New York, at last, has a statewide system for public matching funds. Candidates for the state Legislature — and governor, attorney general, and comptroller two years from now — can receive contributions from small donors and have them matched to increase their value. This will, in theory, permit anyone running for office to focus far more on poorer people within their neighborhoods than the wealthy far beyond them — since matching funds are only unlocked from donations, up to $250, from within the district.
But this being a program created in Albany, there are loopholes — and one, in particular, threatens to upend the whole system. There is no spending limit for participating campaigns. A politician can see each of their contributions matched as much as twelvefold by public money and still spend however much they’d like, whether it’s from powerful political action committees or wealthy donors. (Self-funders, like Michael Bloomberg, would still be barred from receiving public funds.)
It’s a bizarre new reality that doesn’t exist for municipal campaigns in New York City, which are subject to strict spending caps if participating in the matching funds system.
New York City’s system, administered by the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Board, functions well. Straw donor scandals are a reality, as well as campaigns that too often exist to ply friendly consultants with public funds, but a vast majority of races are run legitimately and audited closely. That is one strength of the CFB: how much it scrutinizes individual campaigns and how much compliance it demands of those who decide to run. There have even been arguments that the CFB is too tough, creating a barrier to entry for first-time, outsider candidates who don’t know how to hire the right treasurer to ensure no laws are broken.
The state system, naturally, has the opposite problem. For decades, campaign finance in New York has been something like the Wild West, with candidates routinely flouting rules—the old Senate majority leader, Joe Bruno, once used campaign cash to buy a pool cover — and getting away with it because the patronage-ridden Board of Elections barely (or selectively) brought enforcement actions. Donation limits have long been inordinately high and it wasn't an exaggeration to say New York, until the last few years, had one of the very worst campaign finance systems in the country.
Under state law, only one in three legislative campaigns is subject to a post-election audit in any one cycle. In New York City, every campaign gets audited and many are fined. The only condition that triggers an automatic audit for state campaigns is when a candidate receives more than $500,000 in matching funds: a total above the maximum an Assembly candidate could possibly receive in a primary and general election combined.
Without effective oversight, the new state campaign finance system could be rife with abuse and fraud. Fear of the CFB keeps most city campaigns in line. Absent state scrutiny, it will probably be left to federal prosecutors to root out instances of corruption or law-breaking. That’s far from ideal. The state must effectively police itself before law enforcement gets involved.
This is especially true because the money at stake is much larger than any seen in the city system. The state budget allocated $100 million to matching funds, which wouldn’t be a problem if audits were reserved for every campaign.
What might happen is the worst of all worlds: a faulty, failed campaign finance program that justifies every criticism lodged at the public funding of campaigns. The CFB has survived all these years because it is relatively well-run. No mayor has ever felt any pressure to defund or destroy the CFB. It’s an accepted part of the municipal political process.
But it’s not yet a durable reality on the state level. For public financing to work, it will need closed loopholes and real oversight. Otherwise, a lot of taxpayer cash is going to be poured down the drain.
Ross Barkan is a journalist and author in New York City.
The Adams administration has inked contracts for nearly $7 billion total with two New York-based design-build teams to erect new borough-based jail facilities.
The borough-based jails are slated as replacements for Rikers Island. The Department of Design and Construction awarded the Sweet Group — under the limited liability company Transformative Reform Group — a contract for $2.9 billion to build the Bronx facility, and Leon D. DeMatteis Construction Corp. a contract for $3.9 billion to build the Queens facility, totalling $6.8 billion, according to a notice that appeared in the city register Monday.
The Sweet Group, located at 5 Hanover Square in the Financial District, previously worked with the city on building out Covid-19 vaccination units across the five boroughs, including 31 brick-and-mortar locations and two mobile providers. The firm will build the 777,150-square-foot
jail at 745 E. 141st St. in Mott Haven on the site of the former Lincoln Hospital and an NYPD tow pound. The firm also erected the 28-story WeWork building at 10 Wall St. and the Queens Public Library Mitchell Linden Technology Annex Branch expansion.
The Elmont, Nassau County, firm run by the DeMatteis family will build the 764,350-square-foot facility at 126-02 82nd Ave. in Kew Gardens, on the site of the former Queens Detention Complex. The Long Island-based team is also currently constructing a 310,274-square-foot Success Academy Charter Schools campus in the Bronx, slated to be completed in 2026.
Two other borough-based jails are planned: one in Brooklyn, and one in Manhattan. Each of the four facilities, which together will cost $15.5 billion to build, will contain 1,040 beds, said Jeffrey Margolies, a spokesman for the Department of Design and Construction. Only the Queens jail will provide beds — 590 of them — for women. Construction at both sites is expected to start in August, Margolies said.
The four new facilities will have the capacity to house 4,160 people, about 2,000 less than the roughly 6,000 currently being detained on Rikers — where at least 31 people have died since 2022, according to the Vera Institute, and where hundreds of women have been sexually assaulted, Gothamist recently reported.
Last year the city secured a $2.9 billion contract with Los Angeles-based firm contract Tutor Perini to build the Brooklyn jail. A contract for the Manhattan facility has not yet been awarded.
In 2017 then-Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged to close the notoriously violent Rikers Island in the middle of the East River — where the majority of those incarcerated have not yet been convicted of a crime — and put forward a roadmap to replacing the complex with a smaller "network of modern, safe and humane facilities" where the incarcerated could await trial closer to home.
In March, however, Jacques Jiha, the city's budget director, told the City Council that the original, and legally mandated, deadline to shutter Rikers by August 2027 is "not going to happen."
The contracts for the Bronx and Queens facilities, however, are not final and are subject to a public hearing May 16, the notice says.
The Sweet Group declined to comment, and Leon D. DeMatteis Construction Corp. did not respond to a request for comment.
This story has been updated to reflect the recently increased number of beds proposed for the four new borough-based jails.
While a home in the classic Manhattan enclave of Sutton Place may be the epitome of New York City living, this three-bedroom (with room for more) co-op at 410 East 57th Street has space to spare and a layout that’s anything but cramped. Asking $2,250,000, this pre-war co-op is renovated and move-in ready, with plenty [...]
The post For $2.25M, this Sutton Place classic seven has enough personal space for everyone first appeared on 6sqft.
Mayor Eric Adams’ administration is spending $250,000 of city money to sponsor an upcoming tech conference whose organizer recently worked for Frank Carone, Adams’ political fixer and former chief of staff.
The Smart City Expo USA is scheduled to be held in Lower Manhattan from May 22 to 23, and is touting Adams and more than a dozen other top city officials as speakers. Initially scheduled for October 2023, organizers canceled the conference four days before its start date. They publicly blamed heavy rainfall, but five people familiar with the event’s planning who spoke with Crain’s New York Business attributed the postponement to poor ticket sales and a lack of corporate sponsorships.
Mayor Adams has promoted the revived Expo as a chance to explore solutions to climate change and public safety: “As the tech mayor, I am committed to pushing our city forward,” Adams said in a video message first posted to the conference’s YouTube page in April.
But Adams has not publicly mentioned his administration’s financial support for the event, nor the organizers’ ties to his personal orbit: Aarti Tandon, the CEO of the for-profit company that runs Smart City Expo, last year worked for Carone’s lobbying and consulting firm, Oaktree Solutions. Carone and one of his current employees, Matthew Quinonez, were both copied on an outreach email, reviewed by Crain’s, that Tandon sent last year to prospective speakers and sponsors.
The Adams administration’s $250,000 commitment is seen by some as extraordinarily high for a city sponsorship of a privately produced event. Sources told Crain’s that the payment has aroused concerns within the city’s Economic Development Corp., which is listed online as a “visionary sponsor” of the Expo and has helped coordinate the city’s support along with the Office of Technology and Innovation.
The mayor’s office and EDC declined to answer questions about how the administration became involved in the conference and whether Carone had any influence on the sponsorship, instead referring Crain’s to a statement by the Office of Technology and Innovation.
“As we continue to build New York City’s tech sector and our future-focused sectors, like green economy and life sciences, the city has proudly supported a broad range of economic development efforts, including events like the Smart City Expo, which attract visitors from around the world,” wrote spokesman Ray Legendre. “We look forward to welcoming attendees to help bolster our city’s economy and advance innovation to improve life for New Yorkers.”
Carone, reached for comment on Friday, initially told Crain’s that he “was never involved in it in any iteration, ever.” When pressed, however, he conceded that he had planned to solicit private-sector sponsors for last year’s Expo and “provide seed money myself to the organization” running the event.
“You’ve got to start from somewhere,” he said. But Carone said he never made the intended investment and has no financial stake in the event. The Expo is Tandon’s “baby,” Carone said, adding that he assisted Tandon while she worked for Oaktree but severed ties to the conference last year when she left his company on amicable terms after a short tenure. Tandon continued to lead Smart City Expo USA, where she has been CEO since 2019.
“We were going in a different direction, quite frankly, internationally,” Carone said. The Expo, he added, was “not something we had the infrastructure or desire to work on, so we amicably decided to go our separate ways.”
Oaktree had announced Tandon’s planned hire as a managing director in May 2023, two days before the city announced it would host the Smart City Expo.
Several people who have worked with Tandon on the Expo told Crain’s they were unaware she had ever been affiliated with Oaktree. Tandon declined to comment on her affiliation with Oaktree, and Carone did not respond to follow-up questions about when she stopped working there.
“We postponed the conference because it just wasn’t the right time to host it,” Tandon said in an emailed statement in response to questions about the event. “Glad we waited because it’s going to be great.”
Much of the conference is marketed toward entrepreneurs interested in doing business with cities. John Kaehny, executive director of the watchdog group Reinvent Albany, argued that it makes little sense for New York City to sponsor an event geared toward companies trying to score public contracts.
“It is a concern when the city is directly subsidizing events for vendors whose goal is to sell stuff to the city,” Kaehny said. “That’s taxpayer money, and you have to say, what is the point of that expenditure given that the city is already hosting?”
‘I haven’t heard any buzz’
The Adams administration initially committed $250,000 to last year’s event through a June 2023 vote by the board of the Economic Development Corp., whose members are appointed by the mayor. The $250,000 was a one-time “sponsorship contribution” that is now being used to produce this year’s event, Office of Technology and Innovation spokesman Legendre said in an email.
Legendre said the city’s support also included identifying speakers from within the administration, but it is unclear whether that extends to staffing help or other resources. The deal approved by EDC’s board last year included both the $250,000 sponsorship and also “any needed funding source agreements” for the Expo.
The Office of Technology and Innovation was listed as EDC’s partner in securing the city funding, and the Expo website refers to OTI as a “host” of the conference. The office is a mayoral agency whose leader, Matthew Fraser, was appointed by Adams.
Carone said he played no role in asking the Adams administration to put up money for the conference. He was legally barred from lobbying his former City Hall colleagues for one year after he departed the administration at the end of 2022, and still has not registered as a lobbyist. Several of his employees are registered lobbyists, however, and Carone has been open about the fact that he advises his clients about how to approach his former colleagues in city government.
Tandon said in an email that New York City has been “extremely supportive” of the conference, noting that the National League of Cities and the African American Mayors Association are serving as co-hosts. Given plans to host the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the region, Tandon said, “it only makes sense to convene leaders in NYC to talk about modernizing our airports, the latest innovations in security, mobility, sustainability, and more.”
Opinions about the conference are mixed. Several people told Crain’s they planned to attend this year’s Expo on Pier 36 in the East River, and said they were impressed by the extensive program and lineup of speakers — which, besides the slew of City Hall officials, also includes the mayors of a few mid-sized cities, the governor of New Mexico and dozens of executives in business and real estate.
But others in New York’s business and technology sectors said there was little organic demand for the Expo. The smart-city concept, which broadly calls for using digital infrastructure to improve city services, was a craze during the 2010s but commands less interest now, with attention having shifted to other topics like artificial intelligence.
“I haven’t heard any buzz or any kind of real energy coming out of that event,” said one well-connected tech industry figure.
Tandon, asked whether waning interest in the smart-city concept had been a hurdle for sponsorship and ticket sales, responded that “It’s unfortunate that some have not embraced making NYC ‘smart.’”
“The rest of the world is eating our lunch,” Tandon said in an email.
Some industry players said they see the conference as a valuable networking opportunity, although the attendee pool may be limited by its steep ticket prices — $1,095 for private-sector employees and $500 for people from the public sector or nonprofits. Organizers are marketing the Expo as a chance for startup founders to “Pitch your technology to cities,” and the Adams administration is indeed sending some of the officials in charge of New York’s multibillion-dollar contracts budget, like chief procurement officer Lisa Flores.
Abrupt cancellation
The decision to postpone last year's conference appeared to be made abruptly — some city officials involved in planning only learned of the cancellation when it was announced publicly.
The event’s primary boosters inside the administration include Fraser, the chief technology officer who leads the Office of Technology and Innovation, two people said; Fraser is scheduled to give a welcome address before Mayor Adams’ kickoff speech at the Expo’s opening day on May 22. Other listed sponsors include Google, Accenture and Microsoft.
Tandon, a lawyer by trade, has an eclectic resume that includes stints as a documentary film producer and an advisor on Michael Bloomberg’s 2020 presidential campaign, where she worked on Black media engagement, according to her LinkedIn.
In the years before the pandemic, Tandon helped organize a previous series of smart city events in New York that several attendees recalled as successful. The current iteration, Smart City Expo USA, is a spinoff of a larger conference, the Smart City World Congress, held annually in Barcelona and sponsored by a Spanish trade group. The OTI spokesman told Crain’s that the Adams administration decided to support the Expo because of its affiliation with the Barcelona conference, a prominent event that last year drew 25,000 attendees.
In 2022, Tandon donated $400 to Adams’ re-election campaign, records show. Last year’s press release announcing her hire at Oaktree said she would serve as managing director for equity, entertainment and technology, working in the sports and media industries and focusing on “the intersection of profit and purpose.”
“One of the many things I admire about Aarti is that she meets people where they are,” Carone said of Tandon in last year’s announcement.
Carone has attracted considerable scrutiny for his decision to leave City Hall during the first year of the Adams administration and start his own firm — all while maintaining a leading role on Adams’ 2025 re-election campaign. Although critics see Carone as profiting from his connections to the mayor and his staff, Carone has maintained he is staying within ethical guidelines by not communicating directly with city agencies.
Mayor Adams, for his part, has a well-documented affinity for new and often unproven technologies. In March, he announced plans to install scanners in subway stations to detect weapons, although critics noted that the same machines had a dubious success record. Last year, Crain’s reported on the existence of an obscure two-person office Adams created to screen private-sector business pitches, with an apparent focus on cryptocurrency.
Have a news tip? Send a note to reporter Nick Garber.
Martha Stewart has left downtown for uptown, and downsized in the process.
About a year after selling a West Village triplex, the home-decor doyenne and multimillionaire businesswoman and her daughter, media personality Alexis Stewart, have purchased a duplex on the Upper West Side.
The new six-bedroom home is at the Belnord, a full-block redevelopment project at 2376 Broadway at West 86th Street. The apartment, a 4,600-square-foot unit spanning the top two floors of the 12-story building, cost $12.3 million, according to the city register, which indicated the deal closed April 25.
The deed also revealed the Stewarts have been in contract since April 2023, about two months after they found a buyer for their 9,500-square-foot former pad at 165 Charles St., a glass tower designed by Richard Meier near the Hudson River that was a celebrity hotspot after opening two decades ago. Both Martha and Alexis signed the Belnord deed.
The unit’s seller was the Belnord’s current developer, Westbrook Partners, which took over the project in 2021 from HFZ Capital Group, a once high-flying firm now deluged by a torrent of lawsuits over unpaid bills and missed loan payments.
When the state attorney general’s office allowed sales to begin at the Belnord in 2017, HFZ envisioned getting $18 million for the Stewarts’ new spread, which has a living room with a fireplace, a formal dining room and views of both the building’s landscaped courtyard and West 87th Street, according to the offering plan and marketing materials.
But as condo sales slowed in the years before the pandemic, which added its own layers of complexity, the development team appeared to scale back its pricing ambitions. In recent years the Stewarts’ unit was marketed for $13.2 million, according to Streeteasy, before finally trading below that.
The 213-unit Belnord’s most-recent offering plan calls for a sellout of $1.3 billion, but because the 1909 rental turned condo is rehabbing and selling units as they become vacant, the process has gone slowly. As of May 6 the Belnord had unloaded about 50% of its apartments, according to the real estate data firm Marketproof, which added that sale prices there have ranged from $870,000 to $13.9 million.
The building's own turn in the limelight might enhance its appeal. Exterior images of the fictional co-op the Arconia in the Hulu comedy series Only Murders in the Building are actually shots of the facade of the Belnord, a landmark.
It’s not known if Alexis, a former radio and TV host, will live in the apartment with her family or share the residence with her mother, whose primary address still appears to be a farm in Katonah in Westchester County.
Richard Ziegelasch, the Corcoran Group agent who represented the Stewarts in the deal, did not respond to a request for comment. And Douglas Elliman broker Maya Kadouri, who marketed the unit, declined to comment.
In 2015 Martha Stewart sold her multifaceted company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, to Sequential Brands Group for about $350 million but continued to be involved with her firm, which published Martha Stewart Living magazine and other titles. In 2019 Sequential ended up selling the intellectual property to Marquee Brands for $175 million.
Stewart, a former model who has branched into marijuana-derivative-infused candies in recent years, also posed in 2023 in a bathing suit on some covers of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue at the age of 81.
New condo sales have been a bit of a bright spot in a market still chilled by high interest rates. The median sale price for developments in Manhattan in the first quarter was $2.1 million, which was up sharply from the $1.6 million in the first quarter of 2023, according to Elliman data. But sales activity in the category slumped by 35% over the same period.
A Crown Heights property that has seen several development proposals over the years traded hands again. A limited liability company tied to Yitzchok Schwartz’s YS Developers paid $64 million for 960 Franklin Avenue, which sits a block from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and is home to a former spice factory, as The Real Deal reported. [...]
The post 289-unit condo proposed for Crown Heights site next to Brooklyn Botanic Garden first appeared on 6sqft.
Leases
Bloomberg extends massive Lexington Avenue lease
Address: 731 Lexington Ave., Manhattan
Landlord: Alexander's Inc.
Tenant: Bloomberg LP
Lease size: 950,000 square feet
Lease length: 11 years
Asset type: Office
Read more about the deal here.
Law firm moves in Midtown
Address: 1251 Sixth Ave., Manhattan
Landlord: Mitsui Fudosan
Tenant: Sullivan & Worcester
Lease size: 42,000 square feet
Asset type: Office
Read more about the deal here.
Sales
Industrial parcels next to scrapped Amazon headquarters trade
Addresses: 45-40 and 45-28 Vernon Blvd., Queens
Seller: Quadrum Global, Baron Property Group and Simon Development
Buyer: ZD Jasper Realty
Sale price: $47 million
Asset type: Development sites
Brokers: JLL's Brendan Maddigan, Rob Hinckley, Michael Mazzara, Ethan Stanton, Winfield Clifford and Vickram Jambu represented the seller and the buyer.
Read more about the deal here.
Tennessee firm acquires Canarsie concrete plant
Address: 9814 Ditmas Ave., Brooklyn
Seller: Rossanna Bortone
Buyer: Jeff Hollingshead
Sale price: $12.5 million
Asset type: Industrial
Columbia University canceled its main commencement event slated for May 15 after weeks of tumult on campus, as protests spurred by the Israel-Hamas war upend the college graduation season.
The school is instead focusing on smaller-scale celebrations, saying that for many students they are more “meaningful to them and their families,” according to a statement Monday. “We will focus our resources on those school ceremonies and on keeping them safe, respectful, and running smoothly.”
Columbia is following the University of Southern California in abandoning one of the year’s marquee events while other schools review security plans amid a deepening crisis. Protests at Columbia culminated last week in a police raid and more than 100 arrests after dozens of people barricaded themselves inside a campus building. The school asked requested police to stay on its Morningside Heights campus until May 17, and access to the area has been restricted.
Colleges across the US have been thrown into turmoil since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, toppling university presidents, bitterly dividing students, and angering powerful alumni. Schools’ responses to behavior on campus have prompted investigations by Congress and stoked accusations of antisemitism, as well as concern about suppression of free speech for pro-Palestinian voices.
Columbia holds its commencement ceremony every year for thousands of graduates and their families, where each school gathers on the main quad to listen to the university president give an address. Individual schools will still hold their own separate ceremonies, in some cases at relocated venues including the Baker Athletics Complex in northern Manhattan.
“These past few weeks have been incredibly difficult for our community,” Columbia said. “Just as we are focused on making our graduation experience truly special, we continue to solicit student feedback and are looking at the possibility of a festive event on May 15 to take the place of the large, formal ceremony.”
USC also canceled its main commencement, citing security concerns. Instead, the private university in Los Angeles is opting for smaller ceremonies and holding a “Trojan Family Graduate Celebration” at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum with drone shows, fireworks and the school’s marching band.
The city announced Monday it would make $5.3 million in new grant funding available for its business improvement districts, including a program meant to help the organizations deal with rising insurance premiums and cut down on the amount of frivolous lawsuits they face.
That $500,000 initiative is called the "trusted partner" program, and the department of Small Business Services will administer it. It will get rid of many requirements the BIDs face that the city characterizes as cumbersome, such as lowering the amount of agreements they need to review, sign and comply with. It will help provide greater clarity around what BIDs are and are not responsible for as well, which should in turn cut down on the number of lawsuits filed against them over issues they are not in charge of, such as snow removal.
These types of lawsuits are a huge issue for BIDs, causing them to face significant insurance premium hikes and outside counsel costs, said Mayor Eric Adams' administration.
The funding also includes $400,000 for the "connected corridors" program, which aims to support public design and lighting projects in parts of the city that have not traditionally seen much investment. The initial BIDs chosen for the program this year are the 161st Street BID near Yankee Stadium in the South Bronx, the Pitkin Avenue BID in Brownsville and the Sunnyside Shines BID in Sunnyside.
The money is part of the mayor's budget for fiscal year 2025 and represents a small fraction of the overall $112 billion plan. In general, the investments aim to help boost tourism and economic development while cutting red tape for BIDs.
The Adams administration timed the announcement to coincide with the city's second annual BID Day, an occasion meant to celebrate the city's 76 neighborhood organizations. The groups invested $194 million in their neighborhoods, collected almost 4 million trash bags worth of litter and held 4,561 public events drawing a total of 25.8 million people during fiscal year 2023, according to a recent report from the department of Small Business Services.