Jesse Masyr

People around the country seem to be having such a blast with these community benefits agreements--pacts between private groups and developers to provide affordable housing and other benefits--but in New York, they are turning out to be such chores. The one at Atlantic Yards has been faulted as a meek deal arranged behind closed doors by Astroturf groups. So people up in Harlem promised to create a truly representative body to negotiate with Columbia University over benefits that the school would offer local residents as part of its expansion, and it's started to unravel in the final crucial weeks.

Or maybe not. Today, three members of the local development corporation are announcing they will resign from the body in protest of being shut out of the negotiations. But the lawyer representing the development corporation is suggesting that the loss of those three members may hasten completion of a community benefits agreement.

“Our mission is clear, our vision is clear. We are going to negotiate a community benefits agreement,” the lawyer, Jesse Masyr, said. “I think that you could make the argument that two out of the three members never really intended to fulfill the mission of the LDC.”

Mr. Masyr would not name which two members he was talking about.

One of the three who resigned is Nick Sprayregen, who owns four storage warehouses that would be taken over by the university to make way for its expansion. He had been fighting this summer to hold onto his seat, but is now going to voluntarily give his position up. The two other members are Tom DeMott, a tenant who lives near the expansion footprint and represents tenant associations, and Luisa Henriquez, who represents tenants in a city housing program living in the expansion footprint.  read more »

By a 21-0 vote, the City Council’s Land Use Committee slathered praise on The Related Companies’ proposed shopping mall at Bronx Terminal Market Wednesday morning. The full council is expected to approve it later this afternoon.

Presumably, the community benefits agreement between the developer and Bronx elected officials will be signed by then. (A press conference is scheduled for 1 p.m.) As of this morning, it had not. But Jesse Masyr, an attorney for Related, said the agreement required any “warehouse shopping club” that leased space in the mall to honor food stamps and W.I.C. Related would pitch in half the membership fee for 2,000 low-income households for the first five years. How those families will be chosen is yet to be determined. Richard Lipsky, a lobbyist for the merchants who would be displaced by the mall, said afterwards, “Basically, elected officials have become lottery officials for the 40,000 food stamp recipients within the congressional district.”

The C.B.A., which Masyr said was enforceable, also calls for Related to contribute $3 million to a referral service that would direct the retail jobs for Bronx residents. Borough contractors and suppliers will be given preference (ditto on details), he said, and the mall would be built to environmentally green standards.

Separately, the head of the merchants association, Stanley Mayer, signed an agreement Tuesday night accepting $30 a square foot for moving expenses, Masyr said, including $10 from Related, $10 from the city, and $10 from the Bronx empowerment zone. No deductions for Related’s legal expenses. Mayer was not talking to press. The individual merchants, though, could decline the offer—and be left with what exactly?

One council member was said to be changing his vote. Nonetheless, an issue that got a lot of ink in the press turned out to be a newspaper dragon. -Matthew Schuerman

On Monday, Jesse Masyr, an attorney for The Related Companies, told City Councilors that the developer would try to give the wholesalers at the Bronx Terminal Market what they wanted so that they would put down their lawsuits and leave peacefully. At that point, a group of merchants had asked for a buy-out of $30 for every square foot of space they had at the, and a June 1 moving date. In talks since then, according to a lobbyist for the merchants, Richard Lipsky, Related made clear what Masyr meant: Yes, it would give $30 a square foot, but after deducting all the legal costs the company had incurred as a result of suing to block the shopping mall planned for the site. That comes to about $6.75 a square foot, Lipsky told The Real Estate.

Is this Related's way to force the merchants to admit that they were wrong to exercise their God-given right to take legal action like every other person in this country? Then again, surely they were not wrong at all, from a financial perspective: they would not have come as far as they have without having sued.  read more »

The other question is, how much do the merchants owe their lawyers?

-Matthew Schuerman

If Irwin Cohen wants to save the Bronx Terminal Market, he better move fast before there is nothing left to save. A splinter group of merchants has offered to leave the present site in the South Bronx if they are paid enough money, according to testimony Monday morning at a City Council subcommittee hearing. Jesse Masyr, an attorney representing The Related Companies, the developer that wants to turn the area into a shopping mall, said that the group had asked for $30 for each square foot the vendors occupied, plus permission to stay until June 1.

“We are going to try our best to achieve that request and are going to get as close to it as possible,” Masyr said at the hearing.

A previous offer was for $10 a square foot. A meeting between Related and the group, which claims to represent a majority of the 16 or 17 remaining merchants at the site, is scheduled for Tuesday.

The main vendors association, the Bronx Terminal Market Preservation Association, had embraced a plan by Cohen, who developed Chelsea Market in the 1990s, to build a new market across the Major Deegan Expressway from the present site. Under the splinter plan, presumably, the vendors would find spaces in various locations throughout the Bronx. Andrew Alper, the president of the city Economic Development Corporation, said he could assess Cohen’s plan because he hadn’t seen “any numbers.” Alper said the “highest and best use” for the property would be a park.  read more »

Also at the hearing, Alper recounted the tortured history of the shopping mall, saying that it started when “Deputy Mayor Doctoroff, who we all know is friends with Steve Ross of Related,” asked the developer whether it could be turned into a shopping mall. This is, as far as we know, the first time a city official has acknowledged that Doctoroff and Ross are “friends” as opposed to “business partners.”

-Matthew Schuerman

The developer who brought Chelsea Market to Manhattan now wants to replicate it in the South Bronx.  read more »

The developer who brought Chelsea Market to Manhattan now wants to replicate it in the South Bronx.I  read more »

The strangest story of the week has to be the Bloomberg campaign's attack on Ferrer for failing to reward his donors with support for their contracts in the Bronx. (Mike, who has benefited from the political support of some of the same people, has not been so remiss.)

We've been alerted to another instance of this shocking non-quid-pro-quo. Freddy has raised questions about the Bronx Terminal Market sale, despite the fact that Jesse Masyr, partner of bigtime Ferrer patron Bill Wachtel, played a central role in that deal.  read more »

Shocking.