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
