Location: So, one day, the phone rings. It’s Robert De Niro. He wants to build a hotel. Why did he turn to you?

Mr. Born: I’ve got to believe that he was very methodical and careful because he actually spent years with this piece of property [the eventual Greenwich Hotel]. I think he liked us because we were probably a little more low-key than some of the obvious names. And I think he was comfortable also because, from a financial point of view, he wanted to know he was getting involved with people who were solid and would be up to the task.  read more »

Location: This is a horribly anxious time to be in New York real estate, especially if you’re one of the city’s biggest builders. What keeps you up at night?

Mr. Sciame: I like to say that I sleep like a baby: I sleep for two hours and I cry for two hours. Only kidding. … Any major builder in this town in 2008 is having a very good year. And we’re having a very good year.

How is that possible? It’s been incredibly unsteady; apartments are going unsold.

It has been, but as the builder, we are building that building, and the apartments that you’re trying to sell have been paid for … which is why my year has been good.  read more »

Location: The city’s fiscal future looks pretty rough. How would you feel about raising property taxes?

Mr. Thompson: What you’re looking at now … it’s almost a rollback on a reduction. Because if you look, they just cut property taxes 7 percent. I think it is reasonable to expect that that’s going to get rolled back—I know the mayor is attempting to do that now. That probably makes the most sense in the short term.

Do you think the mayor will be successful in getting that through?

It’s clear the state isn’t going to be helping us; we haven’t felt the full impact of what the state cuts are going to be, so I think it makes sense to be able to do that, and the members of the [City] Council will probably agree with that.  read more »

Location: You were recently quoted in Crain’s saying that the hotel business might now be facing ‘the biggest decrease since the immediate aftermath of 9/11.’ Can you quantify this for us?

Mr. Fox: It’s a little tough to judge in the short term. Generally, we’re down anywhere from 10 to 12 percent for the first two or three weeks of October, compared to the same period last year.

 
Whereas the average monthly occupancy rate was as high as 92 percent, its highest level in years, just this past August.

The citywide number for the month was 92, but year-to-date we’re in the high 80s.  read more »

Location: About your new market report with PropertyShark, is this an attempt to challenge the Douglas Elliman-Miller Samuel juggernaut or to gain greater name recognition in the industry?

Ms. Liebman: The Corcoran Report, which we started in the ’80s, was actually the first report to ever come out in Manhattan, so we had a great head start in market reports. Our relationship with PropertyShark was more about getting as much data as possible, because to me, the market report should have as much clear information as possible for any buyers and sellers, so we want to put forward the best data that we can.  read more »

Location: Can I get you to talk about the much discussed report on the middle class that you are working on?

Mr. Bowles: I think one of the things that I’m excited about is that we’re not talking strictly about how to save the middle class. We’re looking at New York’s historic role as a place that groomed a middle class and looking at whether that’s continuing to happen today. We’re going well beyond just the real estate price increases that you’ve seen—and obviously that adds quite a bit of a burden to the middle class in New York—but we’re also focusing on things like the economy, and one of the problems that we find is that there aren’t a lot of middle-income jobs being created in New York City like the ones that were before.  read more »

Location: Where is New York headed now that its main economic engine, financial services, is on the rocks? Do cities normally survive when the main employer, job generator, income generator, goes belly up?

Mr. Kotkin: Well, in the case of financial services, it’s less a job generator than an income generator just because the jobs are such huge providers of income. Basically, New York has been on what you could call the ‘plutonomy wagon.’ Plutonomy is a term used to describe the intersection of plutocracy and economy. So New York has been the ultimate trickle-down economy—it’s been a relatively small group of people driving the economy.  read more »

Location: Since you bought Harlem’s Delano Village, now called Savoy Park, in 2006, how many of its 1,800 apartments have been deregulated?

Mr. Rubler: None. Or, under 10. I mean, occasionally, an apartment will achieve a legal rent that’s over $2,000, which, at least under today’s regulations, means that it’s technically deregulated, but it’s never a part of our business plan to deregulate apartments. Specifically, it’s part of our plan to keep 100 percent of our apartments within rent stabilization.

 
The New York Times reported that last year when you refinanced Savoy Park, it was underwritten for an ultimate cash flow of $19.  read more »

Location: In 2006, you went after the developer Aby Rosen’s plans for a glass tower at 980 Madison in The Times, writing that the Landmarks Preservation Commission would let him build whatever he wanted. They’ve since made him and his partners redraft and scale back plans. Are you glad you won?

Mr. Wolfe: Well, that’s not over yet. They did try again, with what was in effect a plan for a tall glass building lying down. You see in plans and renderings a slab maybe three stories high, but it stretches over a huge area. That building, between 76th and 77th, 980 Madison, is a whole block! .  read more »

Location: The financial industry is changing before our eyes. What’s your outlook for the city’s economy in the short term and midterm?

Mr. Lieber: There’s no question that this is unprecedented in any kind of shape for Wall Street since the ’20s. So we’ve never seen anything this bad, at least not in a long, long time. But having said that … around the economy, our unemployment rate is still relatively low—5.1-ish percent right now—which is up a little bit. Our tax collections going forward are on target so far, though we still are fearful about some of that declining.

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