CRAINSNEW YORK BUSINESS Uber angles for a piece of the MTA P. 8 | Get paid when you buy a house P. 11 | Harlem baker’s Jewish soul food P. 31 NEW YORK BUSINESS® OCTOBER 17 - 23, 2016 | PRICE $3.00 SHOW STARTERS Soundstage owners like Steiner Studios Chairman Doug Steiner are furiously building facilities to keep up with the explosion of TV shows produced in New York. But will the boom last? PAGE 16 VOL. XXXII, NO. 42 WWW.CRAINSNEWYORK.COM NEWSPAPER P001_CN_20161017.indd 1 10/14/16 7:56 PM WE HEAR YOU, MARIO. With Express Funding, get your card payments in your Chase checking account the next business day. Chase.com/ExpressFunding All businesses are subject to credit approval. Next business day funding is available to eligible Chase merchant services clients who deposit into a single Chase business checking account. Visa®, MasterCard® and Discover® credit and debit transactions are eligible. Additional terms, conditions and restrictions apply. Merchant services are provided by Paymentech, LLC (“Chase”), a subsidiary of JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. Real business owners compensated for use of their actual statements. Deposit products offered by JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. Member FDIC ©2016 JPMorgan Chase & Co. Untitled-11 1 8/30/2016 12:13:11 PM OCTOBER 17–23, 2016 CRAINSNEW YORK BUSINESS FROM THE NEWSROOM | JEREMY SMERD IN THIS ISSUE The political mayor 4 AGENDA 5 IN CASE YOU MISSED IT BEFORE HE RAN FOR MAYOR, Bill de Blasio, then public This museum 6 ASKED & ANSWERED is growing, advocate, visited our newsroom. It was clear he would try to but its quest succeed Michael Bloomberg: De Blasio had set up a citywide 7 SMALL BUSINESS for a new 8 POLITICS home is campaign account and was busy raising his profile. Still, he falling short would not answer any questions about his ambitions. His 9 ARTS reticence struck me as coyness, because he was clearly 10 INSTANT EXPERT angling for the position. Looking back on it, however, I see 12 VIEWPOINTS his response as a disciplined effort to control his message. 15 THE LIST That discipline now seems to be lacking. I was flummoxed—as were his advisers—that the mayor would FEATURES go on a tirade against the New York Post this month 16 STUDIO CITY Wow. What a about the tabloid’s coverage of him. Likewise, the trove of 20 ON LOCATION Clinton campaign emails disclosed by WikiLeaks, while terrorist,” Hillary offering an unfiltered view into the mayor’s national “ Clinton’s campaign ambitions, also underscores the extent to which he is involved in advancing his cause—sometimes to his manager wrote detriment. about Bill de Blasio. In November 2014, Hillary Clinton’s campaign man- ager, Robby Mook, wrote in an internal memo that the P. 31 ALVIN LEE SMALLS mayor “has recently asked to have increased direct access to her so he can tell his 31 GOTHAM GIGS progressive partners what she thinks about issues important to them.” But, unlike his fellow New York Democrats, the mayor did not immediately endorse Clinton. 32 SNAPS As he tweeted in June 2015, he was waiting to hear “her larger vision to address- 33 FOR THE RECORD ing income inequality.” Mook responded, according to WikiLeaks: “Wow. What 34 PHOTO FINISH a terrorist.” A few weeks before he would finally endorse Clinton, de Blasio was CORRECTIONS still angling for the candidate to show up at his Progressive Agenda forum in Iowa AdTheorent is headquartered in Hudson Square. that, not surprisingly, never happened. StartApp is based in SoHo. S’well donates a Holding out to endorse Clinton clearly backfired, but that didn’t stop the mayor portion of sales to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. from sending Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta unsolicited advice on Contently’s publication is called Contently Quar- terly. IIT has 140 employees. Those details were Hillary’s debate performance against Bernie Sanders in March. “Hillary was fantas- misstated in “Crain’s Fast 50,” published Oct. 10. tic on the gun control answer, then totally blew the mass incarceration question,” de Blasio wrote. “Why on earth did she say ‘Are you going to ask Senator Sanders that question?’ instead of just addressing the issue? When she makes it about her, she loses the high ground. Stating the obvious, I know, but she keeps doing it.” The mayor already has a warring relationship with Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Now it seems he has strained his relationship with the next president of the United States. All eyes will soon turn to the 2017 mayor’s race. De Blasio needs to again ON THE COVER embrace discipline and focus on managing the city—which has no small number PHOTO: BUCK ENNIS of challenges. Let his handlers worry about political strategy. DIGITAL DISPATCHES CONFERENCE CALLOUT NOVEMBER 1 Go to CrainsNewYork.com Getting ready for AMAZON PLANS 9 million New Yorkers to build convenience stores and develop Together with private- and > curbside pickup public-sector leaders, like locations for food Carver Bancorp Chairman shoppers. It also Deborah Wright, plans to roll out drive- Crain’s will explore answers to the in service where online questions facing New York as it grocery orders can be brought to cars. reaches a population milestone. n Office leasing in midtown south slowed in SHERATON NY TIMES SQUARE the third quarter because of a lack of space larger than 250,000 square feet, according 8 a.m. to noon to CBRE Group. Availability in the region was [email protected] 9%, the highest since 2014. n Charter Communications has begun an Vol. XXXII, No. 42, October 17, 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 image makeover by phasing out the Time Ave., New York, NY 10017. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send Warner Cable name and replacing it with address changes to: Crain’s New York Business, Circulation Department, 1155 Gratiot Avenue, Detroit, MI 48207-2912. the Spectrum brand. The company closed For subscriber service: Call (877) 824-9379. Fax (313) 446-6777. $3.00 a copy, $99.95 one year, $179.95 two years. on its acquisition of TWC in May. (GST No. 13676-0444-RT) © Entire contents copyright 2016 by Crain Communications Inc. All rights reserved. BUCK ENNIS, COURTESY OF AMAZON OCTOBER 17, 2016 | CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS | 3 P003_CN_20161017.indd 3 10/14/16 8:16 PM WHAT’S NEW OCTOBER 17, 2016 AGENDACity Council’s food-vending legislation would not satisfy hunger for reform he City Council has spent years cooking up legislation to re- form mobile food vending, tinkering with various ingredients in an effort to serve something palatable to both vendors and brick-and-mortar stores. It has taken so long because the is- Tsue is complicated and the solutions advocated by the two sides are often mutually exclusive. For example, the vendors want the city to issue more licenses, while the merchants want fewer. Vendors are tired of getting CHOICE LOCATION: Vending spots fined; stores want more enforcement against them. Can’t get any more are first-come, diametrically opposed than that. first-served, but good ones require Meanwhile, the city’s archaic system has led to a thriving black market, paying protection with holders of vending permits renewing them every two years for $200 money. while renting them out, illegally, for $20,000 or more. Something had to be done. for reform only temporarily and probably won’t prevent the pain of a Into this unforgiving environment, City Council Speaker Melissa chaotic street-vending scheme from returning. Mark-Viverito and six other council members last week introduced the The bill would not change the first-come, first-served system by which Street Vending Modernization Act. To their credit, it did not provoke food carts choose locations each morning. How do so many vendors get the howls of outrage from either side, an indication that the bill is balanced same spot every day? They pay protection money to thugs. Unacceptable. and is viewed by stakeholders as an improve- Moreover, the black market would surely ment from the status quo. It raises the number More permits, higher fees and continue. The bill calls for the city to raise its of food-vending permits gradually, ultimately $200 permit fee to $1,000. The slightly higher doubling it by 2025, while laying out a new, reshuffled enforcement will cost does not remove the incentive for hold- specialized enforcement unit that relieves hardly end a thriving black market ers of permits to lease them at huge markups beat cops of a task they despised. An adviso- to desperate entrepreneurs. And individuals ry panel would be formed to monitor the new could still renew a permit every two years, in- system and recommend improvements, and pilot projects would test ways definitely. Council members are thinking of ways to address this, such as to better regulate congested areas. by requiring permit holders to work some shifts themselves, as owners That’s all well and good, but here’s the problem: The council bill hard- of individual taxi medallions must. But that’s a half-measure. The only ly changes the old recipe. It just adds more of the same elements and way to create a fair, legal market for permits is to go further with the taxi- a dash of some new ones. It amounts to a meal that abates the hunger medallion model. That is, auction the permits.