Government briefs

Final section of the High Line begins construction

City officials and celebrities, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg, City Council speaker Christine Quinn and fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, attended last month’s groundbreaking ceremony for the third and final section of the popular High Line park, Crain’s reported. The $90 million addition, funded by a mix of public and private funds, will be completed in phases, with the first scheduled to be finished in 2014. The third section will extend the park north, between West 30th and West 34th streets, and from 10th to 12th avenues. CSX Transportation, the Florida company that owns and once operated the railroad tracks at the High Line, donated the last section to the city this summer.

Obama vows to keep mortgage tax break

President Barack Obama

If reelected, President Barack Obama would not touch the mortgage-interest tax deduction for middle-class families, he said last month during a speech accepting his party’s nomination for president at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C. Instead, any tax increases or deficit reduction measures would be aimed at households earning more than $250,000 per year, the President said. “We believe that when a family can no longer be tricked into signing a mortgage they can’t afford, that family is protected, but so is the value of other people’s homes, and so is the entire economy,” he said. The Republicans, meanwhile, have  pledged to eliminate the mortgage-interest deduction as part of their party platform. Although critics have said abolishing the tax break would make it more difficult for middle-class individuals to purchase homes, the Republicans say it would help pave the way for income and corporate tax cuts.

LIC-based Krinos Foods to move to the Bronx

Greek food manufacturer Krinos Food announced last month that it will develop a $20 million facility on what is now city-owned land in the Tremont section of the Bronx, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Long Island City-based company — which imports and makes olive oils, cheeses, coffee, pastas and yogurts — is purchasing the site from the city for $3.5 million, and will build a 100,000-square-foot facility there. Krinos will seek subsidies typically available to industrial companies, but didn’t receive any additional government incentives to stay in New York state. Krinos was founded in 1958 and has called Queens home since 1981. At a time when many manufacturers have left the city due to high costs, staying in New York was “not the obvious choice for us,” Krinos Foods president Eric Moscahlaidis told the Journal. But, he added, “I’m a born and bred New Yorker. I wanted to be in New York.”

UES to get new science and medical buildings

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

The city reached an agreement with Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the City University of New York last month to construct two new science and medical facilities on the Upper East Side. In what Mayor Michael Bloomberg called “one of the largest real estate transactions the city has ever been involved in,” the city will sell a 66,000-square-foot site at 525 East 73rd Street to Memorial Sloan-Kettering and CUNY for $215 million. Memorial Sloan-Kettering will then construct a 750,000-square-foot cancer-care facility, and CUNY Hunter College will build a 336,000-square-foot Science and Health Professions facility.