Three developers who are building massive new projects in Downtown Brooklyn, Queens and Midtown East, together spent almost $3 million on lobbyists in 2014 to expedite their new projects.
The real estate and construction industries spent $166.3 million on lobbying on the state and city levels from 2007 through the first half of 2014, according to a review by The Real Deal of the most recent disclosures available.
Albee Development — the lead developer on City Point in Brooklyn — outspent its colleagues, paying lobbyists $1.2 million, according to Crain’s. Most of the money went to Washington Square Partners, one of three partners on the Brooklyn project.
The consortium of developers that is building a 2,500-unit project along the Astoria waterfront in Queens, Halletts A Development — which is now lead by the Durst Organization — paid $680,500 to hire Cozen O’Connor, a law and government relations firm.
SL Green Realty, the developer looking to build a 1,500-foot-tall office tower at One Vanderbilt in Midtown East, spent $500,000 on lobbyists last year. Of that sum, Crain’s reported, roughly half went to Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson, a law firm that specializes in public review applications. [Crain’s] — Claire Moses