'Griffin to stick with Park Ave. skyscraper plans despite Mamdani personal attack, anti-biz policies'

 Take that, Zohran Mamdani!

The mayor’s blind-side attack on Ken Griffin failed to derail plans for a $4.5 billion skyscraper home for Griffin’s Citadel companies.

The new tower at 350 Park Ave. will go up as planned, according to Steven Roth, the CEO of Griffin’s major partner Vornado Realty Trust.

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Despite billionaire Ken Griffin’s feud with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a new tower at 350 Park Ave. will go up as planned.Bloomberg via Getty Images

He said in the publicly-traded real estate company’s second-quarter earnings call Tuesday that he expects the joint-venture development agreement among Vornado, Griffin and minority partner Rudin to close in September. Roth indicated Vornado would exercise its full option to buy 36% of the JV.

Roth said, “We have a $3.3 billion construction loan ready to go” for the 1.8 million-square-foot, 1,600-foot-tall cloudbuster designed by Foster + Partners. 

Griffin’s Citadel and Citadel Securities would be anchor tenants with about 850,000 square feet.

Demolition of the old 350 Park Ave. and 40 E. 52nd St. is underway to make way for the new tower, as Roth noted.

Questions were raised about the project’s future after Mamdani made a video in April disparaging Griffin for owning a $200 million condo apartment.

Griffin said his participation in 350 Park Ave. was “under review” following the  hit.

He also said he would “double down” on Miami and add to Citadel’s considerable space there, hinting his commitment to Manhattan was uncertain.

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The $4.5 billion skyscraper is being developed by Vornado, Griffin and minority partner Rudin.Foster + Partners
But all hands seem to be on board for the Park Avenue cloudbuster, which would create what Roth called a new “umbrella” for Midtown rents of $350 per square foot.

By comparison, the best buildings command in the $200s for large floors, although a few $300-plus deals have been struck for very small spaces.

Roth also said the partnership — “and by that, I mean all the partners” —  were “contemplating” a possible sale of a 25% interest “at a price which will give us an appropriate profit.” 

Such ownership dilutions to cash in on rising values are not uncommon in high-stakes new developments.

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“We have a $3.3 billion construction loan ready to go” for the 1.8 million-square-foot, 1,600-foot-tall cloudbuster, said Vornado CEO Steve Roth.Getty Images

On a different topic, Roth denied Vornado had any intention to sell the former Pennsylvania Hotel site — “the best development site” in Manhattan – emphasizing it is “not for sale.”

The earnings call came as Manhattan hit new occupancy and rent peaks in the first half of 2026, which was on track for the strongest leasing year since before the pandemic.

https://nypost.com/2026/08/04/business/ken-griffin-to-stick-with-park-ave-skyscraper-plans-despite-mamdanis-personal-attack-anti-business-policies/

Can Homeowners Save New York State from Socialism?

 In November, the suburbs of New York City will be the pivotal arena for whether the Democratic Socialists of America cement their takeover of the entire state from their New York City stronghold. The decisive issue is not crime, deteriorating quality of life, or high taxes, but one that is arousing significant suburban anxiety: the DSA’s vendetta against the American Dream of homeownership.

Residents of Westchester and Nassau counties, which abut the northern Bronx and eastern Queens, and of whom 80% own their homes, are watching with increasing unease Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s mounting attacks on the city’s homeowners, and logically assuming that they are next.

Despite Westchester County’s nearly 3-1 Democrat voter registration advantage over Republicans and a 15% advantage in Nassau, the DSA’s Marxist belief that property ownership is evil may elect a Republican governor for the first time in more than 20 years. The electoral math is such that if Republican challenger Bruce Blakeman can earn a five-point swing in the metro area over Republican Lee Zeldin’s statewide 6% loss to Democrat Kathy Hochul in 2022, he clinches a Republican victory. Some political analysts believe that Zeldin lost because he failed to focus more on the threats to single-family housing.

Blakeman is the popular County Executive of Nassau, winning re-election in 2025 by 55%-45%; in contrast, Kathy Hochul’s favorability rating, according to the most recent Sienna poll, is 43%-44%, which is not good for an incumbent. Her support for the New York City mayor has contributed to her unpopularity.

The Mamdani administration is an avowed opponent of private property, excepting the Mamdani family’s residential assets here and in Uganda. Hochul and the Democrat-controlled legislature cravenly caved to his demand for a punitive surcharge on luxury second homes worth over $5 million under a new pied-a-terre tax. Not a peep was heard when the fine print revealed that the surcharge included every property worth $1 million or more, meaning more than 50% of the city’s homes. Crickets when he curated an easily searchable and doxable-friendly database of 960,000 of the city’s enemies of the people, previously known as property owners. Hochul informed the press that it was nothing “out of the ordinary.”

Democrats were silent when Mamdani’s Department of Finance followed up last week with letters to tens of thousands of homeowners whose primary residence is New York City, demanding payment by August 21, unless they prove a negative by coughing up massive amounts of documentation, including federal tax returns, driver's licenses, voter ID cards, and more if the property is owned by an LLC. These are demands that prove the Democrats’ objections to the SAVE act ludicrous. Due to massive outrage by the targets of the Mamdani administration, by Saturday morning, the deadline was pushed to September 18. The mayor is also threatening a property tax increase to 9.5% for all homeowners.

Some of the progressives who voted for him and believe in redistribution of wealth feel betrayed. An NYU professor appearing on the podcast Pivot sputtered, “He’s taken a legitimate source of revenue and he’s turning it into a wanted poster.”

Suburban homeowners are paying attention. Given the unfolding drama in New York City, it’s reasonable to assume that some demographic groups normally affiliated with the Democrat Party may change their normal voting patterns. They are concerned about mayor’s control over Governor Hochul, with unease intensifying after the DSA’s congressional and state legislature wins in June.

They should. Mamdani’s Marxist ambitions coincide with Hochul’s fixation on building 800,000 new affordable housing units, located mostly near train and bus stations on Long Island and in the northern suburbs.

To further understand the political dynamics, it’s worth recounting some history. The war on suburbia began decades ago, when the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development initiated policies to force affluent suburban communities to eliminate racial disparities by building affordable housing and populate those structures with low-income people of color.

In 2008 under President Barack Obama, HUD was emboldened to focus on Westchester, forcing the county to build 750 affordable units under a federal settlement. When HUD upped the ante and demanded 10,000 new units and an end to local zoning, opposition was so fierce and bipartisan that the county’s voters elected a Republican as County Executive, who stopped HUD’s efforts.

Since her 2022 election, Hochul has been pushing her Housing Compact, which would override local zoning to allow accessory housing throughout the suburbs and high-density housing of 50 units per acre near transportation hubs. Costly infrastructure issues like schools, police, parking, sewers, and traffic are to be borne by the municipalities. The state's Association of Towns and the New York Conference of Mayors were adamantly opposed to Hochul’s attempts to eliminate the state’s constitutionally protected Home Rule for local zoning.

With a Hochul victory in November, the state’s Democrats will accede to the DSA’s demands to decolonize private property and eliminate Home Rule, which has long been a protection against overbuilding.

Outside of Manhattan, homeownership levels in Staten Island and parts of Queens and Brooklyn reach levels similar to the suburbs. For example, in both white and black majority neighborhoods in eastern Queens along the Nassau County line, homeownership percentages are over 70%. The neighborhoods of Riverdale, Douglaston-Little Neck, and Cambria Heights are indistinguishable from their nearby Westchester or Nassau counterparts.

In late 2024, New York City’s Democrats enacted the City of Yes, a zoning law that enabled developers to erect high-density units without any local input. This happened over the near-unanimous objections of community groups in the single- and two-family areas of Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx. and Staten Island.

It is also worth noting that the DSA is 85% white and skews very young. Hispanic and black homeowners are not buying into their proletarian rhetoric. They’ve achieved or aspire to the American Dream. As one black minister in Westchester’s Mount Vernon put it, “Maybe we have to break the Democrat monopoly.”

Homeownership is not just a white demographic statistic. While white homeownership is 78% and 87% in Westchester and Nassau, according to the U.S. Census. Black homeownership is 39% in Westchester and 74% in Nassau. Hispanic is 69% and 60%, respectively.

Homeownership represents a lifetime of achievement and an invaluable way of creating intergenerational wealth. One’s home is not something to be taken away by elite white Marxists with little life experience. Property rights are worth fighting for because they are the key to America’s economic success and our societal strength.

Republicans statewide and particularly gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman need to loudly champion the values of homeownership and local control over land use as the foundation for making New York great again.

Linda R. Killian is a retired financial executive and a local Republican chairman in Westchester County.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/08/can-homeowners-save-new-york-state-from-socialism/

Mamdani admin extends $1.86B ‘emergency contract’ for NYC hotels-homeless shelters

 The Mamdani administration re-upped a $1.86 billion contract that will see hotels across the five boroughs provide emergency space for the homeless.

The three-year- contract with the Hotel Association of New York City Foundation, which represents nearly 300 hotels, runs from July 1 of this year through June 30, 2029.

“Over the last 15 years, [the Department of Homeless Services] has faced numerous crises that forced it to rely on commercial hotels to temporarily house clients,” a DHS spokesperson said.

“DHS is focused not only on upholding New York City’s right to shelter but improving outcomes for all the New Yorkers we serve,” the spokesperson added. “As such, we continue to work to transform the city’s shelter system by opening new, high-quality shelters while gradually phasing out the use of commercial hotels for families with children.”

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Homeless encampments near Hudson yards and the Javitz Center.Lone Pine Press for NY Post
But the city has to continue to maintain capacity during the transition under “Right to Shelter Laws” which mandate access for anyone seeking shelter in the city. There were 82,929 adults and children in Big Apple shelters as of July 31, according to the department.

“By exercising the renewal option of the agency’s master contract with HANYC, DHS will be able to retain critical hotel capacity, as needed, while we work to bring more traditional capacity online, reduce reliance on hotels, and rightsize our shelter footprint over the coming years,” the spokesperson said.

The hotels will only be activated as shelters if needed and the DHS representative emphasized that the city may not spend the full $1.86 billion allotment.

The city relied heavily on using hotels for emergency shelter to help curb COVID-19 during the height of the pandemic shutdown and continued to utilize the space during a migrant crisis where thousands of asylum seekers were bused into the Big Apple.

About 150 hotels, motels and inns were converted to shelters during the peak of the migrants influx.

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A tent set up by a homeless person on 36th street and 11th avenue in Manhattan.Stephen Yang for NY Post

The hotel association said the original contract was finalized in January 2025 after the group beat out dozens of other bidders.

“It is a continuation of HANYC’s well-documented role as a responsible stakeholder since the COVID crisis when the organization moved, pro-bono, over 18,000 people from shelters to hotels on an emergency basis from May 2020 to December 2021,” said Vijay Dandapani, CEO of HANYC.

Meanwhile, DHS awarded two other contracts valued at more than $87 million combined to social service providers as part of its “Integrated Commercial Hotels Program.”

Housing Works was awarded $47.2 million and Neighbors 4 Neighbors $40.28 million to assist homeless individuals and families sheltered in the hotels with their daily needs.

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Advocates, like David Giffen, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless, call hotel use an “unfortunate necessity.”James Keivom for NY Post

Critics have complained that New York City has among the highest hotel rates in the country — and taking thousands of rooms offline doesn’t help make the tourist-reliant metropolis more affordable.

But advocates combating homelessness said the reliance on hotels was an unfortunate necessity.

“The City’s use of hotels to serve as emergency shelters is obviously far from ideal. But given that the City has both a legal and moral obligation to provide shelter to all in need, it must make sure that they have enough beds,” David Giffen, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless, previously told the Post.

He mentioned that numerous people froze to death on the streets last winter.

“The best way to end the use of hotels is to dramatically reduce the number of people who need shelters in the first place by building more housing that’s actually affordable to the lowest-income New Yorkers,” Giffen said.

https://nypost.com/2026/08/02/us-news/mamdani-admin-extends-1-86b-emergency-contract-for-nyc-hotels-to-serve-as-homeless-shelters/

Surprise: Mamdani’s ‘socialist’ NYC rent freeze benefits wealthier tenants the most

 Mayor Zohran Mamdani has declared the rent freeze “a historic victory” that provides “the relief that working people across our city deserve.”

In reality, a large number of those tenants could actually well afford to pay more.

Ironically, they also tend to get the biggest savings.

And the fact that they have a sweet deal pushes up prices for those facing today’s non-regulated rental market.

Here’s the key: The Mamdani initiative has frozen the rent for all 960,000 rent-stabilized tenants, but Census records show 30% of them earn $100,000 or more; that’s 288,000 affluent households enjoying the rent freeze.

There’s no requirement to be poor to score a rent-regulated apartment, a fact Mamdani, who lived in a rent-regulated unit before moving into Gracie Mansion, conveniently overlooks.

So affluent households in the city’s top neighborhoods have benefited from rent regulation for decades while newcomers to the city crowd into small apartments and face high market-rate rents.

Note, too, that those $100,000-plus households are raking in more than the citywide $85,000 median income for all households, whether homeowners or renters, including those in market-rate apartments.

One might ask how many of them earn even more than that. But the city’s Rent Guidelines Board, which conducts its own housing research and which just approved the rent freeze, isn’t curious about such questions.

In its 2025 Income and Affordability study, part of the basis for deciding on rent increases, the RGB masks the number of high-income rent-stabilized tenants by citing only a single gross figure: “For all rent stabilized tenants, the median household income was $60,000”

The board prefers such questions as how many rent-stabilized tenants are still paying off student loans — a core Mamdani voting group.

But there’s good reason to believe the extent of rent subsidies for the rich are even more significant in well-off neighborhoods such as the Upper West and Upper East Sides.

It’s been a while since anyone looked at such questions but when New York University’s Furman Center on Real Estate at NYU reviewed regulated units in top Manhattan neighborhoods below 96th Street back in 2013, the results were eye-popping.

Sure enough, the median income of rent-stabilized households in those areas was higher than that of market-rate tenants in all of New York City except for eight neighborhoods outside of the core of Manhattan.

In other words, median-income tenants in rent-stabilized units in much of Manhattan were likely paying lower rents even though their incomes were higher than that of median-income tenants in non-stabilized units.  

What’s more, these well-off households stayed in their apartments a long time, even if their kids moved out, leaving them empty bedrooms. 

Below 96th Street, 35% of stabilized households lived in the same unit for over 20 years, compared with just 2.7% of market-rate households, Furman found.

Such “slow turnover” leads to “inefficient use of the city’s housing supply — and overcrowding in other places.”

Only 4% of white city households live in overcrowded apartments, while 10% of Asians do.

White baby boomers on the UWS and UES are aging in place with rent-subsidized good deals, while new immigrants must crowd in.

It’s possible the picture has changed dramatically since that 2013 study — and that rent-regulated apartments below 96th Street are all now occupied by low-income households.

But the Housing and Vacancy Survey stopped asking about rent-stabilized tenant incomes by neighborhood, and the Rent Guidelines Board has not been interested enough to do its own research.

But that 30% of rent-stabilized tenants who earn more than $100,000 live somewhere — and it’s not likely in the South Bronx.

Keep in mind owners of regulated buildings have zero incentive to rent to the poor; if one is going to receive a below-market rent, better to make sure the tenant earns enough to pay at least that much.

The number of wealthy tenants whose landlords are forced to subsidize them should be a priority for the Rent Guidelines Board when it undertakes its next annual “income and affordability” study.

But the Census finding about $100,000-plus rent-stabilized households already makes clear that the situation needs reform.

The rent freeze should not apply to high-income households. Period.

Those earning, let’s say, more than $200,000 a year with assets of more than $2 million should not qualify for the rent freeze.

Instead, their rents should increase either with the rate of inflation or the Consumer Price Index, which reflects the expense cost for property owners.

Mamdani delights in calling out those who’ve committed the sin of becoming wealthy.

But his rent freeze helps more of them than anyone else. It’s the precise opposite of the kind of socialism he promises.

Howard Husock is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of “The Projects: A New History of Public Housing.”

https://nypost.com/2026/07/27/opinion/surprise-mamdanis-socialist-nyc-rent-freeze-benefits-wealthier-tenants-most/