Fight between former Giuliani aide and democratic Socialist tanks major housing project

NEW YORK — He’s a flashy financial investor with a taste for gourmet cuisine and expensive suits. She’s a Democratic socialist who called the NYPD a “white supremacist institution” and sympathized with Russia as it invaded Ukraine.

The paths of two of the more eccentric figures in New York’s political and real estate circles would likely not have crossed, but for a massive piece of land in Harlem. On the West 145th Street site that houses Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, the financier sees prime development opportunity for nearly 1,000 new apartments — while the City Council member sees unchecked greed threatening the Black epicenter of New York City.

The tension between the brash businessman and novice politician boiled over last week, when a stalemate led him to yank his proposal and blow off a meeting with high-ranking members of Mayor Eric Adams’ administration.

In the end, Bruce Teitelbaum, once a top aide to former Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani, found the fate of his 1-million-square-foot proposal in the hands of one of the most far-left members of the New York City Council — Kristen Richardson Jordan, who goes by KRJ. And despite his close ties to Adams, the first-term Democratic mayor, Teitelbaum could not build the necessary support among Richardson Jordan’s 50 colleagues to achieve his goal.

Now, he is looking toward another development he has long desired on the Queens waterfront near Amazon’s ill-fated HQ2 initiative as he grapples with the loss of a plan that would have given him a foothold in Manhattan’s electric real estate market.

“We need to focus on a housing crisis here in New York. There's no question, it's becoming more expensive to live here,” Teitelbaum said in a televised interview on a local cable show Friday night. “The implications are far beyond this project and far beyond Harlem.”

Indeed, with the city facing an acute housing shortage causing rents to soar and sending residents scrambling, the episode represents more than just a dispute between these diametrically opposed New Yorkers. It is a signal that the local politicians, who have significant power to dictate the terms of development in a city grappling with its future, are not necessarily willing to override commonplace concerns to expand the housing stock in the chaotic real estate market.

Teitelbaum declined to answer a series of questions from POLITICO, and Richardson Jordan hung up on a reporter before responding to a text message referring to a prior statement she had issued.

“Doing a big project in that space with great affordability is not impossible when we take greed out of the equation,” she had said in the statement. She demanded significantly more low-cost housing in the project, saying “industry insiders have told me this would be a great site” for it.

Plans to build in Harlem

Earlier this year, Teitelbaum appeared to have a better shot at crossing the finish line.

Facing likely concerns about the scale of the proposal — 915 housing units and office space spanning two 363-foot-high towers in a relatively affordable neighborhood — he sought to join forces with Sharpton, a national civil rights leader and power broker in Harlem. Teitelbaum promised a “state-of-art” space for NAN and a “world class” civil rights museum on the site.

And while he and his team faced sustained opposition from Richardson Jordan — who insisted they only negotiate in public — the new Council member had not won over many of her colleagues, according to three people who would only speak on the condition of anonymity. That dynamic left the door open to the legislative body overruling her, in a breach with its custom of affording individual legislators veto power over development projects in their districts.

To sweeten the deal, Teitelbaum tried to lure the community with a promise of the city’s first “geothermal green energy district” that would power his towers and beyond.

“We had a year-round, fully-funded internship program for at-risk youths in Harlem, the first green energy district to address environmental racism and climate change, job training, access to first rate health care and a lot more,” he said in the TV interview.

But some politicians said the benefits were out of touch with local concerns about rapidly-rising housing costs. Richardson Jordan called them “11th hour breadcrumbs.”

“The project from the beginning had a lot of bells and whistles that were peripheral to what was by far the overwhelming concern of the community, which was the level of affordability,” Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine said in an interview.

In his nonbinding recommendation in February, Levine demanded more affordable housing, free community programs and a tripling of car-share spaces. Initially, Teitelbaum pledged 30 percent of the homes would be income-restricted, but Levine insisted on at least 50 percent.

During a public hearing the following week, Teitelbaum said he could not meet Levine’s request without more financial subsidies from the Adams administration.

A few days later, he nurtured his good relationship with City Hall — jetting down to the Bahamas for a party hosted by the mayor’s chief of staff, Frank Carone, according to two people with knowledge of his attendance.

On April 25, the City Planning Commission voted to approve the proposal without the additional affordable housing.

“Without new homes both affordable and market-rate, we will not be able to dig ourselves out of this crisis,” commission Chair Dan Garodnick said. “I believe we need to take every viable opportunity to put a dent in New York City’s housing crisis. This is one of those opportunities.”

Between 2009 and 2018, New York added half-a-million jobs but only 100,000 new homes, according to data from the city comptroller. The deficit is especially problematic for people of limited means. The rental vacancy rate for apartments listed below $1,500 is less than 1 percent, according to a survey conducted between February and July of last year.

How it went south

Then the deal began to unravel.

In early May, Sharpton distanced himself by announcing plans to take his museum project elsewhere.

“We do not see how this can be done in the confines of the available space that you have told us can be leased to us,” Sharpton co-wrote in a letter to Teitelbaum on May 2. Sharpton declined to comment.

And it became clear in recent weeks that Council members didn’t have the appetite to help Teitelbaum, despite an aggressive lobbying push.

He met directly with some lawmakers and tapped the city’s top lobbying firm — run by his wife, Suri Kasirer — to persuade them into action. As of a recent public filing, he and his partners have paid Kasirer’s company $120,000.

But his negotiating style didn’t win him many friends in the legislative body.

“The developer did a horrible job presenting this application; we felt many times like information was being withheld,” Council Member Rafael Salamanca, chair of the land use committee, told POLITICO last week. “The developer was the cause of the demise of their own application, that’s really what it boils down to.”

Others who declined to speak on the record echoed that sentiment.

In the weeks leading up to a Council committee vote slated for May 31, Teitelbaum kicked his efforts to salvage the deal into high gear.

Supportive labor leaders penned an op-ed in the Daily News. Other unions got on board. And Teitelbaum finally heeded concerns about housing costs, promising half the residential units would be income-restricted. He did not, however, receive a commitment from City Hall for the public financing needed to make that feasible, according to two people involved in the negotiations.

The final straw for City Hall came on May 27, when Teitelbaum skipped a meeting with top mayoral aides to discuss his request for public financing.

“I haven’t heard from the developer on what happened there,” Adams told reporters last week. “If they sat down and wanted to see how we could come in and assist, I have not heard that.”

Meanwhile, the local community plotted its own strategy.

On May 28 the community board, which had fiercely opposed the project, called an emergency Zoom meeting to discuss the revised proposal.

Phoning in from a Fleet Week celebration, Richardson Jordan said she was unswayed by the changes. “I don’t feel that what they’re calling affordable is actually affordable to the community,” she said.

She said there was “not much appetite” among her colleagues to approve the plan and expected the body to shoot it down.

Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who took over the body in January, voiced doubt over Teitelbaum’s sincerity regarding the amount of affordable housing.

“Let’s be clear about this figure — it was aspirational because the Council never received any formal indication from the city that subsidy funding for this project was secured,” she told reporters last week. “We as a Council are expected to be responsible in considering verified information and so our expectation is that applicants in the land use process will responsibly engage as well.”

Teitelbaum does not enjoy the same close relationship with the current Council speaker as he did with her predecessor, Corey Johnson, who tapped a Kasirer employee as his chief of staff.

Some members were disappointed in the outcome.

“I thought it had great potential and hopefully in the future some compromise can be settled on that works for the owner and the Council,” said the Council’s Republican minority leader, Joe Borelli.

Teitelbaum said in the TV interview that he doesn’t “blame anyone” involved for the failure of the project — instead attributing the outcome to “a little bad luck” and “timing,” with elected officials more focused on the legislative session in Albany and the city budget.

What’s next for Teitelbaum

He heaped praise on Adams and his top housing and economic development officials, whose support he likely needs for his long-desired vision of a sprawling development on the Long Island City waterfront in Queens.

He has so adamantly pushed plans for the vacant site, one lobbyist referred to it as his “white whale.”

Teitelbaum’s previous ideas did not win over the administration of former Mayor Bill de Blasio, whom he recently referred to as an “unemployable loser” on his Facebook page.

Among his goals is a pedestrian bridge connecting Long Island City to Roosevelt Island, and a “green energy” hub — which got a nod from mayoral candidate Andrew Yang last year. Teitelbaum has said the hub could power the nearby Queensbridge Houses — the country’s largest public housing development.

“From the get-go I thought it was way too dense and way out of scale for the framework, which we had adopted for Long Island City,” Alicia Glen, de Blasio’s deputy mayor for housing and economic development, said in a recent interview. “We were really put off by the whole thing because it’s not what we discussed.”

Teitelbaum’s Queens property flanks a parcel slated for a sprawling campus that would have housed Amazon’s headquarters, but local opposition ultimately torpedoed the deal.

During the pandemic, talks about the future of Long Island City fell apart when Teitelbaum and his development partners could not agree on terms with the de Blasio administration.

But Lorraine Grillo, Adams’ first deputy mayor, touted aspects of the project during a speech in April.

“We’ve actually spoken with folks who have interest in development there and ideas — new ideas — about energy and things like that,” Grillo said. “We have some exciting thing that we’re already talking to folks about

Council Member Julie Won, who represents Long Island City, declined to comment on the plans.

Meanwhile, Teitelbaum indicated he is not done pushing his Harlem proposal just yet.

“Never give up,” he recently wrote on his Facebook page. “Got a few tricks up our sleeves.”