NYC Real Estate News

You can see Manhattan from bottom to top from the observation deck of SL Green Realty’s 73-story 1 Vanderbilt Ave. at East 42nd Street, but the latest target for leaders of the real estate investment trust is just 10 blocks north.

There lies the Seagram Building on Park Avenue, the first skyscraper built with floor-to-ceiling windows, a handsome, 30-story, 1958 building with some big-name tenants but roughly $1 billion in debt that owner RFR Realty may have trouble refinancing when the loan comes due next May.

SL Green hears the sound of opportunity knocking. It has become Manhattan's largest office landlord in part by snagging top-shelf properties from tapped-out owners, most recently when it seized control of 245 Park Ave. in bankruptcy court two years ago. At a dinner last month at Le Pavillon, a restaurant inside 1 Vanderbilt, SL Green officials told institutional investors they’re now eyeing the Seagram.

“They just used it as an example of a building with looming loan maturities that they’d target,” said Alexander Goldfarb, a real estate industry analyst at Piper Sandler who hosted the dinner. “The point is, here is the type of building they’re thinking about.”

SL Green’s chief executive, Marc Holliday, in an interview said: “We're always interested in investing in those kinds of projects.” 

SL Green is one of the only office landlords that can dare to dream so boldly. Over the course of 44 years of near-constant buying and selling (in stark contrast to its mostly buy-and-hold competitors), the firm has assembled a portfolio of about 50 buildings encompassing 30 million square feet of office space, 90% in Manhattan and about a third located in a handful of Midtown blocks near Grand Central Terminal. The area happens to be the nation’s hottest office market, so New York’s biggest real estate bull is ready to magnify its considerable bet on the city’s office future when rivals are in retreat.

Manhattan offices are a bet fewer investors want to make, and SL Green has bought out some doubting partners in recent months at startlingly low prices. It paid just $7 million to acquire the 45% stake in 10 E. 53rd St., a building that’s 98% occupied, from the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, a fund with $400 billion in assets. It also bought back an unidentified Israeli partner’s 44% stake in 2 Herald Square for no money, then persuaded the lender, U.S. Bank, to retire the $182.5 million mortgage in return for a $7 million payment. With scores of Manhattan towers still disturbingly vacant and billions’ worth of mortgages coming due, overleveraged owners may be forced in the months and years ahead to sell at fire-sale prices to SL Green. Think Worldwide Plaza, where SL Green is a 25% owner. Maybe even the Seagram Building.

“We’re ready to really take advantage,” Chief Financial Officer Matthew DiLiberto said at a conference last month.

Bravado is a necessary part of any salesman’s playbook, but coming from an office landlord, it’s more than a touch discordant in light of the mounting financial pressures they all face. That includes SL Green.

Vacancy rates citywide are 15% and continued creeping higher last quarter, securities firm Evercore ISI says, while commercial broker CBRE reports only 2% of office buildings nationwide are thriving. Hundreds of billions’ worth of mortgages will have to be refinanced at higher rates, while Fitch Ratings says 9% of these loans are in special servicing, aka the intensive care ward.

SL Green believes it has the sort of buildings that tenants want and knows how to meet their needs. It’s about to install a golf lounge at 245 Park as part of a $200 million upgrade so finance bros can work on their swing without leaving the building. Occupancy in its Manhattan buildings rose last quarter to 86.7%, 80 basis points higher than in the first, an unexpectedly strong showing, according to JPMorgan analyst Anthony Paolone.

Every tenant is sacred because SL Green has borrowed to the hilt to bet all its chips on Manhattan. Its $11 billion debt burden is 11 times higher than operating earnings. Six times is what investors want to see, according to BMO Capital Markets. Ever the wheeler-dealer, SL Green plans to ease the burden by selling buildings. It just completed the $635 million sale of 625 Madison Ave. to The Related Cos. only months after seizing control of the property when billionaire developer Ben Ashkenazy defaulted on a loan. It is also expected to soon sell slugs of 245 Park and 1 Vanderbilt, a tower which analysts estimate is worth $4.6 billion.

Unlike most of New York’s largest real estate owners, who pass properties down from generation to generation, SL Green has never been a buy-and-hold investor and since 2001 has sold all or part of 50 buildings. Wall Street admires a dealmaker, and though SL Green shares still trade 30% below prepandemic levels, they have doubled in value in the past 12 months — far ahead of the shares of rival Manhattan office owners Vornado Realty Trust and Boston Properties.

But there’s always another side of a trade, and it happens that betting against SL Green is one of the most popular wagers in real estate. A hefty 20% of its shares have been sold short, the most of any office landlord. Bears reckon there are only so many tenants who can pay the high rents SL Green needs to service its debt, and unless interest rates decline dramatically, the landlord will be stuck with a pile of office mortgages that it can’t roll over and be forced to sell properties at depressed prices.

“SL Green isn’t a battleground,” BMO analyst John Kim said. “It is the battleground.”

Many of New York’s biggest real estate owners got into the business the old-fashioned way: inheritance. Brooklyn native Stephen L. Green got into the business through hair.

Around 50 years ago, Green was a lawyer who lent a neighbor — some say it was a client — $50,000 and was repaid with wigs instead of cash, according to his alma mater, Hartwick College in upstate New York. Green took the inventory to Asia, sold it at a 100% profit and soon was manufacturing wigs in Hong Kong and South Korea. He sold the enterprise to Gillette for $7 million and plowed the money into Manhattan office buildings, such as 36 W. 44th St. and 38 E. 30th St. It was the early 1980s, New York’s renaissance was years away, and longtime owners were ready to sell for whatever they could get. Green’s wife, Nancy, was in charge of construction and turning the old garment-manufacturing buildings into humming white-collar offices.

“He was prolific,” recalled Barry Gosin, who was fishing in the same waters as Green at the time and now is CEO of real estate broker Newmark Group.

Green became known as “King of the B’s” because he bought older Class B buildings instead of fancier Class A’s. But his more modest buildings stayed filled enough to survive the early 1990s crisis that wiped out some rivals and started buying on avenues instead of streets. To raise more money for acquisitions, he took his company public in 1998.

He broke into the big leagues four years later, when he and a partner paid $480 million for 1515 Broadway, a 1.8 million-square-foot tower that the firm now hopes to turn into a casino. The deal was a bold move, as banks weren’t lending when the economy contracted after 9/11, and property insurance was nearly impossible to get at any price. But the Times Square tower was a success, and The Lion King has played in its theater for nearly 20 years.

Sept. 11, 2001, was auspicious for SL Green for another reason: It was primary election day in New York, and Green’s brother Mark, who served as the city’s public advocate and was not involved in real estate, was running for the Democratic nomination for mayor against then-Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer. The election was postponed after the planes crashed into the World Trade Center, and Ferrer’s victory on Sept. 25 disrupted Mark Green’s momentum. Although he eventually beat Ferrer in an October run-off, he lost to Michael Bloomberg in November’s general election.

“Most people think the delay turned the tide and allowed Bloomberg to win,” said Robert Ivanhoe, a partner at law firm Greenberg Traurig who has represented SL Green for more than 30 years.

During the campaign, SL Green took a roasting in the press for being the largest landlord to city agencies. It responded by acquiring yet more buildings, including a big Midtown office portfolio from developer Scott Rechler in 2006. That deal marked the arrival of Green’s successor, Marc Holliday, an investment banker who had joined the firm as chief investment officer in 1998 after helping take SL Green public. The new CEO was from a real estate family: His father, Morton Holliday, was the city’s No. 1 mortgage broker for several decades.

“He was a lender to everyone, ” Gosin said, “literally everyone.”

Including SL Green. In 2009, with the economy wrecked by the financial crisis, Morton Holliday lined up a $145 million loan to refinance the Graybar Building at 420 Lexington Ave., a landmarked, 1.2 million-square-foot tower that SL Green owned and used for its headquarters. The son’s firm paid the father’s a $428,000 broker fee, according to a regulatory filing.

After the crisis faded away, Holliday began planning his signature statement: a supertall tower that would bring Park Avenue-level rents to East 42nd Street. It was a project that would transform the owner of Class B properties into a builder of Class A space.

In the summer of 2001, SL Green struck an unremarkable-looking deal to buy 317 Madison Ave. for an unremarkable-sounding $106 million. But the 22-story building offered a key parcel of land for what became 1 Vanderbilt Ave. Ground was broken in 2016 to develop the city’s fourth-tallest tower at a cost of $3.3 billion, and analysts were skeptical tenants would pay the prices commanded by Park Avenue buildings like the Seagram.

But today 1 Vanderbilt is 99% occupied, thanks to TD Bank moving from 317 Madison and paying $130 per square foot in rent, while Greenberg Traurig came from the MetLife Building across the street and pays $127 a square foot. Ivanhoe said the building’s huge windows, two Michelin-star restaurants and easy access to public transportation make for an attractive workplace, even if it means his longtime client is never far away.

“We’re just one floor above SL Green,” Ivanhoe said. “When you get the call, you’re right there.”

As part of the development, SL Green agreed with the city to pay $220 million to connect the building underground to Grand Central and improve access to the subway. Holliday also agreed to build 1 Vanderbilt slimmer than he could have in order to create a larger public space between the building and the train terminal. (He built taller instead.)

The building opened just as tenants began demanding new space and the finest amenities to lure workers back from home after the pandemic. It also created a template for success in other buildings. The next one is to be 245 Park, a 1.7 million-square-foot tower that SL Green acquired out of bankruptcy in 2022. SL Green had bought a stake in 2018 and as a mezzanine lender assumed the mortgage and forced out Chinese owner HNA after it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Soon after taking control, Green sold 50% to a Japanese partner for $1 billion, a startlingly high sum that BMO’s Kim called “the deal of the century.”

The tower at 245 Park, 20% vacant as of June, got a boost this month when Ares Management, which leases three floors, agreed to add an additional eight and help fill a void after Major League Baseball moved out in 2021. Bond-rating firm KBRA said the building’s $1.2 billion mortgage is no longer a “loan of concern.”

Filling vacancies is crucial because SL Green has $1.3 billion in bills due next year, when mortgages for 11 Madison Ave. and 1515 Broadway mature. Lenders required Stahl Organization to cough up $250 million in cash in order to refinance 277 Park’s $750 million mortgage, and similar terms could be demanded of SL Green, which has $200 million on its books. Because SL Green has a table of still-valuable properties that it’s willing to sell a piece of, including 1 Vanderbilt, it should be able to put up the down payments necessary to refinance loans.

“Our lenders believe in the assets we have, believe in us,” Holliday told Crain's, “and we are doing everything we can to ensure they have a good result on their investment in us.”

Depending on how 1 Vanderbilt’s sale shakes out, SL Green could emerge with enough cash that it would be positioned to snap up the Seagram Building. SL Green is in the process of raising a $1 billion fund to invest in the debt of Manhattan office buildings and knows the Seagram well, considering it helped negotiate an 18-month loan extension last year for the tower.

Tenants include private equity giant Clayton Dubilier & Rice and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund. But about $1 billion worth of debt on the 860,000-square-foot building comes due next May, and there are signs that owner RFR, which declined to comment, might have trouble refinancing. Its 50% partner in the Chrysler Building is insolvent, and an older Fifth Avenue office building that RFR owns missed a property-tax payment last year.

Not only does the Seagram come with a gilded tenant roster, but RFR has also invested in the latest amenities, including a former 24,000-square-foot underground garage converted into the Playground with a pickleball court and a rock-climbing wall.

“It’s a great building,” Holliday said. “There aren’t more than a few dozen that one would call really great buildings.”

Mayor Eric Adams may appear vulnerable as he gears up for his re-election campaign, but many big names in the city's real estate industry don't seem to be flocking to an alternative just yet.

The latest fundraising numbers are perhaps the clearest sign of this so far. Not only has Adams outraised his two challengers at this point by a wide margin, but his list of donors is also filled with major real estate names, many of whom have given him the maximum $2,100 donation. These include investor Alex Adjmi, developer Hal Fetner and developer William Zeckendorf.

The haul is a good indication that Adams' perceived vulnerabilities for the 2025 election, such as a criminal investigation into his fundraising efforts and his unpopular budget cuts, haven't amounted to very much at this point. His re-election campaign is still shaping up to be a formidable one that retains strong backing from one of the city's most influential sectors.

The mayor has long enjoyed close ties to the real estate industry, so its continued support for his campaign is not a huge shock. During his 2021 campaign for the office, he led the sprawling field of candidates in real estate donations by a lot, according to reporting in Crain's from January of that year. And although refusing to take donations from the industry was something of a litmus test at the time to prove a candidate's progressive bona fides, Adams never shied away from real estate and told Crain's during the campaign that the nasty reputation developers had in many communities was unfair.

"The bad actors, I believe, have really damaged what should be a more symbiotic relationship," he said.

Adams has stayed largely friendly to real estate throughout his first term apart from a few minor dustups. These include a fiery speech at this year's REBNY gala slamming industry leaders for not backing him more on crime and education, and developers' concerns about an affordable housing component of the administration's City of Yes zoning reform package.

These are small issues in the grand scheme of things, though. They have not detracted much from the mayor's overall pro-development stance around topics including bringing back an affordable housing tax credit and significantly ramping up housing production, and they have certainly not been enough for the sector to cut ranks with him in any significant way.

And though this may fit the definition of damning someone with faint praise, it's not as if the industry has an attractive alternative. The two candidates who have entered the race to challenge Adams so far are former Comptroller Scott Stringer and Brooklyn state Sen. Zellnor Myrie. Both are generally seen as more liberal and less friendly to real estate than Adams (Stringer was among the 2021 candidates who said he would not take money from developers), as is current Comptroller Brad Lander, who is rumored to be considering a mayoral run as well. If a Democrat to Adams' right enters the race, this could change, but that is a pretty big if, particularly given that most to Adams' right are Republicans.

Plenty could happen between now and the 2025 mayoral primary, and given the friendliness Adams still has to the real estate community, donors shifting to another candidate or stopping their contributions would be a strong sign that he may not win a second term after all. But their relationship has proved durable, and at this point it seems nothing short of an indictment (something that is not currently on the table) is likely to change that.

Beyond being the latest Democratic foil to Donald Trump, New Yorkers saw a champion of health care access in Vice President Kamala Harris’ first stump speech on Monday.

In her first public remarks as a presidential candidate, Harris tried out a campaign platform that appeared to place a premium on health care access and women’s health. The speech crowned a prolific day of Democratic fundraising and made waves in New York, where political observers and health care insiders saw opportunities to read between the lines.

Harris is relatively popular among Democrats, including in New York, where Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one in terms of voter registration. In her first 24 hours as a candidate for president, Harris broke campaign finance records by raising over $81 million.

Speaking to supporters at her campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, Harris provided a snapshot of some of the key issues, if not specific policies, that her fledgling campaign is likely to reprise over the next 106 days.

In the 20-minute stump speech, the vice president emphasized her background as a prosecutor against powerful actors while framing herself as a supporter of middle- and working-class Americans. Harris warned a second Trump presidency would put Social Security and Medicare “on the chopping block,” and promote “policies that treat health care as only a privilege for the wealthy, instead of what we all know it should be, which is a right for every American.”

With few policy details in place, political tea-readers were left to scrutinize the vice president’s record for hints at how a Harris presidency would impact health care in New York. 

“If anything, she was testing the waters yesterday. It seemed like she started to talk platform,” said Lupe Todd-Medina, a Democratic political consultant and principal of Effective Media Strategies.

“She was talking about not just reproductive rights but women’s rights. I think she’s on to something there,” she said. In the speech, Todd-Medina heard overtures to Black maternal health, which she said would resonate with the Black women who make up a significant plurality of Harris’ base. “Now it’s time for tributary,” she said.

Harris took time to beat the drum on Republicans’ restrictive record on birth control and abortion access, warning against the specter of a national abortion ban and promising to back federal legislation to protect reproductive rights.

“The more this issue becomes part of the conversation the better it is for advocates like us who fight for increased access to birth control, abortion and reproductive rights,” said Jenna Bimbi, co-executive director of the Williamsburg-based NY Birth Control Access Project. 

“In New York we’re protected, but we’re not protected if there is going to be a national ban on abortion,” which became a possibility when the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in 2022, said Council Member Lynn Schulman, a Queens Democrat and chair of the Committee on Health.

Several people Crain’s spoke with said having a woman in the governor’s mansion and at the top of the Democratic ticket boded well for women’s health in the state.

“I am a member of the first female majority-led City Council and because of that we’ve had bills on maternity leave, we’ve had bills on maternal mortality, abortion access, reproductive rights,” Schulman said in a phone interview. “That makes a difference.”

Insiders believe her presidency could also give Democrats a strong advocate in the White House when negotiating prescription drug prices under the Inflation Reduction Act. And Harris’ backing, as a Senator, of the Medicare for All Act in 2019 has given hope to supporters of expanded access to health care.

“We need to be able to afford medication,” said Mercedes Narcisse, a Brooklyn Democrat and Chair of the Committee on Hospitals. “I’m looking forward for her to fight on that, to make sure that we will be able to afford our prescriptions.”

Linda Lee, a Queens Democrat and chair of the City Council’s Committee on Mental Health, Disabilities, and Addiction, said Harris could play an important role in funding New York’s mental health care infrastructure by providing federal support to “continue to connect New Yorkers to the comprehensive treatment and recovery services they need, while also ensuring our nonprofit and community-based partners on the ground receive the funding necessary to carry out this impactful work.”

As a woman leading a presidential ticket, Harris may already have a leg-up on the Trump-Vance campaign that President Joe Biden did not have.

“She was talking about not just reproductive rights but women’s rights,” said Todd-Medina. “I think she’s on to something there. She’s put herself in a space where her opponent and the vice presidential opponent really cannot touch her. She’s put herself in a space all her own that she’s able to define.”
 

STARTUP EXPANSION: Mental health startup Headway, which provides a billing and scheduling platform for therapists and connects patients to care, is expanding to Medicare Advantage and Medicaid plans, the company said Tuesday. The expansion comes after the company raised $100 million in Series D financing and notched a $2.3 billion valuation, allowing it to “accelerate” its growth into insurance markets that serve low-income and older individuals, CEO Andrew Adams said in a statement. Headway expects to expand to Medicare Advantage plans in 51 markets by the end of the year and launch with Medicaid plans in 2025.

BOARD SHAKEUP: Alexander Rovt, a billionaire fertilizer and real estate magnate who sits on the board of two Brooklyn safety-net hospitals, is resigning from his position as vice chair of the board of Maimonides Medical Center, according to a report in Politico Playbook last week. Rovt, who’s also the chairman of safety-net One Brooklyn Health’s hospital board, confirmed his resignation as he faces a lawsuit over a vote that ousted One Brooklyn Health’s former CEO LaRay Brown last fall. Rovt said in court filings that his resignation from Maimonides had “nothing to do” with the ongoing lawsuit, and told Politico that he stepped down for the sake of unity on the board.  

GIFT CARD CONTRACT: The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s Division of Family Health awarded a $1.5 million contract for “gift cards” on Tuesday, according to the City Record. The award went to Edenwald-based Baychester Payment Center, LLC., which is listed as a woman-owned business with $1.2 million in registered contracts with the city, according to records kept by the Comptroller’s Office.

The people handpicked by Mayor Eric Adams to rewrite the City Charter will advance changes that would undercut some of the City Council’s legislative authority, according to a list of final proposals released on Tuesday.

The five questions expected to appear on the November ballot for approval by voters include measures that would tighten rules about how the council studies the fiscal impact of new laws. They would also slow down the legislative process when the council is considering bills that affect public safety.

Those ideas clearly echo Adams’ own criticisms of the City Council, with whom he has feuded over the last year as the body overrode his vetoes of bills that expand costly housing vouchers and impose new rules on police officers and jail staff. Adams’ charter changes also give him the added benefit of blocking the City Council from adding its own ballot question in November; the council proposed to increase its oversight powers over mayoral appointments. Adams has denied that his revisions are politically motivated.

“I’m grateful to our commission staff for their thorough research of the city’s charter, thoughtful ballot recommendations, and steadfast commitment to our fellow New Yorkers,” said commission chair Carlo Scissura, a lobbyist and head of the New York Building Congress who is one of several close allies of the mayor’s appointed to the 13-member panel. The commission will vote to approve the changes on Thursday and place them on the fall ballot.

But the City Council sees the effort as plainly political. Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and other lawmakers have called the process rushed and unnecessary, and council spokeswoman Julia Agos blasted the final recommendations on Tuesday.

“This final report mirrors the commission’s rushed process with it issuing its final report less than 24 hours after this final hearing with hours of public testimony,” Agos said. “The Mayor’s commission has put forward proposals that impact the council without engaging us as the entity affected, different from the council's legislative process that the mayor's commission has consistently attacked.”

Fiscal watchdogs may cheer some of the commission’s final proposals. One amendment would require the council to publish fiscal impact statements before holding a hearing on a bill, update that analysis before a vote, and also publish estimates by both the mayor’s budget office and the council itself. That would mark a shift from current practice, in which fiscal impact statements are released soon before votes. (The housing voucher law, for example, was passed last year just one day after the council projected it would cost $10 billion.)

Meanwhile, for bills that affect the NYPD, Fire Department, or Corrections Department, the commission will propose allowing those agencies to file their own “public safety impact statement” outlining the department’s view on the bill’s effects. If the council proceeds with a planned vote, the mayor or those affected agencies would be given 50 days to convene their own hearing — separate from the council’s typical bill hearings — to solicit their own feedback on the bill.

The proposals would resolve the mayor’s grievances against the public safety bills passed by the council earlier this year. Mayor Adams and some officials in the NYPD and Corrections Department railed against the legislation — which required police officers to document more street stops and prohibited solitary confinement in city jails — and argued that the council had failed to take the department’s feedback into account. (The council has rejected those claims, and noted it held hearings on both bills.)

Other proposed charter changes target more obscure policy issues that were raised at the commission’s dozen public hearings. For example, one proposal would allow permits for film shoots to be issued by the Mayor’s Office for Media and Entertainment, which already processes those permits, instead of the Small Business Services Department, which currently handles them.

And the commission wants to boost minority- and women-owned businesses by enshrining the chief business diversity officer — a position created by the mayor — in the city charter, and empowering that person as a point of contact for MWBEs.

Some who had hopes for the mayor’s charter push were left disappointed by the final proposals. Andrew Rein, president of the watchdog Citizens Budget Commission, said the group should have considered his proposals to revamp the city budget through detailed financial plans and mandatory deposits into the rainy day fund.

“It's disappointing the commission chose to defer or ignore good options we and others proposed for bringing needed integrity and transparency to the budget process, and they instead are proposing tweaks,” Rein said in an email.

Other members of the Charter Revision Commission include Ruben Diaz Jr., a lobbyist and former Bronx borough president; Jackie Rowe-Adams, an anti-gun violence advocate and vocal supporter of the mayor; and Max Rose, the former Staten Island Congressman-turned lobbyist.

As return-to-office numbers hit almost 80% of prepandemic levels, lunch options in midtown New York keep proliferating — whether it’s the standard $17 takeout salad or a $34 Gruyère cheeseburger at the splashy new Four Twenty Five .

Now there’s yet another recourse for white-collar workers who want to escape pedestrian meals during the day, not to mention uninspired event dinners at night.

One of New York’s preeminent cooks, Daniel Boulud, has jumped into the high-volume corporate catering business. This week he’s launching Cuisine Boulud New York. It’s the latest in the chef’s empire that includes the two-Michelin-star Restaurant Daniel and the recently reopened Café Boulud; he also runs the kitchen at the AmEx Black Card dining room, Centurion New York.

This new partnership will be with LifeWorks Restaurant Group, a division of the food service behemoth Aramark.

“Across our portfolio, corporate tenants are back in the office in a big way with expectations for entertaining both clients and employees,” says Marc Holliday, chairman and chief executive of SL Green Realty. His properties include the new luxury tower 1 Madison, where Cuisine Boulud is based. “Top companies expect the same Michelin-quality food they’re used to when they go out to eat socially, and chef Boulud’s ability to provide that in a corporate setting is rare and very much in demand.”

Holliday noted the popularity of operations in another SL Green property, 1 Vanderbilt, where Boulud operates the scenic Le Pavillon restaurant and the Vandy Club, the midtown building’s tenant-only amenity space. “At 1 Vanderbilt, the elevated amenity spaces that Daniel Boulud serves are booked for tenant events daily,” Holliday says. “There’s no question that this culinary offering was a big selling point for the building, which is fully leased.”

Boulud is a veteran caterer. For 25 years he’s run the boutique operation Feast & Fêtes from Restaurant Daniel’s kitchen, dishing out food for American Express, FIFA, LVMH and other clients. He’s also done occasional blockbuster events, from Time’s 75th anniversary at Radio City Music Hall in 1998, for which he ordered 150 copper pots to create authentic versions of lamb Champvallon, to a 2023 wedding at the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild for 150 people, on the French Riviera.

“We have always had aspirations to take on large events,” Boulud says. “They are so integral to our clients’ lives and are a quintessential element of New York City. In the past we have had to turn down events because we just didn’t have the right space and staff to make them all happen.”

Cuisine Boulud has one of the city’s fancier addresses, and not only for a catering company: It’s a 12,000-square-foot kitchen space at One Madison. Attached to it is Le Jardin sur Madison, a 6,200-square-foot event space designed by architect David Rockwell, and a 5,000-square-foot rooftop garden.

The prices for a Cuisine Boulud meal will start at $30 per person for a breakfast meal that could include freshly baked croissants and scones, seasonal fruit, and chia seeds with oats and coconut. They can go as high as $1,000 per person for a fine dining-style gala with customized menus, wine pairings, a parade of caviar and truffles, and options such as raw bars and Ibérico ham carving stations.

Boulud’s business partner Sebastien Silvestri, CEO of the Dinex Group, says the focus right now is on a successful opening in metro New York, but they’re also eyeing Cuisine Boulud outposts in South Florida and Los Angeles.

The Related Companies’ enormous casino proposal at Hudson Yards has been perceived as a favorite to win an elusive license, given its sheer size and job-creating potential. But its roll has been slowed by a volley of criticism, including from leaders of the High Line and the local politicians who could sink the bid.

The proposal, first reported by Crain’s in February, calls for three skyscrapers to be built on a new platform atop the still-undeveloped western half of Hudson Yards. Promising a $12 billion investment and thousands of jobs, it may be the biggest of the 11 known contenders for the three downstate casino licenses being awarded next year — giving Related front-runner status, since state officials will be required to heavily weigh each project’s economic development potential when deciding who gets a license.

Related and its partner Wynn Resorts are also promising more than 1,500 apartments, a public school and open space. However, the project would deviate from what the city previously approved for the site under the 2009 rezoning that paved the way for Hudson Yards — not only by adding a casino but also by reducing the amount of housing and building taller towers.

That sparked resistance from Friends of the High Line, the well-connected nonprofit that manages the nearby elevated park and had previously enjoyed a close relationship with Related. The developer has donated more than $1 million over the past decade, a person familiar with the funding said. The High Line group went public with its opposition campaign this month, saying the casino plan would surround the park with towers that block city views.

“This plan has less light, less air, less views, less green space, and we feel they can do better,” said Alan van Capelle, executive director of Friends of the High Line, in an interview. Van Capelle emphasized that his group supported new development on the site but wants it to conform with the plans agreed upon in 2009 that enjoyed buy-in from the community.

Local politicians who will ultimately decide the project’s fate are joining in the criticism. Casinos must win at least four votes from a six-person panel appointed by local officials; reviews will start next summer.

Assemblyman Tony Simone said in a statement on Tuesday that he is “extremely skeptical” and “philosophically opposed to the idea of a casino in an extremely congested part of New York City.” Mark Levine, the Manhattan Borough President who will also control one of the six votes, said that any new project “should enhance — not diminish — the civic treasure that is the High Line.”

The neighborhood’s state senator, Brad Hoylman-Sigal, could not be reached for comment Tuesday, but previously said that the High Line’s opinion “is going to count.”

Some in Related’s orbit downplay the uproar as a negotiating tactic to alter the plan rather than a sign of true opposition. Related spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz noted that the developer has met with Friends of the High line 10 times and “made meaningful amendments to our proposal in direct response to concerns they raised.”

“It is our hope that as good neighbors, they would discuss any further concerns with us directly in the spirit of that constructive dialogue,” Ravitz said. “Our proposal to transform the western yards with a massive new park, hundreds of units of affordable housing, and development that will generate tens of thousands of jobs, billions in new taxes and community investments, has not even been formally submitted yet, so we would hope our government leaders would wait to read it before forming a judgment.”

Still, some observers are already speculating about how a Related faceplant would reverberate among the other casino bids. One elected city official speculated that the High Line’s campaign would ultimately benefit SL Green, whose Times Square casino proposal had been seen as a longer shot due to opposition from Broadway theater owners.

“The biggest beneficiary from the demise of the Related bid is going to be SL Green,” the official said.

Casino licenses will be awarded by the state, but Related must also overcome the extra hurdle of getting city approval for its project, since it involves zoning changes. Local Councilman Erik Bottcher will have outsize influence on that process as it goes through a monthslong public review, and he has called himself “highly skeptical” of changes to the 2009 deal.

“We haven’t met a single elected official on the West Side that’s enthusiastic about what’s being proposed,” van Capelle said.

Bidders will be allowed to modify their proposals in response to feedback from the six-person panels.

The full plan by Related and Wynn also includes a 1,750-room hotel, which would occupy an 80-story tower above a five-story podium that contains the casino. The rest of the site would have a 1,400-foot office tower and a 1,200-foot apartment building, all surrounded by about 6 acres of public open space.

Among the harshest critics of Related’s plan is the local community board, which wrote a letter to the developer this spring opposing the “drastic shift” from prior plans for a “predominantly residential” development that would have contained as many as 5,700 apartments.

“Why should communities around the City of New York work with the real estate industry and the City government to respond and agree to zoning changes with detailed site plans and Points of Agreement,” Community Board 4 wrote, “when such plans and agreements can be discarded at [a] later date?”