Developer could get $100M in breaks
De Blasio taking heat over Upper East Side rezoning proposal
A real estate developer who’s pushing for a controversial rezoning in partnership with the New York Blood Center would receive $100 million in additional benefits under a plan recently outlined by Mayor de Blasio’s administration.
De Blasio has come under fire in recent days for backing the rezoning because he owes $435,000 to a lobbying firm that represents the Blood Center, a nonprofit blood bank that’s partnering with Longfellow Real Estate Partners to expand its headquarters.
In a letter to City Council Speaker Corey Johnson dated Nov. 10, de Blasio’s director of legislative affairs, Paul Ochoa, makes clear that the city’s Industrial Development Agency would provide $100 million in tax breaks to Longfellow under the development deal.
Councilman Ben Kallos, who represents the Upper East Side district where the rezoning is being proposed, said the benefit is just one more sop de Blasio is offering a well-connected developer.
“$100 million is a lot of money,” he said. “It comes out to more than a billion in subsidies over decades, and I want to know how long it’s going to take for the city to get a return on our tax dollars because I don’t think we ever will.”
It’s not the first time de Blasio has faced attacks from Kallos, who’s suggested that the mayor’s debt to Blood Center lobbyist Kramer Levin Naftalis amounts to a bribe that may have undue influence over the mayor in his support of the rezoning. Team de Blasio has countered that in January, the mayor made it a priority to make the city a center of life sciences.