Public park? Wind farm? Both!

New York is about to be just as green as the Hudson River!

The Deputy Mayor, Cas Holloway, New York City Department of Environmental Protection and the New York City Economic Development Corporation announced a proposal for solar and wind power facilities in Fresh Kills on Staten Island earlier this week.

There's a 75-acre plot of land within the massive 2,2000-acre dump-turned-public park available for lease that could be developed into a facility that generates upwards of 20 megawatts of renewable energy. That is enough to power about 6,000 homes. It will double the city's natural energy capacity.

"New York City needs energy to keep it running, and we want that power to be reliable, clean, and affordable," Deputy Mayor Holloway said in an announcement. "This RFP does all of those things and, if successful, will more than double the renewable energy capacity in the City.  Renewable energy is the most sustainable kind, and under Mayor Bloomberg’s leadership we’re maximizing the use of City assets to develop as much capacity as possible."

These initiatives are in accordance with the mayor's PlaNYC sustainability initiatives.

Seth Pinsky, president of the EDC, also noted that it will "build the city's green economy, not only leading to job creation and economic investment, but also ensuring the sustainability of our city."

mewing@observer.com

That big thing in the corner is the Willets convention Center. (NYC EDC)

After Mayor Bloomberg and the city won a key Willets Point case back in 2010, a slew of colleges and development companies are competing to redevelop the iron triangle. As part of Bloomberg's plan, a convention center—the first outside of Manhattan—will be a focal point of the project and will rocket Willets Point into "New York's next great neighborhood."

But now that the gigundo casino-and-convention complex is in the works at nearby Aqueduct, is there room for two convention centers in Queens?

That's what The Times is asking today, and the answer they find is that the city's biggest borough has room for two.

"Willets Point right now looks like something in a third-world nation, and if we’re going to be able to maximize economic opportunities it’s going to require full redevelopment," Queens Chamber of Commerce president Jack Friedman tells the Gray Lady.

The Bloomberg administration does not appear to have changed its mind, either. A spokeswoman for the city's Economic Development Corporation, which is leading the Willet Point's redevelopment, would not address the Cuomo casino/convention plan but did say that "our plans have not changed."

mewing@observer.com

“I work on a lot of the same issues,” said Ms. Pinsky, who married Economic Development Corporation head Seth Pinsky last summer. “The thing about the real estate industry, it’s very civic minded. Many owners are family businesses and there’s this strong tradition in the industry of wanting projects and policies that are best not just for the industry’s own interests, but for the entire city.

Angela Pinsky. (Photo by Kiki Conway)

Landlords know that their success and the health of their investments depend on the health of the city as a whole.”

Ms. Pinsky joined the mayor’s office during the heady first years of the Bloomberg administration, a period of sweeping vision, and bore witness firsthand to how real estate could provide government with the levers for urban change.

Starting as then-Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff’s chief of staff, one of the first projects she worked on was the rezoning of the Williamsburg and Greenpoint neighborhoods in Brooklyn, a process that would eventually allow a wave of residential development to sprout in the area. The neighborhood’s potential wasn’t as easy to see then. Ms. Pinsky lived in Williamsburg at the time, near the waterfront, an area that was a forlorn stretch of derelict-looking industrial buildings.

“If you didn’t get dinner by 6:00 you weren’t going to eat that night,” Ms. Pinsky said. “It’s hard to believe looking at the neighborhood today, but there weren’t grocery stores or restaurants back then.”

The area was already gaining momentum as a place for artists and hipsters and for its proximity to Manhattan. The rezoning, though, kicked that transformation into high gear and made the neighborhood the magnet for living, culture and nightlife that it is today. The project was just one of many seeds of revitalization that the administration sought to plant around the city, a bold agenda that galvanized Mrs. Pinsky’s view of real estate as a tonic that could cure the city’s ills.

“I worked on the Olympic bid and PlaNYC,” Ms. Pinsky said. “There was the feeling that you were never doing enough.”

Mayor Bloomberg arranged the office in City Hall as a large bullpen with everyone sitting at open workstations. His was, and still is, at the center of the room. Ms. Pinsky sat near the periphery, but the layout avoided isolation and permitted everyone in the room to feel within the fold of the office’s work.

“You could hear what the mayor was talking about on the phone and you always had an awareness of what was going on,” Ms. Pinsky said. “There were no silos. That was one of the great things about the administration—it was transparent.”

She remembers Mayor Bloomberg as having a photographic memory and a talent with data. “Numbers are part of his body,” Ms. Pinsky said. “But he was also very instinctual. The mayor would do the research and then trust his gut.”

Mr. Doctoroff, who left city government in 2007 to become the chief executive of Mayor Bloomberg’s financial information company, Bloomberg LP, was more analytical. “Dan wanted analyses down to the penny and he would ask you little details to see if you knew about a project inside and out,” Ms. Pinsky said.

Ms. Pinsky grew close with Mr. Doctoroff. She said he still checks in on her. “I had a very strong attachment to Dan,” Ms. Pinsky said. “I was young and had a lot to learn. I was timid. Working in that situation makes you learn about decision-making. I grew up a lot in that role. Dan still calls all of us. He’s very protective.”

Mrs. Pinsky stayed on when Mr. Doctoroff left, maintaining her position as a chief staffer for Bob Lieber, a former Lehman Brothers executive who was hired as Mr. Doctoroff’s successor in the role of deputy mayor of economic development. Mr. Lieber was less of a visionary than Mr. Doctoroff, according to Ms. Pinsky, but had a clear talent for negotiating deals, skills that Ms. Pinsky would also soon come to appreciate.

One of the first issues they handled together was what to do with Off Track Betting. The parlors were oozing red ink, Ms. Pinsky said, largely because the city and state took money out of its total revenue rather than its profits. “OTB expenses were rising and there was nothing to compensate it for that,” Ms. Pinsky said.

Mr. Lieber helped devise a solution in which the city and state would share a cut of OTB’s profits only, an approach that would pad its bottom line. He worked hard to align various interests in the state that would permit the idea to be implemented. But the negotiations bogged down and eventually he retreated, arranging a deal that would allow the state to take control of the organization. A year later, it was shuttered.

Mr. Lieber’s efforts had paid off in one sense; the city was no longer on the hook for OTB’s $500 million of pension and other liabilities. Still, it was demoralizing to see how such a common-sense solution could meet defeat when OTB’s inevitable demise had been so widely predicted.

By the spring of 2010, with the economy and government-spurred developed in slow gear due to the recession, Ms. Pinsky was ready for change. Mr. Lieber had left office to return to the private sector, taking a job at C3 Capital Partners. She soon got her own chance to switch over as well. “Mike Slattery, an executive at REBNY, called me in,” Ms. Pinsky said. “I wasn’t expecting it but they had an opening.”

For REBNY, Ms. Pinsky was a hugely attractive hire, as she had not only valuable connections in city government, but also a close feel for how it works. Having staff with Ms. Pinsky’s skill set and experience has been essential for the city’s real estate industry, whose health depends not just on economic winds but as much on the burdens and restrictions that government places on it too.

In recent months Ms. Pinsky has been working on a range of issues. Taxes on carried interest, an investment structure typically employed by hedge funds but also by some real estate partnerships, will likely be raised from the current capital gains rate. Ms. Pinsky and other lobbyists hope to segregate real estate from the issue, which has been focused at increasing taxes specifically for investment funds.

The outcome of their efforts could have a profound effect on how ownership structures are arranged in the real estate business. Closer to home, the City Council is grappling with whether to pass living-wage legislation, a regulation hotly opposed by the city’s real estate industry. The requirement primarily affects retail tenants, forcing them to pay higher wages to employees in buildings that receive city subsidies or incentives.

The issue is what brought down a bid by the Related Companies to redevelop the Kingsbridge Armory in 2009, when Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz backed instituting requirements that would have forced Related’s tenants in the project to pay the higher wage rate.

“Related couldn’t build under that requirement,” Ms. Pinsky said. “Retailers aren’t going to go to a building if they can get space across the street that’s cheaper. And developers know that and they’re not going to build if they can’t be as competitive.”

Ms. Pinsky, née Sung, got married to Seth Pinsky last summer. At least on the surface, the marriage seems like a well-suited match. Mr. Pinsky is the head of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, the pseudo government agency that the mayor’s office uses as one of its primary arms of economic development. Mrs. Pinsky said that she and her husband are actually quite different. “It really was a case of opposites attracting,” Mrs. Pinsky said. “I like dance music, he listens to nothing but classical. I’m very social and he tends to be more introverted.”

While Mrs. Pinsky would have preferred a getaway like Hawaii for their honeymoon, Mr. Pinsky chose the Sudan and then Egypt. Mr. Pinsky prefers exotic, out-of-the-way destinations that sometimes verge on risky. He was days away from visiting North Korea before the government there canceled his papers permitting entry. He went to Iran earlier in their relationship without Mrs. Pinsky.

“We had a safe word,” Mrs. Pinsky remembers. “Waffles. If he got captured and said that, I knew to send the U.S. government.”

The travel, especially in former Soviet countries, an area that fascinates Mr. Pinsky, has afforded her a perspective on infrastructure here.

“You can compare what they have in other cities and see where it has gone right and wrong and, also, what we do that is right and wrong,” Mrs. Pinsky said. “I still want to go to Hawaii.”

DGeiger@Observer.com

The city greatly expanded its second annual Big Apps competition, Deputy Mayor Robert K. Steele stopped by Google's offices to announce that the city is wooing a top-flight engineering school, and the EDC even hosted a mixer, Startup Exchange, where founders and VCs mingled with folks from city government.

These efforts, however, have been met with increasingly loud cries of frustration and cynicism. Many in the tech community feel the EDC is big-footing the natives, throwing city dollars behind unnecessarily bureaucratic solutions instead of supporting the grassroots organizations already in place. The fight recently became public with a long post on NY Convergence, a site dedicated to covering tech in the tri-state area, which called the city's efforts a largely symbolic, heavy-handed exercise that is out of step with the community.

"I keep my finger on the pulse of what's going on, and if there are real initiatives from the city, I haven't heard about it and none of my cohorts have heard about it either," Reece Pacheco, founder of Overtime Media, wrote in an email thread in which members of the nextNY group criticized the EDC.

Anil Dash, recently elected as one of the first community board members at the 16,000 strong NY Tech Meetup, feels the city needs to try a less traditional approach. "They seem to be starting from the side of the usual economic development machinery and trying to ‘tech-ify' it, if you'll pardon the expression. Will that work? I don't know. But it seems like it must be at least a little less efficient than it could be. Seems like a lot more could be done, beginning by engaging with infrastructure like the NY Tech Meetup that already exists."

The city's proposal for a new engineering campus in New York is emblematic to many of what's wrong with its approach. "They're taking answers from the very institutions that have failed to educate enough technical innovators in the first place. And then they're going to stick them in a big building somewhere," wrote Charlie O'Donnell, a partner at First Round Capital and one of the most active presences on the NY tech scene.

EDC spokesperson Julie Wood thinks O'Donnell is way off the mark. "We are talking about an initiative in which, it was reported, the LC/City is prepared to invest $100 million. That's a very, very big number in today's fiscal environment. This is a major initiative that is designed to transform the City's place in the world of applied sciences—not 'stick people in a building somewhere.'"

The city's track record in the past few years is certainly more than symbolic. Its Big Apps competition made more city data available for public consumption and development than any municipality in the nation. And the winner of the inaugural effort, MyCityWay, went on to receive funding from the NYC Entrepreneurial Fund, a $22 million investment partnership between the EDC and private venture capital, the only city sponsored investment fund outside of Silicon Valley.

Check Out Some of the City's Recent Tech Initiatives >>

The EDC has also backed incubators like NYU-Poly Varick Street Incubator and The Hive at 55, helping numerous startups get a foothold in a high-cost environment. "Initiatives they support like the NYU-Poly incubator are of great importance to the long term viability of NYC as a world-class technology center," wrote Evan Korth, community board member at the NY Tech Meetup and co-founder of hackNY, a program that connects students with internships at tech companies.

Wood says accusations that the EDC has ignored the grassroots tech organizations are ridiculous. "City officials and EDC representatives have presented information about the Big Apps competition at many Meetup events, and two Deputy Mayors--Robert Steel, the deputy mayor for economic development, and Stephen Goldsmith, the deputy mayor for operations, both have presented to Tech Meetup--proof that we are not only interested in, but do actively take advantage of the existing community."

To some, these efforts have come across as tone-deaf. "Sending out e-mail blasts and having high level people speak for five minutes at a couple of Meetups here and there is not relationship building, nor is it the kind of participation we're looking for," said Charlie O'Donnell. "That's what some of the EDC folks I've met fail to understand."

But Jacob Brody, founder and CEO of Standard Start, says the tech community has to meet the city halfway.

"There is a fundamental disconnect, because people in the tech community expect things to work the way they do in the VC world," he said. "Except the government doesn't make risky investments, have Twitter conversations or pivot on a dime. Their plan for an engineering school, for example, is a big, expensive, long-term play, and the tech community should recognize that there is value in that, which is different from what a great, grassroots organization like hackNY can provide."

In the end the friction between the city and the tech community is actually a sign of progress. "We wouldn't have been having this conversation five years ago, because the city wasn't at the table," said Jonathan Bowles, Director of the Center for the Urban Future. "In the last two years there has been a big shift, with the city really trying to get behind the local tech industry. Do they always get everything right? Of course not, this is government. But that doesn't mean we should get mad at them for showing up late to the party."

Check Out Some of the City's Recent Tech Initiatives >>

bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper

Seth Pinsky’s team at the city’s Economic Development Corporation came upon the expansion of the verb while leafing through the legislation a few months back.

“Historically, if you were issuing tax-exempt bonds, you could only issue them for the purpose of helping a manufacturing company manufacture tangible goods, like widgets,” Mr. Pinsky said (for the record, widgets are more metaphorical than tangible). “The definition was expanded to include intangibles like software. It’s suddenly opened up the possibility of using tax-exempt bonds to assist the expansion of new-economy companies.”

In other words, companies that manufacture computer code, that develop Web sites, that work in biotech or new media, now have access to so-called Nimble bonds, tax-exempt bonds for small and midsize firms that can be used to defray capital expenditures, like, say, Internet servers, or commercial real estate investments.

The first company to take advantage of these bonds was Stellar Services, a software developer, which is in contract to spend over $5 million on two commercial condominiums at 70 West 36th Street. Stellar has preliminary approval for up to $4.4 million in bonds.

“We were always struggling about office space,” said Liang Chen, the owner of Stellar. “When we first got to this current space [on 38th Street], we had 5,000 square feet. At the time, we had 10 people. And we thought this was for life. And now we have 28 people [in this office]. And our company has grown to about 100 people.”

And so Mr. Chen began searching for new space in a number of markets, like New Jersey, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. And then he found out about this program.

Sunil Aggarwal of Think Forward Financial, an adviser to Mr. Chen, said, “Two percent savings on $5 million translates to $100,000 per year. For 10 years, you’re looking at $1 million in savings.”

“They’re talking about how there’s no funding available for small businesses right now, so you need this kind of programming,” Mr. Aggarwal said. “Now they’ve expanded the definition of manufacturing to include software companies, biotech companies, new-media companies. … Those are the industries that can grow in the city.”

“Personally, I live in New York, and I want everyone here,” added Mr. Chen. “Now, we can hire more people locally. … This is very beneficial to a company like us.”

drubinstein@observer.com

"This is a cute way of trying to go around the City Council, and I’m confident it will be subject to a legal challenge," said Brooklyn Councilwoman Letitia James.

The project in question, announced in March 2008, would turn the fabled institution at First Avenue and 30th Street, which has served the psychiatric needs of legendary, and legendarily unstable, New Yorkers like Eugene O’Neil, Charles Mingus and Allen Ginsberg, into a hotel and conference center.

At the time, according to Ms. James and Councilman Daniel Garodnick, who represents the district in which the former psychiatric hospital is located, the city promised that the project would be subject to ULURP.

A recent letter from the Economic Development Corporation to Community Board 6 Chair Lyle Frank admits as much, explaining that the city's Law Department determined, upon further review, that since the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation will lease the property directly to the chosen developer, rather than first transferring the property to EDC, no ULURP is required.

EDC also emphasized that, once a bidder is chosen for redevelopment, the proposal will still go through an extensive public review process, including appearances before the Bellevue Community Advisory Board, Community Board 6, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer's office, and New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation. It would further require the approval of the HHC Board of Directors, the City Council, and Mayor Bloomberg.

That might just be enough to satisfy Messrs. Garodnick and Frank.

"If EDC commits to noticing, seeking and getting a recommendation from the community board and borough president, it may not be all that different than a ULURP process," Mr. Garodnick said.

Ms. James isn’t so sure. The reason she and other Brooklyn pols even give a hoot is that the redevelopment of the hospital has a direct impact on Crown Heights. At the moment, Bellevue houses Manhattan’s largest homeless shelter, with 850 beds, including more than 100 dedicated to homeless men with special needs, according to a recent article in the New York Press. That intake center would be relocated to the Bedford-Atlantic Armory in Crown Heights, one of the more notorious homeless shelters in the system.

"The data and evidence here are clear: You need to maintain an intake center, the front door to the homeless shelter system for homeless men in Manhattan," said Coalition for the Homeless's Patrick Magee at a recent press conference, according to NY1. "There is no reason in the world that the city should propose moving that intake center out to Brooklyn."

The city has since committed to opening another Manhattan intake center in its place, though it has yet to indicate where.

Ms. James argued that the backtracking on the ULURP process removes one of the opposition's main points of negotiating leverage with the administration. And as far as the replacement public procedures outlined in the letter are concerned, she is dubious.

The "devil is in the details," Ms. James wrote, in an email.

According to the New York City Economic Development Corporation, the Port Authority is one of many possible locations under consideration, but a deal to move the bi-weekly fashion shows to the grungy midtown bus terminal is nowhere near being finalized.

"Fashion Week is a vital asset to New York City and we are working expeditiously with IMG and the fashion industry to find a suitable new home,” said Patrick Murphy, the head of fashion/retail industry growth initiatives at the NYEDC. “The reports of an imminent or scuttled deal to move to the Port Authority Bus Terminal were erroneous.”

It is no secret that Fashion Week is persona non grata at Bryant Park and the contract with the company that hosts the event, IMG, expires in 2010. The EDC would not specify the other potential venues in the running, but The New York Daily News wrote in March that one long-term solution on the table is relocating Fashion Week to somewhere on the redeveloped West Side rail yards.

Then the city determined that the private landowners—one in particular, Joe Sitt of Thor Equities—were not the perfect partners they had imagined. In November, the mayor announced a plan that would put the city in the captain’s seat by taking control of the entire amusement zone, buying out or trading property with the owners.

Then last night, at a forum at the Museum of the City of New York, a city official acknowledged there were talks going on to reach some sort of agreement where the city would realize a remade amusement district in conjunction with the private landowners, which would represent a reverse from the November announcement. The official, Coney Island Development Corporation president Lynn Kelly, said she could not expand much beyond that, but did say of the plan that “the different landowners could partake in all of this.”

Why the shift since November?

As often with development fights, local politics reign supreme.

Some key colorful local elected officials greeted the city’s plans with some displeasure, with State Senator Carl Kruger vowing to block a crucial measure that moves around parkland designation. Mr. Kruger became an immediate outspoken opponent after the plan was unveiled, though he did not say much about it while it was being crafted in a relatively public manner.

Then there is Councilman Domenic Recchia. Also at the forum last night, Mr. Recchia believes a city-led rezoning is the right answer, but does not want to see the city force out the existing landowners, particularly Mr. Sitt, whom Mr. Recchia called a good friend.

Mr. Recchia made clear last night that he was unmoving in his opposition to a large city-owned amusement district (the city would turn it into parkland and lease it to an amusement operator), saying the proposal was unfair to the owners and it would not work financially.

“By making it parkland it only really adds value to one party and that’s the city,” he said.

To complete its plans, the city would need the support of the City Council, which often defers to the local council member.