CRAINSNEW YORK BUSINESS NEW YORK BUSINESS® JANUARY 22 - 28, 2018 | PRICE $3.00 CHANGING TIDES IN RED HOOK As residential developers clamor to build on the Brooklyn waterfront, industrialists such as John Quadrozzi Jr. ght to keep their businesses a oat PAGE 13 PLUS: Pressure mounts on Port Authority to cash in on the Red Hook Container Terminal PAGE 16 VOL. XXXIV, NO. 4 WWW.CRAINSNEWYORK.COM CONGESTION WILL ESSEX THE LIST PRICING GETS CROSSING Largest A REBOOT UNITE THE executive- P. 3 AND P. 5 LOWER recruiting EAST SIDE? rms P. 10 NEWSPAPER P. 8 P001_CN_20180122.indd 1 1/19/18 8:15 PM JANUARY 22 - 28, 2018 CRAINSNEW YORK BUSINESS FROM THE NEWSROOM | ERIK ENGQUIST | ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR IN THIS ISSUE A how-not-to for op-eds 4 IN CASE YOU MISSED IT Sony/ATV artists have 5 POLITICS more than SOME YEARS AGO Crain’s began accepting op-ed submis- 100 nomi- 6 ASKED & ANSWERED nations for sions and publishing two to four each month. Now we this week’s 7 TECHNOLOGY receive that many every day, run as many as we can online Grammy and perhaps one in each print issue. I screen all of them and 8 WHO OWNS THE BLOCK Awards edit the ones we use. is helps me understand all the issues 9 VIEWPOINTS our readers care about, but it takes a tremendous amount of 10 THE LIST time. I’m going to try to cut down on some of that time right FEATURES: THE FUTURE OF RED HOOK now by sharing with all of you—businesspeople, advocates, PR professionals, public ocials and ordinary readers— 13 WORKING THE WATERFRONT the keys to getting your pieces rejected. Just follow these 16 SHIPPING OUT steps (which a fair number of submitters unwittingly do Use arcane language already) and you will dramatically reduce my workload. and excess verbiage. P. First, we cover only New York, so don’t mention New “ Oona20 Tempest York anywhere in your piece. It’s the rst thing I look for, And be sure to and its omission makes for an easy decision: No. attack rival interests If you do manage to sprinkle local references throughout with scurrilous your article, worry not. Just make sure the topic concerns New Yorkers and also everyone else (“Congress must accusations address global warming!”) My task is still easy: Delete. 20 GOTHAM GIGS Other surere failure tools are to use a lot of arcane lan- 21 SNAPS guage, excess verbiage, industry jargon and acronyms. Speak to a narrow group of experts, rather than to our general readership. Make your lead paragraph cum- 22 FOR THE RECORD bersome, if not indecipherable, to scare folks away rather than draw them in. And 23 PHOTO FINISH double or triple our recommended length of 500 words to ensure that readers, start- CORRECTIONS ing with me, never get to the end. Ray LaHood’s name was misspelled in “Stormy If you cannot help but write clear, concise text explaining your point as you would weather made one thing clear: JFK needs help” to someone at a cocktail party, fear not. Other avenues to the trash bin remain. One published Jan. 15. Josh Zegen, co-founder and CEO of Madison Realty is to send us a press release or a story pitch and slap “op-ed” in the subject line. I’ve Capital, said, “There are going to be a lot of prots seen about a million interest-group statements and PR pitches in 27 years as a jour- to be made for owners who have single-story nalist, so I’ll recognize your impostor right away. properties that can now add oors and lease that Another road to rejection is to write to someone else—the governor, say, or space.” The quote was misattributed in “Investors snap up properties as the warehouse market another publication, or the authors of a previous op-ed. Address it to them speci- soars,” published Jan. 15. cally. We’re happy to be your personal messaging service. Not. Finally, my favorite: Attack a business rival rather than make a case for govern- ment or civic action that benets the public (even if it helps you, which is OK). For instance, if you own taxi medallions, declare that Uber gets away with murder because it is evil and all judges and regulators are corrupt. Be sure to omit your conict of interest and include scurrilous accusations unsupported by evidence. Now please excuse me while I gure out what I’ll do with all my spare time. ON THE COVER PHOTO: BUCK ENNIS CONFERENCE CALLOUT FEB. 14 CRAIN’S DIGITAL DISPATCHES BREAKFAST FORUM Go to CrainsNewYork.com Alphonso David, counsel to the governor and a longtime member READ A Crain’s 40 Under of his inner circle, is set to discuss 40 honoree in 2010, the Cuomo administration budget Joe Zidle becomes > and legislative and regulatory BlackStone’s new priorities for 2018. investment strategist. He will work alongside NEW YORK legendary forecaster Byron ATHLETIC CLUB Wien, 85, vice chairman of the private wealth group, 8 to 9:30 a.m. gradually taking over his duties. [email protected] ■ Newly released campaign nance Vol. XXXIV, No. 4, Jan. 22, 2018—Crain’s New York Business (ISSN 8756-789X) is published weekly, except for double records show the Women’s Equality Party, issues the weeks of Jan. 1, June 25, July 9, July 23, Aug. 6, Aug. 20 and Dec. 24, by Crain Communications Inc., 685 Third the boutique political party started by Ave., New York, NY 10017. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing ofces. Postmaster: Send Gov. Andrew Cuomo, had just one contrib- address changes to: Crain’s New York Business, Circulation Department, PO Box 433279, Palm Coast, FL 32143-9681. utor, a Rockefeller heiress. For subscriber service: Call 877-824-9379. Fax 313-446-6777. $3.00 a copy, $99.95 one year, $179.95 two years. (GST No. 13676-0444-RT) ©Entire contents copyright 2018 by Crain Communications Inc. All rights reserved. ■ The Legal Aid Society sued to stop the rezoning of East Harlem that the City Council passed last year. BUCK ENNIS 2 | CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS | JANUARY 22, 2018 P002_CN_20180122.indd 2 1/19/18 8:08 PM JANUARY 22, 2018 AGENDAOur strategy to get Albany’s OK on congestion pricing: whatever it takes ne of the unfortunate things about congestion pricing is that it will never quite reach its potential. No matter how perfectly it could be designed with the aid of computer mod- eling, behavioral analysis and advanced economic theory, it Owill have to be adulterated by politics in order to gain approval from the state Legislature. But make no mistake: Whatever form congestion pricing must take to pass muster with lawmakers will be better than what we have now, which is vehicles taking convoluted routes and wholly unnecessary trips that cost the metro-area economy $20 billion a year, foul the air and make people miserable. It’s a shame that the debate that began Friday with a road-fee proposal by Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Fix NYC panel will not be about mak- ing it as eective as possible. at cannot be the focus. No, this will be transit, but that is a feature of it, not the purpose. What it does best is about votes: 32 in the state Senate and 76 in the Assembly, the minimum improve trac, which is increasingly robbing New Yorkers of money and needed in each chamber. Such is the nature of democracy. time that they will never get back. Sure, the extra billion dollars a year that Even if this were not an election year, the plethora of stubborn, unen- road fees would generate for subways is desperately needed and will make lightened, self-interested legislators will require the governor to make the measure palatable for lawmakers in transit-dependent areas. Better changes to get a plan through. Some of the subway service would also draw some trav- tweaks may enhance it, but most will be Compromises will be needed to elers out of their Ubers and back onto the compromises to appease this or that constit- trains, freeing up Manhattan asphalt for its uency. No matter. If Cuomo can somehow persuade lawmakers to do something most valuable use—deliveries and cross- get lawmakers to do something never before never before tried in the U.S. So be it town trips for which subways are useless. implemented in the U.S.—never mind that In the end, congestion pricing will suc- it’s worked well for years in cities around ceed for the same reason that the market the world, and the premise of congestion pricing underpins our capitalist economy does, by pricing scarcity. Bopping around Midtown and Lower system—it would be a tremendous accomplishment. Years later, when its Manhattan in a car is a luxury that must be priced as such because other- benets become clear, improving it won’t be so heavy a political li. wise it ceases to exist: e streets get so crowded that no one can move, Note that we haven’t mentioned the subways yet. Mayor Bill de Blasio including buses and ambulances. For the lawmakers who don’t grasp that, talks about congestion pricing almost exclusively as a means to fund mass Cuomo will have to bargain and posture. Whatever it takes. — THE EDITORS FINE PRINT Small businesses often are credited with creating most of the nation’s jobs. But big businesses are better at retaining them. For example, in East Harlem, where more than two-thirds of businesses have fewer than ve workers, the 2% of employers with 100 or more workers account for 68% of jobs in the area, the state comptroller reported.