CRAINS 20160523-NEWS--0001-NAT-CCI-CN_-- 5/20/2016 8:42 PM Page 1 CRAINS ® MAY 23-29, 2016 | PRICE $3.00 NEW YORK BUSINESS VOL. XXXII, NO. 21 WWW.CRAINSNEWYORK.COM 0 71486 01068 5 21 NEWSPAPER WE’RE IN. CBRE is honored to take home a historic 34th win ingenious. in the Real Estate Board of New York’s Most Ingenious Deal of the Year Awards. Lauren Crowley Corrinet, Gregory Tosko and Sacha innovative. Zarba received the 2015 Robert T. Lawrence Memorial Award for helping our client, LinkedIn, expand at The Empire State Building— inspiring. inspiring an icon to innovate for one of tech’s most innovative companies. We’re proud of our creative partnership with LinkedIn— and the advantage we bring to the tech sector in its growth across New York City. 20160523-NEWS--0003-NAT-CCI-CN_-- 5/20/2016 8:33 PM Page 1 MAYCRAINS 23-29, 2016 FROM THE NEWSROOM | JEREMY SMERD Interesting conflicts IN THIS ISSUE 4 AGENDA THE MOST RECENT DUSTUP 5 IN CASE YOU MISSED IT between Gov. Andrew Cuomo and No good subway Mayor Bill de Blasio, this time over the development of two 6 ASKED & ANSWERED improvement goes unpunished residential buildings at Pier 6 in Brooklyn Bridge Park, says 7 TRANSPORTATION a lot about their attitudes toward the incestuous way 8 WHO OWNS THE BLOCK politics and business commingle in New York. 9 INFRASTRUCTURE The mayor wants to push his agenda in the face of 10 questions about quid pro quos for campaign donors, while VIEWPOINTS the governor, facing similar questions, is more than happy to shine a spotlight on the FEATURES mayor as several probes by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara The mayor and 14 THE LIST and Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance play out. 21 THE SMELL OF SUCCESS The tiff is definitely not about the policy long agreed governor’s tiff 22 HOT SAUCE MAVENS upon by the city and the state: to build housing in the says a lot about the 24 NEW MODEL FOR MOVIES maritime park to raise much-needed revenue to maintain way business is done its underwater infrastructure. in New York I don’t live close to Brooklyn Bridge Park but I share P. 9 the concerns of locals and their elected leaders. The idea Scott of building housing in a park, especially on the banks of Rechler the East River with exquisite views of Manhattan, is offensive. Parks exist precisely because we plebeians can’t afford to live in a unique place like Brooklyn Bridge Park. Adding affordable housing to the plan, as the mayor wants to do, only reminds us that affordable housing is a lottery for the lucky few, intended to absolve society of the guilt we feel that New York is so expensive— without actually doing anything to make it less expensive. Be that as it may, appearances of a conflict of interest, not policy, motivated the 36 GOTHAM GIGS governor’s Empire State Development Corp. last week to postpone a vote that was 37 expected to allow the de Blasio administration to add affordable housing to the SNAPS plan. The potential conflict: RAL Development won the Pier 6 contract a month 38 FOR THE RECORD after it and its lobbyist, James F. Capalino & Associates, gave $20,000 to the 39 PHOTO FINISH mayor’s Campaign for One New York. The mayor says it’s all perfectly legal. That may be. It’s perfectly legal that CORRECTIONS Capalino repped the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy, the park’s fundraising LAURIE GLIMCHER will leave her role as dean of Weill Cornell Medicine on May 31. Her departure date was incorrect in the arm that shares an office with Brooklyn Bridge Park Corp., which is pushing for May 16 Asked & Answered. the housing. And it’s legal that Brooklyn Bridge Park Corp. shares a PR firm, Risa The film Money Monster booked multiple rooms for up to 15 Heller Communications, with RAL and Capalino. nights at the Andaz Wall Street. That number is described The mayor is right that this is the way business in New York is done. But that incorrectly in “The New Movie Shooting Paradigm” on page 24. doesn’t make it OK. It looks terrible, especially in an era of pay-to-play prosecutions. The governor’s people, whatever their intentions, see this; the mayor, to his detriment as he digs his heels in, does not. Applications remain open! DEADLINE EXTENDED ON THE COVER CRAIN’S FASTEST- GROWING COMPANIES PHOTO COMPOSITE: DANIELLE SLADEK Each year, Crain’s recognizes the New York-area companies with the highest three-year DIGITAL DISPATCHES revenue growth rate. Public and private companies Go to CrainsNewYork.com with at least $10 million READ in revenue are eligible. Danny Bennett was named CEO of SHOW EVERYONE HOW > Universal Music Group’s FAST YOU REALLY ARE new Verve Label Group. CrainsNewYork.com/ ■ ApplyFast50 RXR Realty closed its $1.7 billion purchase of 1285 Sixth Ave.— one of the largest office-building transactions in the city this year. UBS will Vol. XXXII, No. 21, May 23, 2016—Crain’s New York Business (ISSN 8756-789X) is published weekly, except for double remain in the building through 2032. issues the weeks of June 27, July 11, July 25, Aug. 8, Aug. 22 and Dec. 19, by Crain Communications Inc., 685 Third Ave., LISTEN New York, NY 10017. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address to the woman behind Queen Majesty changes to: Crain’s New York Business, Circulation Department, 1155 Gratiot Avenue, Detroit, MI 48207-2912. Hot Sauce in this week’s podcast. Music by For subscriber service: Call (877) 824-9379. Fax (313) 446-6777. $3.00 a copy, $99.95 one year, $179.95 two years.(GST the Frightnrs. CrainsNewYork.com/podcast No. 13676-0444-RT) BUCK ENNIS, KELSEY BENNETT ©Entire contents copyright 2016 by Crain Communications Inc. All rights reserved. MAY 23, 2016 | CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS | 3 20160523-NEWS--0004-NAT-CCI-CN_-- 5/20/2016 7:22 PM Page 1 AGENDAWHAT’S NEW MAY 23, 2016 The narrow interests of a few make the city more expensive and less safe SAFETY FIRST: Dan Mooney’s t’s always sad when New York City politics and bureaucracy kill compact crane investors had four more built. works from an entrepreneur’s dream. But one such story, recounted by our within a building, He planned to design larger Peter D’Amato in last week’s Crain’s, is especially infuriating reducing risks. ones, too, for use on taller because the innovator, crane operator Dan Mooney, wasn’t the towers. Local 14 was at risk of Ionly victim. The whole city lost. losing its stranglehold on Mooney invented a crane that is cheaper, faster and safer than the crane labor, which the union tower cranes dominating the city’s skyline. It doesn’t take an engineer- justifies on the grounds that ing degree to see why his Skypicker is superior. Much smaller than a operating cranes in the city is tower crane, it has a boom affixed to a solid column that is bolted to each dangerous. floor of the building it is erecting. Immune to the deadly collapses caused Then in 2013, without by wind or the raising and lowering of other cranes, it doesn’t require the warning, the city’s $80 million liability insurance policy that tower-crane projects do. Department of Buildings As a building goes up, the Skypicker can climb to the next floor in revoked the Skypicker’s approval and demanded Mooney start from minutes, rather than half a day, controlled by a single operator, not the scratch. Having spent $2.5 million so far, he can’t afford to design and highly paid crew that tower cranes need. Nor does the Skypicker require build new cranes and take them through a costly approval process. So his Class A-licensed operators, whose compensation packages cost $106 an five Skypickers have spent three years collecting dust in a Queens ware- hour. Not surprisingly, when the house. To ensure they remain there, Skypicker was first used four years ago The Skypicker is cheaper and less Local 14 got Councilman Ben Kallos to to construct a 34-story midtown hotel, dangerous, but threatened to end a union’s sponsor a bill regulating Skypickers as if it was picketed by Local 14-14B of the monopoly. Then the city deemed it illegal they were tower cranes. The union International Union of Operating rewarded Kallos with campaign contri- Engineers, which represents virtually butions. all Class A crane operators in the city. Anonymous complaints targeted The Skypicker’s fate is a classic example of how parochial interests in the machine, but inspectors always found it working exactly as New York stifle innovation that can solve fundamental problems—in this designed. case, the high costs of building in the city. Instead of drafting legislation Mooney had created an ideal hoisting device for projects up to 35 sto- relegating the Skypicker to the scrap heap, the City Council and the ries that otherwise must use tower cranes or crawler cranes, both of Buildings Department should devise a path for more Skypickers to come which have been plagued by fatal accidents in recent years. As develop- to a market desperate for an alternative to the deadly status quo. ers lit up Mooney’s phone inquiring about the Skypicker, he and several – THE EDITORS FINE PRINT New York’s public hospital system wants to enroll more people in its insurance arm, MetroPlus, to reverse a budget hole expected to grow to $1.8 billion by 2020.