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CRAINSNEW YORK BUSINESS Construction deaths go uncounted P. 8 | Secrets of the city’s dominant bird P. 10 | New York’s seltzer master P. 30 NEW YORK BUSINESS® SEPTEMBER 12 - 18, 2016 | PRICE $3.00 HALL2016 of FAME Ken Langone. Bruce Ratner. Kathryn Wylde. Stephen Berger. Geoffrey Canada. This year’s inductees are in a class by themselves Pages 13-23 VOL. XXXII, NO. 37 WWW.CRAINSNEWYORK.COM NEWSPAPER P001_CN_20160912.indd 1 9/9/16 7:25 PM Element Hotels chillProductivity can’t be achieved without balance. That’s why we go beyond business tools to offer our guests what they need to stay whole, like bikes to borrow, spaces flooded with daylight, Relax evening wine receptions, healthy grab ‘n go meals and more. Discover the essentials of balanced travel. Extended Stay Reimagined Element New York Times Square West Book now at elementhotels.com Chandler, AZ ⚫ Aspen, CO ⚫ Denver, CO ⚫ Miami, FL ⚫ Boston, MA ⚫ Lexington, MA ⚫ Hanover, MD Bozeman, MT ⚫ Fargo, ND ⚫ Omaha, NE ⚫ Lebanon, NH ⚫ Ewing, NJ ⚫ Harrison-Newark, NJ Las Vegas Summerlin, NV ⚫ New York, NY ⚫ Dallas, TX ⚫ Houston, TX ⚫ Calgary, CAN ⚫ Vancouver, CAN ⚫ ⚫ ⚫ Vaughan, CAN Suzhou, CHN Frankfurt, DEU Amsterdam, NLD © 2016 Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Preferred Guest, SPG, Element and their logos are the trademarks of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc., or its affiliates. SEPTEMBER 12 - 18, 2016 CRAINSNEW YORK BUSINESS FROM THE NEWSROOM | ERIK ENGQUIST IN THIS ISSUE Welcome to the world, son 4 AGENDA 6 IN CASE YOU MISSED IT Fairway ONE OF MY SONS, 16, just finished his summer job. As first 7 SMALL BUSINESS emerges from jobs go, it was rather glamorous: He was a ballperson at the bankruptcy to 8 WORKSITE SAFETY open in U.S. Open, on court with the world’s best tennis players at Bergen Beach New York City’s best-attended annual event. He had beaten 9 WHO OWNS THE BLOCK out hundreds of applicants at two rounds of tryouts—an ac- 10 INSTANT EXPERT complishment of which he was immensely proud, after hav- 11 LOWER MANHATTAN TAX BREAKS ing previously come up short. And while scooping up balls 12 VIEWPOINTS and baking in the sun doesn’t look like fun to me, he loved the work. Ballpersons must work as a team and master a pro- FEATURES tocol that fans don’t notice, but players and supervisors do. 13 CRAIN’S HALL OF FAME That said, it didn’t take long for him to discover the After his first day 27 GOTHAM GIGS downsides of minimum-wage employment. It was not 28 SNAPS quite what Barbara Ehrenreich described in her bestseller on the job, he “ 29 FOR THE RECORD Nickel and Dimed two decades ago, but still eye-opening to came home and a relatively privileged teenager. 30 PHOTO FINISH After his debut—the first round of the four-day tour- announced, ‘I could nament for lower-ranked players trying to qualify for the get fired on Friday’ main event—my son came home and announced, “I could get fired on Friday.” The ballpersons had been told there were too many of them. The stakes were not as high as for a low-wage worker who has to make the rent to avoid homelessness, but given my son’s lack of perspective, his stress level was certainly elevated. With layoffs looming, I took Friday off to see him in action. It was a thrill watch- P. 27 ing him dash out for netted balls, and I was pleasantly surprised to see him demon- JERRY SCANLON strate leadership just four days into his ballperson career, such as by repositioning a CORRECTIONS crew member’s umbrella to better shade a resting player. But at day’s end, he was let Robin Lester Kenton has a son attending pre-K this year. go. Crushed, he removed his Ralph Lauren uniform so quickly that he lost one sock. This fact was misstated in the Sept. 5 Photo Finish. The next Monday, he got a call. Could he come back Wednesday? He did, though The Araca Group was an investor in Once; its role was in- his elation was offset by paranoia that the bosses would notice his non-Polo sock correctly described in “A historic comeback for one of NYC’s oldest social clubs” in the Sept. 5 issue. and drop him again. The scheduling also baffled him: Each night he was told if and when he would be working the next day. “How do people plan their lives?” he asked me. Welcome to the retail and service sector, son. Things got worse. One evening, he called me, disconsolate. “I don’t know if I want to do this job anymore,” he said. He’d worked just one match in two days, relegated to standby duty without explanation. When he asked to clock out, an official joked, “Why, are you tired?” I reminded him that he was being paid. “I don’t care about the money!” he said. “I sit around all day and do nothing!” He was ashamed to be seen ON THE COVER in uniform. I urged him to persevere. He did. He got more court time. His morale PHOTO: BUCK ENNIS lifted. But I suspect the low points will prove more valuable down the road. DIGITAL DISPATCHES CONFERENCE CALLOUT OCTOBER 19 Go to CrainsNewYork.com CRAIN’S READ A former Schlitz ENTERTAINMENT SUMMIT Brewery plant at 95 Join House of Cards Evergreen Ave. in > creator Beau Willimon Bushwick, Brooklyn, and other leaders of New York’s may become home to the city’s Human burgeoning film and TV industry for Resources Administration. a discussion of the future of a key tax break and how the industry is n Saks Fifth Avenue opened a store in lower planning for growth. Manhattan across from the Sept. 11 Memo- rial and the World Trade Center mall. NEW YORK MARRIOT DOWNTOWN n A panel of judges dismissed a lawsuit 8 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. against Pier55, the proposed park along [email protected] the Hudson River funded by media mogul Barry Diller and fashion executive Diane von Furstenberg. Vol. XXXII, No. 37, Sept. 12, 2016—Crain’s New York Business (ISSN 8756-789X) is published weekly, except for double issues the weeks of June 27, July 11, July 25, Aug. 8, Aug. 22 and Dec. 19, by Crain Communications Inc., 685 Third n The Department of Cultural Affairs and Ave., New York, NY 10017. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to: Crain’s New York Business, Circulation Department, 1155 Gratiot Avenue, Detroit, MI 48207-2912. For the Rockefeller Foundation created a two- subscriber service: Call (877) 824-9379. Fax (313) 446-6777. $3.00 a copy, $99.95 one year, $179.95 two years. (GST No. year CUNY internship program to promote 13676-0444-RT) ©Entire contents copyright 2016 by Crain Communications Inc. All rights reserved. diversity in the city’s cultural institutions. AP IMAGES, BUCK ENNIS SEPTEMBER 12, 2016 | CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS | 3 P003_CN_20160912.indd 3 9/9/16 8:18 PM WHAT’S NEW SEPTEMBER 12, 2016 AGENDACarters deserve a chance to clean up their act, as they have done before rivate carting in New York City was a horror show into the 1990s, when a concerted e ort by prosecutors and regulators broke organized crime’s grip on the industry. Veterans of the business tell amazing stories of the turnaround, such as a low- Per Manhattan building seeing its $2 million annual carting costs drop to $200,000. e city focused on creating competition that would lower costs and improve service, and it succeeded. About 90 carting companies are active today and charge an average of 30% less than the rate caps set by BUSINESSES’ TRASH would be their powerful regulator, the Business Integrity Commission. e city’s collected by one commercial establishments are generally happy with their carting service hauler in each zone created and pricing, and most New Yorkers wake up to commercial streets free of under a city trash and never notice the folks removing more than 8,000 tons of waste proposal from them every day. But now the de Blasio administration wants to dramatically restructure one customer a long way from its base could trade that account to a rival the system mostly because by one measure—vehicle miles traveled—car- with more clients in that neighborhood. In exchange, the rst carter would ters are not e cient. If the city were divided into zones, each served by receive an account nearer to its own client base. ousands of these swaps a single carter, truck routes could be greatly consolidated, cutting emis- could be made. But the city does not allow them, because its regulations sions of greenhouse gases. at is undeni- are designed to protect customers’ choice of ably true. But the carting industry rightly The city should explore other ways to carters, not to encourage e ciency of routes. complains that it is suddenly being judged e irony is that under zone collection, by a standard that it has never been asked to make the private waste industry more businesses would have no choice: City Hall meet. Moreover, it is not getting the chance ef cient, greener and safer would pick their carters. to meet it. e administration’s reform plan e administration should explore other has a single track: zone collection, also ways to improve commercial waste collec- known as franchising. If the City Council agrees, in ve to seven years tion.