Daniel Doctoroff

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 serve as the president of Bloomberg LP.  read more »

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 up his last days as a public servant before becoming president of Bloomberg LP.  read more »

With two years left in his job and a whole lot left to do, Mayor Bloomberg today announced that administration insider Robert Lieber, president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, would become his new Deputy Mayor for Economic Development.

The appointment raises a relative newcomer to the administration—Mr. Lieber joined the EDC last January after working at Lehman Brothers for over 20 years—while moving some of the load of predecessor Daniel Doctoroff to the court of Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler, who will assume control of the environmentally-focused PlaNYC, among other operations.

With all of the major development projects under his watch, Mr. Lieber will likely be rushing from day one (he starts Jan. 8) to get those developments into the ground, as many of the signature development initiatives of the Bloomberg administration have yet to see any cement poured.  read more »

Critics of Atlantic Yards repeatedly argue that there is something about the 22-acre housing and arena complex in Brooklyn that does not jibe with the Bloomberg administration’s rhetoric about community participation in the planning process. In an article appearing in tomorrow’s Observer, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff basically agrees.  read more »

In late October, I sat down with Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff for an interview, discussing the past and future of the Bloomberg administration’s economic development plans. (At the time of the interview, I was a reporter at The New York Sun, and wrote an article on the city’s shift toward a strategy of implementation.)

Here’s some excerpts that seem to offer a view of Mr. Doctoroff’s development policy philosophy:  read more »

In a press conference in the Times Square subway station today, the mayor announced the groundbreaking (without shovels or dirt) of the 1.5-mile extension of the No. 7 subway line, a keystone in the city’s efforts to expand midtown to the far West Side.

While officials, including Governor Spitzer, Representative Jerrold Nadler, and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, lined up at the press conference to pledge their support for the start of the project, the decision of who will pay to finish it—should there be any cost overruns—has been pushed off to a later day.  read more »

New York magazine reports that Daniel Doctoroff may leave the Bloomberg administration next year. The Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Rebuilding has been "exploring his options."

The Observer's Matthew Schuerman sat down with Mr. Doctoroff in February to talk about the developments he most wants to complete before leaving office.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You know those little turquoise boxes from Tiffany’s, the ones with a big white bow? Apparently, they are among the great icons of the world—up there, I suppose, with the pyramids, the Great Wall of China and the Eiffel Tower. At least, that’s what Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff said at Wednesday's grand opening of the new Tiffany & Co. store on Wall Street.

“So many of us have enjoyed Tiffany products in our lives,” Mr. Doctoroff gushed.

I’m not sure his words registered with the coffee-cart vendors whom Tiffany’s had contracted to display turquoise umbrellas and give out free coffee (in turquoise paper cups) and cookies, but Mr. Doctoroff was probably right about most of the hundred or so well-heeled tourists and Wall Street types who came to watch the ribbon-cutting and partake of free breakfast and gift bags.  read more »

Willets Point in Flushing is about as close to a controlled economic experiment as can be found in the five boroughs. A 60-acre tract of landfill located in the shadow of Shea Stadium, the 13-block strip is best known for its dense cluster of about 225 car-related businesses employing somewhere between 1,200 and 1,800 workers on any given weekday.  read more »

Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff’s right-hand man in the unsuccessful bid to land the 2012 Olympics started work on Monday at the Related Companies, according to The New York Times. Jay L. Kriegel became a senior adviser to the firm and to its chairman and C.E.O., Stephen Ross. Mr. Ross is also chairman of the Real Estate Board of New York.

New Yorkers of a certain age may know Mr. Kriegel best by the role he played as an aide to Mayor John Lindsay in the Serpico police-corruption brouhaha of the early 1970's. Here's an excerpt from Time magazine in January 1972:

In earlier testimony in closed sessions, Mayoral Assistant Jay Kriegel, 31, whom Lindsay has called the "best staff man in America," had admitted going to the mayor in 1967 with the sordid details of police crime that Detective Frank Serpico and Sergeant David Durk had given him. By the testimony of Durk and Serpico, Kriegel came back to them to report that the Lindsay administration was concerned about possible ghetto rioting and did not want to upset the police.

In his latest appearance before the commission, Kriegel told a different story. He said this time that he had never given the mayor more than a general idea of the cops' charges and did not provide him with specifics. Nor, said Kriegel, had he ever told Durk and Serpico that the mayor was concerned about bothering the police by acting on corruption. But the two policemen have stuck to their version.

Mr. Kriegel eventually escaped threats of a perjury indictment.

One quarter of that may come from congestion-pricing fees; ‘ferries are easy,’ Doctoroff says, but operators face choppy challenges.  read more »

Come Back to San Gennaro: The Mob is Deeply Missed
City officials have since strived to cleanse San Gennaro of certain less than desirable elements: No more gambling. No more booze-slinging street vendors. And, if you believe the current organizers, no more Mafia involvement. Mob mentality, though, still has its place. Go to story by Chris Shott.  read more »

New M.T.A. chief Lee Sander was a skeptic about the long-planned East Side subway. Now he’s in charge of completing 33 blocks by 2013.  read more »

Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff has been shopping a 35-story tower on Robert Moses Playground just south of the Secretariat "that would consolidate United Nations offices now housed in widely scattered city-owned buildings," The Times reported. The neighborhood "would be compensated for the park's loss by a planned esplanade and bike path along the East River," a city spokeswoman said.

- Matthew Schuerman (via Curbed)

Aides to Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff concluded that the current design for the Javits Convention Center expansion would cost between $1.93 billion and $2.2 billion, up from $1.68 billion, according to a March 9 memo obtained by The Real Estate. What's more, the amount of exhibition and meeting space that the expansion would add seems to have shrunk a bit from the plan approved last summer, from 520,000 square feet to 345,000 square feet.

The memo, which preceded the recent pow-wow including Mr. Doctoroff, Senator Chuck Schumer and Governor Eliot Spitzer, argues that it is preferable to move ahead with the current design, which expands Javits a block and a half to 40th Street and adds a floor, rather than extending it a block to the south as others have suggested. (The current design would be less expensive, the memo argues. A more radical plan, involving the western rail yards, was not considered.) The memo also suggests looking at a "phased closing of Javits" as well as "closing Javits altogether during construction" to see if it would save money.

Javits junkies will remember the good ol' days, before security concerns, construction inflation and detailed cost estimates, when conventioneers thought they could build the even larger expansion outlined in the 2004 environmental-impact statement with about a billion bucks.

Errol Cockfield, spokesman for the Empire State Development Corporation, which is overseeing the joint city-state project, wouldn't comment on the estimates, saying that the state was reviewing the current design and would make a decision about how to proceed in early May.

- Matthew Schuerman

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s aides these days start their spiel about the long-range plan for the  read more »

The transfer of the Red Hook piers from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to the city is still months away it seems, though the Post and the Sun on Thursday made it seem imminent.

"We anticipate that the final transfer will occur later this year," Port Authority Executive Director Anthony Shorris said in a statement.

Port Authority spokesman Steve Coleman likened the agreement that was signed between the two entities to a contract on a house, as opposed to an actual closing.

Still, it does seem like the city has advanced its cause considerably since Mr. Shorris told reporters three weeks ago he was "looking at what should happen."

Democratic lawmakers had been pushing Mr. Shorris to hold off on the transfer since the city would move, or maybe even eliminate, the Red Hook container port in favor of a mixed-use, marine-dependent development.

And what a development that will be. Ever considered how highly hops figure into the Economic Development Corporation's plans for the piers? a A brewery, a beer garden and a beer distributorship are all in the cards. Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, who signed the agreement, did a good job of negotiating. For one, the transfer is off if the city fails to change the zoning on the area to permit these new uses. For another, the city will get the piers for a pretty decent price ($1). If the city is not able to cover the costs of maintaining the piers with lease payments from their users, it will be able to draw down on a fund, set at "up to $75 million," that the Port Authority will put forth.

Why? The memorandum of understanding cites a consultant's study that found that the Port Authority would have to spend $130 million over the next 25 years on maintenance otherwise. - Matthew Schuerman

Crain's has the lowdown on the development of Hudson Yards on the far West Side of Manhattan. More striking than the scope of development, perhaps, is the pace:

The development of 5 million square feet of housing, or nearly 40% of the total amount expected to be built there over the next three decades, is already under way. Nearly 1,000 hotel rooms are in the planning stages, and the construction of an office tower could begin later this year.

Developers like the Related Companies and the Witkoff Group have bought sites amid the yards, and Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff has hinted that "there will be news of an office development" there by the end of 2007.

- Tom Acitelli

Mayor Bloomberg came into office vowing to end corporate welfare as we know it. And he did.  read more »

Mayor Bloomberg came into office vowing to end corporate welfare as we know it. And he did.  read more »

Downtown Brooklyn's lament has been the inability to attract mega-tenants to four different sites that were painstakingly drawn and measured in a city-led massive rezoning two years ago.  read more »

Joe Chan, the president of the new Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, indicated in an interview last week that he was headed in a different direction: go for singles rather than home runs. Small parcels here and there might work better for the "creative industries" that he says could make Brooklyn home.

At a City Council Finance Committee meeting today at City Hall, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff made every effort to stress how different this year's plan to develop the West Side Rail Yards is from the plan the city pursued for the site last year.

"It's totally different because we in fact are not purchasing the West Side Rail Yards at all, or the right to build on the West Side Rail Yards. What we are doing is leading a planning process that will lead to a RFP. Whatever is paid pursuant to that RFP will benefit the MTA. So, we do not know today how much the MTA will receive for the West Side Rail Yards."

(NY1 reporter Bobby Cuza has a neat summary of West Side Rail Yard development history here.

It's been clear for a long time now that Doctoroff is staking his reputation on whatever gets built there. He'll have to hope that his new approach is enough to satisfy the colaition that derailed his plans last year.

-- Azi Paybarah

Hillary Clinton campaigns in Virginia for senate candidate Jim Webb.

At 8:30, Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff attends the Construction Industry Breakfast Forum at the Hilton where the New York Building Congress releases construction forecast.

At 10, Street vendors release report documenting poverty and harassment and then march from City Hall Park to the Environmental Control Board (66 John St.).

Also at 10, Mayor Bloomberg and Adolfo Carrion celebrate the expansion of the Bronx Museum of the Arts.

At noon, Borough presidents denounce "subsidized gentrification" and encourage affordable housing, at City Hall.

At 1, the Immigrant Affairs commissioner and Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz discuss Diversity Immigrant Visa Lottery at the Arab-American Family Support Center.

At 5:30, there is a Central American Heritage inside City Hall.

At 7, former Sen. John Edwards, Elizabeth Edwards, signs copies of her book; Barnes & Noble, 2289 Broadway.

At 8, a town hall entitled "Should the U.S. Get Out of Iraq?" is held at 123 W. 43rd Street, and hosted by Harper's Magazine and WNYC New York Public Radio.

And finally...Elton John releases the Elton John Fireside Home Fragrance Collection at the St. Regis Hotel. Yes!

-- Azi Paybarah

A behind-the-scenes political insider could become the city’s next big development kingpin, if  read more »

Mayor Bloomberg will make "a major announcement on New York City sustainability policy," when he joins Gov. Schwarzenegger at 3 p.m., according to Streetsblog.

While details are a bit sketchy, some new hires in Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff's office may offer some clues.

Dr. Rachel Weinberger of U. Penn, who wrote "Transportation for Livable Cities," was recently hired as a new "Senior Policy Advisor for Transportation." Supervising her is newly hired Rohit Thomas Aggarwala, who has a PhD. in history and is described as "a brilliant politician."

Streetsblog notes, "Aggarwala has a big job ahead of him and Mayor Bloomberg hasn't left him much time to get it done -- unless, of course, he gets to continue doing it during a Doctoroff Administration."

-- Azi Paybarah

Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff couldn't resist taking a dig at his adversary at Ground Zero during a Crain's breakfast this morning in which he went ebullient about the future of Lower Manhattan:

Larry Silverstein is so confident in the future of downtown that he is already raising the rent on space the city will take in Tower 4.

He went on to praise Silverstein, though, and said the designs for Towers 2 through 4 (which will be shown to the press tomorrow), look "magnificent" and "spectacular."

-Matthew Schuerman

Alex Garvin has been Dan Doctoroff’s favorite urban planner for about seven years now, ever si  read more »

For the past year or so, Mayor Bloomberg’s top brains have been working, sometimes fitfully, a  read more »

For the past year or so, Mayor Bloomberg’s top brains have been working, sometimes fitfully, alway  read more »

Far from being in the early stages, as his people like to claim, the team drafting Mayor Bloomberg's Strategic Plan had commissioned a study by Alex Garvin (Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff's Olympics designer) on housing, which was completed in May. The list of projected housing platforms is far longer than we reported yesterday, including not just the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and Sunnyside Yards but also the Prospect Expressway, the 36th Street Yards, and the Bay Ridge Line.

"This report," the introduction states, "presents opportunities to build between 160,000 and 325,000 housing units, with virtually no residential displacement...."

By way of explanation, from the housing chapter: "In some sections of the city, the cost of land now exceeds the cost of buildign a platform."  read more »

There is a lot more of it to dig through, also about the "public realm," which an urbanist like Garvin surely put a lot of thought into. Aaron Naparstek has it all on StreetsBlog.

-Matthew Schuerman

Six weeks before the Great Blackout of 2003, Mayor Bloomberg’s senior energy adviser quit his post  read more »

Six weeks before the Great Blackout of 2003, Mayor Bloomberg’s senior energy adviser quit his  read more »

This morning, board members of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority took it for granted that Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff's No. 7 extension was going to cost more than its $2 billion estimate, even throwing around numbers as high as $3.5 billion.

What that means is that the developers' tax payments would no longer cover the cost of running the line out to 11th Avenue and down to 34th Street. Instead, the M.T.A.--and, indirectly, the poor schmucks who take it to work each day--will have to help out.  read more »

"I don't think they are going to give us a billion-and-a-half-dollar blank check if there is an overrun like that," M.T.A. Chairman Peter Kalikow told his board. "I clearly think there are some areas where we should be covered for some of the overruns."

In the afternoon, you have the Public Authorities Control Board likely shooing in the Javits Center. The more up-in-the-air vote is in the morning, when Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff would like to see the M.T.A. approve the city's offer of $500 million for development rights associated with the West Side rail yards. Officially, according to a spokeswoman, the M.T.A. will be discussing the 2007 budget. The rail yards bid is not on the agenda as of now.

Why is this so important? Because Doctoroff is trying to get the bonds out the door to bring the subway down 11th Avenue, but the city can't issue the bonds until it tells buyers how it will pay them back. This is such a marvelously complex transaction that the M.T.A.'s dithering will likely cost the project another month--or even two, since the transit agency's board does not usually meet in August.  read more »

The plan to turn the Farley Post Office building at Eighth Avenue and 33rd Street into a commuter-ra  read more »

Joshua Sirefman is returning to the Economic Development Corporation as interim president, filling the spot left by Andrew Alper, who officially left June 2. The interim part is bit mystifying--Sirefman was chief operating officer of the E.D.C. for a while before becoming chief of staff to Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, such that he would not be a long-shot candidate himself. But Doctoroff's e-mail announcing the change said, "[T]he search for a permanent replacement continues," suggesting they are looking to hook a larger fish. Ostensibly, the announcement (first reported on The Daily Politics) is a disappointment for Kate Ascher, but Sirefman essentially outranked her anyway, so that the rumor she was ascendant was just that--rumor. -Matthew Schuerman

Last night, the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects announced the winners of the 2006 Design Awards.

Amongst the big winners were Renzo Piano and Beyer Blinder Belle (Morgan Library expansion) and Gabellini Sheppard Associates (Top of the Rock).

On June 28, they'll all toast one another during a luncheon at 7 World Trade Center.

And Dan Doctoroff can take solace in the fact that NYC 2012 took home the prize for commissioned project. Nevertheless, it looks like 2016 is already out of the question.  read more »

- Michael Calderone

Saturday is Earth Day, and New Yorker staff reporter Elizabeth Kolbert will discuss global warming.

On Monday, the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce General Membership Breakfast features Chuck Schumer at Li Greci's Staaten.

And in the evening, City Year's Ripples of Hope Dinner honors Dan Doctoroff at Chelsea Piers; and Laura Bush is scheduled to deliver remarks at a reception for Nancy Johnson and Christopher Shays in Stamford.

—Nicole Brydson

The Port Authority leased the twin towers to Larry Silverstein back in July 2001 in order to get out of the real estate business. Now Mayor Bloomberg wants it to get back in.

For several weeks now, the Mayor has been proposing that Silverstein give the rights to develop Towers 3 & 4 along Church Street, the choicest sites, back to the Port Authority. It was never quite clear what would happen next and why another developer would have any better access to capital or any easier time renting the space than Silverstein would. Today at a City Council hearing, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff gave the answers: the Port Authority should build it themsleves, issuing their own bonds to raise the money, taking about 600,000 or 700,000 square feet for its own offices, and then renting out the remaining 3.1 million square feet. What’s more, the Port Authority would forego the profit that Silverstein is seeking and charge lower rents, he said.  read more »

The Wall Street Journal yesterday had a sympathetic look at what it feels like to be Dan Doctoroff after a rare defeat, something of a break from the glee many of his critics took in the failure of the Olympic bid.

Doctoroff is not, evidently, a guy who likes to fail, or one who has failed often:

Mr. Doctoroff, 47 years old, made his fortune running a private-equity firm. Back then, he had few failures, but they haunted him. One investment in a drugstore chain lost $20 million, and for two years afterward, he couldn't bring himself to enter any drugstore. "It was too painful," he says, so he bought his toiletries at supermarkets.

State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky poked holes in the plan for the Javits Convention Center expansion Thursday morning—and afternoon. A lot of them were awfully small holes, but Brodsky—who is running for state attorney general, remember--did get the staff of the Convention Center Development Corporation to admit that they might have to do a supplemental environmental impact statement because the plan has changed since the one for Hudson Yards was completed. No one would specify how long that would take but figure another two to six months.  read more »

Transit Union’s Toussaint: Time to Go    read more »

Transit Union’s Toussaint: Time to Go Now that members of the Transit Workers Union have foolishl  read more »

Eliot Spitzer kept out of the West Side Stadium fight last year, telling reporters he couldn't talk about it because his office might wind up litigating.

But at a breakfast up in Washington Heights this morning, he broke his silence:  read more »

"I didn't think it made a lot of financial sense to give a way a piece of real estate that's worth a few billion dollars to a football team for a hundred million dollars," he said. "That's their fiscal determination thus far - maybe not down the road - but it didn't make sense to me."

After the event, Spitzer said he'd expressed his reservations privately to Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff and others.

It's a slow day for real-estate news, but The New York Sun has an article today on the construction boom in New York City. Interesting quote from Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff: "I think we are in the midst of, arguably, the greatest building boom in probably the period since World War II."

The paper follows up with an editorial calling the boom "one of the mayor's great successes."  read more »

But The Times, in an AP report, tells us of a cooling housing market. Of course, that's nationally.

-Matthew Grace

Those vacant seats on the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation are filling up fast! Grab one while you can. After today’s rejiggering, there’s only one left.

The Mayor came out strong with a press release at 4:30 p.m. announcing six appointees, including four from his own cabinet: Dan Doctoroff, Amanda Burden, Deputy Mayor Marc Shaw and Finance Commish Martha Stark. The Governor responded minutes later. (The Real Estate uses the word loosely, as we got the news from a phone call from Empire State Development Chairman Charles Gargano, and we may have been low on his list. But hey, a phone call doesn’t take as much time as a press release to prepare for.) His two appointees are the aforementioned Gargano and James Kallstrom, his special advisor on counter-terrorism at Ground Zero.

The Mayor’s other appointees are Verizon President Lawrence Babbio and civic icon Bill Rudin. Stan Shuman and Ed Lewis resigned from the board earlier this week, according to a mayoral aide, “after several years of service.” The Governor, meanwhile, still has one more seat to fill.

Gargano said he did not know whether the simultaneous announcements were planned or a coincidence, but he said he had been asked by the Governor several weeks ago. Asked whether the LMDC would become the arena for a showdown between the Governor and Mayor, he said, “No. It’s not like there are going to be any surprises. The Governor set out a very aggressive timetable for Ground Zero and this puts a strong focus on accomplishing that.”  read more »

And people say the LMDC doesn't have anything left to do. If so, its board will sure have a swell time doing nothing.

-Matthew Schuerman

The Mayor walked into the Daily News building Oct. 21 to get an endorsement.    read more »

The Mayor walked into the Daily News building Oct. 21 to get an endorsement.  read more »

Over at the the Lipskys' blog, there's much rejoicing at today's Times examination of the Bloomberg Administration's unconventional Bronx Terminal Market deal.

To me, though, the central theme of the piece is a window on a defining feature of the Bloomberg administration: the extent to which whole areas of policy are, for better or worse, controlled by the Mayor's strong subordinates. It was, to some extent, natural: Mike came to office with fewer opinions on matters of public policy than most politicians. But these are matters that weren't discussed, or even contemplated, in his last election; and it raises the question of what personal projects and personalities a second term might bring.  read more »

It's safe to say that, legality aside, the Related Company would not be part of this deal had Dan Doctoroff not gone to work for Mike Bloomberg. Ditto the stadium push. In another arena, it seems likely that without the happenstance of hiring Tom Frieden, there would be no smoking ban. Mike's ballyhooed taste in art is Patty Harris's taste. The transformation of the NYPD into a local Department of Homeland Security is owned by Ray Kelly.

The Mayor has often talked about picking good people, giving them responsibility, and making them accountable. He's succeeded in empowering competent managers; but the trade-off seems to be that he's contracted out whole areas of policy, leaving the incoherence that makes this administration so hard to describe or analyze as a single piece. And so hard to predict.

Tom Bernstein, the co-founder of the International Freedom Center, was revising his notes for the pu  read more »