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Meeting-space companies are banking on New York. British company Etc.venues is taking 30,000 square feet at 601 Lexington Avenue as part of an expansion into New York’s lucrative meeting-space market. [WSJ]
A Brooklyn landlord allegedly beat his tenant and used a racial epithet. Authorities say the elderly landlord broke into a female tenant’s apartment, beat her with a cane, used a racial epithet and told her, “you don’t belong here.” His son was also charged for his role in the incident. — [NYDN]
Bill de Blasio and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Credit: Gage Skidmore and nrkbeta via Flickr)
AOC opposes Mayor de Blasio’s Rikers plan. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted an Instagram story Wednesday in which she expressed opposition to a plan to replace the Rikers Island jail complex with four jails in separate boroughs. “This plan is presented as what’s necessary to #CloseRikers, but the plan itself doesn’t even include the closure of Rikers,” she wrote. [Politico]
Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son (Credit: Getty Images)
SoftBank’s debtholders hope for more caution. The cost to insure SoftBank’s debt increased last month to the highest level in nearly a year after WeWork’s IPO plans veered off track. But the co-working company isn’t all to blame: Uber’s valuation sagged, and SoftBank’s stake in Alibaba plummeted because of the trade war. [Bloomberg]
Rodrigo Niño (Illustration by Nazario Graziano)
What went wrong at Prodigy Network? Rodrigo Niño’s plan was to democratize real estate with his crowdfunding platform, but investors now fear they will lose everything. [TRD]
Cars are effectively banned on 14th Street. Starting Thursday, cars will only be allowed on the busy Manhattan corridor between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. to make deliveries or to pick up and drop off passengers. [NYT]
New York buildings are killing thousands of birds. Between 90,000 and 230,000 birds die in the city each year after flying into buildings, leading the state to consider measures that would mandate bird-friendly facades on new construction. There’s a pending state bill that aims to promote bird-friendly construction, and the City Council has proposed all new buildings and alterations use bird-safe measures below a certain height. [The City]
From left: REBNY President James Whelan, Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Louise Carroll and State Senator and Housing Committee Chair Brian Kavanagh (Credit: Facebook, Twitter, Getty Images, iStock)
A de Blasio official thinks the rent board will be kinder to landlords. Louise Carroll, commissioner of the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, speculated Wednesday that the Rent Guidelines Board will approve larger rent increases than before in an effort to compensate for rent-limiting changes to state law. [TRD]
Landlords are getting some love from the city. The city is preparing a proposal to overhaul the J-51 tax break program, in part to make it more attractive to landlords. Louise Carroll, who heads the city’s primary housing agency, said the incentive needed to be “right sized.” [TRD]
Compiled by Sylvia Varnham O’Regan