The Sit-Down

Location: Does Craigslist scare brokers, in the sense that it opens up access to real estate information?

Mr. Baum: No, Craigslist doesn’t scare me; in fact, I think that Craigslist is fantastic, if used properly. The problem with Craigslist is that it lends itself to ridicule because there are many posts that are either false or absolutely untrue, and there are scams where people have lost thousands of dollars because they think they are renting something when they are not. So Craigslist has its flaws in that respect, but at the same time, the opening up of information I personally think is a great thing.  read more »

Location: Let’s talk about the Summer Streets program. Has it gone as good as you would have hoped?

Mr. White: You know, when the city first announced Summer Streets, we were thrilled. The indications from other cities are that when streets are given over to biking and walking on weekends, it’s been a huge success, but skeptics here in New York thought that not enough people would come out; but we have just had throngs of people coming out walking and biking, and it has really just exceeded our expectations for success. We are calling the summer of 2008 the ‘Summer of Car-Free Streets,’ and a few years from now we might look back at this summer as the summer when car-free streets hit the big time and people woke up to the enormous latent demand for car-free living and walking.  read more »

Editor's note: A shorter version of this interview will run in the Aug. 13 print edition of The Observer.

LOCATION: Explain why Amtrak wants New Jersey Transit's planned ARC (Access to the Region's Core) tunnel under the Hudson River to connect with the Penn Station tracks.

Mr. Kummant: Basically, look, this goes back to a process we're leading, which is a process for the whole Northeast corridor. And, at the end of the day, we're in a completely different world, where capacity matters a great deal. You're looking at 2030 projections where commuter volume and Amtrak volume in total is almost doubling.  read more »

Location: Last year, a Legal Media Group study named you the best-connected and most powerful real estate lawyer in the world. That’s sort of extraordinary.

Mr. Mechanic: I did get a kick out of that, I have to admit. That was fun. I went to a meeting with a tenant I was representing with a pretty good sense of humor, and I walked in and he said, ‘Aha! We now have the best real estate lawyer in the galaxy!’ So you have to enjoy all that. But I think I’m pretty good at what I do, and certainly I have lots of relationships that I’ve developed in almost 30 years in the business.  read more »

Location: After years of bubbling real estate prices, the market is changing, and now is not exactly a good time to be selling an apartment—let alone thousands, which is your job. Do you lie awake panicked in bed?

Ms. de França: I mean, I realize it’s a challenging market, but I can’t say I’m living in fear of it.… We’ve enjoyed an incredibly robust market in the past five or six years, which is now stabilizing; I think that buyers are much more skeptical, consumer confidence is lower than it’s been. With that said, it gives us an opportunity to be patient with the consumer, educate them.  read more »

Location: How long has your family been out here?

Mr. Fodera: We’re just about an 80-year-old company; we’ve always operated in the city of New York, but we’ve been in Willets Point in this facility for almost 35 years.

Why’d you move out to Willets?

It’s tremendous as far as highway access, as well as the labor force, and it put us very close to our customers.

You do food distribution?

Bakery ingredient distribution. My clients start from the mom-and-pop stores right up to the biggest bakeries in the city.  read more »

Location: How did you first get into the hotel business?

Mr. Bashaw: When I got out of college, I bought a building in Cape May, N.J., and renovated it into a hotel in 1989, called the Virginia. … And then we bought another one called Commerce Hall, which we opened in 2002; 110 rooms, built in 1879, really amazing building.

Sounds like a lot of renovation work.

Well, we love renovating. That’s why this Atlantic City project is so fun for us.

So, these are two hotels, a HoJo’s …

And a Holiday Inn, and we’re combining them.  read more »

Location: The theme that unites the Mayor’s 2030 PlaNYC is that the city will grow by about one million people in the next 25 years. Do you agree?

Mr. Beveridge: It’s an interesting thing because the way they framed it was that it’s inevitable that the city’s going to grow that much. … If you take a look at it, that isn’t that much growth, percentage-wise, since they have it over 30 years.

So what happens in 20 years? How big is the city?

It will be bigger. Unless something bad happens! Then it will be smaller.  read more »

Location: How’s the capital market doing?

Mr. Herzka: If you’re talking about the Wall Street type of funding, that’s pretty much nonexistent.

Where’s the financing coming from?

From a lot of the commercial banks, large savings banks, life insurance companies, a consortium of banks funding larger deals, and of course the agencies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

And what kind of financing do you do?

Meridian actually specializes in all income-producing properties, whether it’s multi-family, retail, industrial or office. You’re sitting here with David Rosenberg, who heads up the capital markets group. And Ronnie Levine, who heads up the structured [financing] and construction group.  read more »

Location: Have you been better protected from this credit crunch because you sell buildings in the below-$100 million market?

Mr. Knakal: Clearly, the market for buildings over $100 million is much slower than the market for buildings under $100 million, mainly because of the availability of credit. … To the extent you’re looking for a nine-figure loan on an acquisition, that’s very challenging to find, mainly because most of those loans were provided by [commercial-mortgage-backed securities] lenders that are no longer active.

How have your sales been affected?

Our number of transactions is off by about 21 percent compared to 2007.  read more »

Location: You like to give parties with dozens of Russian violinists and industrial quantities of caviar. Is decadence your worst trait?

Mr. Rosen: The last thing I am is decadent. … I’m a big thinker; I do a lot of stuff; I enjoy life immensely. … When I throw parties, I blow a lot of money, you know what, so be it; that’s what I like to do.

That sounds like Trump. Do you think of yourself as a high-art Donald?

No. I love Donald because he’s a very unique guy—and he markets what he does with his character and his personality; I don’t do that. I don’t put my name on buildings; I don’t put my name on things. I’m not a commodity, I don’t market myself.

In 2006, it was reported that you had bought 350 West Broadway with your 40 Bond/Gramercy Park Hotel partner Ian Schrager to develop a hotel. Now it’s opening as a condo—without him. What happened?

No, no, no, I bought it alone. … We tried to buy the site next to it and the site behind it, and at that point I wanted it to be a hotel. And as I do most of my hotels, I at least talk to Ian about doing it in some sort of collaboration. … I love Ian as a friend and as a—he’s as good as they will ever make them. But I have my own organization.

It’s going to be a glass luxury Soho condo building with $9.575 million-and-up apartments with steam showers. Does New York City really need more glass condos?

New York never has enough of anything. I do think that glass condos will continue; glass is a great material, you can do whatever you want with it; you can bend it—look what we did at [40] Bond Street. We used glass, but in order to replicate the environment of a cast-iron district.

We’re sitting in 350 West Broadway’s sales center, where there’s an actual Basquiat in the bathroom and a huge George Condo portrait in the entryway, and you have a Warhol at the One Jackson sales center. When does art become just a sales gimmick?

Our sales office is basically a home; so you walk into a home and the home has great furniture, a great bathroom, a great kitchen, and great art. … I actually asked George to produce a piece of art site-specific for this building, so he did this, and it stays in the lobby. I did the same thing with Peter Lane, who is a ceramic artist, who made a beautiful installation. And the other lady, what’s her name [Michele Oka Doner], she’s doing all the bronze work, pieces that are going to be hardware for the doors.

Is it true you have Basquiats in your children’s rooms at home?

Sure, there are Basquiats. The kids chose them. The kids choose what they want to hang. I think those days are over where you tell the child, ‘Hey this is how it is. You live with a Mickey Mouse drawing poster that you bought for 12 bucks somewhere else.’ … I’m not enforcing a certain life on them. They like art, they choose. It’s their choosing what they want to live with.

You seem to not comment on whether your Basquiats, Warhols, Princes and Koonses are yours personally or lent by your company, RFR. Which is it? Is it the same thing?

It’s the same thing. … I have my own art collection that I buy, and then I have a whole bunch of different art that I have in the company’s name that I basically trade and sell and lend out to other buildings and other places. For me, it’s a logistic, it’s all under one umbrella.

You were going to build a Lord Norman Foster-designed 30-story glass tower on top of 980 Madison, the 1949 galleries building, until the Landmarks Preservation Commission made you scale back plans. How did you feel about the Upper East Side’s reaction?

A lot of people voiced their opinion in a fashion that they should have not voiced their opinion, just because of respect for people, period.

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Location: You’ve made a name for yourself as a real estate broker and hospitality consultant, making deals on behalf of operators like Jeffrey Chodorow, Giuseppe Cipriani and Stephen Starr. Now, you’re a part owner yourself here in the new Surf Lodge in Montauk. How did you make that transition from middle man to being sort of the man?

Mr. Kamali: Well, for a number of years, I was doing brokerage and consulting, and I would watch the demise and the success of so many operators, and you come to realize what mistakes they’re making and what they’re doing to become successful. Over the years, you really come up with a really good plan of what’s going to work and what’s not going to work.

When I found this property, I brought Jamie [Mulholland, owner of Manhattan nightspots Cain and GoldBar] here and said, ‘You know what? This is going to be amazing. We’ve done so many deals together. It’s about time we do something together.’ Instead of me just selling off this beautiful piece of land, I’m like, I want to be a part of this. I’m going to put my money where my mouth is and I’m going to be a part of the whole thing.

How did the deal exactly happen?

There was a previous operator called the Lakeside Inn. The owner had been here for over 15 years.

Who owned it?

A gentleman named Jim Barnts. He was running it as a dysfunctional hotel, with a pseudo nightclub at night. It had a bad connotation to it.

Sum it up for me, the vibe.

Local people coming in at 12 o’clock at night and partying until 4 o’clock in the morning, falling down drunk. Big disco ball in the middle of the room.

We ended up purchasing the property. As you can imagine, Montauk actually welcomed us with open arms.

How much for the building?

Isn’t that public record?

Oh, I can look it up.

Five [million].

How does Montauk real estate compare to Manhattan real estate?

It doesn’t.

What’s the big difference between operating and brokerage?

You know how much oil it takes to fill up these lanterns? See, these are little things that I never thought I’d care about or know about, but they’re the little things that you have to actually know as an operator. It’s a hit-and-run with brokerage. I think over the years it taught me so much. But you still don’t get the breadth of how much goes into developing a place like this.

How long has the project taken?

It’s been over the course of the last year. We built it in eight weeks. I mean, we renovated it in eight weeks, which is incredible.

What are your favorite touches?

I think it’s the bar. We ripped out a lot of the sheetrock of the ceiling. It was kind of ugly. We opened it up to expose those incredible wooden beams. Put up all those surfboards. Put driftwood on the walls.

Robert McKinley, who is our partner, handled all of the design and the construction. He was behind the design of P.M., Cain and GoldBar. Rob and our other partner, Jayma Cardoza, have been coming out to Montauk for years and years and years. Rob’s a big surfer and Jayma loves the beach out here. It’s the only time she gets to disconnect from the real world. Rob always goes over these incredible concepts he has. He had this concept. I’m like, ‘Rob, this [property] really fits the concept that you had.’

You also brought on board Sam Talbot of Top Chef fame. Why?

We had been talking with a lot of restaurateurs and chefs. But Sam was at the top of my list because of his passion for seafood. He also kind of fit the persona of what the Surf Lodge was: cool, sexy, fun. He wakes up every morning and heads to the port and picks up fresh fish.

Did you feel you needed a celebrity chef to make a statement?

With my partners, with their reputation and their following, I don’t think it was about making a statement. I think it helps that there was a lot of notoriety that Sam had. But it was more about his talents and his personality. He really fits into our family.

Now that you’re out here in Montauk, are you still doing a lot of brokering? Or are you just, like, hanging out for the summer?

Hanging out? [laughing] Yeah, Chris, come up during the week, we’ll hang out and go to the beach! No, it’s like all hands on deck up here—everybody’s doing everything. No, I have my laptop and my phone. I think 70 percent of my time with respect to my other business is really consulting for the food-and-beverage development of hotels. I do not do as much brokerage as I have in the past.

The hotel business is a good racket to be in these days. Hotel construction is booming, though the credit crisis may slow things down.

Well, the credit crisis didn’t affect the people who already had their loans two years ago. So they’re continuously building. I have six projects I’m working on in New York, ground-up construction of hotels; one of which, it’s being completed, but the deal is public now, so I can talk about it. Frederick Lesort is doing a Jour et Nuit down at 85 West Broadway, a hotel called the Smyth Tribeca. He’s handling all the restaurant and nightlife down there. I forged that opportunity.

How long will the hotel boom go on?

I wish I was a fortuneteller. I think the hotel market in New York is really strong. But I think developers in New York, unlike anywhere else in the world, react very quickly. So, if there are too many hotel rooms in New York, if we come to a point where occupancy levels drop below 80 percent, then you’ll find yourself, saying, ‘You know what? Maybe we should scale back or make these condo buildings or rental buildings.’

Should we expect to see you as partner in more things going forward?

I’m looking to bring this concept and others that we have to different markets. Hopefully, there will be more hotels for me down the line. I’d love to go into secondary markets. Even Puerto Rico, Peru, Costa Rica—it doesn’t necessarily have to be a prime location within those countries. It could be this cool little fishing village, where we create this little haven where people come and hang out.

You do a lot of surfing out here?

I actually just lay there. I’m good at just sitting there on the beach.

cshott@observer.com Next Page >

Location: On the rail yards, how did News Corp. tell you that they were no longer interested in being an anchor tenant?

Mr. Blau: There were several rounds, and they [the M.T.A.] called us in for what they said was the final round. We had hoped, or thought, that we would be designated at this meeting, which was to happen the next day; and literally 12 hours before the meeting, we got a call from News Corp. that said while they were very, very interested in the site, they couldn’t agree to commit at that moment.  read more » Next Page >

Location: You paint a pretty grim portrait of the financial services sector and its present role in the American economy. You write about the recent economic bubbles, including the housing bubble: ‘As for the financial sector’s behavior in such circumstances, surely there must be some applicable variation of Lord Acton’s famous thesis about the greater the power, the greater the abuse and corruption.’ What parts of the financial services sector are so corrupt and so prone to abuse?

Mr. Phillips: It would be the huge amount of debt that was undertaken by the financial sector for purposes of future amount of leverage; the huge amount of gathering of resources, I think it’s fair to say, by the mortgage-lending sector so that they had money on hand to come up with all the exotic mortgages; then the third aspect would be the elements of securitization that came to the fore in the last six to eight years, with particular emphasis, I suppose, on collateralized debt obligations, the mortgage-backed securities and some of the other related games, like the asset-backed commercial paper and some of the asset-backed securities.

You write toward the end of the book that New York will lose ground as an international financial center, falling behind London. Can you put a timeline on that decline?

Well, first of all, nobody would agree as to whether New York is ahead of London or London is ahead of New York with any great reliability. …

But let’s hypothesize that, as of 2006, they were exactly equal. And I would say that some of the burden New York would take on that would be a problem would have to do with, for one, the export of financial products. Some of the people in the financial sector have talked about the importance of financial products as, effectively, exports; and that would include various forms of corporate debt. … [Foreigners] seem somewhat less interested in debt instruments recently; not hard to figure why. So I think it’s fair to say the sale of tainted financial products has been a black eye for the U.S.

A recurring theme in Bad Money is the movement of the American economy from literally manufacturing things to a reliance on securitization and trading of debt. Why is it such a bad thing for the economy to move from manufacturing to financial services?

Because it’s not established that it’s a reliable modernization. One of the things I’ve gotten into in several of the books … was taking the views of various economists on the extent to which you could rely on a sort of postindustrialism as a sort of way to run a national economy; a number of economists have pursued that and come to the conclusion that you could wind up doing that sort of thing successfully if you were Liechtenstein or the Cayman Islands and what have you, but there wasn’t any evidence that the leading power could effect that transformation.

The reverse, of course, would speak back a hundred years ago of how London moved in the direction, that it was sort of the financial and commercial adviser to the world, but that didn’t work out. … Even in the mid-1920s, the British were so concerned with getting the pound back up. The idea was that having a strong pound would be important for the city of London; it was not an asset for the resurgence of British manufacturing. They thought that didn’t matter; they thought that the future of Britain lay in the financial services, so a strong currency would help.

Well, the currency didn’t stay strong and financial services didn’t stay strong; and they wound up, essentially, in the bag in terms of financial circumstances by the time World War II was finished. … In other words, Britain ceased to be the leading world economic power. My guess is, if we stay with finance dominant, we will cease to be the leading world economic power.

As for the housing market, do you think the policymakers and the elected officials deliberately created the housing boom?

Yes. Now, is that something that was done with the full notion of its fallibility? No, I wouldn’t say so.

But I think one of the conclusions you could fairly reach … is that [former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan] Greenspan, in his previous incarnation as chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers in the 1970s, was a great student of what happened within the U.S. economy. And then in his early stage as chairman of the Federal Reserve in the late 1980s, again, he saw a housing boom in 1988 and 1989, saw the extent to which housing prices climbed, before any bubble popped. …

That was sort of something he kind of kept in the back of his mind; and when the securities market bubble popped in 2000 and 2001, there was this look to see where they could get the stimulus to replace the loss of the roughly $7 trillion in assets that had gone out of the wealth pattern because of the loss in the stock market. Where could you replace this? Where could you create new wealth to make up for the slippage? And an obvious area was housing.

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Location: How long have you been working with your father, David?

Mr. Walentas: Since ’97.

And before that you were with Donald Trump?

For a year.  read more » Next Page >

Location: About six months ago you released an Ian McKellen-narrated video of what downtown Brooklyn would look like in five years. Given the current economic turmoil, would you release the same video today?

Mr. Chan: Absolutely.

The video cited $9.5 billion in private investment—that included Atlantic Yards?

That includes Atlantic Yards.

So you still think Atlantic Yards will happen?

Yeah, I think it is in the process of happening.

All 16 towers and arena?

The Atlantic Yards was always a project that was conceived as taking a few economic cycles to fully realize itself.

 read more » Next Page >

Location: Last year you did $1,129,126,981 in loans, which makes you the biggest mortgage broker in the country. How is that possible during such a massive economic crisis?

Melissa Cohn: Well, 2007 happened to be probably the biggest year in real estate for New York City, and I was certainly a beneficiary of that. I mean, it was the highest-grossing year for real estate in any year that’s ever been recorded. I certainly have benefited from the increase in the value of real estate in New York City.

 read more » Next Page >

Location: After more than 60 years as a stand-alone midtown Manhattan restaurant, you’re opening a second Patsy’s Italian Restaurant in … Atlantic City?

Mr. Scognamillo: We can’t be more excited, and the partner that we’ve found at the Hilton Casino, they are just as excited as we are.

This was so important to us, because, really, it’s our little baby; I mean, we have our little baby here and we want someone to be taking care of it and nurturing it and treating it the right way.  read more » Next Page >

Location: Your family has been involved in real estate for decades, owning various commercial, industrial and residential buildings throughout New York City. But a shopping mall? Retail is a new frontier for the Hemmerdinger clan, no?

Mr. Hemmerdinger: The interest in retail is all me.

What’s the allure?  read more » Next Page >

Location: In your bid for mayor, as of January, you’d raised $180,000 compared with more than $4 million by one of your potential opponents.

Mr. Avella: I consider that a virtue.

People use the term ‘long shot.’

I agree. Absolutely. I’m bucking the system; I have been since 2002. I’m the independent voice. … The real estate industry, which is the biggest contributor giving to people for higher office, they aren’t giving to me.

How many hours a week do you work?  read more » Next Page >

Location: Your new book, Creating Central Park, asserts that the park was a testament to democracy, lowercase ‘d.’ But it wasn’t born of it. Can you explain the vote for the park and the general push for the park?

Mr. Heckscher: I would like to start by saying that the whole issue of the park has to do with open space in Manhattan. Central Park is, shall we say, the conclusion of 50 years of political machinations of how to provide, for the city and Manhattan, open space mostly for health reasons—for air and space for the health of the public, and recreation.

Why hadn’t it been done beforehand?  read more » Next Page >

Location: We’re probably in a recession, and a big culprit is the housing market—prices were much too high, and now they’re really sinking. As the nation’s largest luxury home builder, do you feel guilty?

Mr. Toll: I feel guilty for not being more cautious and recognizing that we had to be on thin ice because things had been so good for so long. [But], by 2000, we should have entered the next down cycle, on an ordinary basis. But we didn’t. And if I had become cautious then, my company would have missed the great ride that it took in ’05 and ’06. In ’05 we made $800 million plus—net, net, net!  read more » Next Page >

Location: You represented a London-based oilman when he bought two penthouses at the Plaza, a triplex and duplex that will close next month. The Times reported that the price is $56 million, but I’ve heard it’s $53.5 million.

Ms. Sample: That’s correct. There probably will be some additional purchases that go along with that … for staff.

Ms. Powers: They had an hour and a half to spend with us, they were like, ‘pick out the best.’… One is facing Fifth Avenue, and one is facing Park Avenue.

That was a record-breaking contract price, but only for about a few seconds—before developer Harry Macklowe paid around $60 million for a Plaza sprawl. Was your buyer upset?

Ms. Sample: You know what? He doesn’t really believe that Macklowe paid $60, to be honest with you.

Have you been approached by new owners at the Plaza to put their places up for sale for nine digits? The rumor is that some people want to flip for as much as $100 million.

Ms. Sample: One hundred to $110 … and we were offered $150 million for the two apartments at the Plaza that we haven’t closed on yet! And do you know what our guy said? He said, ‘I wouldn’t sell it for $300 million.’

That’s crazy! He hasn’t even seen the apartment yet because the renovations aren’t ready. How does he know he won’t want to sell?

Ms. Sample: Look, if someone is worth $5 billion, they don’t care.

But isn’t it crazy for people to be so wealthy?

Ms. Powers: Good for them.

Ms. Sample: Good for them. That’s the democratic way. I’m not a communist. If you work hard, and it’s legitimate, why shouldn’t you?

I reported that you just sold a $15.85 million apartment at the Time Warner Center, and that the seller, whom you represented, was known as ‘the psychic hot-line king,’ the man behind the fraudulent Miss Cleo.

Ms. Powers: I had no idea.

Ms. Sample: No, we didn’t.

Do you look into the backgrounds of the people you work for?

Ms. Powers: Not always. I mean we look at the company, the biography, but not into every single detail.

Ms. Sample: Well, what psychic hot line would ever be legitimate, quite honestly? I’m sorry, that would be my answer to that.

Not to nitpick, but in 2004 you listed Tyco CFO Mark Swartz’s Ritz-Carlton duplex for $28 million, after Tyco’s downfall.

Ms. Sample: We cannot discuss that. … We were hired by the corporation after the indictments. So that’s the answer to that question.

Is your attitude here that it’s about the real estate, not the people? Or do you worry about where your clients’ money comes from?

Ms. Sample: Yes, we do, absolutely. … We’ve had governments that are not in favorable standing with the United States, shall we say, that we’ve been contacted by. … When I first started in the business, I was almost kidnapped by a guy that was wanted by Interpol … for arms smuggling.

Ms. Powers: Everything is questionable when you deal with that much money. We’ve dealt in the past with huge casino owners; now, that alone is questionable. Next Page >

Location: You’re now one of four teams left vying for the West Side rail yards, down from five. How do you feel about your chances?

Mr. Durst: I think we have a 25 percent chance. … We think we have the best bid in terms of planning and the financial terms for the M.T.A. [the yards’ owner].

How long of a build-out would there be on the site?  read more » Next Page >

Location: How did you guys decide to be partners?

Mr. Grieco: My wife.

Mr. Canora: Well, we worked together at Gramercy Tavern for a while, and then when I left to open Craft, his wife, Katie, was the opening [general manager] of Craft. So, she and I had a close relationship, because she worked the front [of the house] and I was in the back. I was chomping at the bit to do my own thing, and she obviously knew that he had it in the back of his mind also.  read more » Next Page >

Location: What’s the bigger accomplishment: The underdog New York Giants beating the undefeated New England Patriots to win the Super Bowl? Or, New York’s tourism industry rebounding after 9/11?

Mr. Tisch: I would say, for different constituencies, the accomplishments are about the same, and, actually, some of the lessons are the same. The lessons are that by working together, by putting aside your individual concerns, by always understanding the greater good, you can accomplish a lot.  read more » Next Page >

Location: Every day seems to bring more news of the aftereffects of the credit crisis spawned by the subprime mortgage defaults. Can you connect the dots between those defaults and the lack of fresh lending for commercial property buys here right now?

Mr. Mosler: I think it’s difficult to connect the dots in precise terms, but clearly we continue to see the fallout from subprime. We haven’t reached the bottom, which we had all hoped to do by now. Personally, I think, as it relates to subprime, we’re not that far away from reaching the bottom, which is the most important piece of this.  read more » Next Page >

Instead of finishing community college, Ben Shaoul bought up his first building at age 19. Eleven years later, he controls over 1,000 rental units, is finishing up three new condos, and is about to erect his first hotel.

Location: You’re 30 years old, but you have over 1,000 rental units, including a big new development at 636 East 11th Street, and you’re constructing the A Building condo two blocks up, the Yves luxury condo in Chelsea and another nearby on West 22nd Street. How?

Mr. Shaoul: I started working as an intern for a realty management company when I was 19 years old. I had already dropped out of college, after approximately one year—I went to a community college in Miami, and then I took some more classes at Baruch. … The people I was working with, they said, ‘Why don’t you go buy a building?’  read more » Next Page >

Location: What do you think about the concept behind the city’s plan to rezone 125th Street, where the city wants to allow for significantly more development along much of the corridor?

Mr. Stringer: It’s one of the more famous streets in the world and a rezoning is appropriate. But this community needs much more than just a sliver rezoning, so we need to think beyond 125th Street.

Is it feasible to think that you could both revitalize Harlem but also avoid displacement?

That is the single biggest challenge I have as borough president. … My pledge to the people in the borough was yes, I recognize that the skyline is going to change, and it should and needs to, and I’m going to support that change. But I’m also going to do it with community participation.

On the West Side, you’ve advocated making 33rd Street a passageway for pedestrians, partially closing it off to cars. … What’s the reasoning behind it?

Part of what we want to do is create open space—the challenge for Manhattan is to marvel in our tall buildings, but at the same time create pedestrian space and walkways.

How would you rate the job of Dan Doctoroff, the former deputy mayor for economic development and rebuilding, now that he’s gone?

I think that Doctoroff and his team, and the mayor … set a very high bar and a high standard as to what is possible for the city. They recognize, as I do today, to think big and to take on big projects and entice people to think about the changing skylines of the city. How you balance community and thinking big has been the challenge of the last few years, and I think he will be judged kindly by history.

Yes, he had missteps, and obviously the stadium was not the finest moment, and he overplayed the Olympic hand, but the bottom line is, he is the first deputy mayor in memory who we will actually be able to say he left an imprint on the changing skyline of the city—and not just in Manhattan.

How would you change the property tax structure?

Right now, vacant property is taxed at a lower rate above 110th Street than south of 110th Street. The reason there is that way back when, 20 years ago … a lot of landlords abandoned property and left New York, leaving the city to own those properties, and no one wanted to tax them because they knew everybody was on shaky ground. Now that we have development way beyond 110th Street, we should change that.

So a higher tax discourages a landlord from sitting on it?

The public interest is not served by having a tax distinction above 110th Street right now. And with a city that’s going to need a lot of revenue, that makes a lot of sense.

There are still a lot of projects that are out there that the Bloomberg administration is still implementing as we speak—do you think all of them will get in the ground before the mayor leaves office?

I think every administration wants everything all nice and tidy before they leave. I think the mayor has already established his legacy on major projects. I think if a few take a little longer, if we need to take a close look at some, I don’t think that hurts the legacy, I think that’s just smart urban planning. I’m not on a deadline; I don’t think you have to operate that way.

Do you wish the borough president’s office had more definitive power, like it used to?

The city charter gives me a say in land use and development, and in any measure, we have taken that advisory role and fundamentally changed the way this office is perceived. … So it doesn’t matter whether I serve on the Board of Estimate, or [that] the job may have been more powerful 50 years ago. It’s 2008, this is the hand I’m dealt and we’ve made the most of it.

What do you think about the position of public advocate? Next Page >

Location: Steve, you’re opening a second Magnolia Bakery on Columbus Avenue this week, and Danny, you just opened a second Mermaid Inn on Amsterdam Avenue this past November. Both of you used to live here on the Upper West Side. What is it about the neighborhood that brought you back for these new endeavors?

Danny Abrams: I think that we both knew the neighborhood about as well as anybody did. And we both felt—at least I did—that there was a lack of good places to go. And the demographic has changed and the neighborhood has kind of evolved over the years. The people who were 25 and living in very cheap apartments are now a little bit older and married with children.

Steve Abrams: Including us!

Danny: And we’ve both owned businesses up here over the years. It’s just a really wonderful market for what we do.

What other businesses?

Steve: I own a construction company, high-end residential construction, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous sort of stuff. My clients are Samuel Jackson, Annie Leibovitz, Jeff Gordon …

Does Sam Jackson have snakes in his apartment?

Steve: No. Seriously, we have a long history in this business. We started as young guys, so we opened a bar because that’s what’s you do when you’re 25 or so. The bar was called Wildlife at 77th and Amsterdam Avenue. After that, we both jointly opened a dance club together called Live Psychic. And then we sort of split up. And I opened a restaurant called Flowers on 17th between Fifth and Sixth. And Danny started to take over the Upper West Side a little bit and opened up a place called Prohibition and then a place called Citrus. I came back to the neighborhood and opened a place called It’s a Wrap. And then I got out of the business for 10 years. And Danny went on a tear. …

Danny: I didn’t go on a tear, but I opened a bunch of joints.

Right. The Mermaid Inn among them.

Danny: Opened the Mermaid, opened the Red Cat, opened Harrison, opened a restaurant called Pace. About a year ago, I bought everybody out of the Mermaid Inn so I could sort of expand that, the way I felt it should be expanded.

Why did you focus on that particular concept?

Danny: I just felt like it had more potential to be a neighborhood joint than the high-end restaurants that I was doing. If I wanna be a part of the neighborhood, you have to be a certain price point. The price point that would be O.K. on the Upper East Side, it would be O.K. in Chelsea, it would be O.K. on the Upper West Side, so that I could have four of those in Manhattan, of all the same name.

Is it hard to be a neighborhood place when you have several locations in different neighborhoods?

Danny: No, I think it’s actually kind of easier because, if you have one location, then you might draw people from all over the city. When there’s two of them, the people from the Upper West Side that are thinking, ‘Let’s go to the East Village and go to the Mermaid Inn. Eh, I don’t wanna go down there, it’s a $15 cab ride. I’ll just go to the one around the corner.’ So it’s easier to focus on the neighborhood, when you’ve got more than one.

What is the difference in real estate terms between downtown and the Upper West Side?

Danny: The rent, the size, the number of seats are all pretty similar. I think you’ve got to be patient to find the right opportunity. I could have taken a more expensive place on Broadway, or further down on Columbus Avenue or Amsterdam. But it didn’t work with the price point that I have. I’d have to charge more money.

Steve: Amsterdam versus Broadway is the difference between a mercenary restaurant and a neighborhood restaurant. [The new Magnolia space] is exponentially more expensive [than the original]. I bought [the original store] last year, inherited a very reasonable rent. But I think that Magnolia was a victim of its own success downtown. When it went in 12 years ago, it got a very good 12-year lease with good rent. Next Page >

Location: You’ve been warning of a national real estate collapse since 2005. Do you feel vindicated by last year’s downturn?

Mr. Shiller: Well, I don’t like to use the word vindicated, but it is unraveling as more or less I expected.

When your S&P/Case-Shiller index of home prices came out last year showing record drops, you said things hadn’t been