Housing construction and tax revenue in the city of Los Angeles are being hurt by a voter-approved levy on high-priced property sales, according to researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles.
The tax on high-value properties, including multi-unit buildings, has caused a 50% drop in sales above the $5 million threshold, researchers at the Luskin School of Public Affairs estimate.
A former FDNY chief “betrayed the trust” of New Yorkers by taking bribes to fast-track fire inspections, a Manhattan judge said Monday before sentencing him to 20 months in prison.
“You betrayed the trust that the Fire Department and the people of New York placed in you,” Judge Lewis Liman said of Brian Cordasco, 49, before ordering the retired smoke-eater to serve the prison time and pay $157,000 in restitution and fines.
Cordasco pleaded guilty in October to scheming with supervisor Anthony Saccavino at the FDNY Bureau of Fire Prevention to take nearly $200,000 in kickbacks — including from high-end restaurants and hotels near JFK International Airport — in exchange for a prized spot on City Hall’s inspection “VIP list.”
The two FDNY chiefs and middleman Henry Santiago Jr. exploited a hefty backlog of projects at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to score illicit cash payouts from clients eager to move forward on projects quickly, prosecutors with the Southern District of New York alleged.
“The crime was opportunistic,” Judge Liman said Monday. “You took advantage of your position, and you took advantage of the COVID crisis.”
Manhattan feds pushed for Cordasco, who was netting a salary of $250,000 a year, to serve up to four years in prison for pocketing payoffs in a scheme involving 30 projects across the city.
“There was no reason he had to engage in this conduct but greed,” prosecutor Jessica Greenwood told the court.
Cordasco’s lawyers pushed the judge to sentence him to one year of home confinement, suggesting that a broader culture of corruption at City Hall may be responsible for his crimes as well.
The attorney, David Stern, did not refer to Mayor Eric Adams by name. But Hizzoner was accused — in an indictment dropping from the same Manhattan feds days after Cordasco and Saccavino were arrested — of taking travel perk bribes from Turks in exchange for fast-tracking FDNY inspections at the Manhattan Turkish consulate building.
A 2023 lawsuit also accused the Adams administration of helping big real estate developers cut to the front of the line of a so-called Deputy Mayor of Operations, or DMO, list to help speed up fire alarm inspections for local businesses.
“When the mayor or the mayor’s office is telling people, ‘I want you to move these people up, because I want you to move them up,’ it breeds a kind of complacency about doing that,” Stern said.
“That doesn’t make it right,” Stern continued, before adding: “If the mayor did it, I don’t know.”
The Justice Department under President Trump has moved to dismiss Mayor Adams’ corruption case — a decision admittedly made without considering the strength of the evidence that Adams took bribes.
The department has claimed instead, without providing evidence, that the case was “politically motivated” and harming Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda, which Adams has expressed support for.
Cordasco’s bribery scheme started at the tail end of the Bill de Blasio administration, in 2021, and ran until 2023, federal prosecutors say. Santiago, who ran a crooked fire safety company, personally delivered bribe payments to his partners during steakhouse dinners in Manhattan and even at the fire prevention bureau’s Brooklyn office, according to the feds.
Cordasco apologized to his former colleagues Monday before the sentence was read out.
“I betrayed the very same people who took me in with open arms,” he said, standing and reading a prepared statement.
“I know I cannot go back and make things right,” he added. “There are no do-overs.”
Judge Liman called Cordasco’s speech “very impressive” and, acknowledging his family members in the gallery, noted that he doesn’t view the prison sentence “as a reflection of you as a human being, but rather the seriousness of the offense.”
The judge also moved back the date when Cordasco is required to report to a federal lockup to June 17 so that he can attend his son’s school graduation ceremony earlier that month.
Saccavino and Santiago have pleaded guilty as well and are awaiting sentencing.
, “The sentence imposed today sends a clear message that government officials who betray the public trust to line their own pockets will be met with just punishment,” Matthew Podolsky, acting US Attorney for SDNY said in a statement Monday.
The four Southern District prosecutors handling the Adams case have either resigned in protest of the Trump DOJ’s handling of the case, or were abruptly put on leave.
An internal probe has been launched into their conduct, according to DOJ Assistant Attorney General Emil Bove, formerly one of Trump’s criminal defense lawyers.
The Adams case is now being handled by the Main Justice in Washington, DC, with Bove himself the only prosecutor to make an appearance at the latest court date.
Many large office tenants have their eyes on new digs — some of which would give them less space than their current locations as corporate consolidation remains a significant market factor.
Sources said that French creative agency Havas, now at 200 Hudson St., is downsizing and is on the prowl for new digs elsewhere. Newmark tristate president David A. Falk responded to our query, “We are evaluating all opportunities for Havas in the range of 350,000 square feet.”
Also generating buzz is technology-focused hedge fund 2 Sigma. Currently with a total of 500,000 square feet at 100 Sixth Ave. and 101 Sixth across the street, it’s looking to consolidate into between 350,000-400,000 square feet in midtown or midtown south. The firm is repped by a Cushman & Wakefield team that includes Peter Trivelas and Tara Stacom, who declined to comment..
Also possibly on the move is AMC Networks at 11 Penn Plaza, which is said to be trolling for 200,000 square feet elsewhere.
Meanwhile, Nomura Holdings is looking at Vornado’s Penn 2, as Bloomberg first reported. If it leaves all or part of its current 900,000 square feet at Worldwide Plaza (825 Eighth Ave.), where it has an exit option in 2027, it would leave more floors to re-fill for the tower’s owners, SL Green and RXR.
The tower lost major tenant Cravath, Swain last year. The landlord partners recently modified a $940 million CMBS loan enabling the property to leave special servicing. An SL Green spokesman said, “Worldwide Plaza is an iconic, well-located asset with a rare block of space available at the top that will be in high demand. The mortgage loan is current. We have ample reserves to support a robust redevelopment plan to bring the property up to today’s standards.”
Leasing has been subdued since the huge surge in January and February, but medium-size deals are still getting done
At 360 Lexington Ave. at East 40th Street, longtime tenant Webster Bank signed an expansion and extension totaling 46,000 square feet. Insurance group Signers National will move to the building with a 15,000 square-foot new lease.
The boutique tower was recently acquired by AmTrust RE, who plan to add a high-end tenants’ amenity space and to upgrade the facade.
Privately held AM Trust RE, led by president Jonathan Bennett, owns more than 12 million square feet of prime commercial properties in the US.
Octus, a credit intelligence and data firm formerly known as Reorg, signed for 43,000 square feet at 295 Fifth, a joint venture of Tribeca Investment Group, PIM Real Estate and Meadow Partners.
The 710,000 square-foot former Textile Building, opened in 1920, also recently lured Bridgewater Associates for its first Manhattan location and Korean steakhouse Oiji Stk.
The building’s owners have repositioned it with a new lobby and tenant amenities. TIG principal Elliott Ingerman said, “Ultimately it’s our job to create an environment that people want to come to every day.”
Octus was repped by Colliers. CBRE repped the landlord.
The Roosevelt Hotel, which has been home to thousands of mostly illegal migrants, will close on June 22, as per a notice on the state’s Department of Labor WARN site.
The notice says 96 employees will be out of work due to “contract termination” — i.e., the end of the city’s $220 million lease from the Roosevelt’s owner, the government of Pakistan, to turn the once-proud hotel into a homeless shelter.
Now JLL, the agent for Pakistan, can get on with finding a new owner — and ending the two-year nightmare in the heart of midtown.
Big Apple residents are legally required to compost their garbage, but steaming landlords say they’re getting the rotten end of the deal by being forced into dumpster diving to comply.
Starting Tuesday, the city will dish out $25 fines for failing to separate food scraps from regular trash.
But for apartment buildings, the responsibility will fall on maintenance staffers rather than the residents, who can continue to chuck their coffee grinds and chicken bones down the garbage chute without consequence, property owners claim.
“We don’t think that forcing hard-working building supers to be elbow-deep sorting through tenants’ garbage — turning building maintenance into a daily dumpster dive — is where the government should be focusing their energy and resources right now,” railed Kenny Burgos, the New York Apartment Association CEO and former Bronx state rep, to The Post.
“The city has tossed us a mess without gloves.”
Burgos has been protesting the composting mandate since before it went into effect in October as part of the Sanitation Department’s ongoing war on rats, warning that the “level of anonymity” in apartment buildings means the onus for sorting compost will fall on building management.
For apartment buildings with four or more units, the mandate means adding another general bin specifically for composting, similar to how garbage and other recycling is sorted.
All leaf and yard waste and food scraps, including food-soiled products such as paper plates and pizza boxes, are expected to be placed in composting bins.
“Every building in NYC handles trash differently, but for decades they have ALL been required to sort their recyclables — and now they are required to sort their compostable material as well,” said Vincent Gragnani, a spokesman for Sanitation, in an email.
“Whether that means bins on every floor or bins in one common area such as a basement would be up to the building management. The bottom line is that food and yard waste must be separated from trash and put out on recycling day so that we can turn it into finished compost or clean energy.”
But New Yorkers haven’t traditionally been good at recycling anything. Fewer than half of paper and cardboard that could be recycled in the city actually is, and just around 41% of plastic, glass, metal and cartons is tossed in the right bins, according to a study released by Sanitation last year.
Landlords now fear that the fallout from residents not properly composting will only fall on them.
“I challenge the people who passed this law and are trying to implement it on the backs of the housing people in the city of New York to spend two weeks sorting through garbage to see how well it works, especially in a multifamily building with a huge garbage chute,” griped John Crotty, who manages multiple buildings across the city.
Crotty slammed the law as “ill-conceived,” claiming that tenants who are not interested in composting won’t change their behavior because they won’t be handed down the fine.
The landlord expects his supers will now spend double the amount of time handling trash duties, which previously just amounted to bringing the garbage to the curb.
“If you’ve ever had to change diapers — that is disgusting. Now you have a garbage bag full of everyone else’s diapers and everything else they have. Are you going to [send workers in there]? It’s not kind to the people who work in the building,” Crotty said.
“They don’t care bout the employees who work in these buildings at all,” he said of city officials. “It is an impossible standard — it is detached from reality.”
Starting Tuesday, residents will be able to call 311 to report buildings that are not helping them compost their trash.
https://nypost.com/2025/03/30/us-news/nyc-landlords-fume-over-new-composting-laws-and-25-fines/
