Tony Greenberg, founder of Up Ventures

While some New York City real estate developers look to another neighborhood for inspiration, Tony Greenberg, founder of the just-launched Up Ventures, looked halfway around the world.

Up Ventures, a real estate development group specializing in innovative restaurant space, aims to bring Tokyo- and Hong Kong-style restaurant real estate to New York City.

“Here in New York, you see restaurants on the basement floor, the ground floor [or] the rooftop [in different buildings],” Greenberg said. But overseas, Greenberg said that restaurateurs establish eateries on upper-level floors of the same building. Rather than browse blocks for restaurants, patrons could look upstairs or downstairs at the offerings in a single building.

Greenberg, who had been vice president of finance at Hudson Yards Development Corporation before leaving the post in the late spring, said that the concept clicked for him during his travels and he began to explore ways in which he could apply the relatively unheard of strategy in New York. [more]

From left: Joshua Sirefman and the Hudson Yards

Joshua Sirefman, former interim president of the New York City Economic
Development Corporation, was fined $1,500 by the Conflict of Interest
Board after he helped his private sector employer bid for a city contract to develop the West Side rail yards. A month after he resigned
as interim president of EDC, Sirefman was hired as senior vice
president of Brookfield Properties, a large commercial real estate firm
that was bidding on a Metropolitan Transportation Authority contract to
develop the West Side rail yards. However, the city’s charter prohibits
a public employee from appearing before a city agency for a year from
the date of the employee’s resignation. During an October 2007 meeting,
Sirefman directly lobbied the Hudson Yards Development Corporation on
behalf of Brookfield to develop the West Side rail yards, despite
specific instructions from the city to not communicate with the Hudson
Yards agency for one year. [Village Voice] [more]