One day after retail giant Express announced it is filing for bankruptcy protection and will close nearly 100 stores across the country, the Ohio-based clothing company announced plans to lay off dozens of employees at its corporate office in Manhattan, according to a state unemployment notice made public Tuesday.
With a restructuring of the mall staple imminent, Express announced it will part ways with 169 employees who work out of its design center at 111 Fifth Ave. by the end of July.
Express Inc., the limited liability company that filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Delaware on Monday and also owns its eponymous brand Express along with UpWest and Bonobos, opened its first store in 1980. It expanded to 600 stores throughout the 50 states and Puerto Rico in the decades since. Employing about 9,300 workers, roughly 2,800 of whom are full time, Express plans to shutter 95 of its brick-and-mortar shops across the U.S. by June 30, according to the court filing.
Five of those stores are in New York City, according to the documents: 5036 Kings Plaza in Brooklyn; 23-96 Bell Blvd in Queens; and 1552 North Broadway, 514 Broadway and 129 Fifth Ave., all in Manhattan.
Corporate employees for both Express and Bonobos currently work at 111 Fifth Ave., between East 18th and East 19th streets. A spokeswoman for the company, who asked that her name not be used, claimed, however, that the unemployment notice filed with the state's Department of Labor is "just precautionary," pending the sale of the company and its forthcoming reshuffling. It's not clear how many retail workers will lose their jobs as part of the store closures—the spokeswoman declined to provide a number.
In the past year Express began reducing its footprint by closing about 100 stores across the country, leaving about 584 stores in operation at the time the company filed for bankruptcy protection, citing economic and retail-specific market pressures, as well as reduced foot traffic in malls and other shopping centers, according to court documents.
And according to its most recent financial filing, Express, the parent company, had reported $34.6 million in cash and cash equivalents at the end of the third quarter of 2023, compared with $24.6 million at the end of the third quarter of 2022; and it recorded $274.7 million in total debt at the end of the third quarter of 2023, compared with $235.4 million at the end of the same quarter in 2022.
One day after retail giant Express announced it is filing for bankruptcy protection and will close nearly 100 stores across the country, the Ohio-based clothing company announced plans to lay off dozens of employees at its corporate office in Manhattan, according to a state unemployment notice made public Tuesday.
With a restructuring of the mall staple imminent, Express announced it will part ways with 169 employees who work out of its design center at 111 Fifth Ave. by the end of July.
Express Inc., the limited liability company that filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Delaware on Monday and also owns its eponymous brand Express along with UpWest and Bonobos, opened its first store in 1980. It expanded to 600 stores throughout the 50 states and Puerto Rico in the decades since. Employing about 9,300 workers, roughly 2,800 of whom are full time, Express plans to shutter 95 of its brick-and-mortar shops across the U.S. by June 30, according to the court filing.
Five of those stores are in New York City, according to the documents: 5036 Kings Plaza in Brooklyn; 23-96 Bell Blvd in Queens; and 1552 North Broadway, 514 Broadway and 129 Fifth Ave., all in Manhattan.
Corporate employees for both Express and Bonobos currently work at 111 Fifth Ave., between East 18th and East 19th streets. A spokeswoman for the company, who asked that her name not be used, claimed, however, that the unemployment notice filed with the state's Department of Labor is "just precautionary," pending the sale of the company and its forthcoming reshuffling. It's not clear how many retail workers will lose their jobs as part of the store closures—the spokeswoman declined to provide a number.
In the past year Express began reducing its footprint by closing about 100 stores across the country, leaving about 584 stores in operation at the time the company filed for bankruptcy protection, citing economic and retail-specific market pressures, as well as reduced foot traffic in malls and other shopping centers, according to court documents.
And according to its most recent financial filing, Express, the parent company, had reported $34.6 million in cash and cash equivalents at the end of the third quarter of 2023, compared with $24.6 million at the end of the third quarter of 2022; and it recorded $274.7 million in total debt at the end of the third quarter of 2023, compared with $235.4 million at the end of the same quarter in 2022.
More than 30 years ago Annika Pergament drove up the coast, starting in Florida, in search of her first journalism job after graduate school—her trunk filled with tapes of herself as a news anchor. She landed a gig in television news just several hundred miles later.
"I hit every news station on the way. And by the time I got to South Carolina, I got a job," she said.
It wasn't the exact position she wanted, which would have been on the air, but it was a morning producer for the CBS affiliate in Florence and Myrtle Beach. And it wasn't long until a reporter quit and she got a seat in front of the camera.
"I think the immediacy of television journalism just really appealed to me," she said.
Pergament, who attended high school in Switzerland and grew up speaking Swedish and French, says her interest in journalism started with taking photos when she was an undergrad at Duke University, where she snapped a couple of shots for the school newspaper. A history major, Pergament took a job as a paralegal for the summer at a New York law firm before graduation and considered attending law school. But an attorney at the firm suggested she pursue a different career.
Pergament listened. After just about five months in South Carolina, She eventually landed a job in New York at NY1 — then owned by Time Warner Cable — in 1994. Her first day was Aug. 29.
"I know the date by heart because Aug. 30 is my birthday," she said.
She started off covering state politics, dabbled in live trial coverage, for which she got to show off her legal knowledge, and then became the senior business anchor, regularly interviewing entrepreneurs, business owners and CEOs. Now, she hosts The Rush Hour — which airs weekdays on Spectrum News NY1 from 4 to 6 p.m. — interviewing some of New York's most powerful players.
Pergament won an Emmy in 2022 for her segment "How Lower Manhattan Has Evolved Post 9/11," which aired in 2021.
She has held a few local positions in New York over the years, including at WCBS, Court TV and at WPIX as a freelancer. During one of her many stints at NY1 — and in between her cameos playing herself on television series The Sopranos, Law & Order, Gossip Girl and Mr. Robot — Pergament took a continuing education program in business to help bolster her coverage of the industry. Her bosses soon moved her position from the newsroom down to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange — making NY1 the only local news station to be represented next to the iconic bell.
"It was a challenge, but it was definitely time for me to learn something new," she said. "And that really sort of piqued my interest in covering business news."
Her experience as a business reporter has dovetailed with her position as the host of The Rush Hour, which launched this past January. Spectrum has more than 32 million customers across its 41-state service area.
Some of Pergament's favorite and most prominent guests have included Bill Rudin of Rudin Management, former interim New York City Transit President Sarah Feinberg and civil rights attorney Ron Kuby.
"I have a stable of people who I bring on who are experts at sort of distilling complicated information," she said. "I always love to hear what these highly accomplished New Yorkers have to say and what they're doing."
The Federal Trade Commission voted Tuesday to adopt a near-total ban on noncompete provisions that prohibit workers from switching jobs within an industry, a rule the Chamber of Commerce vowed to immediately challenge in court.
The high-stakes legal showdown comes three years after President Joseph Biden signed an executive order encouraging the FTC to limit noncompete agreements, which affect roughly one in five Americans.
“Robbing people of their economic liberty also robs them of all sorts of other freedoms,” Chair Lina Khan said Tuesday. Arguing that the FTC lacks “rulemaking authority requires ignoring the most straightforward reading of the” law.
“We need to be honoring what courts have said over what courts in the future might say,” she added.
The antitrust and consumer protection agency voted 3-2 to issue a final rule Tuesday after a nearly hour-long debate in an open meeting of the FTC’s five commissioners. The proposal would ban most new noncompete agreements including those of senior executives.
Existing nonncompetes for executives who earn more than $151,164 a year in a “policy making position” can remain in place.
Existing noncompetes with lower-level workers would become unenforceable after the rule goes into effect in six months. The agency estimated that it would increase earnings by at least $400 billion over the next 10 years. The rule wouldn’t apply to employees of not-for-profit entities or franchises.
The Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest business lobby, earlier told reporters it plans to sue over the rule as soon as Wednesday.
Union backing
The FTC first proposed a noncompete ban in January 2023, arguing the restrictions unfairly block workers from switching jobs and undermine labor competition. The proposal has the backing of labor organizations AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union, Democratic senators and attorneys general from California, Illinois and 17 other states. Of the 26,000 public comments the FTC received about the proposal, the agency said that 25,000 of them were in support of a ban.
But business groups oppose the ban, arguing that it’s overly broad and limits the ability of companies to protect confidential information.
Tuesday’s vote fell along partisan lines with the FTC’s three Democrats in favor and the agency’s Republicans opposed. Melissa Holyoak, the former solicitor general of Utah who joined the agency last month, said she was opposed to the rule because there was “no clear congressional authorization” for the FTC to issue it. Republican Andrew Ferguson also voted against the rule, saying he was sympathetic to the policy in the rule but doesn’t believe courts will uphold the FTC’s rulemaking authority.
“The administrative state cannot legislate because Congress declines to do so,” Ferguson said.
In a call with reporters Monday, the Chamber’s Chief Policy Officer Neil Bradley said the FTC doesn’t have the authority to issue the rule.
‘Micromanaging’ economy
The rule “opens up a Pandora’s box where this commission or future commissions could be literally micromanaging every aspect of the economy,” Bradley said. “Agencies can’t exercise authority that Congress hasn’t given them. Congress has not given the FTC the ability to write regulations with respect to competition.”
The agency’s Democrats, however, maintain that the FTC does have authority to issue rules defining unfair methods of competition. The final rule also rejected the idea that the agency doesn’t have the authority to issue the rule because it represents a “major question,” citing a 1973 case that upheld the agency’s rulemaking authority.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has shown deep skepticism toward what it views as agency overreach. In a 2022 case involving efforts to stifle greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, a sharply divided court said regulators must have clear congressional authorization before acting on “major questions.”
The last time the FTC issued a standalone rule defining an unfair method of competition was in 1968, known as the Men and Boy’s Tailored Clothing Rule. The rule, repealed in 1994, required clothing companies to provide equal treatment in promotions to all sellers. The agency has issued dozens of other rules that rely both on its unfair methods of competition authority and its ability to define unfair or deceptive practices.
“The FTC has some good arguments on why this isn’t a major question but a topic that fits comfortably in its authority,” said Sandeep Vaheesan, a lawyer with advocacy group Open Markets Institute who filed the initial petition for a noncompete ban in 2019. “If this isn’t a restraint of trade, what is?”
New York City’s open streets season is in full swing. The car-free Earth Day celebration on Saturday marked the start of 2024’s Open Streets program in the five boroughs, closing over 100 streets to vehicles and transforming them into safe public spaces for educational programs, recreation, and more. A list of participating locations can be [...]
The post Open Streets 2024 season kicks off across NYC first appeared on 6sqft.
Mayor Eric Adams’ administration went on the offensive Tuesday as he prepares to nominate Randy Mastro, an attorney with a long and controversial career, to be the city’s top lawyer.
Despite opposition by the City Council, Adams’ administration has confirmed it is considering Mastro, a partner at King & Spalding and former deputy mayor under Rudy Giuliani, to replace Syliva Hinds-Radix as the city’s corporation counsel. But members of the City Council, who could reject his nomination, have begun voicing objections about Mastro’s work, which has included representing New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie during the “Bridgegate” scandal, helping Chevron avoid paying a $9 billion pollution fine — and, currently, representing New Jersey in its lawsuit against congestion pricing.
But Adams mounted a defense of Mastro during a press conference on Tuesday, calling it “a slippery slope to go after attorneys for representing their clients.”
The job of corporation counsel is rarely the subject of political squabbling, and it’s unusual for the controversy to play out so publicly before a nominee has even been announced. But the dayslong debate adds another chapter to the mayor’s sometimes-messy dealings with the City Council, which included lawmakers overriding Adams’ vetoes of two public safety bills in January.
Trying to reframe the Mastro debate, Adams’ chief counsel Lisa Zornberg talked up the attorney’s qualifications during Tuesday’s press conference. Zornberg, who advises the mayor on legal issues, rattled off Mastro’s service on the boards of Citizens Union and the Legal Aid Society, and noted that he represented Black Lives Matter protesters who sued the federal government over their 2020 dispersal near the White House.
“Randy’s an incredibly top-notch, world-renowned lawyer who’s given tremendous service already in the past,” Zornberg said. She likened Mastro’s more controversial cases to Founding Father John Adams’ famous work representing British soldiers accused of murder following the Boston Massacre.
The administration’s defense came hours after another ominous sign for the nomination. The council’s Black, Latino and Asian Caucus , which comprises nearly two-thirds of the 51-member body, announced their opposition to Mastro in a Tuesday morning statement, citing his past work “against a number of Council priorities” — including his efforts to block homeless shelters in Midtown and the Upper West Side.
Adams is looking to replace the current corporation counsel, Hinds-Radix, due to disagreements over how to handle some of the legal challenges confronting his administration, the Daily News reported. (Adams denied any discord on Tuesday, calling Hinds-Radix “a longtime friend.”)
Those legal issues include the federal investigation into whether his campaign conspired with the Turkish government, a lawsuit accusing the mayor of sexual assault in 1993, and multiple investigations into the conduct of his aides Timothy Pearson and Winnie Greco. The city is also trying to fend off a potential federal takeover of the Rikers Island jail complex, and a tangle of legal issues surrounding the ongoing migrant crisis. The corporation counsel defends the mayor, the city and its agencies in civil cases, leading the city’s Law Department.
The Mastro skeptics are not limited to antagonists of the mayor’s. Shaun Abreu, a Manhattan Democrat not known as an Adams foe, told the Daily News last week that he did not expect Mastro’s nomination to even advance past a committee vote.
One council member, who requested anonymity to discuss the body’s internal dynamics, told Crain’s on Tuesday that there appears to be a solid majority ready to vote against Mastro’s nomination.
“It would have been a smarter approach to better understand the council politics before putting the name out there in public,” the lawmaker said. “Because it’s going to both damage Randy Mastro’s reputation having to go through a failed process, and damage the mayor’s position bargaining with the council to have a notable public loss.”
Mastro did not respond to a request for comment.
Mastro, who has donated to Adams’ campaign, served in the 1990s as chief of staff and later deputy mayor to Giuliani, where he was known for his aggressiveness — and his work to rid the Fulton Fish Market of organized crime. Despite Mastro’s work for a Republican mayor, Adams officials noted Tuesday that Mastro was one of the Giuliani administration’s top-ranking Democrats.
Mastro’s other clients in recent years have included fast-food franchisees seeking to block the state’s minimum-wage hike, landlords who challenged the state’s 2019 tenant protection laws, and Brooklyn residents who opposed a bike lane on Prospect Park West. He was known for fighting Michael Bloomberg’s administration on its proposed West Side stadium and efforts to expand taxis to the outer boroughs — prompting Crain’s to label him a “maestro of mischief” in 2013.