By Nitasha Tiku 4/04/12 9:15am

Secret Weapons

Seth Pinsky

Let’s Make a Deal! How Mike’s Mild-Mannered Closer Seth Pinsky Got the City Building Again

Imagine, if you will, the landscape of New York City 15 years hence. A drive to Citi Field in Willets Point takes you past a pleasant if overpriced cluster of residential buildings, rather than seedy chop-shops. Roosevelt Island is home to a sprawling $2 billion applied-sciences campus spinning out an army of developers to populate ping-pong-table-clad start-up clusters from Dumbo to Union Square. On Manhattan’s far West Side, the rezoned stretch of Hudson Yards offers millions of square feet for office space, housing and retail and 14 acres of open public space. You can already see traces of a more built-up, scrubbed-down New York in Luna Park’s freshly-painted Scream Zone, the first new roller-coasters Coney Island has seen in 80 years, and the rapidly-metastasizing arena at Atlantic Yards, which will soon play home court to the rebranded Brooklyn Nets.

It’s hardly a scenario Seth Pinsky could have imagined in September 2008, when Lehman Brothers collapsed just seven months into his tenure as president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC), a not-for-profit arm of the Mayor’s office charged with fostering economic growth across the five boroughs.

At the time, Mr. Pinsky was a 36-year-old former lawyer and investment analyst, only a few years removed from a private sector gig refinancing real estate deals for the big banks as an associate at Cleary Gottlieb. He had one big win under his belt—jump-starting the World Trade Center redevelopment project—but he didn’t have “a political bone in his body,” as one insider put it. “People kept saying to me, ‘Wow, you’re the head of the Economic Development Corporation? We’re in an economic meltdown!’’ Mr. Pinsky told The Observer.

“At the time it meant, ‘You must be really crazy.’” Read More

By Eliot Brown 4/14/09 8:32pm

Lieber: Wall Street Jobs, If Not Revenue, Will Be Fine

The Bloomberg administration is bullish on the future of Wall Street.

Yes, really.

Bob Lieber, the deputy mayor for economic development and a former Lehman Brothers executive himself (he left when times were still good), was asked at a New York Building Congress forum on Tuesday morning what the Bloomberg administration was doing Read More

By Eliot Brown 4/14/09 8:31pm

Lieber: Wall Street Jobs, If Not Revenue, Will Be Fine

The Bloomberg administration is bullish on the future of Wall Street.
Yes, really.
Bob Lieber, the deputy mayor for economic development and a former Lehman Brothers executive himself (he left when times were still good), was asked at a New York Building Congress forum on Tuesday morning what the Bloomberg administration was doing to Read More

By Eliot Brown 11/06/08 5:06am

Doctoroff Unfiltered

Hidden away from public view for nine months now, former Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff last night emerged from his private sector bunker (he’s now the president of Bloomberg LP) to deliver his first retrospective on his time in the Bloomberg administration since he resigned in January.

Speaking at Columbia University to a lecture Read More

By Eliot Brown 10/08/08 7:50pm

Former Bloomberg Deputy Hires Former Spitzer Deputy

Paul Francis, the former state director of operations under Governors Spitzer and Paterson, has been picked up by Bloomberg LP to take a top job in the company’s Financial Products group, a Bloomberg spokeswoman confirmed. Put another way: Dan Doctoroff, formerly Michael Bloomberg’s influential deputy mayor and now Bloomberg LP’s president, hired last week a Read More

By Eliot Brown 8/11/08 6:33pm

What’s Doctoroff Saying to City? It’s a Secret

Ever since he left the city for Bloomberg LP in January, there’s a fair bit of chatter among government and real estate types about former Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff’s continued role in the Bloomberg administration—just how much does he say to current city officials, and what is he saying?

The answer to those questions, it Read More

By Eliot Brown 3/25/08 4:28pm

Doctoroff Cleared to Stay Involved in City Projects

The city’s Conflicts of Interest Board has cleared former Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff to continue to serve in a number of roles connected with the city, allowing him to keep his positions on multiple governing boards.

Mr. Doctoroff, the architect of the city’s development strategy under Mayor Bloomberg, left the administration in January to Read More

By Eliot Brown 1/09/08 4:47pm

The Week of Two Deputy Mayors for Development

It seems there’s a bit of overlap at City Hall. Robert Lieber yesterday became the new Deputy Mayor for Economic Development, taking over most of the responsibilities of Dan Doctoroff, who announced last month he was leaving the administration.

But Mr. Doctoroff is still around until Friday, according to mayoral spokesman John Gallagher, finishing Read More