Crain's New York Business (2026)

27/05/2026

Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled his long-awaited housing plan on Tuesday, pledging to build and preserve 400,000 affordable housing units over the next decade.

The 100-plus page plan touches on several core tenets of the housing platform Mamdani campaigned on. It targets bad landlords, explores ways of seizing neglected properties, identifies tools to ramp up housing construction and acknowledges that property owners need help with rising costs. It also integrates the New York City Housing Authority, the city’s public housing agency, as part of the broader housing agenda.

Pro-housing and tenant groups largely lauded the plan, while landlord groups said it comes up short in providing relief.

Read five key takeaways from the mayor’s “Block by Block” agenda here: https://www.crainsnewyork.com/politics-policy/cny-zohran-mamdani-housing-plan-20260527/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

26/05/2026

Having worked at two Michelin-starred restaurants in the city and defeated Chef Bobby Flay on his own cooking show, Aarthi Sampath had plenty of culinary confidence to draw from when she decided to open her own restaurant.

Turns out she needed it: Several restaurateurs and investors rejected her. Regardless, Sampath raised more than half a million dollars to bring her idea to life.

Dravida, which opened on Thursday, celebrates food from places — such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana — where Indian immigrants have settled.

Menu highlights include Lhasa lamb momo, Khameeri roti and oxtail bunny chow.

The name of the restaurant refers to people from South Asia. Dravida is also a nod to Sampath’s father, who used to tell her to be a proud Dravidian after she had been bullied at school.

Read more here: https://www.crainsnewyork.com/real-estate/commercial/cny-aarthi-sampath-dravida-indian-diaspora-20260522/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

22/05/2026

A more-than-century-old building home to a longstanding longshoreman bar in Brooklyn Heights has officially traded hands.

Miles and Alexander Pincus — brothers, business partners and lifelong sailors, who founded the hospitality group Crew — scooped up the 4-story building that houses the famed Montero Bar & Grill for $4.5 million

The Pincus brothers also took over running the old-school haunt as part of the sale. First opened in 1939 as a local watering hole for the sailors and longshoremen who worked nearby, Montero’s, in the years since, has become a popular karaoke spot. The bar is located at the corner of Hicks Street, near the entrance to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and a few blocks from the waterfront.

Based in Tribeca, Crew’s other assets — all maritime-inspired restaurants — include the Grand Banks, an oyster bar aboard a historic wooden sailboat docked in the Hudson River at Pier 25; and the Yacht Club, a rooftop destination serving seafood and cocktails at the Starrett Lehigh Building in Chelsea.

Read more here: https://www.crainsnewyork.com/real-estate/commercial/cny-montero-73-atlantic-sold-20260521/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

21/05/2026

New York City has secured 1,000 heavily discounted World Cup tickets from FIFA, marking a modest but tangible win in Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s push to make the tournament more affordable for New Yorkers amid widespread concerns about its costs. They are by far the cheapest tickets currently available to any World Cup match, and no other host city has yet announced comparable discounts for residents.

The tickets, which will be distributed through an online lottery system starting May 25, will cost $50 each and include complimentary round-trip bus transportation to MetLife Stadium. Gov. Kathy Hochul previously announced heavily discounted bus tickets from the city to the stadium.

The city is not paying for the tickets, a person familiar with the rollout said. The deal is rather part of a broader partnership between City Hall and tournament organizers.

The tickets will come from an allotment FIFA previously provided to the New York/New Jersey Host Committee. Such tickets are typically reserved for corporate sponsors, VIPs and other tournament partners and cannot be resold. But after months of lobbying from City Hall, FIFA agreed to let the host committee give them to the mayoral administration to sell at a discount.

Read more here: https://www.crainsnewyork.com/politics-policy/cny-mamdani-world-cup-tickets-20260521/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

20/05/2026

Three more 99-unit buildings could soon be coming to New York City’s outer boroughs, adding to the ongoing trend of developers planning projects with slightly less than 100 units in the wake of a contentious new affordable housing tax break.

EMP Capital Group has filed plans with the city’s Department of Buildings for a pair of adjacent 26-story mixed-use buildings at 35-43 37th St. and 37-09 36th Ave. in Astoria. Each building will have 99 residential units and offer more than 100,000 square feet of commercial space and a community facility.

Issac & Stern Architect’s Ralph Kowalcyzk is listed as the architect for both projects. Demolition permits have already been filed for the two-story building at 37-09 36th Ave. but not for the 37th Street address.

EMP Capital Group purchased 35-43 37th St. for $15.4 million in mid-February. It was unclear if this deal also included 37-09 36th Ave. The real estate developer did not respond to a request for comment on its plans for the Astoria sites.

In addition, developer Andrea Gjini has similarly filed plans for a 12-story residential building at 1917 Morris Ave. in the Bronx’s Mount Hope neighborhood. The project would feature 154 total residences on the lot, indicating Gjini intends to build more than just the 99-unit project on the site. The 99-unit building would also include a cellar and a 20-foot backyard.

Read more here: https://www.crainsnewyork.com/real-estate/commercial/cny-99-unit-buildings-astoria-mount-hope-20260520/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

19/05/2026

A shuttered hotel on Billionaires Row that was previously operated by the now-collapsed hospitality firm Sonder has changed hands.

A partnership led by landlord BD Hotels sold the Chambers Hotel at 15 W. 56th St. for $66.2 million, according to a deed that appeared in the city register this week.

The buyer was the Hennick Group, a Toronto firm owned by the Hennick family that also controls the real estate brokerage Colliers International and the apartment building management firm FirstService. The firm’s managing director, Jory Hennick, signed the deed in the deal, which went into contract March 21 and closed May 5, based on the register.

It is unclear exactly when the hotel’s owners tapped Sonder to handle booking at the Chambers, a 77-room property between Fifth and Sixth avenues. The property dates back to 2001 and features a subterranean restaurant space that once housed star chef’s David Chang’s Ma Peche restaurant.

Read more here: https://www.crainsnewyork.com/real-estate/commercial/cny-chambers-hotel-sells-20260518/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

18/05/2026

Irma Garcia-Vargas, who lives with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, struggled to find stable housing and treatment years after she moved to New York in 2016.

In 2024, she transitioned to the so-called STEPS program, a pilot run by the FiDi-based nonprofit Institute for Community Living that offers a “step-down” for patients who no longer need intensive care. Garcia-Vargas has fewer monthly visits with her case manager and engages in activities on her own such as visiting her boyfriend in Astoria on the weekends. But she still needs hands-on help to manage medications and stay in therapy.

The STEPS program, which has worked with Garcia-Vargas and more than 150 other New Yorkers, is now at risk because promised city funding hasn’t materialized.

Early signs of success captured the attention last year of former City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and led the city to commit $4.5 million to expand the pilot in the current budget year, said Jody Rudin, executive director of the Institute for Community Living. But that funding has yet to be released, leaving the future of STEPS hanging in the balance.

“It’s increasingly clear that it’s not happening,” Rudin told Crain’s, adding that the funding is critical not only to expand a model that is showing signs of success, but also to prevent the roughly 70 current clients from losing access to care.

Read more here: https://www.crainsnewyork.com/health-care/cny-steps-program-city-budget-20260518/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

15/05/2026

Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday revealed new details on how her administration would plan to roll out the contentious pied-à-terre tax, favoring an approach that would initially tax condos and co-ops with an assessed value of $1 million or more.

The proposed tax would apply to pricey second homes. For the first two years, it would impose a 4% levy on condos and co-ops valued between $1 million and $3 million, while those valued between $3 million and $5 million would be hit with a 5.25% surcharge, and those valued at $5 million or more would pay 6.5%.

These temporary thresholds are based on the fact that properties assessed by the city’s Department of Finance at $1 million generally have a sales value of $5 million, according to the governor’s office.

Those limits would change if and when the city reforms how it assesses these properties, an issue that has been central to a decades-long fight over the city’s controversial property tax system. The governor’s office indicated that the city would change this valuation system within two years.

As for one- to three-family homes, the tax would apply to those with an assessed market value of $5 million or more. For properties valued between $5 million and $15 million, the rate would be .8%; for those between $15 million and $25 million, 1.05%; and for properties worth more than $25 million, 1.3%.

Read more here: https://www.crainsnewyork.com/politics-policy/cny-hochul-budget-pied-a-terre-20260514/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

12/05/2026

Flanked on each side by his new housing and tenant czars, Mayor Zohran Mamdani took his first housing-related actions as mayor.

He signed several executive orders on his first day in office, including one that revived the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants and installed longtime tenant advocate Cea Weaver as its leader. Two others created task forces to find city-owned land to build housing and speed up permitting for housing projects, overseen by Deputy Mayor of Housing and Planning Leila Bozorg. She was a critical figure in last year’s changes to the city charter that deflated the City Council’s veto power over new housing.

That moment encapsulates the administration’s public approach to housing so far: a dual track that embraces building as much housing as possible while also ramping up enforcement against bad behaving landlords.

The mayor’s deputies have repeatedly referred to this strategy as an “all-of-the-above approach.”

How this translates to actual policy remains to be seen, however. The mayor is expected to release his housing plan this month, the timing of which has been dictated by city and state budget negotiations.

Read more here: https://www.crainsnewyork.com/politics-policy/cny-zohran-mamdani-housing-plan-mayor-20260511/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

11/05/2026

A progressive grade school that’s downsizing has unloaded its Chelsea complex amid a challenging economic environment for independent schools.

Corlears School, founded in 1968, has sold its home at 324 W. 15th St., according to a deed that appeared in the city register last week.

The 19,800-square-foot site between Eighth and Ninth avenues – three rowhouses combined through the years – fetched $19 million in a deal that closed May 4, based on the register.

The buyer of the 4-story, 50-foot-wide site was Robert Saffayeh, the CEO of Saffayeh Group, a Bay Ridge, Brooklyn-based development firm whose projects include mid-sized condo builds across the city.

For years, Corlears offered classes at the pre-school through fifth grade level. But in 2023, it announced that starting this fall it would no longer enroll students kindergarten age and older so as to instead “focus exclusively on educating our youngest learners,” the school said in a statement.

Read more here: https://www.crainsnewyork.com/real-estate/commercial/cny-corlears-school-sells-chelsea-campus-to-condo-developer-20260508/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

08/05/2026

If New Yorkers tuned in only to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s budget announcement this week, they might have thought lawmakers had closed in on a $268 billion spending plan for the next fiscal year.

They would be wrong.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie told reporters after Hochul’s presentation that the governor misrepresented the state of negotiations.

“The final portion of that debate, that budget negotiation, is still ongoing,” said NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, responding to a question about whether he believes the state will offer more assistance to help the city close its $5.4 billion budget gap. “It’s a little bit premature.”

The governor does not formally need the New York City mayor’s approval the way she needs the Legislature’s, but Hochul is up for reelection and cannot risk unraveling her relationship with the popular downstate democratic socialist or upsetting other New York City Democrats.

Albany bought itself more time this week. The Legislature passed, and the governor signed, a 10th budget extension, running through Monday, May 11, when the spending plan will be 40 days late. Even in Hochul’s telling, the details need to be ironed out and the text written.

Read more here: https://www.crainsnewyork.com/politics-policy/cny-hochul-budget-mamdani-agreement-new-york-20260507/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

Crain's New York Business

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