While we wait for De Blasio's plan to be unveiled, the team that will lead the charge is being put together...
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De Blasio’s short list for real estate jobs
December 01, 2013
By C. J. Hughes
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Bill de Blasio promised a bold new approach to running New York. However, based on the names being bandied about for the City Hall jobs that matter the most to the real estate industry, the new boss might look a lot like the old boss.
Indeed, on the short list for chair of the Department of City Planning (which arguably has the most direct impact on the real estate business) are three people who are on the 13-member City Planning Commission now under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, according to several industry sources. The candidates mentioned to The Real Deal are: Anna Hayes Levin, Michelle de la Uz and Kenneth Knuckles.
“The changes are not going to be nearly as great as people assume,” said Fred Siegel, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a New York-based think tank, who worked on Rudy Giuliani’s 1993 mayoral campaign.
De Blasio, sources added, believes that a person with seasoned knowledge of the minutiae of zoning codes would be a tremendous asset. “Amanda Burden herself was a commissioner before she became the chair,” said one former Bloomberg administration official. “The thought is that you need somebody who knows the ropes.”
* Of the three contenders, sources say, the front-runner is Levin, who was appointed to the commission in 2009 not by Bloomberg but by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who will be inaugurated as the city’s comptroller in January. As a result, she’s not seen as a holdover from the current administration, sources said.
Levin — a Yale graduate with a law degree — has a bit of grassroots appeal, too. She came to City Hall via Community Board 4 on Manhattan’s West Side, which grappled with numerous redevelopment plans while she chaired the land-use committee. “She gets a lot of points for her work on the Hudson Yards rezoning,” the former administration official said. Levin opposed Bloomberg’s earliest redevelopment proposal for the rail yards site, which included a stadium for the Jets football team, while pushing for elements of the office-building-focused plan in place now. She did not respond to a request for comment.
* De la Uz, meanwhile, could satisfy different political aims for de Blasio. As executive director of the Fifth Avenue Committee, a social justice group that builds affordable housing in South Brooklyn, de la Uz could presumably help advance de Blasio’s goal of creating 200,000 affordable units. She also lives and works in the 718 area code, which is the natural power base of de Blasio, a Park Slope resident who represented that area on the City Council.
De Blasio had appointed de la Uz to the City Planning Commission in 2012, but the pair reportedly had a falling out over the rezoning of Roosevelt Island. De Blasio supported the rezoning, but de la Uz voted against it, casting the sole “no” vote on the commission. “That was not well-received,” one former official said of de Blasio’s reaction, though he added that de Blasio appears to have forgiven her.
Indeed, de la Uz is also said to be a strong favorite to lead the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the city’s affordable-housing-creation arm, which is expected to be more active under the new mayor. (It should be noted that HPD has served as a stepping stone of sorts in recent years; former Commissioner Shaun Donovan is now U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.)
* Others are placing bets that Knuckles, who has served as the commission’s vice chairman for the last decade, is tapped for chair. Knuckles — an attorney with an architecture degree who served in the Dinkins administration — runs the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, an investment group that’s been a major force in Harlem’s recent revitalization. For his part, Knuckles said he had not yet been approached by de Blasio, but would be honored to be considered.
“The mayor-elect has very clearly stated what his priorities are around planning,” with affordable housing being at the top of the list, Knuckles said. “I assume he wants to continue to see growth in the city, but in a way that can better address income inequality.”
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Less likely, but still a hat in the ring, sources say, is Vishaan Chakrabarti, who was director of the City Planning Department’s Manhattan office during the early part of the Bloomberg administration, when he, too, worked to rezone the West Side.
But he may not be willing to give up his current roles as a partner at SHoP Architects and professor at Columbia University to reenter the public sector, sources said.
Chakrabarti, who also previously worked at Related Companies, was heavily involved in that firm’s plans to create a mixed-use development at the James A. Farley Post Office with Vornado Realty Trust, as part of the redevelopment of Penn Station.
Earlier this year, Related reignited interest in the project with a revised proposal, which a former state official said might just convince Chakrabarti to head back into the public sphere. “If he could pull together all the pieces to a transformative project of this type, I could see him coming back,” the source said.
Chakrabarti declined to comment on whether he’s been approached by de Blasio, but did offer that “the new Penn Station is an extremely important agenda item.”
...Another name popping up to head the Planning Department is Meenakshi Srinivasan, chair of the Board of Standards and Appeals, a lower-profile agency that nonetheless can block certain zoning changes issued by the Planning Department and reverse Department of Buildings decisions.
Srinivasan, who has master’s degrees in city planning, urban design and architecture, worked in the Planning Department from 1990 to 2003. In that capacity, she too worked on the master plan for Hudson Yards, according to news reports.
...Meanwhile, several sources said de Blasio is zeroing in on Ronda Wist to run the Landmarks Preservation Commission, where he appoints all 11 members.
Wist, a vice president of the Municipal Art Society of New York, the design watchdog group, would replace Robert Tierney, who’s chaired the LPC since 2002. She is no stranger to Landmarks; she was executive director of the LPC at the end of the Giuliani administration, and previously worked at the Planning Department.
...One name that should probably be scratched off any list, however, is Mitch Rudin, the CEO of Brookfield Office Properties.
After he walked with de Blasio in Manhattan’s Veterans Day Parade last month, rumors heated up that de Blasio might consider a private-sector developer for a top job.
But according to a Brookfield source, “it was truly apolitical” and the two were only thrust together at the last minute.
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