Land Use

A real estate developer who’s pushing for a controversial rezoning in partnership with the New York Blood Center would receive $100 million in additional benefits under a plan recently outlined by Mayor de Blasio’s administration.

De Blasio has come under fire in recent days for backing the rezoning because he owes $435,000 to a lobbying firm that represents the Blood Center, a nonprofit blood bank that’s partnering with Longfellow Real Estate Partners to expand its headquarters.

In a letter to City Council Speaker Corey Johnson (D-Manhattan) dated Nov. 10, de Blasio’s director of legislative affairs, Paul Ochoa, makes clear that city’s Industrial Development Agency would provide $100 million in tax breaks to Longfellow under the development deal.

Councilman Ben Kallos (D-Manhattan), who represents the Upper East Side district where the rezoning is being proposed, said the benefit is just one more sop de Blasio is offering a well-connected developer.

Kallos said that “$100 million is a lot of money. It comes out to more than a billion in subsidies over decades, and I want to know how long it’s going to take for the city to get a return on our tax dollars because I don’t think we ever will.”

It’s far from the first time de Blasio has had to weather attacks from Kallos, who has suggested that the mayor’s debt to Blood Center lobbyist Kramer Levin Naftalis amounts to a bribe that could be having undue influence over the mayor in his support of the rezoning.

But Team de Blasio has countered that in January, the mayor made it a priority to make the Big Apple a center of life sciences, in large part as preparation to better face COVID and any future pandemics.

The Blood Center rezoning would accomplish that, according to de Blasio spokesman Mitch Schwartz.

“Months ago, the mayor invested $1 billion toward making New York City the life sciences capital of the world,” Schwartz said. “It’s the right way to rebuild our economy and prepare for public health challenges. And if major companies want to innovate and create jobs in the heart of our city, then we’ll vet their projects and work with them to identify appropriate incentives they qualify for.”

Schwartz also noted that Longfellow is entitled to the tax break and that such breaks exist to encourage agendas like the one outlined by de Blasio in January.

Rob Purvis, the Blood Center’s executive vice president and chief of staff, said the center and Longfellow are “aggressively pursuing funding opportunities to support” the project “through city programs for which it may be eligible including [city Economic Development Corp.) LifeSci funding and [Industrial Development Agency] benefits for development projects.”

“[New York Blood Center] and Longfellow are having positive conversations with the city, but no formal application or agreement has been made yet for city funding for this project,” he added.

PR firm BerlinRosen is also working for the Blood Center. The firm’s co-founder, Jonathan Rosen, has been one of the mayor’s closest advisers.

“It just seems weird to me that every time Kramer Levin is involved in a project, the mayor supports it, especially when he owes them so much money,” said City Councilman Ben Kallos, who represents the Upper East Side and is a leading opponent of the Blood Center plan.

“I do think there’d be as much pushback if it wasn’t a lab project,” New York Blood Center Executive Vice President and Chief of Staff Rob Purvis said. “Everyone against the project recognizes how important the lab aspect is. Opposition would be the same.”

But the way this development has been debated, and the issues it raises, make it a cautionary tale for life sciences developers, regardless of the outcome of an expected mid-November vote in front of the entire New York City Council.

“It’s been handled poorly the entire way,” Council Member Ben Kallos said of the proposal, which is in his district. “If [life sciences developers] want a lesson on what not to do and what malpractice looks like, this is it.”

The expanding demand for life sciences space, especially in dense urban markets like New York City, San Francisco and Boston, suggests there will be more instances where life sciences developers aggressively seek new opportunities and come into contact with community groups.

New York City is racing to add more lab space — the city has devoted $1B to help develop new facilities — to meet rising demand and counter perceptions that it’s punching below its weight.  

Legal and staffing challenges have made it nearly impossible to enforce the 2010 law, leaving commercial operators of multiple short-term units able to continue skirting it. That’s where the bill, introduced by Councilman Ben Kallos, comes in. The bill requires hosts to register with the city and obtain a registration number before they can rent out their homes, and only short-term rentals that conform to city and state law are eligible: the unit must be the host’s primary residence, and the host must be present during the rental. Registration will make it more difficult for landlords and other scofflaw operators to maintain multiple listings that are not their primary residence.

Council Member Ben Kallos has proposed legislation to make sure sheds stand for no more than 90 days. And de Blasio on Wednesday said the city's Department of Buildings is doing more to enforce existing time limits.

Yet still, many remain even on city property such as NYCHA buildings.

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — New York City has announced a plan to improve the appearance of New York City public housing buildings.

The $111 million project will tear down unsightly sheds and scaffolds and fix façades at 45 buildings in 15 NYCHA developments.

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and Council Member Ben Kallos made appearances at the mock anniversary and gave remarks. Brewer recently penned a letter to the Department of Buildings to apply pressure on Weinreb Management to take down the scaffolding, and Kallos has authored legislation not yet passed that would stop landlords from keeping scaffolding up for extended periods.

"We were livid. And we still are," one resident of 51 West 86th Street told Patch on the condition of anonymity. "The disregard for the concerns of tenants and for the city laws concerning facade inspections and repairs is staggering."

The Coalition to Stop the Tower includes numerous neighborhood and preservation groups like Civitas NYC. In addition to Kallos, U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney has joined the opposition.

In an interview with THE CITY last week, Kallos, who is term-limited and leaves the Council at the end of the year, said the Blood Center has rejected a series of options he had suggested. He contends what the zoning deal would give the Center, in essence, amounts to a large subsidy he disparaged as “minting money.”

He defended his stance, noting he does not accept campaign contributions from real estate interests.

A City Council bill that would require the host of short-term rentals on websites such as Airbnb’s to register their homes with the city and get them inspected by engineers pits the short-term rental company against a hotel industry hobbled by the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The legislation aims to curtail the thousands of apartments that are being illegally used as hotels, said the bill’s sponsor, Councilman Ben Kallos.

Hotels argue that the rental schemes are hurting their business by offering less expensive, more flexible alternatives to tourists. The schemes also reduce the city’s stock of affordable housing by letting apartments be used for short-term stays rather than for full-time residents, the hotels point o

Council Member Ben Kallos, who represents the Upper East Side, was also concerned by the fact that the nonprofit did not initially disclose that the 334-foot tower would include a Biosafety Level 3 Lab for studying agents that can cause serious, or even lethal, infections, The New York Post reported. 

“The Blood Center’s expansion plans have been opposed by every local elected official as well as thousands of residents in the community for more than a decade,” a spokesperson for Kallos told CO. “The environmental impacts of this proposed development cannot be mitigated, from shadows on the park and the Julia Richman Education Complex to the creation of new loopholes and the fact that the proposal would include the displacement of thousands of people from 500 apartments.”