S3 | E7 | Sue Donoghue, Prospect Park

Announcer (00:01):
Hey BK with Ofer Cohen.

Sue Donoghue (00:03):
I really think that transformation I've seen in Prospect Park and having it now be a place that is such a Mecca and people do feel comfortable coming at all hours, really mirrors the transformation of Brooklyn.

Ofer Cohen (00:16):
Sue Donoghue, the president of the Prospect Park Alliance. Thanks for being here this morning. You had a long commute to come to our office. Tell us about it.

Sue Donoghue (00:25):
Wasn't too bad actually. It was a nice walk and it's a great thing about living and working in Brooklyn is that you can walk most places.

Ofer Cohen (00:32):
What are we, five blocks from? Prospect Park? Six blocks?

Sue Donoghue (00:36):
Yeah. Not so many. Yeah.

Ofer Cohen (00:38):
So you know, Prospect Park has always been, I used to live like right here on Bergen street for many years and I, you know, spent a tremendous amount of time at Prospect Park. You know, bike ran there until I earned my ankle biked until I got my Peloton. took my kids there a lot. How did you get to work at the park?

Sue Donoghue (01:03):
It's a good question Ofer and it was a bit of a circuitous path actually. right prior to taking this job as president of the Prospect Park Alliance, I worked in the Bloomberg administration. And prior to that I actually worked on wall street, which is interesting, not your typical path. So I, I decided between kid number two and number three that I really could not keep doing that job. It involved a lot of travel, a lot of travel to the West coast and really didn't have the psychic gratification, that I was looking for. So I left that and actually went back to graduate school and got a masters, at NYU in public administration. And when I was just about the end of that program, I was hired by city hall to go to the parks department and oversee the planYC, initiatives at the parks department.

Ofer Cohen (01:58):
So when you worked for the Bloomberg administration, you lived in Brooklyn already?

Sue Donoghue (02:02):
I did, yeah. We moved to Brooklyn in 96 actually. I was, working in living downtown, we decided to buy and back then Brooklyn was actually a little bit more affordable and so, and my husband had been born and raised in Brooklyn Heights and so we, our first place we bought was in Brooklyn Heights and it was great because I could actually sometimes walk to work or definitely walk home from work and it was a great first place to live.

Ofer Cohen (02:31):
Did you move to Park Slope when you took the job at Prospect Park?

Sue Donoghue (02:35):
No, actually, interestingly enough we moved to Park Slope. A couple of things prompted that. we had our second boy and if, you know, when you have two young boys, you really need to get them out and run them like puppies and at that time, Brooklyn Heights didn't have, you know, didn't have Brooklyn bridge park and it had a great playground but we needed space. And the other thing that's interesting is, my second, I had a right after 9/11 living in Brooklyn Heights, you know, around 9/11, was difficult. It was really intense. There was soot, there was, it was a difficult place to be for sure. And I'll never forget, we were walking down to the promenade after it had happened and I was very pregnant because my second was born in November and a policeman stopped and he got out of the car and he gave me an air mask. He said, what are you doing out and you should have this cause I was pregnant. And so that weekend after we actually went to Prospect Park, I knew enough, I had never been there. and we sat in Prospect Park and I had a, you know, a two year old, and was very pregnant and it was absolutely beautiful. and it did feel special. It was, and to think back now, it's kind of ironic, right? But it was a real turning point. You know, my husband had kind of been saying, we should look at park slope. We should look at, moving to that area. And I thought, Oh my God, we're gonna move farther into Brooklyn. And then you go there and you spend time. And, it really worked in terms of our family and our kids and it was, it was beautiful to have the park right there. So in 2002, we moved to Park Slope. I took the Prospect's Alliance job after the, after the end of the Bloomberg administration. So I've been in the Alliance job, since 2014 so I worked through the end of the Bloomberg administration and then was hired to run the Prospect Park Alliance.

Ofer Cohen (04:31):
and that was just a perfect transition being working on, you know, transforming public spaces and parks.

Sue Donoghue (04:39):
Absolutely the Prospect Park Alliance is actually a public private partnership with the city. So we work in the park, they alliances there in the park under a license agreement with the city. And so we work hand in hand with the parks department. And so my experience working in city government was certainly really helpful. My experience with parks and the understanding and recognizing the importance of parks to communities was really helpful. and I, you know, obviously had a love of the park and knew the importance both personally as a mom and for my own kids, but certainly knew the importance of a great big public park to the well being of a community and of the bar. Really you think about it, you know, Prospect Park sits in the middle of what would be the third largest city if it was a city right in America. And, the role that Prospect Park plays, you just said it yourself. I mean, people, it's a daily, daily, amenity for people and it's so important.

Ofer Cohen (05:41):
And yet so many people, including myself, and I'm sure you at some point take parks especially prospect park for granted, right? It's just there. It's a city amenity, right? It doesn't give us much any way, you know, shitty subway and a great park. Right? And then nobody's really thinking, Oh, this is, something I should invest in, or this is something that needs any kind of thoughtful leadership or just tell me about it.

Sue Donoghue (06:09):
Yeah, absolutely. It's such a good point. I do think that we do tend to take parks for granted. It is at those moments like I described, you know, after a significant event, people flock to their parks. Like my experience going to Prospect Park is not unlike after 9/11 central park became a gathering place as a place where people go to commune when they want to be with others in a great environment. but you're right, I do think people tend to take it for granted. different from when the Alliance started 30 years ago in 1987 it was very much neighborhood and community driven because of the parks were in terrible disrepair. They had been largely abandoned by the city. They really were lacking investment. We had, it's hard to imagine now, but we had boarded up buildings and parts of the park that people absolutely would not go into. And it was the neighbors around the park, a lot of moms and parents who said, this is crazy. We have this beautiful, beautiful park that people are not using. And so that's really what spurred, the city. The first thing that they did was they appointed a park administrator of Central Park and of Prospect Park to say we need someone local and on the ground to be building interest and be building support. I still have that title of park administrator. So I'm president of the Alliance and park administrator and the Alliance, the nonprofit organization was formed with the eye towards getting individuals, getting neighbors, getting community organizations involved in really taking back and supporting the park. And, I really think that transformation you've seen in Prospect Park and having it now be a place that is such a Mecca and people do feel comfortable coming at all hours really mirrors the transformation of Brooklyn, right?.

Ofer Cohen (08:00):
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I mean, there's so many. I mean, I remember just biking or running through it over the years. I mean, there's so many like nook and crannies and there's so many things that you kind of, Oh, I've never actually seen this. Or I'm like, once you kinda get off the main path, but I remember a stat about the biggest lawn in the par.

Sue Donoghue (08:24):
Exactly contains the largest uninterrupted open space of any park in the country. It's over a mile along that long meadow. that was it. You know, the really cool thing about Prospect Park is it's all manmade. It was created, by visionary park designers. The same individuals who created central park created Prospect Park. The Prospect Park was created 10 years later. So we like to say that, you know, Olmsted and Vaux got their start in central park and they really go it right in Prospect Park in 1865 actually.

Ofer Cohen (09:00):
And what was the, what was that land before?

Sue Donoghue (09:02):
It was, it was pretty much open space. There hadn't, there wasn't that much development beyond, where you know, where Prospect Park starts. But when you think about it, it's so visionary, right? To take 585 acres and they, they were visionary. They did foresee that Brooklyn was going to be growing and that, that it would need a defined open space. Really for the masses to enjoy.

Ofer Cohen (09:28):
And I think about it, the waterfront was so heavily utilized by industry.

Sue Donoghue (09:35):
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And it was also, you know, the streets where, you know, there wasn't the plumbing and the, you know, that there is, so the streets were in a pleasant place to walk and wander, you know, to have green space and open lawns and a meddow , you know, they really saw it as integral to the quality of life of a growing, bustling city, much as it still is today.

Ofer Cohen (09:59):
What is your favorite, maybe hard to name your favorite child? What was your favorite place within the park?

Sue Donoghue (10:09):
That is such an interesting question. I think for me, my favorite place in the park is absolutely walking the paths in the Woodlands, in the ravine where it's quiet, where we have waterfalls, where we, where you can absolutely forget that you are in New York city. You know, I mean, and that's really the beauty of Prospect Park, right? You can get lost in it. You can, there's, you don't see big buildings, you and, and given, you know, some of the work we've done in the restoration and bringing back the water chorus and recreating the waterfalls are a part of the original design. You can feel like you're in Vermont or New Hampshire, you can really get lost, which in a busy bustling city with a lot of concrete where we all, you know, exist in our day to day, that's incredibly important. It has proven physical and health benefits, right? It's incredible that we can provide that for people,

Ofer Cohen (11:07):
But if too many people know how special it is, it won't be special anymore. In other words, you're going to go on through, go through the path and it's going to be packed.

Sue Donoghue (11:16):
Right. I know. Luckily that's where a couple of things that having 585 acres is a good thing. We can spread people out and we already, today we see over 10 million visits. It's to the park every year. I mean that's extraordinary. And, there are parts of it definitely the Long meadow places where it feels crowded, but there still is plenty of space where you can get lost and you know, take those paths and those meandering walks, I still do it.

Ofer Cohen (11:44):
You still find your way and basically get lost?

Sue Donoghue (11:48):
Absolutely. Yes. I mean, I like to, it's a way that I, take people out to better understand the park is, is wonder some of those paths and show people some of those things. so it's very much a part of my, role and just introducing and building support for the park because people are often floored that we have that, that you have those kind of spaces that are so isolated, that are so quiet and that are so restorative. So, a big part of my, you know, when I'm looking to build support or frankly, donations for the park is to take people to those areas and help them to understand that, you know, all that Prospect Park contains.

Ofer Cohen (12:32):
You've touched on a point of, you know, raising private money. Some people would say, well, isn't that the cities job and why do we need private contributions to support a part?

Sue Donoghue (12:47):
Yeah, I get that a lot. I do. And it's something that, we do, talk readily about, and you know, my answer to that is really, I wish there was enough of a tax base and enough money to go around to support everything, right? It's like, Oh, my kids were in public school and we still did things to support the school. you really need that. that public support too. And it's that combination of public and private that really helps parks to thrive. And it's a very local, impetus. You know, people are using the park every day. They see the benefits of the park and it is, I think we're stronger always with that, that the combination of public and private supporting a great public amenity.

Ofer Cohen (13:38):
Right. And, and the city is currently funding, one or two interesting projects.

Sue Donoghue (13:47):
Yes, absolutely. so working in conjunction with the city, we are, opening up, the Flatbush side of the park. So along Flatbush Avenue from Grand Army down to the zoo. there was a long stretch of open space, a sidewalk that has historically been in disrepair that we've now redone. It's beautiful. It's a big wide sidewalk with trees planted and green on either side. And we're putting a big new entrance there. So really across from BBG, the Brooklyn Botanic garden, putting a big new entrance there. because it goes back to what you were saying before Ofer, as you know, one of the biggest challenges now, we went from 30 years ago, people not using the park, 2 million or so users to now over 10, and how can we make sure that we're having opening up access to all parts of the park. So in that Northeast corner, we have some, big open areas that are, you know, that aren't as well utilize that people are, they're just adjacent to or just in from Grand army Plaza. And yet people don't know they exist or don't utilize them. So we'd need to spread people out. We need to provide more open space.

Ofer Cohen (14:55):
So much development, above market rate and affordable housing is happening on that side of the park. You want to try to encourage people to come in through that door instead of going around.

Sue Donoghue (15:09):
Right, right. We're seeing so much growth, right? Prospect, Lefferts and Flatbush and , the areas to the, you know, East of the park and we wanna we wanna open up the park and be welcoming and accessible. It's a big part of what we're looking to do is continue as the borough changes and as the neighborhoods change, make sure we're continuing to be welcoming and opening and accessible.

Ofer Cohen (15:34):
That new entrance is opening when?

Sue Donoghue (15:36):
Hopefully in September and we're making great progress and really, you know, to highlight the importance of, you know, what a park does for a neighborhood and a community. So we're going to have this new entrance. D O T is putting a bike lane along Flatbush, which is great, which will help bring more people. They're going to have a crosswalk on Flatbush there. So it will help to both ease, access to an ease, commuting to get to that entrance. And then we'll have this new entrance and I'll have a beautiful public Plaza where we'll definitely want to have. there'll be a, there'll be a citi bike, there'll be a lot for a gathering place for families. And then for us, where you come in there is, it's called the former Rose garden big open space. And it's really what we have our sights on for the next big campaign for the park in terms of our restoration.

Ofer Cohen (16:30):
So obviously, yeah, I mean the transformation of the city and Brooklyn as a whole, but especially the park, much more safe over the last 30 years. But what do you guys do to kind of keep that, extending those summer hours a little bit further down to.

Sue Donoghue (16:49):
Well, so what, what, for those of us who've been involved in parks for a long time, what you see is what really enhances the safety of open space of natural areas is people in programming. Right? The more people there are, the less likelihood of, you know, sorted or illicit activity. So that's why so much of our work is about restoring and opening areas and making them, whether it be lighting or pathways or providing interesting programming and amenities.

Ofer Cohen (17:24):
What are some of the other projects that are sort of, keeping you up at night right now?

Sue Donoghue (17:31):
Well, it's an ongoing, effort as you can well imagine. we are, we received a good amount of funding for grand army Plaza, which is really, it was envisioned as the formal grand entrance to the park. And, so luckily we received some funding from the mayor to, redo the arch, that, was really suffering from, some water damage actually leaking from the roof. And so, it was a necessity that we be able to renovate that. But that is such an iconic piece of, you know, Brooklyn.

Ofer Cohen (18:09):
What are some, some of the other pockets that you feel like you didn't even get to deal with? Things you'd really need? I mean, not right now, but maybe start raising private awareness.

Sue Donoghue (18:22):
There's many. we created this really interesting out of actually fallen trees from Sandy, this natural play area just in from that is a beautiful historic structure called the children's pool that in its original incarnation and vision was to be like the sailboat Lake and in central park beautiful pools with Bella strouds. And it now looks like an old ruin. It's been just over grown and but wonderful amenity with a lot of potential. So we have our sights set on that very much as part of our restoration of this area is really bringing that back and it's so beautiful. It's like a little secret garden. It has actually, some of the most unique, trees and tree specimens of anywhere else in the park. It's just was a very specifically, created area that, has really fallen into disrepair and we're anxious to be able to bring that back for the public for sure. It's so beautiful.

Ofer Cohen (19:28):
It's like just talking to you makes me want to just like run to get out of the office, run through the park and start walking around.

Sue Donoghue (19:38):
Exactly, and you should. It's really, it's so important. There's a study that came out recently that said two hours in nature is is you know, good for your health. You should try this two hours a week out in open space.

Ofer Cohen (19:54):
It's much easier. It's much easier to do it in the summer, but in the winter you kind of have to like gear up. I love the park in the snow. We didn't really get a lot of snow this season, this winter so far, but I just love it over there and the snow.

Sue Donoghue (20:12):
I actually really love it in the winter in general cause you really, you see different things that you wouldn't be otherwise because of canopy cover. It's actually, it's, it's so beautiful to see.

Ofer Cohen (20:23):
In a way it's more meditative. Right?

Sue Donoghue (20:26):
Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Ofer Cohen (20:28):
There's less of a likelihood you bump into someone you know

Sue Donoghue (20:32):
A little quieter Yup. Absolutely. But that's what amazing thing too is we find now that Park's busy, you know, 12 months of the year, I do used to be that there are quiet periods, but now people are running and biking and using the park all year round.

Ofer Cohen (20:47):
In the summer, I mean, there's a lot of stuff going on in the summer.. Give me some of the highlights, some things that you like.

Sue Donoghue (20:54):
I mean, we have a great partnership with BRIC celebrate Brooklyn and that concert series is really phenomenal.

Ofer Cohen (21:01):
I missed the Lizzo show.

Sue Donoghue (21:03):
Oh my gosh. It's so great. I know, I know. It was wonderful. That was with bustle. They did this great. Yeah. they've done the last couple of years we had Lizzo, we had Janell Monet an , Lakeside ends up being a great venue. You can put a stage and you have the backdrop of the Lake. It's gorgeous. but also at the Lakeside center all summer we have this free water play area, the splash pad that has just been tremendous, and has really activated that side of the park. And, families come and just camp out all day and it's great cause it's just free and open and kids love it and just run around and these and, you know, water. It's really great. Yeah, it's been wonderful.

Ofer Cohen (21:46):
I remember you telling me about some, issues with, people that are kind of living in tree houses in the park, I found it fascinating.

Sue Donoghue (21:54):
There's no doubt that the homeless crisis in the city, plays out in a really, really, significant degree in the park. It, you know, it does, it provides cover, it provides homes for people. and it's a challenge. And so we have a very regular, every two weeks, a whole operation going out and, working with the homeless, offering services, and, and letting people know it's not safe and we need to, we're going to have to come at some point and be able to, you know, take some clean up some of these things. So, it's, it's a real, it's a real challenge. And you're, you know, I'm concerned about it both from the health and well being of every new Yorker and also challenges for park goers and for our staff and, and people safety.

Ofer Cohen (22:51):
Do you feel like the trajectory of Central Park and Prospect Park are following a similar trajectory?

Sue Donoghue (22:58):
You know, it's such an interesting question Ofer. Prospect Park, the thing that we really value and, relish is the fact that it really is a neighborhood. It's a community park. We, we refer to it as Brooklyn's backyard. and that is, I think that's what makes it special and what really sets it apart from a central park and a lot of other places. It is where people come for their family reunions and their barbecues and whereas central park is much more tourists heavy, you know, whereas we see over 10 million visitors a year, they see 40 million visitors a year. so the impacts that they're dealing with are different and , in some senses greater. I think we really cherish and want to maintain that sense of it being really a community park and really for, the people of Brooklyn.

Ofer Cohen (23:53):
Is there anything that you feel like people should know about that that we didnt cover?

Sue Donoghue (23:58):
No, I do just think that people need to think of it as, not just a nice to have that it is really critical infrastructure, just as important as streets and roads and maintaining, other critical infrastructure in the city. People have chosen to live and raise their families. you know, in a big city like Brooklyn, it's incredibly important to have that green and open space if we didn't have Prospect Park. Imagine that, right.

Ofer Cohen (24:27):
I feel like, you know, every time I talk about Brooklyn and sort of looking at the map, like it's just like, it's just, it's really the heart of, it's really the heart of Brooklyn. So, we typically, and I know you've been a listener of the show because you tell me from time to time, we typically, I typically ask, at the end of the show will tell me something nobody knows about it. You, and I'm sure you've had some time to think about it. So it's not completely unprompted.

Sue Donoghue (24:54):
Something that nobody knows about me.

Ofer Cohen (24:59):
We only know you walking in the woods all by yourself.

Sue Donoghue (25:00):
I generally have company, but sometimes I do like to walk by myself. that, that I was a fierce, field hockey player back in the day. And that competitiveness and that, you know, competitive sport kind of thing is I think what drives me today and also drives my interest in, you know, staying fit and running. And you know, that, correlation between exercise and being healthy is, is critical to, you know, how we operate.

Ofer Cohen (25:40):
You still play hockey?

Sue Donoghue (25:41):
I don't play field hockey, you know, but I still, you know, you know, I run, I exercise a lot because it's, you know, kind of in the genes. I think it's like, it's what helps me to be able to manage my day to day.

Ofer Cohen (25:54):
That's very cool. Sue thank you so much.

Sue Donoghue (25:57):
It's been good to be here. Thanks so much.

S3 | E6 | Steve Hindy, Brooklyn Brewery

Announcer (00:00):
Hey BK with Ofer Cohen.

Steve Hindy (00:01):
A lot of people questioned naming it Brooklyn, including like lifelong Brooklyn people. They said, really? You're going to call it Brooklyn.

Ofer Cohen (00:11):
Today I talked to Steve Hindy, cofounder and co-chairman of Brooklyn Brewery, one of the largest craft beer makers and United States and an international success story. Steve and his neighbor Tom Potter, founded the company in 1988 pulling a dream to bring brewing back to Brooklyn. Steve had just returned to New York from the Middle East where he had worked as a war correspondent and had learned about about homebrewing, always a pioneer and a risk taker. Steve and his family moved to Gowanus an industrial neighborhood in Brooklyn. As you'll hear, Steve and Tom add faith into Brooklyn brand from the very beginning they built a brewery in Williamsburg, which would later become one of Brooklyn sports established neighborhoods. Steve Hindy, welcome to Hey BK.

Steve Hindy (00:49):
Thank you.

Ofer Cohen (00:50):
How did you get here today? I mean, you're not, you don't live too far from here, right?

Steve Hindy (00:54):
Right. I'm about a couple of miles away in Gowanus. So I rode my bike and they're like 30 mile an hour winds out there. So going down wind was fantastic, but against the wind was difficult. And the other way.

Ofer Cohen (01:10):
How long have you been in the Gowanus?

Steve Hindy (01:12):
We bought a house in Gowanus 26 years ago. It's a wood frame house built in 1840. It was one of the first houses in that part of Brooklyn. Uh, originally a two story farmhouse.

Ofer Cohen (01:28):
That was very pioneering of you.

Steve Hindy (01:30):
Well, we've always kind of been on the pioneering side. When we moved to New York in the, like 1974 we lived on the upper West side. And, our friends on the East side were afraid to come and see us, because of the crime on the West side. And then we just fell in love with this house and, in Gowanus. I mean, it was irresistible. It just such a cool old house. And, um, a lot of our friends thought we were crazy.

Ofer Cohen (02:02):
So this is just around the time you started brewing beer, right?

Steve Hindy (02:07):
I mean, yeah, I started, brewing beer like around 1984, when I came back to New York and then, together with my downstairs neighbor Tom Potter. Eventually I persuaded him to quit his job and start a brewery with me and, that we sold our first beer in March of 1988.

Ofer Cohen (02:31):
Wait we're cutting the, the whole famous story of you being a journalist in the middle East?

Steve Hindy (02:37):
Yeah, that was my first, life. I majored in English in college. and then I tried, teaching high school English. I almost had a nervous breakdown. It's the hardest thing I ever did in my life. I couldn't wait to get out of there. And I went to work for a newspaper in upstate New York and I enjoyed, reporting and, and playing that role. And then, I got my big chance a job with associated press in Newark, New Jersey. My wife and I split up and I got up my head. I wanted to cover a war. So I studied Arabic and said I wanted to go to Beirut. Where the civil war was going on. And I learned there aren't too many people who want to run off to cover Wars. So a year after volunteering I landed did in Beirut as the middle East correspondent for AP.

Ofer Cohen (03:30):
Beirut in the 80s was, was a kind of a very dangerous place.

Steve Hindy (03:34):
Yeah. I got there in February 79 and actually I was sent to Iran shortly after that to cover the end of the revolution and the hostage, a story. Then I got expelled from Iran. I went back in the next year when the Iraqi army invaded Iran. I was with the Iraqi army and covered the Iran Iraq war. My ex wife came to visit me, and we ended up getting remarried in Beirut during the war and we had our first child, having a baby and Beirut was kind of crazy. Uh, so AP transferred me to Cairo, and I got to Cairo just in time to be sitting behind president Sadat of Egypt when he was assassinated. I was in the grandstand, behind him, close enough.

Ofer Cohen (04:32):
Uh, that's kind of intense. And before we get into your first brewing experience, do you ever miss it?

Steve Hindy (04:37):
Well, people who do that their whole lives, tend to have not very functional, relationships with other people. Uh, so, actually AP wanted me to go to the Philippines next, but we had had our second child in Cairo, and Ellen, my second wife, who's also my first wife, said, no way. I'm going to the Philippines. I'm not taking these children to Manila. I'm going home. I hope you come with me. Uh, if not, you know, good bye. Right. So I gave it up and came back to New York. Uh, but in Cairo I met Americans who worked at the embassy, in Cairo, who had been posted in Saudi Arabia, Islamic law, no alcoholic beverages in Saudi Arabia. And they were avid homebrewers. And it was the first time I ever learned you can make beer in your, in your kitchen. So when I came back to New York, I went to work for Newsday, but I was kind of bored being an editor. So that the idea of starting a brewery, I'd always kind of dreamed of, starting a business, even though I had no background in business, whatever. And I started reading about these small breweries that were starting up, mostly on the West coast and also about the history of brewing in Brooklyn. You know, Brooklyn was a major brewing center really up through like the 70s, when Brooklyn became part of New York city in 1898. There were 48 breweries in Brooklyn. Mostly German lager breweries. It was 1986 when the Mets were on their way to the world series. So my neighbor Tom Potter and I would watch the kids and we had this beat up black and white TV and we watch the Mets. And then I started trying to convince Tom, we should, start a brewery. He worked at a bank and had an MBA and it always kind of dreamed of starting a business. So Tom, we got to start a brewery. You know, Brooklyn, it's part of the history here. Well, we'll create a beer that ties into that history. And he thought I was crazy. He had done, he had studied the beer industry and business school and he knew that the big guys were getting bigger and bigger and a little regional breweries were falling to the wayside pretty much every year. But I told him, we're not going to compete with a Budweiser Coors or Miller. We're going to compete with the imports, we're going to create import quality beer, we're going to price it with the imports. And that's the niche we're going after. At that time, imports were 2% of the U S market, so not a big thing. Uh, but it was pretty big in New York city. So I thought that was the way to go.

Ofer Cohen (07:40):
But on that first napkin where you guys drew, your business plan, you could not have anticipated Brooklyn brewery beer being so big and so widely distributed.

Steve Hindy (07:52):
Well, no, not, I mean, our original plan stated our goal was to get 3% of the Brooklyn market, which at that time would have been like a $6 million company or something like that. And our public goal was to bring brewing back to Brooklyn. Uh, so that was the mission. Yeah.

Ofer Cohen (08:18):
Now everywhere you go in the world, you see, you know, I was just in Asia and like in Japan and in Bangkok you see Brooklyn t-shirts and, and the Brooklyn brand is so wildly successful and established. But when in 1986 when you decided to name it Brooklyn Brewery, and when you came up with the logo and the name, you had no idea you're going to be the first guy to make Brooklyn famous in the world. Right.

Steve Hindy (08:43):
I mean, a lot of people questioned naming it Brooklyn, including like lifelong Brooklyn people. They said, really? You're going to call it Brooklyn? You know, I believed that is like this mythical place. I'm, I'm not from Brooklyn. I'm, I'm, I was born in West Virginia, grew up in Ohio. Um, actually the first time I came to New York city was 1957. I was eight years old. I came with my mother and grandmother for the Billy Graham crusades and mom and grandma got saved seven nights in a row at Madison square garden. I fell asleep every night and we went to the last Brooklyn Dodger game at Ebbets field, which was, and I was just completely captivated by New York. It's like, I gotta be, I gotta be in this place. I want to be part of this.

Ofer Cohen (09:37):
You know, a lot of people in the 80s were getting out of Brooklyn.

Steve Hindy (09:41):
Yeah. Know Brooklyn. I mean, it's always fascinated me. Uh, you know, my grandfather on my father's side immigrated from Syria in the 1890s and he lived in Brooklyn, for a time. He ended up in West Virginia. Somehow I think it had to do with some, you know, village connection from Lebanon. But, um, you know, New York is so big. Brooklyn has a kind of character, which is very unique I think. And New York is kind of like a lot of other big international cities. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love New York, but, Brooklyn, is, has more character. It's Brooklyn is like the heart of New York. I think so. Uh, I mean, yeah, it had to be Brooklyn. I wasn't going to make New York Lager, people who've done that since then, and it's just kind of nebulous compared to Brooklyn. Right.

Ofer Cohen (10:52):
So it was, it was not, there was, like you were fully committed. You had a visceral connection to a place and to a name and to, you know, there was not an a question, Oh, what should we name this? This is, you knew I'm starting a brewery. He convinced with a lot of charisma and probably some beer, your partner through joining you and actually kind of formalize it a little bit and then you just went for it.

Steve Hindy (11:18):
Well, I should say I got a lot of encouragement from Milton Glaser. Uh, our designer, um, Milton is the guy who did the, I love New York logo. He's a founder of New York magazine. And, I, I interviewed about 30 different design firms. I wanted to call the company Brooklyn Eagle beer after the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper because of my background as a journalist. Uh, and, I got very frustrated talking to small design firms because nobody was giving me guidance. Uh, so actually my wife said to me, why don't you call the best designers in New York? The only designer I knew anything about was Milton Glaser. But when I called his office, the woman who answered the phone said, do you know who Milton is? And I said, well, yeah, I hear he's pretty good. I want to talk to him. She said, he doesn't just talk to anyone who calls here. And I said, well, I'm president of Brooklyn Brewery. And she said, exactly who, who the hell ever heard of Brooklyn Brewery? So she totally blew me off. And I called her every day for like a week from the newspaper. I was determined to meet him. And finally she said, you're not going to give up, are you? I said, no, I want to talk to Milton Glaser. And she said, okay, here he is. Put Milton on the phone kind of blurted out the idea and he said, Oh boy, that sounds like fun, you know, come and see me. So amazing. Melton agreed to be our designer and we could never afford him. I mean, he's like six figures to get started on something. And , he agreed to take stock, in the company and then we would pay him hourly for his work. It wasn't cheap. He just, he loved the idea of, bringing brewing back to Brooklyn. And he said, first of all, look, we got Brooklyn here. Nobody's claiming Brooklyn. There are no consumer goods named after Brooklyn. Let's claim Brooklyn. So forget the Eagle. Ditch the bird, you know, let's, let's just focus on Brooklyn, Brooklyn beer, Brooklyn lager, Brooklyn brewery. Yeah. Brilliant. Um, and actually in very early on on an idea that then became, you know, very successful. So we met with him a few days later and he unveiled the logo and I looked at it and I said, that's it. And he said, don't say a word. Take it home. Put it on your kitchen table, show it to your wife. Don't show it to a lot of people, just live with it a little. And so I did. And, you know, it began to sink in the simple beauty of that, that be, and how it can kind of evoke the Brooklyn Dodgers. But it didn't really, there was never a B like that on the Dodger uniform. It said Dodgers in script, and that B is kind of the same script, but I run into old timers all, all the time who say that's the old Dodgers B and I don't argue with him. It's like, Oh yeah, that's it. But actually there was no be like that.

Ofer Cohen (14:30):
That's fascinating. So the known, you know, Brooklyn brewery location in Williamsburg was not your first, or was it?

Steve Hindy (14:39):
So in the beginning we did not build a brewery. We contracted to produce the beer in Utica, New York. And our original plan was to build a brewery on day one. But, we met a woman, an entrepreneur who lived on our block called Sophia Collier. And Sophia, started a company called Soho natural soda. And it was really like the first, you know, what became the new age beverage category. Uh, she was selling her company to Seagram's for $30 million when we started out. So we were pretty impressed by Sophia. And we ask her for advice and she said, Oh, this is a great logo. The beers really cool. It's very different than mainstream beer and that's good. But she said, you know, the key to this is distribution and it's not going to succeed unless you distribute your own beer. And I remember saying, you know, distribute beer in New York city, you know, I can hardly afford my car insurance, so I'm going to have trucks, you know. What about parking tickets? What about the mafia? You know, I mean, all of our investors were concerned about the mafia. And she said, yeah, there are a lot of problems out there, but, I'm telling you, nobody's gonna pay any attention to you when you're small and this is the only way you're going to get gone. So then we decided to contract a produce the beer upstate and truck it to Brooklyn. We had a warehouse in Bushwick, which was, you know, pretty scary. And then we built a brewery in 1995 we opened in, in 96, um, mayor Giuliani came and cut the ribbon for the opening. So why not just continue with the Utica? No, we wanted to have a brewery in Brooklyn. Uh, you know, the name of the company is Brooklyn Brewery. That was our, I mean, a lot of people thought we were, you know, it was just, some kind of scam, to, to claim the name Brooklyn without having a brewery. So we were committed to build beer. Yeah. Yeah. But we did build a brewery that was an adventure too. By that time, we were big enough that, it may, you cannot build a brewery of the size we needed in New York city. I mean, you could, but you could also take all your money over to the East river and throw it in the river, you know. And so we continued to brew, in Utica and now we own a piece of, of that brewery in Utica. We still brew there. Uh, the brewery in Brooklyn makes about 80, 000 barrels, which is really good size. I mean it's far bigger. It's probably bigger than all the small breweries that operate in Brooklyn today. Um, you know, a microbrewery is like fewer than 15,000 barrels. So 80,000 barrels is a pretty good size, brewery.

Ofer Cohen (17:47):
And the one in Utica is making everything else, all other or do you have more?

Steve Hindy (17:52):
No, it's the one in Utica is, is mainly making Brooklyn Lager because that's a big brand. That's a big, a big volume. But now we also brew Brooklyn Lager in Stockholm and Tokyo and Melbourne. Australia. Carlsberg, Sweden, in Japan. It's Kiran. Actually the question you asked in the beginning about becoming an international brand, a global craft beer, that was not part of our plan at all. But what I've learned about business is you create a brand, a consumer brand, and it almost has a life where it does have a life of its own. You know, it becomes part of life. And we've followed that brand, all over the world. We didn't take it all over the world. The brand took us all over the world.

Ofer Cohen (18:58):
I'm in a, it's almost like, I feel like I'm asking you a question about your children. How much of your, how much do you think of the success overseas, is because of the beer itself versus the, the Brooklyn Brewery or the Brooklyn Beer? The Brooklyn lagger name?

Steve Hindy (19:12):
Yeah, I'll put it this way. Are all our competitors, Sam Adams, Sierra Nevada anchor, they all export beer. Brooklyn is the biggest craft beer export. So the name is huge. Uh, you know, the beer is good beer. It's quality beer. We've won a lot of awards for it, but the name is the magic. Uh, the name is the reason, you know, you can find our beer all over the world.

Ofer Cohen (19:48):
Uh, you mentioned microbreweries. And over the last, I would say probably a decade, as a lot of those industrial neighborhoods become, you know, more of a hub of creativity and sort of new, kind of artisinal old products. And as I think, you know, Brooklyn is becoming more of a foodie kind of destination. There's a bunch of microbreweries in Brooklyn or that came from Brooklyn or was starting in Brooklyn. And how much, how much of that do you take credit for and how, how involved are you, are people coming to you for advice? Are you mentoring them or like how, how do you look at them as competitors?

Steve Hindy (20:30):
Well there are 11 breweries within a mile of my house in Gowanus and I know them all. Uh, actually I got them all to, to donate beer for the Gowanus canal Conservancy fundraiser, for the last two years. I know a lot of the guys, a lot of, some of the guys who used to work for us, so you know, I know them well. Tom and I wrote a book called beer school that tells a whole story of a Brooklyn Brewery. All the adventures we had. And I can't tell you how many craft brewers here and around the world have read that book, and learned from it. Uh, it's really, it's, it's kind of a business, more a business book than a beer book. It tells about the, you know, the ordeal of starting starting a business. There were 20 startups in the first say, 15 years of Brooklyn Brewery that failed in New York city. Most of them failed because of the inability to get their beer distributed. Um, so distribution was a really hard thing to do, but I think it, it's the reason I'm sitting here talking about our success,today and I think now there are, there may be 20 breweries in Brooklyn now, and, like you said, Brooklyn is a very different place today than it was 30 years ago. And there's a market for all those new breweries.

Ofer Cohen (22:08):
There's a lot of serendipity here. Like the neighbor, the neighbor with a Soho soda. I mean, you know, between Milton and her, right? These are the two best things.

Steve Hindy (22:18):
Yep. Right. You're right. When I tell this story, I talk about how early on there were a couple of things we did that turned out to be gold. It turned out to be critically important to our success. We had no idea that these were the reasons.

Ofer Cohen (22:37):
Yeah. I mean, you obviously live in Brooklyn and your entire business was a big part of your business. Started here, your company, Brooklyn. And when, when you see of how much change has happened in Brooklyn over the last, um, let's say 15 years, so how does it make you feel visa VI the transformation that your personal transformation and the transformation of your company?

Steve Hindy (23:02):
Well, you know, that book, beer school, mayor Bloomberg wrote a forward to the book for me and in it he said that Brooklyn Brewery helped make Williamsburg hip and that Brooklyn Brewery deserves some credit for the Renaissance in, in Brooklyn. And, I'm, I'm proud of that. I know that, you know, I know that gentrification is kind of the flip side of that and, maybe it hasn't been, the transformation is not been great for everybody, but I think Brooklyn is a lot healthier today than it was 30 years ago. There are more opportunities, there are more people investing in Brooklyn. And, you know, I think that's, that's a good thing. One of the interesting things that happened to us very early is that, you know, Spike Lee's movie, do the right thing, came out and Spike put Brooklyn Lager in in the movie and there's a scene where Ozzie Davis goes into a deli in Bed-Stuy and he's looking for Miller high life and , he looks in the cooler and the only thing in the cooler is Miller Light and Brooklyn lager. And he says to the Korean deli owner, you know, where the Miller high life and the deli owner says beer in cooler, you know, they just insist on that. Anyway, Spike did that, you know, normally filmmakers, charge breweries a lot of money to, to put there. Well, we donate beer to Spikes opening parties and , it was so cool to you go to those with public enemy and, and , you know, Eddie Murphy was there and it was super cool. And then we got to know him over the years. And you know, he, he did a lot of really good things here in Brooklyn, I think. And for Brooklyn.

Ofer Cohen (25:22):
You know, I don't know if you've listened to some of the other episodes, but I typically ask at the end of the show, if you can tell us something, something new that nobody else knows about you.

Steve Hindy (25:36):
Well, not too many people know that, I came here when I was eight years old for the Billy Graham crusades. But, let's see, what can I say? Actually, I have one a war story I'd like to tell you about. So you lived in Israel?

Ofer Cohen (25:53):
I grew up in Israel. I was born and grew up in Israel.

Steve Hindy (25:55):
Okay. So you'll know a little bit about this story. So in 1980, I was in South Lebanon with the Irish battalion of the United nations peacekeeping for us, and we were abducted by a militia group. Actually you remember the South Lebanon army sodhadad died and the, the, quisling Israeli supported border zone there where Israel supported this militia, those militia men abducted us and they, it turned out to be a revenge thing. There had been a battle between the Irish battalion and this militia. They killed a militia man. So the guy who abducted us was brother of the kid who was killed and he wanted to revenge on the Irish. So he shot one of the Irishman who was with us three times and then they took away two of the other Irishmen who were found hours later, they'd been tortured and killed. Uh, it was just a horrible, horrible story. I reported the thing and of course the Israelis went crazy because saying, you know, we didn't have anything to do with this. Well, you trained and paid these guys, so you know, you've kind of got to take some responsibility. But, I wrote it and it, you know, it, it, the story carried on for a few days and that was the end of it. 35 years later, I'm sitting at my office in, Williamsburg. And the woman who answers the phone comes in and says, Steve, there's, Homeland security agents, who want to come and see you. And I said, well, okay, then I'll put them on. So I get on the phone and a guy says, we'd like to come and see you. And I said, well, of course when he said, well, how about now? And I said, okay. So they show up like about half hour later, two guys sit down in my office and they said, you were involved in an incident in Lebanon 35 years ago in which Irish were Irish militia, soldiers were killed. And I said, yeah. They said, well, we think the guy who abducted you is living in Detroit, running an ice cream truck, selling ice cream to children. And he applied for American citizenship. We investigated him and we found he entered the U S illegally with false papers. And we found your stories about the killings. So we're wondering if you could identify him. And they showed me headshots of like 50 Arab men. And I said, I think that's him. And he said, yep, that's him. Would you testify against him? And I said, yes. So I gave a deposition a few days later in Manhattan at their office on camera describing what happened that day. Then they went to Ireland and they interviewed the Irishman who was shot by this guy and he too identified him. So they arrested the guy and deported him to Lebanon. And he's now at this very moment in jail, in Beirut on trial, accused of double murder of the two Irishmen, attempted murder. The third guy. And I was subpoenaed to testify, in Beirut. And my journalist friends in Beirut told me, do not come here because, this family is a big family and they know that you are involved in getting him arrested.

Ofer Cohen (29:34):
And you're here in the studio without out security, right?

Steve Hindy (29:37):
Here in Brooklyn without security. Isn't that incredible? I, as a journalist, you know, you're right. A lot of stories and nothing ever happens, right? You write a story and you think, wow, this town's gonna explode when they read this story.

Ofer Cohen (29:53):
Thank you so much.

Steve Hindy (29:54):
You're welcome.

S3 | E5 | Jill Eisenhard, Red Hook Initiative

Announcer:                        00:00                     Hey BK with Ofer Cohen.

Jill Eisenhard:                     00:03                     You know, part of the motivator and people have said like this work is really hard. Like why have you done it for so long is that it's hope.

Ofer Cohen:                       00:10                     I'm Ofer Cohen and this is Hey BK, the podcast about the people behind the Brooklyn transformation in this episode, I speak with Jill Eisenhard, the founder and executive director of the Red Hook initiative. Jill has recently announced that she's stepping down from the nonprofit she founded back in 2002. In our conversation, she looks back at her work in Red Hook, one of the last industrial neighborhoods on the Brooklyn waterfront. Red Hook is home to the city's second largest public housing complex with nearly 10,000 residents in 32 buildings. The NYCHA housing complex and Red Hook is riddled with problems from crumbling infrastructure to mold. These problems were only made worse when Hurricane Sandy hit Red Hook in 2012 most of Red Hook's residents are low income and African-American. According to Jill, the median family income in that public housing complex is $23,000 for a family of four. In the past 18 years, RHI has grown to serve more than 6,000 people with a budget of over $4 million. Not only does it help the young people with job training and afterschool programs, but it also has a larger vision to empower the community from within to create social change. Jill, Eisenhard.

Jill Eisenhard:                     01:12                     So I am from a place that's about as opposite from Red Hook Brooklyn is, could possibly be. I grew up in Western New York, a very, very small town had we had an Apple farm. I showed sheep, at the County fair. That's what you did when you were from, that part of the country. I had never been to New York City until I was in my twenties. My father had never come here until he was in his fifties is like, Oh, it took me 54 years to come here and it will take me 54 years to come back again.

Ofer Cohen:                       01:43                     And what brought you here?

Jill Eisenhard:                     01:44                     I came to visit a cousin and said I would never live here. But, um, someone, the hospital in Brooklyn had found my resume through some online portal, which I still am confused, not like it was that special, um, at that stage in my life. And I was called for an interview as like, ah, it's a good excuse to visit my cousin and I'll go to the interview. And then, um, it ended up being a job that I was interested in. And so I, um, told my mother I was moving to New York city and she didn't speak for about three days.

Ofer Cohen:                       02:17                     How did it start?

Jill Eisenhard:                     02:18                     So I tell people that I'm an accidental founder. I never intended to start an organization. And in 2002, I was a health educator at Long Island college hospital in Downtown Brooklyn. And, part of my job as a health educator was to go out into different neighborhoods and teach women about women's health. And I always felt like there was something wrong with the model where it would come out as an expert from the hospital into communities where I wasn't from there. I didn't look like the people who were there. And I was coming in having some kind of an expert status to tell people what to do. And so there was an opportunity to write a grant and I said, I want to change this model and I'd rather educate women from the neighborhood to become the experts who are teaching their peers. And so I wrote that grant and then I resigned from the hospital and went to do youth development work. And six months later they called me and they said, we have a $50,000 check sitting here for your idea and none of us are going to do it. And I said, well, it'll just be a year and I'll do it at night and on the weekend. And that was 18 years ago. Um, and so things from there just really became very organic. I initially hired 10 women who lived in public housing. I trained them to be health educators. All in Red Hook. And we got donated space, which especially now is really hard to imagine happening in Brooklyn, but we needed space. The police athletic league had a daycare. Someone said, I think they have extra rooms. So I went to the headquarters in Manhattan and I walked in and I said, I have money to hire women. And this man, literally, I don't think he even knew my last name, said it sounds like a great project. Opened his drawer, pulled out a key, handed it to me and said good luck. And we were basically in space for the first six years that we weren't paying for. There was no lease. We had our own entrance onto the street. Um, and it kind of magically expanded. Like we had run out of space and we looked at a door and we're like, based on how the walls go, what's behind that door and magically opened it and found another room. And I think over the 18 years, things like that have always happened where when you needed something, suddenly the Avenue would become available.

Ofer Cohen:                       04:40                     That's incredible.

Jill Eisenhard:                     04:41                     Yeah.

Ofer Cohen:                       04:42                     Let's talk a little bit more of, you know, the moment where you realize that the current systems don't work and you essentially basically felt like you want to make an impact. But I mean, kind of downplaying it a little bit.

Jill Eisenhard:                     04:56                     Yeah. I mean, I think I came in originally with this focus on women's health education. And in that first year or so, part of what started to happen is that people would walk in the door once we had this space and would say, I know you're doing women's health, but I need a resume. Or a 15 year old would come in in the middle of the day and we'd say, why are you not in school? And they would say, Oh, I don't go to school anymore. And so suddenly the needs started to become visible. And my own learning was that health is, is a piece. And if you don't have a foundation of, of housing and food and a steady income, health is very secondary. And so I think early on I learned a lesson of just listening to the community and knowing that community will ask for what it needs on its own. Um, and so by listening to that, I think our model quickly evolved to be focused on youth development. And as we started to do that, just recognized, um, if you're doing direct service and tutoring or, health information or counseling, but you're not actually addressing the systems, we will just do that forever. So we have, really three program areas. Uh, the first is our youth programs. So we're serving about 500 young people a year who are all from the neighborhood. And that's, um, anyone from sixth grade to age 24. And so there, a young person can walk in in sixth grade and be coming to an afterschool program that's led by someone from the neighborhood. When they get to high school, they're coming in and saying, Oh, I'm now 14. I have working papers. I need a job. And so we have met that need by creating positions. We employ, about 80 young people at a time, over in the summer it goes up. So over a hundred, high school students, throughout the year. And they're on our payroll. They're earning a paycheck. Um, lots of different things. They're trained to be peer health educators. They're trained to be peer counselors, um, youth organizers. They're looking at all the issues in the neighborhood and they're becoming specialists to then educate their peers or educating their family. We now have a young woman who started out in that program and she's finishing her master's degree at Hunter college school of social work and started out, she's like, it basically been a counselor since I was 15 years old. Our peer health education program, we had a young person who started out in that who's now at the Department of Education doing citywide program programs in health. So I think for a lot of young people getting a job at RHI thats serving their community also becomes the pathway to their future progression as an adult.

Ofer Cohen:                       07:38                     So I'm 15 years old and I come to Red Hook Initiative and I mean, you know, I'm being trained to help my peers and I'm being employed to help my peers in Red Hook Initiative is funding that.

Jill Eisenhard:                     07:53                     Yes, that right. We're paying them as an employee. And at the same time we're saying everyone who works here has a professional development plan. And so your professional development plan is a 15 year old is that you have to graduate from high school. And so the graduation rate in the neighborhood is around 60% and our young people are graduating at a rate of 95%. Um, and so that's the, the first piece of our model. So at any point in time, a young person from the neighborhood can walk into RHI and really get what they need. Many of them do start at sixth grade and are with us until age 24. Some of them kind of come and go when there's something that they need around work or emotional health or educational outcomes. And we have usually more young people than were we're able to have slots for particularly for the employment place.

Ofer Cohen:                       08:41                     So they're on a wait list?

Jill Eisenhard:                     08:41                     Yup. Yeah. Right.

Ofer Cohen:                       08:42                     So that's where the extra funding can help?

Jill Eisenhard:                     08:42                     Yes.

Ofer Cohen:                       08:42                     Because the need is much greater than what you can provide?

Jill Eisenhard:                     08:49                     And some of it is also space. So last year we, and I'll get to the second part of our model, but took on the two farms that are in Red Hook and they have come under our umbrella. We've rebranded as Red Hook farms. And so it's Brooklyn's largest urban farm. It's right next to the Ikea. Um, it's about a three acre space with an acre and a half that's active production of produce. And then there's another one acre spot on a NYCHA facility. And so young people also have jobs working on the farm, growing food, distributing that food to their neighbors. Red Hook doesn't have their, it's classified in, in department of health language as being a food desert.

Ofer Cohen:                       09:28                     So it sounds like kind of a radical model, right? This is more empowering from within and through the community and the peer group and collaboration. But like how did you guys come up with this model and is there other examples for it?

Jill Eisenhard:                     09:43                     There aren't lot of other examples So the, the youth development pieces are first core. And the second part is I think where we become more radical as you just said, is that we do organizing and advocacy and a lot of the groups, especially the bigger social service agencies throughout New York city, they just do the direct service. And I think the organizing and advocacy that we do is where the social chain starts to happen. And so some examples of that work, you know, NYCHA, especially after Hurricane Sandy, the repairs, I mean, people don't realize it's been seven years, they're still temporary boilers. Um, a lot of the FEMA money has an actually made it there yet. There's still all kinds of Sandy related things that have not been, repaired or fixed. And one of the things that's been happening, is that people don't have cooking gas. And so last year, for example, there are families that started to come to us and said, we haven't been able to cook for three or four months. And it took our organization organizing, people calling NYCHA, calling the press to actually get that story in just for people to have cooking gas. The same has been true with heat. Red Hook is top on the list for mold. We brought in a team from UC Berkeley who like looked at all the mold that had happened particularly after Hurricane Sandy. So it's really been residents who are driving that work. And so what RHI does is we are offering this space for them and the tools and connections to resources like a research Institute like UC Berkeley, but it's really the people who are driving, this is the need we go out of our way to make sure that they're the voices that are talking to press or I'm going to testify about something. For the young people, a great example of that is that two summers ago there was an increase in violence in the neighborhood and as a result of that, there is an increase in policing. And so a lot of the young men in particular were coming to RHI and saying, you have to help us. We don't feel safe in this neighborhood. @e feel like police are following us and we just kind of felt like we don't have expertise in gun violence. This is a little bit out of our range of what we know what to do with. And they kept coming. And so we said, Oh, this is a moment of community asking and we need to respond. And so we got some funding, and employed 12 young adults who did their own research and said, what is the story of violence, in this neighborhood and what are the roots of it? And they put together, they worked with a professor from Brooklyn college and the public science project. So there was real, like a real research presence. They're now known and people, researchers have come to them to talk about their model. They present to the Department of Health. Like a lot of the things that are coming out of their report are now showing up citywide and trying to figure out, looking at all of those issues. And so I think that's the place where it becomes a little more radical is saying like, this isn't a top down model. This is just giving community members, the tools and the opportunity to tell their own story and they have their own solution.

Ofer Cohen:                       12:56                     So, as I'm listening to you, I mean, what comes to mind is this sort of like, why, you know, if there's so many issues in public housing, why is it a nonprofits organization's job to fix all these issues?

Jill Eisenhard:                     13:11                     Yeah, great question. We asked that all the time. I mean, I think to the, the one thing when I was very young, when I accidentally started this organization and had actually only lived in New York City for two years, and I think if I'd been here for a little longer, I never would have even tried to have done this or just would've felt like that. What could I do? And I think, um, but you know, part of the motivator and people have said like, this work is really hard. Like why have you done it for so long? Is that, and this is gonna sound. I mean it's hope, like understanding and seeing it's just incredible to see what happens when people are given the space and the opportunity. I got a note two days ago, a young person who had been a part of our program who was connected, with a company, and got a job in basically in the construction field, and is now moving his family out of public housing after a few years. I've had young people come in with offer letters from jobs when they're like, here's my offer letter and I'm like, you have a retirement plan. I don't have a retirement plan or seeing people being the first from their family to graduate from college and knowing like, I don't think a lot of people try to give us credit for things like that and like, this is 100% that the young person showing up in doing it but I think it's the access to opportunity. I think that's the part that feels hopeful is that the human spirit is amazing and I think having done this for 18 years, it's, there's just an opportunity to see all these things that can happen. And that when residents come together to talk about public housing, they love their neighborhood, they love their building, they love their community. And people are like, I don't want to, I don't want public housing to go away. I don't want to move out of public housing. I just want it to be adequate. Like I wanted to be healthy and safe and not wondering if there's lead in the walls or mold growing on my children's skin, which actually happened in one house because of the situation there. And so I think that the drive is to really say, what would this city be without public housing? I mean, the majority of people who live in NYCHA work for the DOE, they work for NYCHA. They're in city jobs, like NYCHA residents are running the city. And I think as we look at what's happening, and the financial crisis that NYCHA is facing and, and I think people need to really understand who's living there and what, what that, leap would be if that isn't. And I think we have seen people who feel like I now make enough money where I can't, like I almost make too much money to live in NYCHA and there is a gap and I, there isn't anywhere to move in between. And so we've seen a lot of people moving to Pennsylvania moving back down South of just feeling like there isn't space for me in this city if I've succeeded enough to, to move beyond, the public housing or section eight or section nine options that are here.

Ofer Cohen:                       16:29                     Like, can, NYCHA fix all these issues from within can actually NYCHA with the right leadership and funding for that matter.

Jill Eisenhard:                     16:38                     Yeah, I mean the money is significant. I mean the Red Hook on the East side of the Red Hook houses, those buildings were built in 1938 and there hasn't been a significant upgrade. So any building that's been, around for that long and hasn't actually been cared for in the right way, there's a real question about how, you know, how healthy and strong, like what's the infrastructure of this building, how long is it really going to last and where does the, where, what is the smart investment and what does that look like? Um, and so I don't know. I mean, I think that the NYCHA, what happens with NYCHA is a significant one. I think within our organizing work, there are so many things that are playing out in the neighborhood right now. There's the port authority parcel that everyone's kind of wondering, is it, you know, is it going to be sold and if it's going to be sold, what, what's the plan? There's the governor's proposal for the subway, subway line, to come. There's the BQX all of the ball fields in Red Hook right now are closed for lead contamination. So there's a parks, open parks department conversation around what's happening with this space. There's also a current, I feel like I'm reading every possible list of what could be happening in a neighborhood in New York City. And it's all happening in Red Hook. There's a current, conversation about districting um, related to education in the elementary schools that are in the neighborhood. And so I think from our point of view, we're really just working to figure out how can residents know about all these conversations and where is there an opportunity for them to really be the ones who are speaking up and driving and saying what they want.

Ofer Cohen:                       18:23                     It's very interesting. So the question is sort of philosophically 25 years ahead, public housing is not going anywhere. The needs just getting bigger. Like what do you, how do you connect these two?

Jill Eisenhard:                     18:37                     I mean, I think it used to be that NYCHA actually ran community centers and did some form of direct service and I think that was a big mistake, that they need to be a landlord. They need to focus on the things related to being a landlord and that other groups should be doing the social services and the supports that happen. I do think that it's important that different housing communities have something like an RHI that is present and that are partnering and we do partner with NYCHA. And sometimes it's that we're really holding them accountable by issuing your report or going to the press. And sometimes we're saying like, let's work together on this.

Ofer Cohen:                       19:15                     Well, and there are people, you know, there are people in my industry, that think that the city should not be in the business of owning and managing a housing.

Jill Eisenhard:                     19:25                     The thing about it continuing to be held with the city is that I think there's some level of, control over making sure that it's staying low income or affordable or whatever term that you want to call. And I think that if it all becomes privatized, that there's going to be concern of like, what does that ultimately mean for the 400,000 people that are living there now, if those, you know, if markets start to drive those what is that, what's the longterm question? So I think the idea of it staying public is really focused on ensuring that it continues to be there for families who are at the, at the beginning of the spectrum of what they can afford.

Ofer Cohen:                       20:12                     So you touched a couple of times on Sandy. Tell me about that night and that morning.

Jill Eisenhard:                     20:17                     This is interesting. This is kind of, most people don't know this. I actually had had, surgery three days before Sandy. We just had our annual benefit and I said, this is actually, I need to have this surgery. And this was going to be a great time going to like take a week and a half off and, really like not be checking my email, not working. I'm just going to have the surgery and recover and I'll be back. And then I'm on day three, Sandy hit. And so that night I was just, you know, getting tons and tons of text messages and I'm thinking like, our building is ruined. All of our technology's ruined. I'm sure no one thought to like pick our server up off of the floor. Um, and the next morning people started telling me, everything's fine. I didn't believe it. I'm like, they want me to rest. And so they're not telling me the truth. Like there's no way that everything's fine, you know, looking at the news. And it was true and no one understands why it was the only building in Red Hook that like, it's as if nothing had happened, the phones are working, the lights were on, everything was fully intact. And so that next morning I got a call from a staff member and she's like, Hey, is it okay to open the building like none of us have? And at that point, no one knew how bad it was. Right? It's like, you know, just the next morning the sun is out. It's like, Oh, it'll all probably be fine by five o'clock today. And the water was gone by then. I was like, of course, of course you should be there. And so they started calling staff. And people started coming in and then people started saying, Hey, I need to charge my phone. Can I come? We can't cook. The occupy, the group that became occupy Sandy people came in and said, can we use your kitchen to like cook soup? People are going to need dinner tonight. And from there it just became full on the headquarters. And I was home. I had a, long crazy story, I was on incredible pain medication. I had tubes coming out, I had a tumor taken out of my leg and, was working like 14 to 16 hours a day for like weeks after that but never actually set foot in Red Hook until the power was back on.

Ofer Cohen:                       22:35                     It was a pivotal moment for Red Hook, but it was a pivotal moment for the organization too, in a way.

Jill Eisenhard:                     22:40                     Yes. I mean, there were people who came in, during the storm or right after the storm to make a donation and they were like, I live a mile away. I had no idea that you were here. And some of those people became longterm supporters. There are people who donated $5,000 in the time of crisis. And then once they learned what we were about are now donating $50,000. And so I think for us, you know, at the point that Sandy happened, we were 10 years old and we had that we're like, no one knows about us. We need a PR campaign. Of course we didn't have a director of development and we don't have communications team or PR people. So in retrospect it was like, Oh, we got, you know, through a storm. We actually had the PR campaign, I mean the number of journalists and TV crews and everyone that was coming through responding to Sandy and for people who realize, wait a minute, this group has actually been around for 10 years. They didn't just pop up during the storm. That really helps to us to kind of move to the next level.

Ofer Cohen:                       23:42                     Very interesting. So I typically ask if he listened my show, I typically ask, is there anything that the public doesn't know about you? So you did mention the surgery, which I didn't know. Is there anything else that the public doesn't know?

Jill Eisenhard:                     23:56                     So when we when I brought the question to my board about taking on the farm in Red Hook, they were like, what in the world do we know about farming? Like, why would we do that? And I said, well, here are all the reasons why, and if that's not enough to give you confidence, I do not, you probably do not know this about me, but I'm the 1989 New York state junior horticulture champion, at which point they just said, of course you are. And then we kind of proceeded with that. So yeah, that's been, something that as a teenager was really fun and I never thought would matter again, but has given lots of credibility as we've added the farm to our portfolio.

S3 | E4 | Brad Lander, NYC Council, District 39

Narrator:

Hey BK with Ofer Cohen. 

Brad Lander:

This is hard for young people who were not here, like I don't know why they would believe us. It was true, but if you lived through the seventies and the 80s in New York city, the mindset you approach neighborhoods and real estate and development and urban planning questions with was our city was abandoned, that almost killed it. What are we going to do to make sure it comes back to life and isn't killed like that again? 

Ofer Cohen:

That's Brad Lander, the New York city councilman representing parts of Brooklyn, including the very established Park Slope and the ones industrial area known as the Gowanus. Lander a I sat down in the Hey BK studio and talked about his journey as an urban planner, a progressive politician, his upcoming run for city controller and his lifelong mission as an advocate for affordable housing. Brad Lander, our favorite councilman from the 39th district. Thank you for being here. 

Brad Lander:

Very nice to be here. 

Ofer Cohen:

I was telling you earlier that I'm really interested in your personal journey. So I know you went to school in Chicago. I don't know where you grew up. 

Brad Lander:

It's funny, you know, there's a lot of politicians these days who, you know, like tell their story. That's kind of a thing. And I'll confess, I don't usually tell my story. I grew up in suburban St Louis. My folks lived in the first ring suburb where all the Jews of their generation lived, University city near Washington university. They moved out. We moved out when I was five to a second ring suburb called Creve Coeur, a lovely suburban upbringing, nice public school, you know, that did participate in the St Louis voluntary desegregation program, but mostly was a pretty white suburb. And so I grew up with those sort of liberal Jewish values. We want a more equal, more compassionate place but in a place where if you kind of started to dig deeper, you could see we were not delivering it especially well and those things it became especially clear to me when I went to school at university of Chicago, which is on the South side of Chicago and surrounded, you know, one side by Lake Michigan, but on the other three sides, at the time when I went to school there in 1987, almost all African American and poor, and at that time very disinvested with gentrification. You couldn't see it from where it was at the time. And so that for me, both was okay, those values I grew up with of a more equal, inclusive, integrated liberal place. Like something is wrong. They are not being delivered on. And that made me mad. You know, it's like, here's the story I've been told about who we are as Americans, who we are as Jews, what our cities are about and the actuality doesn't, we're not delivering on those values. So that was sort of part one and then, you know, but going from the suburbs into the city was just fascinating to me and you know, to be a suburban kid who moves to the city, you know, at that age for college. You know, my kids grew up in Brooklyn, so they're, they're city kids. And I think it's hard if you're a city kid to kind of understand that energy that comes, if you've been in a suburb, you know, you get to ride your bike or whatever, but you don't have a locally owned store as you can't walk to all these things. You don't have public realm and community in the same way. So that kind of dual move for me in Chicago, like something is wrong in the values, but something is right in the energy of cities. 

Ofer Cohen:

Lander says his fascination with cities set the course of his life like Barack Obama. He became involved in community organizing in Chicago after spending a year of grad school in London, Lander decided to dedicate his career to improving life in cities for all of its residents. He became an urban planner with a degree from Brooklyn's Pratt Institute. It was the early days of the neighborhoods gentrification and changes in zoning rules that allowed new development along fourth Avenue. He would later go on to lead the Pratt center for community development. But in the early nineties, when Lander was young and inexperienced, he landed the job as the executive director of the fifth Avenue committee, the non-for-profit housing organization that aims to hold on to affordable housing in Park Slope. 

Brad Lander:

I did not know anything, you know, anything. It wasn't like I didn't know real estate development. I didn't know how to use Excel. You know, I had to do like spreadsheets for dummies on the subway, on the subway ride, you know, from home to work. But it was a great time. So, you know, that was the early 1990s. Yeah. And very early in this pocket, absolutely. Look parks, it's hard to remember that Park Slope had seen real abandonment. There were in the neighborhood, even of the lower part of Park Slope. Not so much right up by the park, but between fourth, fifth, sixth Avenue, you know, a hundred vacant buildings and 150 vacant lots and neighbors had organized together to try to start bringing them back. So you had some of that abandonment, not at the scale of many other neighborhoods and the kind of leading edge of redevelopment and gentrification was there and, and people could pretty early on see both its benefits and its risks. And so fifth Avenue committee was formed to try to make it work more inclusively. 

Ofer Cohen:

But hold on one second. So you're like, wow, this is, I think this is what I want to do with my life. Like I want to focus on how can we make cities better? Would, you know, how can we find a balance? Right. And, and making cities better, right? And then you fall into this executive director job, which sounds to me like an amazing opportunity. 

Brad Lander:

It was sort of what I was looking for. I was not, I was not qualified or ready to be executive director, but it was the kind of organization I was looking for. 

Ofer Cohen:

So you must've been thrilled. 

Brad Lander:

Oh great. I felt so lucky. It was a great staff team, very diverse and really like the perfect mix. It was, you know, folks who had lived in those buildings, grassroots tenant organizers, neighborhood leaders, who knew we wanted to be able to take over those buildings and renovate them and have families in there who wouldn't have been able to afford it otherwise and bring small businesses into the storefronts. And at the same time as we were doing, you know, small scale affordable housing development, we knew already that the neighborhood would be gentrifying around us. Most of the stock was not city owned, abandoned property where you could make affordable housing. And so we started doing tenant organizing as well, that, that had been going on already. I didn't, didn't start when I got there. And you know, what, what combination of thoughtful, inclusive development, but also a community organizing tenant protection policies? You know, we started fighting to strengthen the rent laws. They had started in the 1980s recognizing that without some stronger rent regulation closing of some of those loopholes, lots of families were going to get pushed out. And that did happen like Park Slope gentrified, the aim we had at the fifth Avenue committee in the late eighties and early nineties of holding an inclusive brotherhood. We did not do it. You know, like that's just honest. The vast majority of families who lived in you know, a brownstone neighborhoods, it doesn't have a lot of big multifamily housing. There were a lot more working class and low income families in the old law tenement, walk-ups and in people's garden apartments because that's what the rents were at the time. 

Ofer Cohen:

Yeah. But over the course of 20 years, , I don't think you guys are failed at the fifth Avenue community. If fifth avenue committee would have grown into a Brooklyn wide organization. I mean, it would have been very successful, the mandate within the context of these avenues. It's very limited. 

Brad Lander:

But in some ways that was, we could see even then like my work in Gowanus began when I was at fifth Avenue committee. We, for some of these very reasons we could see, at the very end, I spent 10 years as executive director there. And, it was only at the very end that the park slope and fourth Avenue rezoning happened and inclusionary zoning was not yet really a thing. We pushed for it. You know, we would like to Canary in the coal mine. We lost that fight, but it helped when something later. And we also at that same time started looking to Gowanus as a place where maybe, something could be built that was more inclusive than we knew we would be able to keep the slope. 

Ofer Cohen:

Did you know what the your path would be? 

Brad Lander:

No, interestingly, and maybe I was just in denial, but people would ask, when I was at fifth Avenue committee,are you going to run for office? And I really meant it when I said like, politics is gross, you know, everybody's on the take. I didn't see politics as a vehicle for building kind of meaningful grassroots democracy. But, as I was going from the fifth Avenue committee to the Pratt center, part of what I realized, and it's kind of funny to look back on this, cause it was still early enough in the real estate cycle, the city council, which should have had policies that were about inclusionary zoning and affordable housing that were more about tenant protections and stopping harassment that were more about building livable, streets and transforming communities to be livable and sustainable was not focused on any of those things. There were no planners in there, but it wasn't yet what people were even thinking about. It's hard to remember that this city was, its politics or not. 

Ofer Cohen:

The low hanging fruits were, and things to deal with were different. 

Brad Lander:

Abandonment was still the political mindset in relationship to the city. Like this is hard for young people who were not here. Like I don't know why they would believe us it was true. But if you lived through the seventies and the 80s in New York city, the mindset you approached neighborhoods and real estate and development and urban planning questions with was our city was abandoned, that almost killed it. What are we going to do to make sure it comes back to life and isn't killed like that again. And like that's how you thought on whether that was about crime and policing, whether that was about development, whether that was about schools, that was how people approached those questions. And this idea that the challenges of growth and inclusion, would be, and sustainability would be primary just was not on people's radar screens. So because we could see that from where we sat at, you know, that kind of first edge of gentrification in this neighborhood that still had enough diversity, politically progressive, but had gone through this. I wanted to see things done differently and I was like frustrated with what had happened on Fourth Avenue. I knew some new policies were needed. So as I was moving to Pratt from fifth, even though I really met like gross about politics as I was moving from fifth Avenue committee. I got bit by a bug, who's going to do it, we can do better. And then at Pratt had the chance to go around the city and work with grassroots community groups. I saw they needed, some tools, they needed some allies on the inside. So that's what led me to run and in 2009 I ran for council, really largely on these issues what is a livable, affordable neighborhood look like? What are policies that would support it? Now, ironically, at the very same time, Atlantic Yards, you know, it was starting to happen right across the street. And I had done a lot of work with acorn, the grassroots community organization that struck the deal with Bruce Ratner to do affordable housing. 

Ofer Cohen:

In 2009. I mean, we were, I was here and it was rough right in the middle of a recession. 

Brad Lander:

So, but yeah, so then I got elected and was lucky, you know, I had a term with the Bloomberg administration when in many ways I was still very much the like voice of we're not doing anywhere near enough. You know, I have a lot of respect for mayor Bloomberg and deputy mayor Doctoroff. But I did not think they were taking, and they started to take the sustainability issues more seriously in that last term. But I did not think they started to take the equity and inclusion. 

Ofer Cohen:

But don't you think it's out of a continuation. So initially you dealt with abandonment and then the beginning of gentrification, how can you develop? And then very quickly it was, Oh, okay, is this overdeveloping? 

Brad Lander:

Yes, absolutely. 

Ofer Cohen:

You know, but if you look at this fixed to that fourth Avenue rezoning, for example, all the fixes, you know, it wasn't necessarily a political thing. It was just like people didn't realize that they're going to rezone Downtown Brooklyn and they're going to enable commercial development, but also maybe also some residential that only residential would be built. Your market is responding. 

Brad Lander:

The Downtown Brooklyn zoning, I was the lone wolf really crying, well more for inclusionary. So I thought it was unconscionable. By then we were fighting the inclusionary housing battle. It was coming in Downtown Brooklyn and it just seemed unconscionable to me that it would be rezoned without a significant affordable housing requirement. And yes, what people said is, well it's mostly a commercial rezoning. And I said, well you know, a lot of it allows residential, how could we not? And in a funny way, like we were just so right because if you had done inclusionary one, you would have gotten some affordable housing, but also you would have balanced the scales a little in commercial development would have been more attractive and whether you had gotten inclusionary residential or commercial, look, good things are happening in Downtown Brooklyn. I don't want to take away from them, but a little better mix of some more affordable units and some additional commercial rather than residential development would have been better. And all we needed to do was apply policies more like the ones we now have. And I'll just on fourth Avenue, cause I think it's useful story. You know, we fought forever as you with inclusionary. We didn't win it. Five years later, new buildings had gone up and had hideous ground floors and the Bloomberg administration came back and applied an active ground floor use requirement, which was good. And I'm glad it got and we said again, okay, but so now we have to do inclusionary. And they still said no. So I wonder what would have happened. You know, and this is true on the rent laws and this is true on that if we had been able to prevail on the Bloomberg administration and deputy mayor Doctoroff, to see that there was a need to attend more in a more focused way on issues of displacement and affordable housing and inclusivity earlier. Who knows, it's hard to, hindsight's 20/20, but we didn't get to them fast enough. And that's part of the backlash we have today. The reason why people don't want rezonings and development in their neighborhood that people insisted on such a dramatic, a set of changes to the rent laws are that this, the last decade of development did not pay attention to working class families to low income communities. And so of course there is a backlash. 

Ofer Cohen:

Now there's a chance to implement some of these lessons and create a comprehensive plan that is thoughtful about different uses, including a major component of affordable housing in the Gowanus. From personal journey perspective the Gowanus is your opportunity to implement all the lessons that we have learned.

Brad Lander:

As many of them as we can, Yes, absolutely. 100%. I live close by. Well look, the Gowanus, has its own story that's different from my story. You know, the dissolved oxygen content in the Gowanus canal hit zero in 1905. So you know, you got the Gowanus. As you know, it gets industrialized, gets polluted so badly, so early. Then gets, you know, largely abandoned, while it's sitting in between Park Slope and Carroll gardens, you know, that go through this period of abandonment but then come back in this beautiful form. So here you got this place that both from a sustainability point of view, you know, and then floods during hurricane Sandy becomes one of the most polluted, you know, industrial waterways. And from an equity point of view in neighborhoods that have been redlined, you know, with public housing now next to, you know, multimillion dollar brownstones is an opportunity, to do something different, to learn the lessons of sustainability, to learn the lessons of equity and inclusion, to learn the lessons of a mix of uses, a vibrant mix of uses instead of kind of just separating things and you know, luckily for me, yes that intersects with some of the things I've been doing in the meantime. So I like the intersections between, you know, my story and the Gowanus story. Lots of other people obviously play in. And I will say if it were not for the fifth Avenue committee, if it were not for the Gowanus canal Conservancy and active community stakeholders, I think I love about this process we've been on in Gowanus. I think it will, whatever we get right or wrong, I'm pretty sure it will win the title of like most engaged community planning processes for a neighborhood. 

Ofer Cohen:

I mean at the end of the day we're from where we're sitting right now. You know, a lot of people have been complaining as you know,about, Oh, it took so long. In a way, when I'm listening to you right now, it actually feels like it was good for Gowanus that it took the time. 

Brad Lander:

If it had been rezoned in 2008, it would not have had meaningful inclusionary housing, mandatory inclusionary housing did not exist. It was pre Sandy. We would not have done it with the thoughtfulness toward the issues of resilience and sustainable 

Ofer Cohen:

In a way. There's more than that. I mean, you wouldn't have the overdevelopment and or hyper gentrification would not have been, would not have to be at the stage where would need to be balanced. 

Brad Lander:

Correct. 

Ofer Cohen:

And also amazing uses that came only in the last decade. 

Brad Lander:

So yeah. So, you know, we, you can imagine what it would have been if we had done it 10 years ago and I think there's a reason for optimism that we have a lot better chance of building a much more inclusive, much more sustainable, more mixed use and just more thoughtfully planned neighborhood as a result. 

Ofer Cohen:

I think you made it almost your personal goal to make sure that this gets done and this gets done and that it gets done right before you leave this office, which I believe you're termed out. 

Brad Lander:

Yes my come to the end of my term in 2021. I went in, I will say everything useful that I think elected officials do is done in partnership with community organizations and stakeholders and groups who are organizing. And I feel, you know, maybe as proud as anything else about Gowanus that we've just had so much engagement and that doesn't mean every single person is happy on the like, gee, it's too much development side or on the, we need more side. There'll be, there'll be voices that don't, aren't happy in the end, but we're lucky to be in a neighborhood that's got so much engagement and organizing, you know, I don't take for granted that you have a Gowanus Canal Conservancy and you know, we started this and we did a round of community engagement work on, Gowanus in my term before, in the Bloomberg administration before de Blasio came in. So we were ready with sort of a community vision and actually on like the second day of the de Blasio administration was a big snow storm. I trudged into city hall for a meeting with Alicia Glen, who was then the deputy mayor and said, Gowanus is a place to do so many of the things we want to do. And they were not ready for that task cause Gowanus is complex. The Superfund makes it complex. The mix of uses makes it complex. You know, so the idea in between Park Slope and Carroll Gardens, neighborhoods that have almost no private sector affordable housing, that you could have a neighborhood that's about a third affordable it's pretty compelling. It's pretty exciting. 

Ofer Cohen:20:59As the Gowanus heads into redevelopment. Brad Lander is part of a larger group of progressive politicians who have announced they will not accept contributions from real estate developers. 

Brad Lander:21:08This one seems so obvious to me you know in hindsight, when you know, after Alexandria Ocasio Cortez got elected and some other folks started to raise this issue, I thought, you know what? This is important not only for my political future, like this is not only how's it going to play in my future political campaigns. I'm running for New York city comptroller. I don't want to be above reproach, but in the short term, it's just really important for doing Gowanus right. This is going to be complex. Balancing all these interests is not easy. Of course there's a set of people who don't want to see any development and of course those people are going to say, you know, Lander's just to sell out to real estate developers. That's why he's pushing for this Gowanus rezoning. And on the one hand most people who had paid any attention, you know, they don't have to know my whole personal story would say, you know, this actually involves a lot of thinking about how to balance the goals and interests we have. But still the way it plays out would be very easy for people to say, look, that's what this is. And the easiest way for me to give integrity to the decision making process in the Gowanus rezoning is to say I'm not going to take those contributions. 

Ofer Cohen:

100% so I think one thing that's interesting is when you talk about the backlash, right? I mean the backlash is not just locally, it's on every level. It's in every council district. It's on the state level, all over the country. And so we are in an era, at least from where I sit, the backlash has dramatic consequences the rent regulation law is one of those, which I think that as a whole, the real estate community did not see coming down so hard. But I would also say that it was a complete contrast to the kind of process that you're trying to run on the Gowanus rezoning. There was actually no dialogue and there was actually no parties at the table. If you represent real estate interest, we don't have a conversation. 

Brad Lander:

Look, partly Albany has changed very fast, you know, you know, part of what happened is a year ago is still a year ago today, Republicans were in control of the state Senate. And you know, I will say to folks in the real estate community, you know, if you had woken up earlier to the harm that was being done by rampant displacement, including just like, obviously most people are good people and don't, you know, engage in predatory practices. But everybody knew that a set of people were engaging in predatory eviction practices, were buying rent stabilized properties and moving hyper aggressively to take advantage of every loophole in the rent laws and throw out people who had lived there all their lives, in pretty heartless ways, in some cases, illegal ways, in some cases, things that really barely skirted the law. And then at the same time, when tenant organizations would come around and say, let's close the most egregious loopholes, would keep contributing to Republican state senators who weren't even mostly from New York City. And, and not only preserving the laws without closing the loopholes, but in many years kind of expanding the loopholes in a kinda game. And so that went on for so long and I don't think people could see or did see the anger that was building and, and if that had gotten changed earlier, I think you would add something different then obviously once that kind of flood gates opened and you know, the election, obviously, so many things matter here. Obviously the, you wouldn't have had such a strong swing of so many progressive Democrats coming in to the state Senate if it hadn't been for Trump. So look, yes, that all happened. That brought a big wave of change and there was you know, it went along with when the rent laws were expiring, like just a lot of things lined up. Look, even then though, I will say there might have been an opportunity earlier on to try to fashion some compromise. I think the industry counted on the governor to be a political backstop against all these new, the emergent left in the Senate. 

Ofer Cohen:
There's one thing I want to try to really understand. Why did you pick the compcontroller role as your next job? 

Brad Lander:

So this is actually, you've given me a perfect transition to it in thinking about how farsightedness and looking to the longterm is a critical part of what's hard but important in democracy. You know, democracy unfortunately becomes a system in which people are focused on short term gains. Like that's just kinda how it works. Like, what's going to be in the headlines tomorrow? What's going to be on Twitter? How am I going to do at the polls next? Looking to the longterm, like sometimes I think people think of that as just like kind of, prudishness or some kind of like you're a fiscal scold. But really, that's a form of social generosity and solidarity in all kinds of ways to our kids and our grandkids to our future selves. Like we're going to get older and we need a stable and sustainable and not drowning and not unequal city. The compcontroller is the job that has the responsibility to look to the longterm of the city. Sometimes I try to say it's like the prefrontal cortex of democracy the part that helps us do the right thing when it's the harder thing to do. 

Ofer Cohen:

So if you listened, which you haven't, but you will, to some my shows, I usually end with a personal question, which is tell us something about yourself that nobody else knows about you. 

Brad Lander:

Let's see, one thing is that the form of exercise I've been engaged in since the 2016 election is kickboxing. I don't think I look like or read like a kickboxer, but most mornings I go at six am and a kick and hit a bag. And that has been very good for me in this era of our history. So that's, that's maybe the most countered type of the of the things I do. 

Ofer Cohen:

That's a great one. That's a great one, councilman Brad Lander, a kickboxer, and a longtime resident of Park Slope. Thank you so much. 

Brad Lander:

This was really nice. Thank you so much for the invitation. 

S3 | E3 | Carlo Scissura, New York Building Congress

Narrator:

Hey BK with Ofer Cohen. 

Carlo Scissura:

I'll give you a hint though. There will not be a highway at the Promenade, which I think if that's all I said, people would be happy and I could go home. 

Ofer Cohen:

In this episode, I talked to an old friend, Carlo Scissura, Carlo chairs the mayor's committee in charge of evaluating the plan that speaks to crumbling Brooklyn Queens expressway. Part of the BQE, a highway that connects Brooklyn and Queens with the New York suburbs is on the verge of collapse a plan to divert traffic. During the construction along the scenic Brooklyn Heights Promenade was met with fierce opposition. New Yorkers will be relieved to hear that during our conversation Carlo revealed that the panelist scrap the idea of moving cars to the Promenade. Carlo has been a key player behind the scenes during Brooklyn's redevelopment, and construction boom of the last two decades. For nearly five years, the Brooklyn born attorney made his mark as a chief of staff to the larger than life Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz. He since moved on to head the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce and most recently the New York Building Congress. An organization that promotes the construction industry in New York. For now, Carlos says he has no plans to run for higher office. Carlos Scissura, one of my best friends in Brooklyn. So let's go back to even before Marty. 

Carlo Scissura:

I grew up in Bensonhurst, a son of Italian immigrants, a great community to grow up in. I think Bensonhurst will always be the place where immigrants land. At one time they were Jewish at one time, they were Irish at one time they were Italian. Now they are Italian and, Chinese and Russian and you know, a really great mix. So that's Bensonhurst. 

Ofer Cohen:

So both of your parents came from Sicily? 

Carlo Scissura:

Both came from Sicily in 1967. They were part of this big wave of immigrants from Italy, Southern Italy that came from the late fifties to the early seventies. And I may have told you the story when I was running for school board in 1999, I was at a debate one night. And I told the story of being in kindergarten in PS 112 in Bensonhurst. And having this wonderful, beautiful Italian teacher who would come in my kindergarten class everyday and take a few of us out and we learned to speak Italian and the superintendent called me the next day and said, when do you have a chance Come by and see me? And I went to visit him a couple of days later. He said, your memory is a little off. You actually weren't learning Italian. You were part of New York city's first ESL class. We didn't know what to do with all these new immigrants. And Frank Macchiarola who passed away. He was the chancellor, created an ESL program called a pullout program, which is now a model across America. So me and these other Italian kids who spoke very little English would be pulled out of our kindergarten class, go to another room and be taught English, not Italian. 

Ofer Cohen:

So in your home, you only spoke Italian? 

Carlo Scissura:

We spoke Italian at home. 

Ofer Cohen:

Walk me through it. Very different period in Brooklyn. Very different period in city politics. Very different period. Just in general. Right in the city. Just walk me through one of the craziest stories you can tell me from the Marty days. Just one, just one good one. 

Carlo Scissura:

Oh my God. Prospect Park bike lane, which today I think if someone announced we were doing a bike lane today, it probably wouldn't make the cover of any newspaper as, as vehemently as it did back then. But when, mayor Bloomberg and his transportation commissioner announced that they were doing that, it really got people's passions together and Marty was one of the people that was opposed to it. And during that period I was planning Marty state of the borough speech, which was always a big thing in Brooklyn. And he decided with mayor Bloomberg and the audience that he was going to ride a tricycle into the auditorium of Sunset Park high school to show what it means for an older gentleman to get on a bike in Brooklyn, um, was kind of amusing. And uh, mayor Bloomberg had a good laugh, but I mean there are plenty of those stories. Coney Island rezoning, we hope we held a hearing at borough hall during the Coney Island rezoning. And it was interesting. If you know the role of Borough president, you really don't have specific power. You really have a bully pulpit. Obviously Marty used it well and in any rezoning, if the borough president is opposed to it people, you know, the city continues to go along the path. Coney Island was different. They knew if Marty Markowitz would say no to the Coney Island rezoning, it could never get past that cause he was too associated with Coney Island. So during our hearing at Borough Hall, uh, people came to Borough Gall in Coney Island fashion. It looked like the mermaid parade in Borough Hall. I mean it was a spectacle, but I think we did the right thing. So it was a great time in Brooklyn. I learned a lot and then went to the chamber and said, how do we, now we've created all of this. How do we make sure that businesses flourish and that there is a business scene in Brooklyn that rivals anywhere in the world. Then we spent five years there doing the same thing. 

Ofer Cohen:

Why in that moment? Why not sort of stay in politics or local politics? 

Carlo Scissura:

Well, you know, I had planned to run for borough president. I had raised the most money. Everything was on my side and then I just woke up and felt that I didn't want to be in the traditional elected office role. I wanted at that moment in time to continue to be free, to speak my mind, to make change, to build relationships and help Brooklyn. And I think spending time at the chamber helped. I think the business community realized that there was an organization that could advocate for them. 

Ofer Cohen:

But it as much as I think you stand and identify this sort of like one of the leaders of the new Brooklyn, the transformation over the last 10, 15 years and everything that we love about the Brooklyn today, there's a lot of things growing up in Brooklyn that I'm sure you love and miss and sort of fill a little more nostalgic now. 

Carlo Scissura:

I have to tell you, when we were doing the whole, all of this work in Brooklyn, in most meetings I would be in, I was the only one who actually was from Brooklyn. Most people had come here 10 years ago, five years ago, eight years ago, whatever it was. I was like a Relic, a throwback. I'm like, I'm not, I'm 40 years old and I'm considered a dinosaur in this room. Um, so yes. Are there things I miss about the Brooklyn I grew up in? Of course we all have a nostalgic moment in us, but I'm also to the point and pragmatic to understand that nothing stays the same. And in order for all of us to grow, things have to change. Um, you know, we once rode to Manhattan on a horse and buggy. Now we ride in an Uber. Yesterday I took my daughter trick or treating in Bay Ridge. So I grew up in Bensonhurst and, I can honestly say of my high school graduating class. I would imagine 70% of the guys, cause it was an all boys school do not live in Brooklyn anymore. They live in New Jersey, in Westchester or somewhere else. But yesterday trick or treating in Bay Ridge reminded me of my childhood. There were a lot of kids out, there were homes, there were decorations, there was music, the stores were open. And I said, you know what, the people may be different where they came from may look different, but it's still the same. It's still people who love their neighborhood, who want great communities, great schools, and you make new friends and you meet new people and you never forget about the people you knew. I mean, look, Ofer you came from somewhere else, right? My parents came from somewhere else. You look back and you have great memories, but you say you want people to come to Brooklyn. You know, people leave. And that's the reality. There are people that leave Brooklyn, leave New York, leave other places in the world to do something else. When people say to me, I'm leaving New York, okay, bye. Because when you leave, there are two people who want to replace you here and that says something about New York City and the vibrancy we are. I think for me, if I didn't have Villabate bakery or I didn't have Faicco's Pork store or ALC or the Italian places that I love that are here and thriving makes me very happy because my traditional old Brooklyn is still in Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst and Dyker Heights, but I'm excited that now I have a Barclays arena to go to to watch a nets game or my daughter could go see Disney or I've got Brooklyn Bridge Park, which is incredible, who I've got industry city eight minutes from my house in Bay Ridge in this mega incredible place. So what I trade all these new things to go back to Bensonhurst in 1975 1980 absolutely not. 

Ofer Cohen:

I would think that this is a definitely a national trend. The more people want to be in cities, live in cities, cities, lifestyle becoming a lot more attractive and there's a lot more opportunities. And so there's a kind of a more migration into cities and more people stay in the cities. And so what we need to talk about is why are we giving such a hard time as a city to someone like Amazon? Why do we give such a hard time to a project like Industry City? 

Carlo Scissura:

So it's interesting. We happen to be living in an era where New York city is safe. Uh, it's relatively cleaned. We've never had more tourism. We've never had more population. I mean, all the virtues of New York city. We forget that 25 years ago, this was not New York City. There were 2,500 or 2,400 murders a year. People were fleeing, our tax base was down, et cetera. So people forget that it wasn't too long ago that companies like an Amazon or Facebook or whatever it was, whatever the Facebook of that era was, would not want to come to New York. Today we're lucky. So when you have no problems or when you have a perception of no problems, you go after things. So what are we going after? Not you and I, but what are some people in New York going after? Big business people that make money. Um, the tax base of New York. And I think once you erode, if it should happen, that tax base, it's no longer, well, if I don't like New York, I'm going to go to Jersey, but I'll still have New York something now. It's, I could be in Florida, I could be in Texas, I can be in North Carolina. My business could thrive anywhere in America now because there are now good cultural attractions in other places. They may not be New York, but there are good museums outside of New York. There are very good restaurants outside of New York. Young people could have maybe an easier quality of life. I won't say better, but easier spending less of their income on rent and other things. So we're in a moment in New York where we should not only not be hurting business, we should actually be doing everything we can to help business to help grow business. Because while it's wonderful for, and I've said this many times, the Facebooks of the world that want and Google and others that want to grow here, and I say, bring them on and we should welcome them. We should also realize that there are some businesses, particularly smaller mid size that could be elsewhere that don't need to be here. And those are the ones we want to convince and help them to stay here. I think we have to all together fight because you don't want to see businesses leave New York. You want more jobs created in New York. I mean, my position is you should be creating jobs in East New York. 

Ofer Cohen:

So why is a project like Industry City getting such a hard time? Because it's, it's one of the most amazing... 

Carlo Scissura:

It's an amazing place. The amount of jobs that they've created. There are people from all over New York, including the community that go to Industry City. People fear, they fear the unknown. The four letter word today is gentrification. They don't want to see change, and that's human nature. None of us like change. You know, you talked about my growing up, how it's different. Of course it's changed, but I like it. It's good change is good change is important. Um, you know, I tell people if I was afraid of change, I would be sitting on 13th Avenue in Dyker Heights doing real estate closings everyday, right. Would have been fine. My life would've been fine, I'd be making money, I'd probably have less stress. But I changed and we all evolve. And I thin, there are constituencies in New York that worry about change and get scared of it. And it's our job as leaders in business, community, real estate, community, civic communities to educate and say, change is okay because change will benefit you. It will bring resources, it will open jobs, it will create opportunities. And that's really what we want. Opportunities for everyone at every level of the social spectrum. We want opportunity. That's the bottom line. 

Ofer Cohen:

So you know, related to that, you know, your organization is, essentially the membership is people in the real estate and construction industry, right? Being in the real estate and construction industry today in New York, you know, you go to a cocktail party and you have to kind of downplay it a little bit because you're surrounded by people that think that real estate interests are what? 

Carlo Scissura:

So it's interesting, we just put out our two year report. So we do a report every year that looks two years ahead and talks about what the construction real estate industry will look like. It is one of the fastest growing creators of jobs in the city. There are hundreds of thousands of people employed because of this industry. 60% or 61% of the people employed in construction, in good middle-class jobs with health care, et cetera. Do not look like you and I. That's a very good thing. 60%. Our people, our members, people you represent, people I represent are building schools, affordable housing, parks, hospitals, universities. They're building the extension of the second Avenue subway. They're building, by the way, bike lanes. I mean, people forget, you know, you know who builds bike lanes, people in construction, you know, who builds the restaurants you like to go to architects and construction, you know, who builds the schools. You want your kids to go to construction, you know, who builds affordable housing, affordable housing developers and real estate. I mean, let's, let's not take an entire group of people and say we are the enemy when we are employing hundreds of thousands of jobs and we're building the infrastructure that people in New York rely on. I think that's important. 

Ofer Cohen:

So let's talk, you know, a few months ago that I thought it was a really good pick for having you, chair of the committee for the reconstruction of the BQE. And so tell me about that process. 

Carlo Scissura:

So the mayor appointed a commission to look at, putting out some options about rebuilding the BQE from Atlantic Avenue to Sand street a little bit North of then. 

Ofer Cohen:

Why does it need to be rebuilt? 

Carlo Scissura:

Well, I mean, the thing is going to crumble one day. It's, it's old. It's a triple cantilever by the way, an engineering Marvel at the time it was built that whose days have long gone. 

Ofer Cohen:

And for those of us that don't know, this was.. 

Carlo Scissura:

Robert Moses, runs along Brooklyn Heights promenade in Downtown Brooklyn. 

Ofer Cohen:

At a time where the idea was to connect Brooklyn, correct. And Queens and subsequently the suburbs. 

Carlo Scissura:

Correct. So the city DOT, which put a lot of time and effort in and created a proposal that would run a temporary highway along the Brooklyn Heights promenade, obviously that was met with fierce resistance. And the mayor in his wisdom, I think said, we got to look at other options. So let's put together this incredible panel. I'm honored to chair it. And we've spent, you know, the last six months really understanding the project, hearing from experts, talking to people, meeting with community leaders, elected officials, and sort of going the going instead of just saying, this is a nice rendering. I mean they're all great, but so I think, you know, it's interesting when I started this process, in my mind we were going to end the process with a beautiful rendering of what should be built. And I think that's not going to happen. I think what we're going to end the process with is a lot of questions and the questions will be simple. What do we want out of roads? You know, what, what is our expectation of the future of traffic? How do we want to help the community surrounding this? We know we still need to move people. We still need a truck route, but should we be making investments in big highways anymore? Or should we invest in a smaller highway but do other things such as should there be, If you live in Staten Island and work in downtown Brooklyn, shouldn't you have a ferry from Staten Island to Downtown Brooklyn? Sounds very easy and simple and that would eliminate a lot of cars. In my mind there are three parts to the puzzle or three pieces of the puzzle. One is what can the city be doing now in January, 2020 to help this? Should we should be reducing traffic. We should be, again, the things I've said, we could do that right now, we don't have to wait for a road. The second question is what can we do to fix or extend the life period of the BQE without having to destroy people's lives for 20 years? So are there fixes? Is there a replacement, a restructuring that can happen that can reduce traffic continued in the form of a short term patch? When I say short term, remember it's New York city construction. So short term means 20-30 years. I mean because it's got to take you a long time to do something. And then I think one of the thing that excites all of us is a long term vision. And I think that the long term vision should be Verazzano Bridge to the Triborough bridge. It should be looking at the entire corridor, so I think we're going to look at hopefully that there will be a group of people that come together from the state, the city, the federal government, the MTA, the port authority to really focus on the long term fix of the BQE. It is not a road that is for tomorrow I think to to just do a fix of a small stretch doesn't solve the corridor and again, I repeat, when I say the corridor, it means the whole BQE from the minute you get off the Verrazano bridge in Brooklyn to the minute you get on the Triborough bridge in Queens, and I think that it is critical that we invest in a long term planning process and bring in all the effected communities to look at what makes sense. Maybe a tunnel does make sense. Maybe it's time to say we need to build a grand big dig in Brooklyn and Queens that will say we're, we're eliminating highways from Brooklyn and Queens. We're going to have tunnels. We're going to have entrances and exits and high-speed. 

Ofer Cohen:

Everywhere else you go in the world, they decided to do these big tunnels and then they get them done in 24 months and it's done right. 

Carlo Scissura:

But we won't get it done in 24 months, which is why, by the way, it would not be advisable of this committee to say just build a tunnel and get it done. Because in New York it takes decades. So to really do this whole corridor, it's a 30 to 40 year timeline. The current triple cantilever cannot wait 30 to 40 years. So, which is why we say you got to do something now short term. Yes. But while you're doing that, let's plan for the vision of the future. And I think that's what makes the most. 

Ofer Cohen:

Well, we're still young. 

Carlo Scissura:

We're young, we'll drive it. Not for long. We're in our forties I at least me one more year before my end. 

Ofer Cohen:

Right behind your brother. When are you guys going to release the report? 

Carlo Scissura:

We'll have a report out in the next couple of weeks and I'll give you a hint though. There will not be a highway at the promenade, which I think if that's all I said, people would be happy and I could go home. But we wanted to really think a little deeper and a little more logical. 

Ofer Cohen:

Great. This is, I mean, that's amazing. So I typically ask, uh, at the end of these shows, if there's something about, Carlo that the public doesn't know? 

Carlo Scissura:

I think, my most cool story is I have a four and a half year old, who thinks she's 18, but she really is only for the half, who I had through a surrogate as a single parent, I decided one day I want them to have a child. And anyone who knows me knows that when I decide I want something, I generally get it. So I went after it, found an amazing surrogate. And in 2015, my daughter was born and I always say, Ofer Cohen saved my life. Because when I said to him in my office at the chamber, Hey, by the way, I think I had told the executive committee and then you came in my office and was all excited and Ofer you asked me a very simple question, which was, well what are you going to do when you come home with this two or three day old child? And I said, I don't know, I guess I'm going to get a nanny and somebody will help me. And you were like, no, you need what's called the baby nurse cause you have no idea what you're doing and I have the perfect person for you and she's going to call you today because I'm going to call her. And thus was born, not just my child, but the baby nurse who was supposed to stay two weeks, who stayed two and a half years, by the way, make sure you call her, cause you haven't called. She was with me for two and a half years and I figured out a lot of things with her, including how to change diapers so that she don't need to know anymore. You really don't. It's like, it's a very temporary, it's temporary, but anyway, it's fun. It's exciting. It's challenging. But, you know, I tell people we're lucku, you know, I get to run an organization that has a daily impact on the lives of New Yorkers. And then I get to go home to Bay Ridge Brooklyn, which is like living in the suburbs and you get to have the best of both worlds in New York City. Why would you want anything else? 

Ofer Cohen:

Carlos Scissura, living the the Brooklyn Dream. 

Carlo Scissura:

Absolutely. Thank you Ofer 

S3 | E2 | Jonathan Schnapp, Royal Palms Shuffleboard Club

Narrator:

Hey BK with Ofer Cohen. 

Jonathan Schnapp:

It was rough times, you know, it definitely was scary and nobody was dying to throw money at the world's first shuffleboard nightclub next to a polluted canal run by a web developer and a voiceover actress where you're going to drive food trucks into the building. 

Ofer Cohen:

The name The Royal Palms evokes images of vacation, Florida and retired people, but the shuffleboard club is actually a popular destination for young Brooklynites in the Gowanus neighborhood in Brooklyn. The Gowanus sits in between two of the most established neighborhoods in Brownstone Brooklyn: Park Slope and Carroll Gardens. The area is named after a canal that runs through the middle of the neighborhood and that has been polluted for over a hundred years. The city and the local councilmen had been working on a framework to rezone the area into a vibrant mixed use community with a strong focus on affordability and sustainability. In this episode, I talk to Jonathan Schnapp who open the Royal Palms Shuffleboard club in 2014 with his partner Ashley Albert, they turned to a developer friend and a known risk taker in Brooklyn, David Belt, who had created Brooklyn's innovative New Lab and were encouraged to pursue what was by all accounts, a crazy idea. Jonathan Schnapp, Thank you for being here today. 

Jonathan Schnapp:

My pleasure. 

Ofer Cohen:

So walking distance from here, there's the Royal Palms Shuffleboard club. Forget, Gowanus and Brooklyn and all that stuff. Like the idea of shuffleboard? 

Jonathan Schnapp:

Yeah, I used to play with my grandparents in Florida when I was a kid, and hadn't played in a lot of years and then went down on a trip to Florida with my partner. And we were going to Miami to visit her family and then I did some research and found the world's largest shuffleboard club was in St Pete. And I said, Hey, Hey Ashley, is St Pete anywhere close to Miami? And she said, no, that's, that's the other side of the state. And I said, all right, well we should rent a rented car and drive through alligator alley and visit this a hundred year old shuffleboard club. And we did just that and got there and they were having a party like they do every Friday night. And it was young people and old people and hipsters and nerds and weirdos and cool kids and everybody out under the stars playing shuffleboard in this incredible old shuffleboard club. And just had this sort of moment where we're like, this would be the funnest thing, and ever since that night in St Pete, it's kind of been, this is what we wanted to do. Got back to Brooklyn and couldn't get it out of our heads and, and really wanted to find a way to do this. And honestly, one of the first people I ever talked to about it was, was our friend Dave Belt and I came to his office cause Dave Belt does incredible, ridiculous fucking things, you know, and is afraid of nothing, you know. And I was like, this is what I want to. And he was like, I think it's great. You should do it. And I was like, really? Nobody, nobody else has said, I think this is great. You should do it, you know? And started me off on a path and I met a bunch of people. 

Ofer Cohen:

And what did you do before? 

Jonathan Schnapp:

I was a web developer and a teacher at NYU and a DJ and that made pinatas. So I was a New Yorker, you know, just somebody who had a pretty successful career in sort of digital but it was kind of over it and was looking for the next thing. And this felt true to me in a way, because it was something from my childhood and because it reminded me of being a kid on vacation and I thought that it had legs in a way, like the triangles and the circles and the numbers. There's something really beautiful about the aesthetic of the game. There's something beautiful about the way that you play with somebody else and the interaction of the game. It's not bowling. Like, hold on, I'm going to go bowling. You roll your two balls and then you sit down and they label, you know what I mean? There's almost a flirtiness to it of I'm gonna knock you out. You know, and it's a conversation and the conversations that you have when you're waiting for your partners to shoot you sit down on a bench and, you have a conversation with, with somebody, and those, those moments are special and they're not digital moments. They're so analog. That score is kept on the chalkboard and it always has been, you know, and, it doesn't feel like that's changing anytime soon. So yeah, it's been the project of my life. 

Ofer Cohen:

Let's go back to that moment so that, you know, you can get that idea out of your head. It feels like this is what you have to do. Then what? 

Jonathan Schnapp:

Yeah, it's a good question then a long, hard sometimes very painful struggle coming from a place where I had no experience in commercial real estate, construction, hospitality or fundraising, and trying to get from that to opening up a 17,000 square foot brick and mortar thing. So it was a lot of meeting people, a lot of coffees, a lot of talking, raising, , my own awareness, and also raising funds and trying to find a way to get this thing open. And, you know, we found a space probably before we were ready to in Gowanus. 

Ofer Cohen:

So when you signed the lease on the current space, you didn't have the money. 

Jonathan Schnapp:

We didn't have a dime raised. We had our own life savings, which was, but you know you know, thankfully in pretty good shape. You know, we were able to like throw down enough money to secure this space. It was a three months security and he gave us three months free rent and that, that was in the neighborhood of, you know, $60,000 or something like that, and then started bleeding cash and you know, it was rough times, you know, it definitely was scary, and nobody was dying to throw money at the world's first shuffleboard nightclub next to a polluted canal run by a web developer and a voice over actress where you're going to drive food trucks into the building. It just sounded ridiculous, you know, and I look back at all of the people who, you know, said, no thank you to the pitch and, I think they were probably right despite the fact that this thing went as well as it did, and everybody's gotten paid and everything has been fantastic. I don't blame anybody for being like, yeah, no, not for me. 

Ofer Cohen:

Do you think it was just an incredible idea the right time? 

Jonathan Schnapp:

I think we got lucky in a lot of ways, you know, and we got into a great location that was, that I recognized we were going to be able to pull from all of these incredible communities. Carrol Gardens and Cobble Hill and Boerum Hill. 

Ofer Cohen:

Was the Gowanus strategic choice for that reason. Or just that's because that's where it was cheap. I mean, you can also find a space, right? 

Jonathan Schnapp:

Yeah, we were, we were looking for 15 to 20,000 square feet and here was something at, you know, $13 a foot that had air conditioning units already on the roof. So it wouldn't have to do that part of it. And the court's laid out right in the whole thing kind of came together you know, I don't know if it was an incredible idea. We put ourselves in like a sink or swim situation because we were too stupid not to realize that that's what we were doing, you know, and kind of left ourselves no way out. And I think there was definitely a good few times in that year and a half of trying to find the money in particular, where I definitely would have quit, you know, if we would've had a choice, but there wasn't much of a choice, you know, and that's the way, but it was so we just kept swimming. 

Ofer Cohen:

And just give us a sense for, for those of us that were not here, in the Gowanus back then, not that long ago, but still, you know, tremendous amount has happened in the area and it's about to happen in the area. What was open already in that quarter? 

Jonathan Schnapp:

It was everything from old-school places like Two Tom's, to a terrarium shop and Brooklyn Boulders was there and Little Fields was open and the Dino barbecue was under construction and, the Whole Foods was going to be coming also. So everybody knew that that was gonna happen , you know, the Gowanus is a really, really special place and, and I think that polluted canal has given people an opportunity to do some incredible things, having access to this audience of people in this city, is so incredible. And, you know, I don't think it would be true if it wasn't for that polluted canal keeping development out of that area for as long as it did. 

Ofer Cohen:

I mean there was a rezoning that was supposed to get approved about 11 years ago and then when it, became a super fund yeah. That was on hold for about a decade. 

Jonathan Schnapp:

And people were able to make their dreams come true and build a restaurant or, you know, make an archery studio or do a shuffleboard club, you know, and, and ideas that nobody believed in there was an opportunity to do, you know, to take a chance and, and do those ideas in a inexpensive and affordable enough way that there was a chance to success. 

Ofer Cohen:

Why did you pick Brooklyn? 

Jonathan Schnapp:

Well, number one, I guess a bunch of different reasons, number one, there was no way this project could happen in Manhattan at the prices that they were looking at. Listen, we're wasting thousands of square feet of New York city real estate. It is a ridiculous thing to do. You can't even walk on the courts, you know what I mean? So like, just like huge amounts of space that like, are not wasted. But, you know what I'm saying? You know, so, you know, we were looking for something, very inexpensive to try to make this thing work. Again. If I wanted to, be with people like myself, I could just stay the fuck home, you know what I mean? And I don't think that socializing or nightlife, if you want to call it that or, or, you know, hospitality, can be great without diversity and that diversity, can only be attained through value. And if we're paying $60 a foot for 15,000 square feet, we're going to be charging $9 for a beer and you're going to squeeze the amount of people who could come to your place. Your business might be successful, but it's not the business that we want to run. You know, we really wanted to make a place that we would want to go to. And part of that says, come with three friends, rent a court for $40 bucks everybody kicks in, $10, have a couple of $5 beers and some tacos from the food truck and you've had a really nice night for $25 - $30, you know, and that's something you can do over and over and over again and make a part of your life as opposed to an experience where you drop $150 and you come back a year and a half later, you know? , and in order to do the project that we wanted to do and do it the way that we wanted to do, and have it be the place that we wanted it to be. It had to be less expensive than that it had to be so. 

Ofer Cohen:

And the demographic that you're describing is here. 

Jonathan Schnapp:

Yeah, exactly. You know, I think when I think about it, the way that I put it, and what's so special about the Brooklyn neighborhoods that we're talking about and the Brooklyn neighborhood that surrounds Gowanus. And, you know, even out from that is that quite bluntly, it's people with some money to spend who aren't fucking dicks about it, you know? And, that's so rare in the world, honestly, that doesn't exist, you know? And that's what's so special about Brooklyn. They're choosing a Brooklyn life. They want to know their neighbors, they want community. They want to be with each other. And that's extraordinary, you know? And, and as we're looking to grow now, very, very slowly but growing, we opened a second location in Chicago and like the Bucktown Wicker park, Logan square, Humboldt sort of area. And we, we were looking for that thing and found it there. This hospitality life is really hard and it's really quite a grind. You're everybody's bitch. You know what I mean? Like when I was a web developer, I had like 10 clients, you know, I have thousands of clients a week right now. You know what I mean? And, I can't imagine how hard it would be if you didn't love the people that were coming to your place. 

Ofer Cohen:

And if you think about sort of like the greater Brownstone Brooklyn area, it's not like there is really nightlife outside of restaurants and some bars on a Saturday night. I mean, I think that the shuffleboard was the first time I was like, wow, there's actually a demographic in these neighborhoods that want to party and hang. 

Jonathan Schnapp:

Yeah. I think that Gowanus kind of became this special place in that way. Also where people would do the Gowanus experience of going to Dinosaur barbecue, then going to play some shuffleboard and then having some ice cream at Ample Hills, you know, and that was like your Gowanus experience, you know, and somehow, we lucked into that. I think a lot of the people that are there on Saturday night probably aren't from our immediate neighborhood. I think they're kind of coming from everywhere. I think year one, it was very much a Brooklyn thing. Year two it was a New York city thing and year three it kind of popped to this Tristate area thing, which I don't think we were expecting, you know, we really wanted to put this where people where people live and let the corporate follow that. And now with this whole eater-tainment industry popping up that's supposed to somehow save the future of retail, you know what I mean? Whatever, whatever it is that the thing is. Obviously we didn't intend to be that, but we've been caught. We've caught up in that. But, I think that the majority of that world is on the other side of it from us where they're saying, Hey, let's, let's have these corporate parties be our bread and butter. Let's put this thing in midtown, get that dough, and make some money. And it's, it's a great formula for them. It's just not what we do. You know what we want. And the only way that we know how to do it is let's create a vibe first. Let's make this a place for our neighborhood first. Let's build our leagues first. So in Chicago and in New York, we've got about 800 people in each location that play in the shuffleboard leagues every week. And that's at the heart of who we are and sets the tone for the entire week. And all those people, anytime they come in, if you're in the league, you play for free anytime you want to come in, you know, those are our regulars and they love the place and they love the staff and they tip well and they don't you know, treat the place like shit. You know, and, and having those people around is what makes the place feel special. 

Ofer Cohen:

It sounds to me that you, you're, you're sort of like torn between this, true desire to stay authentic and local and the success that it's the lack of better words, gentrification. 

Jonathan Schnapp:

I mean it's somewhat true. I mean, listen, if we can't believe that, like the bro that comes to Gowanus from Kips Bay, you know what I mean? If we can't believe that we can make that person better when they're in our place than they would be somewhere else. By showing them how we treat each other, showing them how we treat our guests, showing them how we do things. If we can't make that person be the guests that we want them to be, then we're not good at our jobs. You know what I mean? 

Ofer Cohen:

That's a lot of responsibility. 

Jonathan Schnapp:

It's not, it's a goal. You know what I mean? But like, we have to believe that everybody who comes into the Royal Palms can be charmed and can be convinced and can have a sense of wonder. They walk into our place, they're like, look at this. This is incredible. And we teach them this game and get into the game, and that's a lot of responsibility. It can be a lofty challenge some days, but that's, if we're not doing that, if we're not able to do that, then we're not good at our thing. 

Ofer Cohen:

You know, Brooklyn has gone through tremendous amount of development transformation, most of which is great. The Gowanus going through a rezoning. My sense is that a similar wave of change is going to come to Gowanus as it came to other neighborhoods in Brooklyn. So where do you see yourself like 10 years from now to be in the neighborhood? 

Jonathan Schnapp:

Listen, we're sitting in a real estate office, you know, I've listened to a bunch of Hey BK podcasts, and I actually asked Dave Belt, I was like, you know, I'm feeling pretty fucking cynical about development in particularly the development of the Gowanus. Should I I sugar coat this for over or should I let loose? And Dave Belt, in Dave Belt fashioned, he was like, let loose, you know? Yeah. I was like, okay, great, fantastic. So you know, in 10 years the shuffleboard club probably won't be there anymore. Our building just got sold, to some relatively good folks. They're looking to create something, you know, and I think in a perfect world, they would knock down our building right now and start building their fucking condos. You know, the smartest people in the world with the most money in the world realize that this is the best bet that they can make. 

Ofer Cohen:

Just as a correction. These are going to be rental apartments, but, okay, 

Jonathan Schnapp:

Whatever the version of this is, the, the people with the most money who are making the safest bet cause these are all risk rewards things. And the group that bought our building said, Hey, we'll give you X much money just to move this somewhere else. You know? And I said, yeah, no, I'm not going to do that. You know, we've got a lease and , we're going to be holding on and cause I honestly don't know why this shuffleboard club works, you know? And there's something about those walls and that space and that moment in that place that somehow is special. And I have not that much confidence that if you take that thing and move it to, you know, one block away, you know, that it's the same thing and that it's that sort of magic. 

Ofer Cohen:

Well it's not going to be the same. But it could still be good. 

Jonathan Schanpp:

It could still be good or could not. People could go there and be like, yeah, it doesn't feel like it did before. You know? And that's something that real estate people people can relate to. Is that like whatever it is, there's risk. I mean. 

Ofer Cohen:

I know you opened in Chicago that has some of the same characteristics you found in the Gowanus are essentially looking for other towns or places in the world that have the same conditions that you found in the Gowanus to go on a seven, eight years ago? 

Jonathan Schnapp:

Yeah. To some degree. Yeah. I think the fact is that we don't, we don't need to do any more of it. Like I'm not, you know, I'm a 47 year old Jewish man with very simple plan. Like, this jumpsuit costs me, you know, $20 on. But not spending on clothes is the point. I don't have any kids. The Brooklyn project alone makes more money than I really needed to. I'm not a rich guy, you know what I mean? But I can buy sushi and a cab, which is all any of us are really ever looking for, you know, to some degree. 

Ofer Cohen:

We have one last question, , that I typically ask. It's tell me something and nobody else, nobody knows about you. 

Jonathan Schnapp:

Ah, nobody knows. Okay, let's see. The thing that people don't know, maybe they could guess, but I think that I was a real strange kid, you know, I grew up outside of the city and in Mamaroneck New York. Strange enough that I wound up at Oberlin college. If you know what that means in some sort of way, you know, a school of weirdos and freaks and wonderful individuals that are artistic and open-minded and bizarre, and always felt that, in some sort of way I was outside of things and I was an outsider in the world. And I think that, the true gratification of this project, of the Royal Palms, was that this larger audience, and thinks what I think is fun, is fun. And that has really changed the way I think about myself in the world. And maybe I wasn't such an outsider the whole time, you know, and maybe I was actually part of this and just didn't know that I was. And I think that change in myself, has been really the most gratifying thing of the project as opposed to any money that we've made or any, you know, success that we've had. I think that's, that's been really the most rewarding part of it is to sort of the change in the way that I see myself because of the way the world has responded to this thing. 

Ofer Cohen:

That's amazing. Very cool. Thank you, Jonathan. 

Jonathan Schnapp:

Thank you for taking time with me. I hope this has been you know, something, something that people enjoy. 

S3 | E1 | Ben Schneider & St John Frizell, Gage & Tollner

St John Frizell:                    00:02                    

Yeah, it just seemed to me just to represent this beautiful thing that was then, you know, kind of forgotten. And then later disgraced and now here and now here it was again, it was like uncovering like a temple in the jungle that had been covered in vines and stuff. And you're just kinda peeling off the layers of it and then all of a sudden there it is.

Ofer Cohen:                       00:21                    

That temple covered in vines is Gage and Tollner. The historic restaurant on Fulton street in Downtown Brooklyn, which shut its doors back in 2004. Gage and Tollner first opened in 1879. Gage and Tollner was one of New York city's earliest landmarked interiors. Its wood details, mirrors and historic gas lamps have remain intact. Now Gage and Tollner has a team of new owners and around 200 small investors from a crowdfunding campaign. The historic restoration project is in its final stages and the restaurant is set to open in the next few months. The three restaurateurs, breathing new life into Gage and Tollner pioneer, the Brooklyn foodie scene and own successful restaurants in Brooklyn. Ben Schneider and chef. Sohui Kim are the husband and wife team behind Good Fork in Red Hook and Insa in Gowanus. They're are opening Gage and Tollner and it's upstairs cocktail lounge with their friends St John Frizell, food writer and bartender behind Red Hook's Fort Defiance. In our first episode of the season, I sat down with Ben and St John in our Hey BK studio. We are on, Gage and Tollner is coming back to Brooklyn. Hey guys, thanks for being here. They met at the burlesque show at a bar in Red Hook in 2002 way before Ikea came to Red Hook.

Ben Schnider:                    01:36                    

We became fast friends and Sohui and I had just bought a rundown house in Red Hook and I was rebuilding it and we had an apartment in the downstairs and St John and his wife Linden became our tenants down there. And and we proceeded then to have good times for a long time and we did,plays back there that St John wrote. And that I starred in the backyard. Those dramas, these, these amazing plays that he wrote.

St John Frizell:                    02:06                    

But with, you know,production values. We had like a full band. We had lights, we had sets, whatever the costumes,

Ben Schnider:                    02:13                    

We sort of memorized our lines and we had a audience of up to a hundred people for each show. It's a big backyard. We just crammed everybody in and we did a pirate play called blow me down and then we did a cowboy play called saddle up and we had original songs. They were really quite phenomenal. Quite phenomenal.

Ofer Cohen:                       02:33                    

I moved to Brooklyn in 2004, so I vividly remember when Good Fork open. Yeah. Because you know, moving to Brooklyn in the early two thousands from the city, that you definitely felt the lack of, the lack of good places to go out to eat.

Ben Schnider:                    02:52                    

When we opened the Good Fork, you could really, it was like maybe 20 places in all of Brooklyn that were doing kind of inventive, sort of higher end food.

Ofer Cohen:                       03:03                    

I don't think there were 20,

Ben Schnider:                    03:04                    

Maybe not. No, you're right.

Ofer Cohen:                       03:06                    

There was probably like six.

Ben Schnider:                    03:07                    

Yeah. I mean, yeah, all of Brooklyn. And now there's like 20 in every neighborhood. And then St John had been talking about this idea for this sort of cafe bar and I actually helped you find that space.

St John Frizell:                    03:20                    

Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah. You actually saw the for rent sign that had been there for years. I was looking all around the neighborhood and you're like, you should call this number. This signs been up here forever.

Ofer Cohen:                       03:31                    

Fort Defiance was modeled after the old day European style bars St John encountered during these travels in South America. Sohui was born in Korea and Ben most recently opened a restaurant and karaoke lounge inside in the Gowanus in 2015.

Ben Schnider:                    03:46                    

We used drive to flushing all the time cause we craved, you know, Korean food and that experience. And so we're like, well there's none in South Brooklyn. Really of a scale, you know, with barbecue and all and the whole thing. And so that's how we came up with the idea for the inside and just built it.

Ofer Cohen:                       04:03                    

From my perspective, you know, living in these neighborhoods. For the last 15 years, it was like a total game changer because, you know, just like the vibe, the family style, you can come with your kids, you can come for a date, the karaoke in the back. It was like such an institution and also one of the first establishments that kinda made Gowanus be taken a little bit more seriously on the foodie map.

Ben Schnider:                    04:32                    

Yeah. It's great because it's really fun and we also have the karaoke rooms there and all that's fun and the bars is fun, but then the food is all homemade, so it's real tasty. But the working title for Insa before we came up with the name was Korean fun time place for celebration, which we actually still have on the menu like little spot.

Ofer Cohen:                       04:56                    

The friends who embodied the Brooklyn spirit with great food and drinks lived through Superstorm Sandy that flooded red hook and brought the community together. But this is the first time they've truly worked together.

St John Frizell:                    05:07                    

Well. I was, I was looking for a place to open in this neighborhood. I really fell in love. I really fell in love with the neighborhood. So my son goes to the international charter school of New York, which had, a campus on Willoughby street and one on Hanover. So I was there, you know, multiple times a week to drop them off and pick them up. It's the neighborhood I really was not that familiar with except, you know, by just passing through like everybody does. And so I really started to spend time here for the first time about five years ago. And I don't know, just fell in love with it. Like it's got just such energy and there's like, there's always something happening and it really feels like you're in a city, there's a lot of people on the sidewalk and it feels, it feels good. Um and there's not many places to eat or drink. So I started to look around for a place to open a small bar you know, tried to rope Ben into it and thought maybe we could go in together. And do some kind of a thing where I'm doing the drinks and they're doing the food. We started to look at properties and we are looking at one on Willoughby and it was a dump. And I was really discouraged. And the realtor said, well, let me show you one more thing I have around the corner. And she walked us right into Gage and Tollner, and it was the first time we had seen it when it wasn't a jewelry store or a clothing store or something. We had never been there to dine, but we both knew sort of the legend of the restaurant and had, you know, done research on its history. So when we walked in, I mean, but it was amazing. It's like, you know, as I'd say, it's like walking into a cathedral. It's like you just fall in love with the space instantly and recognized like the power that it has. It's, it's really very special.

Ofer Cohen:                       06:52                    

Tell us a little bit about, you know, the history.

St John Frizell:                    06:55                    

So Gage and Tollner opened a little bit down a Fulton street, what would be a Cadman Plaza now in 1879, it moved to its current location on Fulton street near the intersection of Jay street in 1889. And,it's, it's the third landmarked,interior in New York after the New York public library and Grant's tomb. So people recognize that it, that the interior has real historic significance and it's just absolutely beautiful when you walk in. So it was an operation from 1879 until 2004, so 125 years.

Ofer Cohen:                       07:36                    

It's very interesting. Like 2004 was such a pivotal year in downtown Brooklyn. The rezoning was just passed. Downtown Brooklyn was just about to start a whole new trajectory. Any idea why closed?

Ben Schnider:                    07:48                    

Well, you know, restaurants aren't like the real estate business. It's really a daily in and out and so, and there's, there's like the profit margin is very small and the overhead is very high. So you're not, you know,, it's not the same kind of business model. You can't wait for that now for the future, you could see the change on the horizon, but you gotta be on the horizon to make money in the restaurant business. You can't be waiting, you know, it was a great place still, but it was just a hard place to have a large scale restaurant at that time.

Ofer Cohen:                       08:25                    

But it was a pretty big deal when they closed. Right?

St John Frizell:                    08:27                    

I mean, yeah, it was, I mean, I think, it's just one of those things where, you know, people saw it in the paper and said, oh, I never went to Gage and Tollner, I kept meaning the go.

Ofer Cohen:                       08:37                    

Nobody lived in Downtown Brooklyn at that point. I mean, that was before all the development came in. So there was no density.

St John Frizell:                    08:42                    

Right. And after six o'clock, they just, they would roll up the sidewalks here and there just was nothing going on.

Ofer Cohen:                       08:47                    

So essentially 15 years of remarkable transformation of a neighborhood you know, tens of thousands of people moving. That restaurant was waiting in a way. And that space was waiting because the space was really hard to do anything else with.

St John Frizell:                    09:03                    

Well, so then the rest of the history after it closed in 2004, it became a TGI Friday's that was open for a couple of years and then it closed and it became an Arby's and it was an Arby's for about a year. Then it became a clothing store and then another clothing store. And then another clothing store. We just kind of went through a lot of tenants at that point. But when we found it, it was empty. It was vacant for the first time in a long time and it had been vacant for a couple of months. Yeah, you could totally, you could see the whole thing for the first time, you know, because when it was a clothing store, they put up these false walls in front of the interior, it has these beautiful arched mirrors and these chandelier's and the clothing stores had done their best to hide all of that. So they put up these, a false walls along the wall. So you couldn't see the mirrors. They put up a grid in the ceiling so that the chandelier's were kind of hid and it was like a, it was like seeing it for the first time. It was amazing.

Ofer Cohen:                       10:03                    

You immediately fall in love with the space and the idea essentially? .

Ben Schnider:                    10:07                    

I had been obsessed with the space had been never been there, set foot in there, but I somehow, like almost a decade before we saw it together, had learned about it. I don't remember how I learned about it, but I became really interested in it on a kind of romantic level in New York history. I was a young restaurant owner and I was like this Gage and Tollner thing. So I looked into it and I actually called Peter Ashkenazi, who was the owner before Joe and Peter was a customer of mine at the Good Fork and so in my reservation books, I found his phone number and I called him and I asked him about it and he said, you know, it's complicated. It's hard to do business there. The ownership is complicated right now and also you're not ready and he was right about all that. And so I kind of, it fell by the wayside and then 10 years later we walk in there. So I had a kind of a connection to it in that way. You knew about it too as a kind of a historian of food and drink, which St John really is. You know, you knew exactly what was going on.

St John Frizell:                    11:19                    

Yeah, it just seemed to me just to represent you know, something in our culture, this beautiful thing that was then, you know, kind of forgotten. And then later disgraced and now here it was again, it was like uncovering like a temple in the jungle that had been covered in vines and stuff and you're just kind of peeling off the layers and then all of a sudden married his and you'd get this feeling of wonder about it. We got this idea on, when we first saw the space, we kind of fleshed it out on the back of the napkin on the ride back to Ben's house. We told Sohui, that instead of a little cocktail bar, we were opening 110 seat chophouse and she said...

Ben Schnider:                    12:02                    

She said I sent you guys for a cup of milk and you came back with a cow.

St John Frizell:                    12:09                    

You know what was going to be a project that was going to cost about $400,000 became you know, a multi million dollar project. We started looking around the Downtown Brooklyn partnership introduced us to a few venture capitalists. We kind of went round and round with them. In the meantime, the clock is ticking because the realtors are still aggressively showing this property. We know there are other restaurateurs interested and we had to do something. We were getting a lot of nos and so we needed to look for another way in. So we decided to take it right to the public. So we create a regulation, crowdfunding campaign, which is, you know, different from something like a Kickstarter in that, you know, instead of getting a tote bag it's a real investment and you're looking for a real return. So we started this thing in August of 2018. It was a covered in the New York times and,it was ultimately successful and we raised just shy of half a million dollars,through a revenue share loans,made by our investors and the investors come from largely from the neighborhood that the restaurants in,and the surrounding neighborhoods, which is as it should be.

Ofer Cohen:                       13:28                    

Without even mentioning the word gentrification. It comes to mind, right? That there's an institution that was old, this Brooklyn that's completely changed in the last 15, 20 years. The neighborhood is a very different neighborhood. You come in with a new voice for food and, how did you even start thinking about what you're doing there?

Ben Schnider:                    13:47                    

Well, I mean, speaking for, Sohui, who I'm sorry I couldn't be here today, but her food is really rooted in this kind of like great combination of simplicity and uniqueness which means sort of one foot in comfort food and one foot and fine dining is how I've always described it and using kind of global ingredients. But she has a great way of bringing love into the food and bringing out flavor in a way that's so satisfying. And if you think about the classic cuisine that a place like Gage is known for, you know, that food is begging for that kind of treatment and that's kind of what we're going to do. So, you know, we were excited by that food and to me a place like Gage and a menu like that, if done with heart, done with soul, it's fun and it's satisfying and it's a little bit of an antidote to this world we're all experiencing with our phones and, and just being glued to them all the time. It's like when you walk into a place like Gage and you're going to sit down and have dinner there, you're going to escape that for a minute. And I think that people are really craving that same dishes, applying some of the kind of seasonality and, I know talk about cliches, but the farm to table movement and just attention and care.

St John Frizell:                    15:11                    

Farm to table, I mean in the 1890s everything was farm to table. I mean it's kind of like going back to, the you know, the roots of, of the restaurant. We're gonna try to get oysters as local as we can. We're getting our food as local as we can. This is the way that they used to do it. This is not, this is not a new idea.

Ben Schnider:                    15:27                    

Right. And I think that for us too, you know, kind of because there's a long history to the restaurant, there's a lot to draw from and we are going to do some fun stuff like have a monthly probably historic special if you will in the in the food realm where we find that there's all these, the menu was vast back in the old days. And there's all these there's all these dishes that have bizarre names, like oysters, boys and barriers.

Ofer Cohen:                       15:56                    

You always collected old the old menus?

St John Frizell:                    16:00                    

Yeah, we've got menus going back to 1919 and actually we just got one yesterday that goes back to 1895. So it's amazing. I mean it's, and then you have to go back and look at what these dishes were and some of them are really hard to figure out like what is, you know potatoes Saratoga. We had to look that one up.

Ofer Cohen:                       16:20                    

Well actually what is it?

St John Frizell:                    16:21                    

Potato chips. So they were on the menu through, through 1919. I was happy to see them on the 1895 menu and then by the fifties they drop off the menu. Why? Probably because you could buy them on every corner. So it wasn't fancy anymore, but for awhile it was, you know, so they were on the menu.

Ben Schnider:                    16:39                    

So you know, we'll have stuff like that. Some of it will be just be kind of guessing or making it up but it'll be a fun exercise to try and recreate some of those dishes or guessing what they might've been like. So there's going to be invention and creativity, but at the same time it's really about, you know, making an Oysters Rockefeller that is just like perfectly balanced and a lot of those simple dishes are just all about balance and ingredients and execution and technique. And that's what we're gonna do. We're not trying to reinvent the wheel here and my principal as like the builder has been our basic thing is like, let's turn the lights down and serve are some good food because that's what it wants. That's what it is.

Ofer Cohen:                       17:24                    

Right. So talking about the lights down, what do you guys envision the experience to be?

St John Frizell:                    17:30                    

People who have been to the restaurant before will totally recognize it in its new incarnation. The idea is that the people who have been there before will feel like they're coming home. You know, they'll feel like nothing has changed. That even the things we do change that they'll remember them being there before, if you know what I mean. You know, what I'm trying to focus on is the experience when you first walk in the door, how do you feel? And we want people to feel really welcome and we want, everyone who walks in to feel that and if we can achieve that and if the food is good, we've got a great business. I mean, that's, that's sort of the goal.

Ofer Cohen:                       18:13                    

Was it more formal back then than what you envisioned Gage and Tollner today should it be?

St John Frizell:                    18:20                    

Yeah, it went through different periods. I feel like it kind of changed over time and it's level of formality. There are definitely at times when it was white tablecloths and very kind of a fine dining, but I think it started originally a little bit simpler than that you know, everyone who's been there in the past remembers the waiters. So the waiters were up to the 1960s or seventies, all black men in black tie with waistcoats and black blazers within insignia on the sleeves that indicate how long they had worked there with a bar meaning one year, a star meaning five and an Eagle, meaning 25 years. And there were men there who had two Eagles on their shoulders. So these were guys, these are guys, you know, we talked to the old manager, this guy John Simmons, who said that there was a guy working there, he was the manager in, in the sixties and seventies. There was a guy working there who had had two Eagles who fought in world war one. And it's like it's incredible, these guys would get a job there and just keep it forever. So, but they were very, you know, they presented this very kind of, you know, a dignified but, but also warm service. So it's like when people talk about the experience of dining there in the past, they talk about the food a little bit, but they really talk about the service and the room. So how to, you know, present a meal? So it's a special occasion. So you feel like, like you're dining at a special place without it being too fussy or too formal.

Ben Schnider:                    19:53                    

And I've always thought of it as kind of like, you can feel like you could spend $40 or $400 and either way, either direction you go, it's good. Kind of more of a brasserie vibe, you know, a place that is like really attentive and really friendly and the service is like impeccable but alive.

St John Frizell:                    20:15                    

And then behind them there'll be the Sunken Harbor club, which is a little 30 seat cocktail bar that will have a vibe of like a, a Victorian Explorers club that was, you know tucked away and sort of the legend is that it was a club for eccentric, you know, Victorian explorers. They would meet up there and plan their expeditions and they were very secretive. And then at some point in the 20th century, they just disappeared and left their club behind them with the cocktail recipe book of all the cocktails they collected from around the world. And we found the book and we're just reopening the club.

Ben Schnider:                    20:53                    

Basically it's going to be a ship and old wooden ship that sank to the bottom of the ocean and then kind of listed over sideways. So it's gonna all be a little bit crooked and we're going to have great Tiki drinks in there. And then all kinds of sort of, you know treasures from various travels.

St John Frizell:                    21:11                    

Yeah. It's the, it's like a little weird secret bar on the second floor of a old chophouse. You know, there's nothing like it in the neighborhood, certainly anywhere else that I know of. And it's like very tucked away in the back. Whereas the first floor is very kind of public facing and faces the street and it's very open and high and this one's very kind of low ceiling and cozy and you know, downstairs the history is all real and upstairs the history is completely fake.

Ofer Cohen:                       21:40                    

I usually ask, tell me something nobody knows about you but I think maybe we can do something a little different and we can ask, tell me something nobody knows about the Gage and Tollner.

St John Frizell:                    21:51                    

There's just a lot of them. I don't know where to start. Let's see.

Ben Schnider:                    21:58                    

Well I found an old box of like cough drops from like 1895 in the wall. And also like fun things like the old wallpaper in the bathrooms. We're going to take the a piece that we found was an extra piece that they kind of left up in the ceiling and we're going to frame it and put that up.

St John Frizell:                    22:15                    

The old maitre d of Gage And Tollner was a gentleman named Wade Siler, who a lot of people remember cause he was very dapper and he's very kind and he still lives in Fort Greene. He's 92 years old. I got to go to his home and then brought him to a Gage and Tollner he still gets around very slowly, but he still gets around. And uhe's got a beautiful baritone singing voice and uwhile he was at Gage and Tollner, I asked him if he could sing. He sang love is a many splendor thing and it was just acapella and it was just incredible. He was a singer. He tried to make a go of it as a singer in the fifties and sixties. And he went under the name Wade Sinclair. And so some people know him by that name still, but he has promised that he will come to the opening and perform. So I look forward to.

Ofer Cohen:                       23:16                    

The team is putting the finishing touches on the space. Ben and St John say eventually they plan the stage the third play in the trilogy that began nearly 20 years ago into Red Hook backyard. This time at Gage and Tollner, thanks so much guys. Gage and Tollner back in Brooklyn.

St John Frizell:                    23:32                    

Thanks for having us over. It's has been a blast.

S2 | E10 | Chad Dickerson

Narrator:                   
Hey BK with Ofer Cohen

Chad Dickerson:              
I was recruiting an engineer and he was making a choice between Apple, obviously in Cupertino, California and Etsy, you know, it's hard to recruit against Apple. So I got to know him and I was starting to understand what he was into and he was really into music and hip hop and my closing line that got him over the line to come to Etsy was how much hip hop are you going to see in Cupertino, like run to Brooklyn.

Ofer Cohen:                          
On today's episode of Hey BK I talk to Chad Dickerson, former CEO of Etsy, the ecommerce site of handcrafted goods that started in Brooklyn and became a multibillion dollar success. Chad now has an executive coaching career and he's teaching at Cornell Tech, he got his start in silicon valley but grew up in North Carolina. In our conversation you'll hear that after just 11 years, Chad has found, his place in Brooklyn and considers it a real home.

Chad Dickerson:              
I lived in the south until I was 23. So like that was pretty much all I knew. And, I didn't visit New York until I was 26. So, you know, I grew up in eastern North Carolina in a place called Greenville and my kind of early childhood, still very farm and oriented. Um, both sets of my grandparents were tobacco farmers, like livestock, pig farmers. And so that was kind of the world that I was used to. And, my maternal grandfather, was unable to read or write, you know, my grandfather would get his birthday card and I at, you know, from age five until much later, like I would read his birthday card

Ofer Cohen:                      
That's incredible

Chad Dickerson:              
That really made an impression on me. And eventually, you know, I ended up going to Duke, scholarship kid and I actually, I majored in English and graduated with honors focused on Shakespeare. So I just never forgot just how important reading is. And it also, I think, growing up in that environment, really gave me kind of a deep appreciation for, can't think of a better term than just like regular people. And so since then, obviously, I mean you know, the guy, I rung the bell at Nasdaq and like took a company public and you know, met famous people and all that stuff. But you know, I'll never forget kind of where I came from. And you know, when I left at Etsy, one of the things that I was proudest of is that, you know, the people who cleaned the toilets and the security guards, and those people, you know, told me as I was leaving that they really appreciated, you know, how I related to them.

Ofer Cohen:                      
So you spent 10 years in California? In between, the south and Brooklyn

Chad Dickerson:              
Yeah at that time in the bay area from 98 to 2008, I went through the whole ".com" boom and bust. I would say what's in some ways, like the most formative time of my life, like I was 3000 miles away from where I grew up in California in great ways and negative ways. It's like living in a different country and, I just learned a lot there.

Ofer Cohen:                      
You worked for Yahoo.

Chad Dickerson:              
I worked for Yahoo. I went out there in 98 to be the CTO at salon.com, which was really an online innovator at the time. And, you know, I went, you know, this kid who grew up in the south, I went from that to, you know, being in a newsroom with people who worked at rolling stone in the 70s and you know, just sort of crazy lefty San Francisco. I say that with a lot of affection.

Ofer Cohen:                      
And then again, your name was Chad so they, kind of embraced you.

Chad Dickerson:              
Well, they thought that, a really close friend of mine out there said, when I joined, you know, I had just worked at CNN, I'd like graduated from Duke. My name was Chad and I came from the south. He said he thought that I'd come from some kind of aristocratic southern family and we laugh about it because as he got to know me he got to know what kind of mind and personal stories I had.

Ofer Cohen:                      
Though Chad had a successful career at Yahoo and was living the good life on the west coast. A friend who had invested in Etsy convinced him to interview at the Funky Brooklyn based startup.

Chad Dickerson:              
So I finally went out to Brooklyn in July, 2008 and I emailed a couple of my friends and said, you know, I'm going out to Brooklyn to talk to Etsy. I'm never going to move to Brooklyn. I'm like a California guy now. So I totally fell in love with Etsy. I met Rob Kalin, the founder. I went from kind of not being that interested in it, just totally entranced. And a big part of it was Brooklyn. Brooklyn in 2008 was a really exciting time. And so my wife and I came back to California and we'd just been married for like a year and we decided to move to New York.

Ofer Cohen:                      
That's incredible. You know, you took a shot and look this interview that he didn't even think.

Chad Dickerson:              
Yeah. And like, I mean it's easy to sit here in 2019 and Etsy is probably, I haven't looked lately, but probably like an $8 billion company, right? It was not an $8 billion company. You know, Etsy was all about handmade and the office was handmade. I mean Rob the founder, uh, I think he actually did the plumbing and the office. Um, cause I remember one day early in my tenure there, like there was like a clog in the sink and rob the founder went and got his tools and said, okay, like I know how to fix this because I put it together. So the office itself was handmade and uh, and very, I mean people talk about startups being scrappy. Like there was not much going on in Downtown Brooklyn at that time. You know, there was one bathroom for the whole company, like one toilet. Um, and so if anyone had to go, like, you just had to wait and there was a sign on the toilet paper that said, you know, if the toilet paper runs out, go buy some. So if you're the lucky soul to go in there and you know, the toilet paper runs out, you had to go, you know, somewhere in that area in Downtown Brooklyn, you could probably buy toilet paper in a hundred places around there now. But you had to go like on a trip just to like find a place.

Ofer Cohen:                      
Yeah. so when you, when you came, how many employees?

Chad Dickerson:              
I think it was about 40 employees. Um, it was like a really small office and you know, companies, startups have lunches and such. And when we had, our weekly lunch, everyone could sit around a table. So, you know, when I joined it was three years old, but it was still incredibly, incredibly small. And, it's one of those things you learn in life. I remember walking in and feeling like I was joining late because I was like employee number, I don't know, 45.

Ofer Cohen:                      
Chad to help build Etsy for nine years and felt like a founder. Eventually Etsy became the biggest success story for tech in Brooklyn. He started as a CTO and in 2011 became CEO until his departure two years ago. At the beginning he faced typical startup challenges, like faulty technology. Not to mention this was the midst of the great recession.

Chad Dickerson:              
That technology was in really rough shape. Like a lot of startups, like the company was scaling, and the team was building as fast as they could, but you know, you don't always build perfect software in that case.

Ofer Cohen:                      
Was it harder to at that point and to recruit tech talent, you know, to work in that space in Brooklyn

Chad Dickerson:              
It was somewhat difficult. So, you know, I had a couple of former CTO's come in and do some consulting work for me, the kind of Silicon Valley folks to kind of look at the tech stack and everything. And one of the things that they wrote up in their report was that they believed it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to build a first rate technology team in New York. Right. And so Brooklyn at the time, especially if you know the geography of Brooklyn, that space was in that neighborhood was not, you know, full of coffee shops. We had terrible Internet service. Like the Internet was going out constantly when I was there. And I think part of it was, you know, there were two high rises being built, one on either side. And just so the building for my first year, the building was shaking pretty much the whole time we were there and there were two pile drivers just like boom, boom. And so it's kind of an unstable building. There are two huge skyscrapers there now, but the Internet went out all the time. And one of my first task, a CTO, you think you're going to come in and be like really strategic and all this stuff is, I think I went down to the Verizon store and bought a bunch of, you know, wireless Internet cards so that developers could keep working. You know, I had just come over from the west coast where I had to fine career and you know, could have done a lot of things there. I stepped into Etsy, the technology was in worse shape than I thought. I honestly, I call it a couple of friends back on the west coast and it's like, oh, I think I might've made a career ending mistake by joining Etsy. It turned out to be the opposite. But, um, yeah, Lehman brothers crashed. Like I really felt like I had come, to the east coast in general, absolutely the wrong time. And fortunately I think this is kind of an under appreciated aspect of Etsy. Etsy is not, and never has been a hugely capital intensive business. So Etsy even in 2008 was running pretty close to break even, especially by today's standards. And I think in 2009 or so we did break even during one period. So it's like a very good business and, there was no need during that period to raise venture capital. Um, in 2008 and, you know, it turns out that a downturn is also a great time to build a company.

Ofer Cohen:                      
Chad describes what felt like an uphill battle trying to recruit talent to build a major tech company in Brooklyn. So he got creative.

Chad Dickerson:              
What I learned is I learned how to pitch Etsy really well. I hired some of my former colleagues on the west coast and convinced them to move to New York.

Ofer Cohen:                      
How did you do that? You're not even sure if you made the right choice?

Chad Dickerson:              
Well, interestingly, and it took me a little while to learn this. I ask myself like, why, why did I come and obviously Etsy, a great company to work for, really interesting, but I would say a huge, huge part of it was New York. Like I wanted to live a more exciting life and you know, like I said, I got a degree in English with a focus on Shakespeare. So I was interested in things like theater and art. And even in, in 2008 you could see the bay area in San Francisco started to become like too tech focused and you know, the arts getting squeezed out and that kind of thing. So, um, it was really as much a lifestyle decision as anything. And so I'll give you an example of like I was recruiting an engineer who, um, was graduating from Carnegie Mellon and he was uh, making a choice between Apple obviously in Cupertino, California and Etsy. And uh, you know, it's hard to recruit against Apple, like everyone's using Apple products and everything. So I got to know him and I was starting to understand what he was into and he was really into music and hip hop and my closing line that got him over the line to come to Etsy was how much hip hop are you going to see in Cupertino, like run to Brooklyn? And that was it. And I use some version of that pitch 100,000 times later I'd find out what someone liked and New York has everything.

Ofer Cohen:                      
That's amazing. From my experience, there's a component of if you're a real entrepreneur and if the bay area is already established to do a tech company in Brooklyn feels like even more entrepreneurial.

Chad Dickerson:              
Absolutely. And that really kind of counterintuitive thing about New York tech is that like New York is, you know, 8 million people, largest city in the United States. But the tech community is incredibly intimate and you know, everyone knows each other. And it's also really, diverse in terms of industries. So right when I was in the bay area, I knew a lot of engineers, a lot of product managers, a lot of people who worked at tech companies. But in in New York, I know a lot of journalists, a lot of attorneys, a lot of artists, a lot of business people of all stripes. And so it's a much like broader view of business and I think it's much more connected to reality. And I think it's also much more connected to just just sort of the global world that we live in because New York in some ways is almost like a physical representation of the Internet. Like you have this grid of streets and you know, you can practically go to different countries like every day just walking in different neighborhoods, going to different restaurants. My name is Chad. I got into a lyft once and the driver was like smiling and laughing and he said, Chad, I am from the country of Chad. And, uh, we just had a great conversation.

Ofer Cohen:                      
But I think the overall notion in our industry that it's still, we still need to pitch the idea of tech, especially big tech to establish their headquarters offices, you know, studios, whatever in Brooklyn. Why is that?

Chad Dickerson:              
I actually think there's less need to pitch it every day. And I would say five years ago I felt more that way, but a few things have happened. I think, you know, one is a number of companies that were started in New York have gone public and hit the public markets. And I think that's a big moment because it creates liquidity for people who live here and it also creates kind of the next generation of investors. And so there was a time when, you know, the DoubleClick folks were kind of the big story, but now you could say like Etsy and Mongo DB and Yext and like all sorts of companies. So that happened. Um, you know, something I'm involved in Cornell Tech. Um, the University on Roosevelt Island is now been established and I think really amazing tech focused academic institutions are a big part of the equation. This sounds crazy if you live in New York, but I would, five or so years ago you could start to pitch people that it's less expensive to live in New York than it is in San Francisco. Like those, the monthly rent lines crossed at some point. Um, and I think, there's also been a backlash against, uh, the tech industry and I think there is a desire to kind of, you know, kind of do something that's more connected to the world and isn't kind of in the kind of ivory tower of Silicon Valley. And I think New York is kind of the perfect place for that. So I think New York has become, you know, really easy to pitch. If there was ever any question that this cycle was going to happen in a very Broadway in New York, I think that question is already answered. And these things have a way of just snowballing and continuing. So I think, uh, what I like to say is New York is not the next silicon valley. New York is the next New York, right? The tech ecosystem I think is, is very much maturing right now.

Ofer Cohen:                      
I'm assuming there's a notion of, you know, Brooklyn, as part of New York City, but Brooklyn enables you to have different kinds of neighborhoods and different kinds of experiences and the pricing points and lifestyles and which could be very attractive for different people and different kinds of sides of the tech spectrum.

Chad Dickerson:              
Absolutely. And I think, you know, I think that in some ways our eras and really every era has defined by kind of like a search for meaning and connection. And one of the things that I've noticed in the tech community in New York is it's very, connected to the civic life of the city. And so just using me as an example, when I was CEO at Etsy, Etsy was obviously a big international company, public company based in Dumbo, but I was also on the Dumbo Business Improvement District Board. And that was really important to me to be, you know, Etsy was a business, but also front street pizza was a business and, there are businesses all around us and so I spent time with the local business owners, in that context because I was one of their peers and I'm still on the board at Saint Anne's warehouse.

Ofer Cohen:                      
Chad is working closely with founders and chief executives as a coach. He received the same kind coaching when he became CEO of Etsy and is sharing his experience going from a small startup to a public company. Meanwhile, Chad is finding himself immerse in a lifestyle of Brooklyn. He and his family have made at home in Carroll Gardens where a CEO of a major company, just another regular guy.

Chad Dickerson:              
One of the things that I really love about New York is that no matter how big you are in any industry, the capacity for people not to care is really high. When I was running at Etsy, obviously, you know a big company here in New York. And when people cared about, like my, one of my neighbors a long time a New Yorker and native came to me and said, so, uh, like you work on the Internet? And I was like, yeah. He's like, can you help me fix my Wifi? So like it's like I don't care.

Ofer Cohen:                      
Did you?

Chad Dickerson:              
I did. Yeah, I know how to, if anyone out there needs Wifi help, I'm your man. Something that was surprising to me now, having lived in New York for 11 years is New York is fast and people talk quickly and like all those things. But um, it is the friendliest city in the world as far as I'm concerned

Ofer Cohen:                      
Because you could actually talk, you can start a conversation with anyone anywhere.

Chad Dickerson:              
Yeah. The thing I liked the most about it too is you get to know the various merchants around the neighborhood too. So my son who's seven years old, takes piano lessons at the place called rock school on Smith Street. It used to be called musicians general store. And, uh, you know, Mingo, the owner is been in the neighborhood since like the late fifties. And so when my son is in his piano lesson, I talked to Mingo about music and the neighborhood and you know, when he used to play in battle of the bands, those places are really kind of, not just kind of service providers or stores, but they're also social institutions. And, you know, I like it so much. I actually started taking piano lessons about a month ago. Almost like, you know, my, my son's grandparents are in North Carolina, but he's got several grandparents on the block and that's just really, really nice. And so, yeah, I feel like, um, he, and we have a community that, uh, in this big city of 8 million people that's really, really, really intimate. You would see this maybe a little in San Francisco, but not, not as much in New York. Like I'm walking around anywhere and I just like run into people because there's very much a walking culture in New York. And so I feel like it's so much easier to kind of stay in touch with people. Like most of us don't spend much time in cars and, that kind of like street life in the civic life of New York, really encourages a lot of chance interactions. I'm still all 11 years in incredibly surprised at how intimate a city of 8 million people can be. You know, my wife and I kind of have a joke, like sometimes we want to go out to a bar and have a drink and talk to each other, but we kind of say how long before we run into someone that, you know, and that's a beautiful thing.

Ofer Cohen:                      
But that is cool, and it's been only in 11 years.

Chad Dickerson:              
I mean, yeah, it's just such a social environment. And a friend of mine who lived here for a while before I moved here said, you know, one of the great things about New York is like you'd go to a bar or something, like the person next to you to start starts talking to you. Right. And you know, I haven't spent a lot of time in the bay area recently, but if you go to a bar in San Francisco, you kind of, everybody sits and looks at their phones until they're friends arrive and then they socialize. But it's all very like, yeah.

Ofer Cohen:                      
So it sounds to me like you, you, you actually wouldn't want to do it anywhere else, but in Brooklyn, right?

Chad Dickerson:              
Definitely not, I mean, I was talking to a friend who's been in New York for probably 30 years and we were talking about like New York has kind of, almost like an addictive quality, like the things that you like are things that you just can't get anywhere else. And so I find even on the kind of a basic level, you know, I like track my steps like everyone else. And I find that when I go to another city, like my step count goes way, way down. And in New York, you, you're walking like five, six miles a day and without even noticing, right. And while you're walking, you're running into your neighbors and you know, walking into shops. And that kind of thing. And so I think that social network and that social environment, um, is something that you just really can't replicate anywhere else or I haven't seen anywhere else you can do that. And maybe one day I'll start a company again. Uh, but, I'm really enjoying this and as I mentioned, I'm, taking piano lessons and so I decided to carve out a little time to do something creative. And, uh, as a CEO, you can't take piano lessons.

Ofer Cohen:                      
You already told us about the piano lessons, but I do ask at the end of every show, uh, to tell me something that nobody knows about you.

Chad Dickerson:              
Oh Gosh. Now I'm worried

Ofer Cohen:                      
Yeah, the piano was like a perfect one.

Chad Dickerson:              
I'm gonna have to think for a moment on this. Gosh, I guess I would just talk too much about myself in public. Um, well, one thing that may be surprising, I'm a person who's like very pro gun control and that sort of thing. But I grew up in the south and grew up in a culture where you were taught to like to shoot weapons. And I'm, if you were to like give me a rifle and a target, I'm like a really good shot. I don't own any guns. I'm very much pro gun control, I know guns well. And you know, I've shot a variety of them and that's just part of the part of the culture that I grew up in. And you know, at heart I'm basically a pacifist. So the idea that like, I'm a good, a good shot, at a target with a weapon is probably a little surprising.

Ofer Cohen:                      
I can totally see that. Thank you Chad.

Chad Dickerson:              
Thank you Ofer

S2 | E9 | Dick Zigun

Narrator:                   
Hey BK with Ofer Cohen

Dick Zigun:                         
It was fully formed from day one. The first parade in 1983 had everything you'd see now. It had the empty cars, it had the king and queen, it had tongue in cheek contest, not beauty contests for most Beautiful Mermaid, but mermaid costume, the beach putting pouch and all of that was their from beginning. It's just gotten bigger.

Ofer Cohen:                      
On today's episode of Hey BK, we move on to South Brooklyn to talk to Dick Zigun, the unofficial mayor of Coney Island, the tattoo covered, Yale-educated playwright runs the Coney Island Museum along with the Mermaid Parade, which he founded 37 years ago, the giant art parade in late June, showcases as an array of memoried customs and Coney Island pride. It's the largest parade in the United States. Growing hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world. Dick moved to New York City in 1979 and has been an advocate for Coney island ever since.

Dick Zigun:                         
Coney island has always been a little bit off beat, a little bit weird. It is a place where New York City residents from all five boroughs come to enjoy themselves. Coney Island is different than just about any spot in New York City, except perhaps Times Square where everyone co mingled. You go on a roller coaster and Hassidim are sitting next to homeboys.

Ofer Cohen:                      
Where did you grow up?

Dick Zigun:                         
So I grew up not that far away, but not in New York City. I'm a native of Bridgeport, Connecticut. A shortcut to understand me is Bridgeport is the hometown of PT. Barnum. Barnum not only ran the American museum in downtown Manhattan, not only started Ringly brothers Barnum and Bailey circus, he was Mayor of Bridgeport. And when I was a kid, there was a month long Barnum festival and there were parades, there was a carnival that would come to town. There was a competition for young school children to impersonate midgets, Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren. And when I was a smart ass seven years old, I was already a Barnum scholar. And I knew that elephants and little people were patriotic. Um, I left Bridgeport at 18. Got a fancy smancy education, a very artsy fartsy Bennington college and then Yale School of drama. I knew that if I was going to make a living in theater, the only place to attempt that in America as seriously as New York City. Um, so I moved to New York but I had this idea that instead of aspiring to Broadway, I would check out Coney Island is a staging ground, as a framing device for my obsession with popular culture rent side shows and burlesque. I moved to New York City in 1979 signed a 10 year lease on a loft down surf avenue directly across the street from Astro land. Put several months on a lot of money into renovating and then the building burned down.

Ofer Cohen:                      
That was an unusual choice in the 70s. If you wanted to do theater in New York City. I mean, I would, I wasn't born here, but I would go through Greenwich Village.

Dick Zigun:                         
I had some early success as a playwright right out of Grad school and one of my plays was put on in California. One of the other plays in this festival that my play was put on was by a playwright named Len Jenkin. And the play, um, called kid twist about a Barelas from murder incorporated was full of Coney Island imagery and I was hanging out in California enjoying the beach, enjoy nature, knew I was headed back to New York City and I had this epiphany standing on the Santa Monica pier looking into an arcade building for rent and thinking about theater in a beach amusement park context. Then decided, when I get back to New York I'll check out Coney Island and 40 years later, I'm the permanently unelected mayor.

Ofer Cohen:                      
And so tell me about the Coney Island that you found.

Dick Zigun:                         
The Coney Island I found was the archaeological remains, of the world's original amusement park. I'd like to say that there was more left of ancient Rome, then turn of the century Coney Island. But although a lot of the infrastructure was already gone, like steeple chase park was gone, Luna Park was gone. There's something about those salt air and the fresh air in Coney Island, even though it rots the mind, it preserves the body.

Ofer Cohen:                      
So you're describing as somewhat desolated kind of place.

Dick Zigun:                         
Well not totally even, at it's worse than the 70s when it was burned down, bombed out, graffiti, full of gangs and arson. Millions of people would come, their businesses were open. It was an incredible sea of humanity. Which it is to this day. Um, but it was broken. Because I'm an advocate of popular culture because it is Coney Island trying to figure out what to do when Coney Island, after those initial steps, I essentially was apprenticing myself, um, to people in Coney Island and learning their style and learning their language and all of that fed into creating Coney Island, USA the not for profit arts organization, which says that its mission is to defend the honor of American popular culture through innovative exhibitions and performances. So that gave me a framework and a justification for getting involved and advocating and experimenting with culture that a lot of people were embarrassed by. A lot of people thought that should be forgotten. Things like burlesque, things like freak shows, um, powtoons, all of those things which are incredibly popular now.

Ofer Cohen:                      
Dick says he was launching a movement, so he decided to do something completely different. He went to the city to start the first mermaid parade.

Dick Zigun:                         
The idea became, well, let's make a statement. Let's take over the entire neighborhood one day a year. I went to the community board, the local police precinct, the local politicians and said, hey, I want up running a 4th of July parade. Dude waited a little bit funky and weird and they laughed at me, not because they didn't think I could do white puppy because 4th of July was the busiest day of the year. Ironically, the Mermaid parade now rivals 4th of July for the busiest day. But not back when we first did it in 1983 they told me I couldn't do 4th of July, but I can pick any other date in the summer calendar. I decided, um, to round off the summer solstice to the weekend. And when I made up the name Mermaid parade, even before the first parade happened, people were laughing because mermaid don't have feet. How did they march in a parade?

Ofer Cohen:                      
It sounds to me like your vision of the mermaid parade has kind of evolved.

Dick Zigun:                         
No, it got bigger. It was fully formed from day one. The first parade in 1983 had everything you'd see now it had the empty cars, it the king and queen, it had tongue and cheek contest, not beauty contests for Most Beautiful Mermaid, but mermaid costume, whether it was ugly or beautiful, as long as it was creative, the beach cutting pageant and all of that was there with the beginning. It's just gotten bigger. I think biggest parade, uh, we've had so far has been about 800 thousand people, which means that the mermaid parade is bigger than Boston.

Dick Zigun:                         
Wow. So throughout the 37 years, tell me one struggling moment.

Dick Zigun:                         
Oh, I've tried to kill off the mermaid parade over the years and fights back . So it is expensive to throw a free party for New York City.

Ofer Cohen:                      
So just to kind of pay for it?

Dick Zigun:                         
So the parade, uh, costs well over $100,000 to put on this parade. As the parade gets bigger, we have, not only an obligation to make good art, but there's also a civic obligation. We disrupt bus routes. We, I don't know how much money the city spends on overtime from NYPD. Um, homeland security is there. The Mermaid parade is a very expensive ordeal for New York City. And because Brooklyn is cool, Brooklyn wants the mermaid parade and loves the Mermaid Parade, I've had to adapt over the years. At the beginning. The antique cars could drive on the boardwalk. They can't do that anymore.

Ofer Cohen:                      
You just said, um, you know, because Brooklyn is cool and the Mermaid parade is cool, Brooklyn wants the mermaid parade. And I could totally see how hipsters from Bushwick and East Williamsburg are, uh, you know, finding their way through the mermaid parade every year. Brooklyn was not cool 36-37 years ago.

Dick Zigun:                         
Let's talk about the former Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, when he was a New York state senator and running for, um, Brooklyn borough president. He wanted a march in the mermaid parade. And I told him, as I told him, tell most politicians, if you wound a march in the parade, you have to wear a costume. He didn't wear a costume. He showed up anyway and worked the parade route. Um, he got elected borough president, I think he loves the Mermaid parade more than I do. And Mayor Giuliani tried to shut down the mermaid parade.

Ofer Cohen:                      
So how did you prevail?

Dick Zigun:                         
Marty Markowitz helped, the local politicians made it clear that the mermaid parade as important. You know, there was a certain amount of harassment. Uh, we weren't closed down and then there was a new mayor the next year,

Ofer Cohen:                      
Beginning of the 2000 was a big turning point for Brooklyn in terms of, um, how other neighborhoods started to change and demographics started to shift.

Dick Zigun:                         
Sure and Mayor Bloomberg, who, no matter what you think of his politics is known for being very smart and recruiting very qualified people. Uh, was working with Daniel. Dr. Roth, in terms of major rezoning of New York City neighborhoods, including Coney Island,

Ofer Cohen:                      
Was that intimidating at all?

Dick Zigun:                         
It was probably the hardest thing I've ever navigated. And at the same time, people will tell you that you were born for one moment in your life. I had no idea going into with that. I would be the major figure who all sides were vying for, first of all, I have an obligation to the not for profit. I started and I worked for Coney Island USA and this was our moment to go from being a fledgling arts organization to institutionalizing ourselves, which is the desire of a successful not for profit. So that was my main priority. My experience taught me that Coney Island, the way it was was broken. It was not sustainable. Things did need to change. Um, and then mayor Bloomberg made me a mayoral appointee to the Coney Island Development Corporation.

Ofer Cohen:                      
Every rezoning in New York City has a, especially a neighborhood wide, rezonings has somewhat of a debate.

Dick Zigun:                         
So the big debate was the day that, uh, directors of the Coney Island Development Corporation, including myself, got a 10:00 PM phone call saying, we want to give you a heads up that tomorrow there will be a front page article in the New York Times about how the city has struck a deal with Thor Equities and is going to shrink the already shrunken proposal in the rezoning for the tourist or amusement section that would be city owned, that is now Luna Park. Instead of being 15 acres, which shrinked to nine acres where as originally, um, in the rezoning from the 60s, Coney Island tourist amusement area with 66 acres. Now I said, uh, already on this podcast that Coney Island was broken and not sustainable. Out of that 66 acres, a lot of it was empty property for the weeds and broken glass, shrinking 66 acres to 27 acres, 15 of which would be a city owned amusement park shrunk to nine acres. I resigned from the Coney Island Development Corporation. I joined the opposition. The rezoning went through. But the advocacy and the noise we made after and through the rezoning led to a lot of additional compromises. That nine acres in reality is back up to 15 acres or even more, all ready in 2019, 10 years after the rezoning. In terms of activated property, we already have more than we had before the rezoning. We've lost the empty lots full of garbage weeds, broken glass, but we're definitely thriving. And on the upswing, my organization succeeded, didn't get him three buildings landmarked. There were already were landmark rides protected by the city. The parachute jump, the cyclone roller coaster, the wonder wheel, uh, prior to the rezone, no buildings where landmarked. We got the Ford amphitheater, which was a derelict building landmarked. It's been rebuilt. Our own building, the former child's building, that Coney Island USA had been renting, got landmarked and we've put a couple of million into restoration and the shore theater across from Nathan's. Um, we got landmarked and it's about to start a major renovation and turn into a 50 room hotel.

Ofer Cohen:                      
When you look at where we are right now in terms of the redevelopment of the broken Coney Island of the 70s 80s and 90s, it's gone.

Dick Zigun:                         
It's gone. But especially when the shore theater turns into a hotel and about two years the shore theater will be done and Luna Park will finish their build out, which is still in progress. Uh, within two years, if you walk around Coney Island, there will be nothing derelict.

Ofer Cohen:                      
So how do, how do you see the rest of the development around Coney Island?

Dick Zigun:                         
They're adding a lot more people to the island and considering hurricane super superstorm Sandy. And what happened there, what happened to my business, my pickup truck, my home. It's sort of surprising that flood zone A is adding that much housing but I guess is New York City comp resiliency. Um, they're going to have to build some kind of storm surge barrier between, uh, the Rockaways and somewhere in New Jersey to block that. Supposedly the new housing high rises will have parking garages in their center core. I don't think it's gonna work. I think they're going to have to deal with some type of people moving and mass transit. But otherwise, um, you know, having spent 40 years of my life at Coney Island and reconciled myself too with being the place, the time and real estate developers forgot suddenly like only can happen in New York City. When the real estate gets hot, it happens fast. It's certainly every inch of Coney Island seems to be under construction and the sidewalks, the streets, the sewers, I'm pretty happy with the way it's going. The rezoning has five other hotel sites not all of them aren't going to build hotels. Um, personally I think one of them should have a casino. Um, but that is by far not a universal opinion.

Ofer Cohen:                      
I was about to ask about that. So I'm happy you saying your hope that the casino in Coney Island would sort of make it a lot more of viable a year round destination.

Dick Zigun:                         
Of course it would. The state constitution or ready allows for written the next couple of years three casinos in the Metropolitan New York City area. Even with the decentralization in the metropolitan area of casinos. The one closest to it to Manhattan in New York City is going to thrive.

Ofer Cohen:                      
While Coney Island is currently being redeveloped. A significant portion of the property is still owned by Thor Equities Joe Sitt.

Dick Zigun:                         
Joe Sitt iss a much more likable guy than let's say Donald Trump who was a real estate developer in Coney Island. We actually have Trump village and Coney Island. But anyway, we were talking about Joe Sitt who's a likable accessible guy. If I wanted to talk to him and call him up, he would talk to me. He made a couple of small donations. He paid for the architectural exterior lighting, on our landmark bill date. But he owns a lot of the property. He hasn't developed it. He's put it up for sale. The asking price is high and that's holding us back considering, the person who owns the most property, who was supposed to be the city's economic development corporation partner is not developing. And it's remarkable how far Coney Island's coming without a major component. I hope he lowers the price and sells it soon.

Ofer Cohen:                      
Tell me something, and nobody knows about you, publicly ?

Dick Zigun:                         
Not enough people know, my training is as a playwright, I write plays, I write damn good plays, weird American plays and I, although I get some attention, when we put them out at Coney Island, it not only holds me back, but because there is a lack of respect or interest in South Brooklyn or Coney Island,, for being honkytonky Hoity toity people turn down their nose at Honky tonk. So we have trouble getting reviews, which not only harms me, it harms the actors and directors and the designers who work for me, who should be getting Obie awards and grants and attention. So if you're, Susan Feldman out there from St. Annes or if you were Oscar, at the public theater, why not develop a weird playwright who's got a lot of talent and is well known in Brooklyn.

Ofer Cohen:                      
Great. Thank you so much. Appreciate your time.

Dick Zigun:                         
Sure.

S2 | E8 | Susan Feldman

Narrator:                   

Hey BK, with Ofer Cohen

Susan Feldman:                    

I feel that the development of the Church of Saint Ann and the Holy Trinity that I began in 1979 in Brooklyn Heights I actually completed in Dumbo in the tobacco warehouse in 2015.

Ofer Cohen: 

On today's episode, I talked to Susan Feldman, the artistic director of St Ann's Annes warehouse in Brooklyn Bridge Park, Susan curates, unique theater from all over the world. Bringing avant garde shows, and new talent to the Brooklyn waterfront.

Susan Feldman: 

It started as a historic preservation story and it really connected to real estate in a very, I think very special way in a lot of times it can be cynical, it happens, especially with cultural organizations and we have real estate people, it can be like beginning of the end for bad situations and also for displacement of people. In a way, Dumbo was not particularly a displacement of many people because it was never particularly residential, but for me, it really was connected. I mean, I was literally hired by the New York landmarks conservancy when they decided they wanted to save Saint Anne in the Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn Heights because it had the first stained glass windows made in America and is a really important historic building.

Ofer Cohen: 

Over the years. Lou Reed and John Cale of The Velvet Underground and actor Willem Dafoe of the Wooster group have all made their mark on St. Ann's. The recent modern production of Oklahoma that's now on Broadway, got it's start there too. As you'll hear, Susan's story is closely linked to the Brooklyn resurgence.

Susan Feldman: 

I actually can still get emotional about it because when I walked into St Anne the Holy Trinity, I thought that it was one of the most beautiful interiors that I'd ever been in New York, even in America to some degree. I personally was looking for something with culture, history, emotion and beauty and I thought this would be a great place to move with the arts. The city was completely different when it came to real estate because it was sort of the end of a period where arts organizations and artists, could find places lofts or places that had been abandoned and you could get buildings for like a dollar a year, to help re revitalize the city. And in terms of Brooklyn, people were not particularly going to, Brooklyn institutions the way they were going to New York City. You know, to the ballet and Bam had just, I mean, in 1979, the next wave wasn't even there. So the people I was,speaking to, to try to help the landmarks conservancy and the church figure out what they could do to save their building and to have a public use that could complement it as house of worship when people like, you know, Harvey Lichtenstein and Joe Papp who was at the public theater. So this is just to set how far back it was.

Ofer Cohen:    

So through, through the eighties and nineties. I mean you've seen tremendous transformation around you. But tell me about those early days in terms of actually, you know, running a theater, attracting audience and developing shows.

Susan Feldman:  

So my job was really to go around and meet people who needed, there was a Brooklyn Opera Society, there was a Brooklyn philharmonia chorus. There was a Brooklyn Heights symphony orchestra. There was the new cycle theater that was a feminist theater company. There was the people doing, Celebrate Brooklyn that wanted to work during the fall and winter and spring. So they became the beginning of what became a season or, a constituency for, for the church. I was only hired for like three months, but then it turned into almost 40 years. So what happened was the groups, were using the space, we'd set up a season. Brooklyn Union gas made the brochure. It said there was something called arts at Saint Ann's, so that started to develop over time because there would be the companies that would do some of the programming and then there would be a couple of, of things that, you know, we would want to program. And for example, there were a group of women in Brooklyn Heights who were preservationists and they were very involved at the landmarks conservancy around the historic windows. And so they had a gala, you know, with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, which at the time was run by Charles Wadsworth. And He fell in love with the church and he fell in love with the acoustics of the church. And so he decided after that concert that he wanted to work with us to create a preview series for Lincoln Center so that we were going to have all the great chamber music artists, singers, and instrumentalists. We're going to come to St Ann's for, you know, three or four concerts a year, classical music, and they ended up putting the building on the map with artists because they loved performing there. And that was also something that became very important to what's followed us through the whole trajectory of 40 years is this relationship between us and the spaces that we're in and the artists that were working with.

Ofer Cohen:

Why did you move out of the church?

Susan Feldman:   

Because the relationship between us and the church basically ended and we realized that the beauty of the of the relationship with the church was, which lasted for 21 years. So I can't say it was a failed relationship. It was an amazing relationship, but it kind of depended on who the priest was.

Ofer Cohen:     

Sure.

Susan Feldman:

And you know, the end of the relationship , for the arts and the church at the time really happened over two different priests. There just wasn't the compatibility of mission. But we had this going concern of this beautiful arts program and even the stain glass studio. And so we decided to move out, took everything with us.

Ofer Cohen:         

When you move to Dumbo, you made a conscious decision to focus more on theater?

Susan Feldman:    

What would happen was we moved to Dumbo and David,, they gave us studio, they give us sort of space and 70 Washington where we could set up our stain glass studio. We could set up an office and we can continue our puppet lab. But David said, look, you can always stay as long as you're giving back. Dumbo and the whole first year I said to him and Jed, I can't give back to Dumbo. We need a space. We need a place to perform. And so 38 water street, the tenants who had been storing cardboard left and smack Mellon had moved the carousel had moved into the old spice factory next to 38 water street, if you remember, which is where Jane eventually put the carousel before she moved it. So there was a gallery that was going to be there and then we were going to be there. Um, but we were sort of just a new game in town. Uh, and so we opened right after 9/11 with a big concert. It was big blues concert. And I remember, Martin Scorsese was starting a series on channel 13. So he hosted it and there were three different film makers that film the different sections. So Lucinda Williams was in it. And, um, the Mississippi Hill country guys were part of it. And that was kind of the first big thing we did. And we had Porta potties because we had 600 people in there or something, or 800 people. And David walked in and he went, oh, this is like Woodstock. I like it, you know? And people were coming up to him and saying, thank you for bringing Saint Ann's here and saving them and, and all that. So I think from the very beginning, it was something where we were kind of looking at each other and saying, what can we really bring to Dumbo? And that would be long lasting. And I think over time they began to see that something really could happen. We were supposed to be there nine months and we were there for 12 years. And I think we shifted from music to theater because in the church music was the thing that worked beautifully. And we had all that height and all that grandeur. And it wasn't really very good for spoken word or for theater anything. And now here were in this warehouse at 38 water street that had all this depth and not that much height, but it had this also amazing location. So, we started to use the depth and again, because we bring artists in who needed space and wanted to, experiment and could use that kind of open footprint, that became our signature. So literally we put up one wall.

Susan Feldman:    

Wow. And the tobacco warehouse at that point was vacant, abandoned space. Um, you know, on state owned land essentially, right?

Susan Feldman:

Yeah it was a shell and the empire stores where decrepit and kind of falling apart. But again, it was this sense of groups of people. It's always been groups of people wanting to do something amazing. And so all the studies that the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation was doing, um, with stakeholders to figure out what, what could happen in the empire stores, what could happen in the tobacco warehouse, who is going to govern Brooklyn Bridge Park, how is that going to all work? You know, we were in all those meetings and we were really interested to see how we could, how we could be part of it and how we could be helpful.

Ofer Cohen:        

That's an interesting point. So that's how the organization actually started as, essentially a partnership between arts and activating and sort of revitalizing an area.

Susan Feldman: 

It's true and, and we had to make it safe, you know, he had to make sure people knew how to get there. And so we had to figure out lots of things like way finding. And I remember we had these sandwich boards that would sit on the corner and you got, what do you face it this way or do you face it's that way. So people coming down dock street and you know, so really labeling things and trying to understand them and also bringing wonderful artists who had followings, who need, the Wooster group needed to be able to work outside of their small garage at the time because they had Willem as part of the company and the company was growing and doing bigger projects and they need a bigger audiences and we could, we could accommodate, we could accommodate them. And some amazing work came out of those early years. Um, one of them you may have heard of 'em Mabu minds, Lee Breuer directed a production of a doll's house with little people. The men were played by little people and the women were played by full grown women. So it sort of turned the whole nature of the sexism of a doll's house upside down because he had these big women in these little tiny men. It was really fascinating and there was a lot of great experimentation and we still did special music and some big music musical programming, but it really turned into a theater at that point. And then the time that the board really took off and grew into a wider board, uh, was when we knew we were going to do a capital campaign, when it became clear that, that the tobacco warehouse could become our future home. But that just took a little longer than we expected. It was a big detour.

Ofer Cohen:          

So tell us about the detour a little bit of the tobacco warehouse.

Susan Feldman:   

Okay. So the low points, now we go to the low point. So one low point is the war with priests and we leave the church. That was obviously hard. Uh, but in Dumbo, um, you know, we'd had this long relationship, to Dumbo and now we were, it became clear at a certain point that the Walentas' were going to develop 38 Water street. So 2010, I guess the Brooklyn Bridge Park Concept for governance came together. And um, so we were at a pretty high point. We had won the RFP and we went to Borough Hall and there was like a ceremony and I was thinking about how they were actually, you know, we're going to be given a lease to this property between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge. And I was thinking about Manhattan Island and Henry Hudson, you know, like you go back in time and it's pretty meaningful. And we had tremendous excitement about what we were going to do. And then about a month later we were all served with papers and so we were sued. We and Brooklyn Bridge Park and the city and the state and the federal government, everybody was sued for conspiracy, which to us was like collaboration of people working together to develop the tobacco warehouse and the empire stores. But there were some procedural grounds that people fought it on, having to do with the fear of privatizing part of the park.

Ofer Cohen:       

Yeah. The suit was filed by?

Susan Feldman: 

Brooklyn Heights Association, the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy, the preservation league, there were actually, two suits, a federal suit and a state suit.

Ofer Cohen:     

So the preservationists?

Susan Feldman:    

They joined on the ones who had hired me.

Ofer Cohen:          

Right. That's the ironic a detour here.

Susan Feldman:  

Right, that was an ironic moment. So we were devastated to be honest with you, because, you know, we didn't feel entitled, but we felt motivated and we felt like we had a great plan and we knew that we were going to take good care of this building and we knew that it was going to meet all the criteria of preservation and arts and civic use. I mean, cause we'd been doing it for so long and quietly in a way, you know, like not with big fanfare but just focused, you know. And so at the end it became so political. So we were kind of very frustrated

Ofer Cohen:         

In the midst of a legal battle St. Ann's that's moved out of its temporary rent free location on water street to another interim space at 29 Jay they had to overcome so many hurdles by 2015 the $30 million renovation of the tobacco warehouse, half of which was funded by the city was complete. And St. Ann's had a permanent home for the first, first time, 2015 was when you opened, in a way, it's a whole different job for you because now you have a permanent home and you just could focus on programming. Right?

Susan Feldman:              

Yeah. I focus on programming, but I'm also concerned, I worry that there's only one gallery building. You know, I worry that, you know, I mean luckily 29 Jay where we were, it's still active as a theater and is a dance school, so it's still got a cultural use. So, you know, I really hope that those kinds of places can stay.

Ofer Cohen:                

Sitting in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Do you miss those cozy days?

Susan Feldman:              

Well, I actually work very hard to keep that cozy feeling. And you know, for example, when we moved from 38 Water street, well first when we moved into 38 Water street, there was this pioneering spirit. So, and the Walentas' were the ones who, who invited us down. And one of my favorite things is that Jane, David and Jed all claim us. They all believed that they were the ones that brought us and I love all of them. And they really, really brought us in almost like a family. And I could see how, how they were, having the space used similarly to the way the city was when we came to Brooklyn Heights. You know, they were activating buildings and they were activating the neighborhood with organizations that, you know, had something to give and also something to gain from developing a new neighborhood. So it really became a community of, of again, the developers, David Selig and, and Peter Lawrence had just started rice, um, you know, and rice was, you know, giving out free ice cream to bring people into the restaurant. And so we became this community of people that really felt like we developing Dumbo. We were building a neighborhood. So where is in the first one, we were saving a church, and, and having this great arts program for art's sake. Here we were building a neighborhood and still have a place in in Dumbo so that it's not, you know, just a tourist spot. I mean I recognize why the location is what it is now and why it attracts people and why it has to be all that, but it also has to have an inner life. So for me, it's like who are the new partners and some of the new partners are the empire stores people, you know, cause we can do stuff together and 29 Jay, you know, because that became a rehearsal space for our Oklahoma. as it moved to Broadway, we used it as a rehearsal space for the jungle, Angels in America rehearsed there. So there's still some of that shared use, which I hope will stay.

Ofer Cohen:              

So do you ever have any dreams about doing a St Ann's warehouse in some of the more grittier parts of Brooklyn where you know, like what Dumbo was 19 years ago, which is hard to find in Brooklyn right now. But let's say the border, you know, sort of Bushwick and Ridgewood.

Susan Feldman:                       

Well, they're doing it.

Ofer Cohen:                             

Right.

Susan Feldman:                     

You can see Bushwick starr and Jack, you know, they're doing the chocolate factory, they're doing it. And those neighborhoods are gentrifying so fast.

Ofer Cohen:                           

Right. It's much faster than in a way. Um, what happened The transformation of place like DUMBO

Susan Feldman:                       

Yeah. It's different, right? Sort of like a sweep.

Ofer Cohen:              

And so how do you feel when you roam through Brooklyn? How'd you feel about those other neighborhoods? And so like to do you have this, kind of like, do you wish you would be operating, there like 25 years ago.

Susan Feldman:               

Do I wish I was like, 30 years younger? Do I want to start it again? You know, it's very interesting because just this year I started thinking about that. I started thinking about that. What's the next thing that needs to happen, you know, um, you know, I'm looking for it.

Ofer Cohen:               

The entire story that you just told us, could it only happen in Brooklyn? Or do you just see it happening and other places?

Susan Feldman:             

I think, I think the trajectory of St. Ann's could only have happened in this Brooklyn or that Brooklyn to this Brooklyn over that period of time. I think there was something really against it happening. Like you can think of underdeveloped cities, but you don't think of Brooklyn Heights as an underdeveloped city and you don't even think of the Brooklyn waterfront isn't underdeveloped part of the city. Right? But they, but they were hungry. They were lacking in a way they were a little bit culturally deprived in a certain sense because there was no home grown acknowledgment really. And so I think that that was, that became a very important, there's a magical thing that happens between artists and people and where it happens. It's very important. And I think that that happened with Bam and with us. And I think the fact that it happened, it happened for both organizations in Brooklyn is amazing. And not a coincidence. And I also think having an enlightened mayor, and also I have to give, I have to give the developers, they were pretty enlightened also. Um, in terms of who they chose, how they chose restaurants and how they chose Quirky people. Bryce was a quirky place, you know, David's a quirky guy, you know, and, and Jed's quirky. So you have very special vision, I think happening and people getting along and not easy people. You know, like sometimes I think my board is like all anarchists now. They're all quirky people and they get along with each other. So there's a sense of purpose that people can unite around. And I think that was also unique.

Ofer Cohen:                     

I was asked a silly question at the end of the program, which is a tell us something that nobody knows about you. And different people answer differently but it's sort of like, you could do whatever you want with that question.

Susan Feldman:                   

I think what people don't know about me, is me. They know what I do , I guess. I guess unattached in a certain way to space like, I can float.

Ofer Cohen:                 

Susan Feldman . Thank you so much.

Susan Feldman:                            

Thank you so much. It was fun.

Ofer Cohen:            

You are listening to, Hey BK, the podcast about the people behind the Brooklyn transformation. You can find us at heybk.nyc or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Ofer Cohen. Thanks for listening.

S2 | E7 | Jared Della Valle & AJ Pires, Alloy

Narrator:  
Hey Bk with Ofer Cohen.

AJ Pires:
People are starting to abandon Manhattan in its entirety and live entirely in Brooklyn.

Ofer Cohen:
AJ Pires and Jared Della Valle traveled to the HeyBK studio from DUMBO, their home base since they started back in 2006. Welcome to HeyBK AJ and Jared principles of Alloy development. I had a horrible commute this morning to  Prospect Heights. You know, tell us about a little bit.

Jared Della Valle:
Getting here? I had to sit next to AJ in the car. I was looking for a different experience rather than sitting across the table from him at work.

Ofer Cohen:
AJ and Jared finish each other's sentences and are clearly in sync. As you'll hear. And the partners of cofounders of Aloe and have a unique approach. AJ and Jared, have taken on Brooklyn and made their mark throughout with a responsible and thoughtful projects.

AJ Pires:
We got to the same place in a little bit different paths. And I went to architecture school to make buildings because I thought that's where you go to learn how to make buildings. And I got disillusioned pretty quickly from the way that that field talks about their successes, which is often about, you know, I achieve this from the client or I was able to manipulate this and get this design done. And it was all about kind of leveraging design in a service model to get things done. And it just seemed very obvious like, oh I don't, I don't want to be in the service profession. I want to be over there making decisions. I want to do this work. Like I want to tackle the problems and do the design work. But like can't you do both? And through a mutual friend, through sheer luck we were introduced and Jared was, you know, I think that's a thing architect develop where like we can, that's a thing. I was like, yeah, that's a thing I've been studying. I think you know, let's do that thing.

Ofer Cohen:
So together they decided to do their thing, blending real estate and architecture. They formed an open office with a collaborative approach that considers both the design and overall impact on the city.

AJ Pires:
I think there's a kind of a simple exercise, at least that I do in my own head, which is, okay hey, there's the opportunity, there's this site, there's going to be 13,000 decisions that need to be made to get to the end at the end end end. Really at the end, two years after everything is done. When somebody describes the three sentences of what the project is and you stand across the street and point added what did it achieve, right? What, what is the opportunity and the best simplest of ways. And I think the impact is increasingly becoming one of the key criteria and value sense that the architecture up at the beauty of it is also for me continuing to be kind of one of the foundational principles of our site selection and project selection, which is can we make something beautiful in the built environment? I don't know what you think. Yeah.

Jared Della Valle:
I mean we're distorting the use of the word value in our practice. I think coming from architectural lense economics has never driven that industry. And,  you know, we are thinking about all of the alternative value sets and how to leverage our capacity with real estate to create alternative values like community connection or political, you know, opportunities or the community benefits in general. Right. And,  yeah, I think our projects need to be financeable, but at the same time, we’re adding in this additional layer of criteria about alternative values. That's super important to us.

Ofer Cohen:
Well, they only take on a few projects at a time. The bulk of their focus has been in Dumbo and they both live in buildings that they designed and developed.

AJ Pires:
No, I think just knowing that, knowing the place right in the ins and outs and who the people in your neighborhood are and what's happening on this corner and that corner. It's just, you know, we have a lot of comfort in the risk because we feel like, okay, I really, I understand this place.

Ofer Cohen:
I understand that dumbo became more and more lucrative as an investment or capital destination. But you know, do you still love Dumbo as much as you love that? And the grittier, you know, it was a little more intimate.

Jared Della Valle:
They were literally wild dogs there when I moved into the neighborhood and my family moved there in 2001, 2002 and in a little bit post-September 11th, they moved from Chelsea and their most beautiful times and the neighborhood were like this time: of the year of February. They would not be a single car parked on the street. It'd be snow on the ground. And it was just like otherworldly. And I miss those moments of solitude,  in the neighborhood, but it was also completely starved. And with my family and committing to a place and the resources, you know, David and Jed have done an amazing job kind of curating the neighborhood and we love being neighbors with them and participating and engaging and a thoughtful future that we don't collaborate. I think we share a value set about what it is and Regina and her work at the park, which is really kind of created a new neighborhood. So I feel ownership of the place candidly after this many years. And I think my wife and kids similarly are proud to have been part of the history, of that place. And, I  love it and I can never foresee moving.  From there it's home.

AJ Pires:
I was in Fort Greene for seven or eight years before I moved to Dumbo and you know, my wife and I started our family in Fort Greene and we did the strollers through the brownstone neighborhoods and go into the playgrounds. And, and that was difficult to leave as DUMBO’ a different neighborhood. It's more mixed-use. There's more office space, and, it's busier and there's more going on. There's tourism and certainly, with the park opened, it can be weekends there where it's really crowded. , but it's also more exciting. And it's funny, as my kids get older, it's a little bit more aligned, right? Cause there's, there's more stuff going on, right. And so like, everything, it changes. I'm sure five years from now it'll be even different than there'll be other things we couldn't even imagine. And the neighborhood and, you know, it's a physical form. The fact that it's constrained by the river and the infrastructure of the bridges will forever be there. And that is really one of the kind of remarkable and memorable moments of living in the neighborhood. And so,  I think that's sustainable.

Ofer Cohen:
Their first big development was a loft conversion on water street, but ha and Jared expand beyond Dumbo. They remain focused on what they describe is northwest, Brooklyn.

Jared Della Valle:
We have this quality of life thing, right? Written in 2008, 2009 or like just being a developer in New York attack, started to expand and to also be in the real estate broker and also having a construction company. And so the immediacy of the projects to our office became incredibly valuable to the culture and success of execution, which is we'll go to the job site twice a day, three times a day between everybody in our office, maybe five times a day. And we're looking to make sure that we can execute quickly and really understand everything. And, that market intimacy is hard to get a feel for and other places. And so, you know, sometimes we even joke about it, it's like this is a great site and we'll be in Long Island City or something like that. And it's like, this is an amazing site. But man, that's gonna take like two and a half hours out of our day to come here. I don't, I don't want to do that. And there's a degree of selfishness with that.

AJ Pires:
There's also though, we've always been very aligned and I think everybody in the office is about what we're doing and what the legacy is, which is, you know, I always use the anecdote, like I kind of, you know, 15, 20 years from now, I want to walk around and with, my mom or my daughter and pointed the 12 buildings we've done and be proud about each one. It's not about how much a dollar is we're making or ego in that way, right? It's about the legacy of the thing and the built environment and the impact that thing had at the people who live with it and use it and encounter it and all of that. And so that does require the discipline of saying, no, whatever that quote is, right. The success is defined by what you say no to is, is absolutely true for the model. And it is sometimes it's, you know, I'm not going to say I don't second guess things where it's like, God, we could have done that and then we would have done this

Ofer Cohen:
Would you say that you have more moments of regretting not seizing an opportunity versus, you know?

Jared Della Valle:
Oh, those are so rare. I mean, we're hardly reflective. I mean, everything is perspective. There's only maybe been one or two deals in our history where we're like, shit, that was stupid were you lost for $50,000 and you know, a week on closing timing where it was like, right. You know, why didn't we do that? But when you look back at the time, there was a reason it was a reason, you know? And, yeah, we're so careful about it, but it's not how I spend our time. I'm so proud of our work.

Ofer Cohen:

I get what you big picture are proud of, but to the point about walking around Brooklyn and being proud of specific projects so far, what would be the thing?

Jared Della Valle:
I love them all. No, I  have to say I think, One John Street is recognizable and part of the Brooklyn Skyline and the amount of,  personal recognition and connection to our company has been kind of overwhelming you know, I hear it every day.  I ride over the bridge and blah, blah, blah, and I saw your building. It's the best building in Brooklyn. And you know, we get a lot of that from our architecture peer set, which is validating because it was really uncomfortable moment when I was stopping producing and it worked for others where I had to actually say I quit architecture. Right. And we’re like, oh, so you don't care and you know what's happening and how is that going to go? Why'd you quit architecture and why are you being a mean developer? And, and so, you know, our participation in the architectural community has been kind of important. One of the most rewarding moments of our career. We had at recent landmarks hearing where we were: presenting 168 Plymouth and the interim commissioner said, I don't think there's another owner or architect in the city who's had more of a positive impact on a neighborhood.  Then you guys. And it was, it was awesome. It was an incredible moment.

AJ Pires:
I started crying, just started crying.

Jared Della Valle:
It was really a moment of recognition of feeling like the imprint and the subtlety and the small choices we're making and the execution and certainty if that outcome is, recognizable as a place. And so for us, we walked out of that meeting like completely elated

Ofer Cohen:
Recently, they've taken on a bigger challenge, a larger mixed-use project in one of Downtown Brooklyn busiest corridors on Flatbush avenue.

AJ Pires:
Like all things right. It was the part intention and part luck and circumstance. We didn't acquire our first piece of property there with the intention to develop what we're currently developing, and so through. And that was four years ago now, and you know, the opportunity with the RFP that the city led to make public schools and to do just a much more complicated phase mixed-use development was just kind of too good to pass up. Right? It was like what you get. We get to do public infrastructure like schools and you know, there was a big affordable housing upon its cultural component that we added. And it, it was the same, skillset that we applied, which is the project became a lot more complicated, you know, three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle on an irregular site in a mixed context. And it required a lot of, iteration and a lot of design thinking to come up with a plan that, you know, met a lot of criteria and kind of achieved whatever it is looking to achieve.

Jared Della Valle:
The complexity of that site and the political landscape and the sensitivity to the other neighborhoods was, an incredible like complete mind fuck for a long time, you know, and, I think we enjoyed, it was going to say the discussion, it was incredibly rewarding to have the 150 meetings we had. And to think through the problems and to accept the community is our client and to think through what a successful outcome could be. It was, yeah, it's a period of our history as a company that I'm exceptionally proud of.

AJ Pires:
I know our work there is not done and we won't be judged until that project is complete. And we follow through on a lot of the, you know, intent that we've described. Right. And that's, that's always the case with development. You're spending most of the time, whether it's with your internal team or your partners or communities or whatever, talking about something that doesn't exist yet. Right. And when it's done, the work is over to a certain extent and so, it's, you know, it'll be that judgment that will be the most, I think rewarding eight years from now or whenever that's going to be

Ofer Cohen:
AJ and Jared create innovative designs. I went back to that initial question, what are they architects or developers when filling out forms? How do they describe themselves?

Jared Della Valle:
If I'm, if I'm speaking publicly, which happens often, I say I make buildings and people understand that that's the kind of most accurate version of it. If I'm, you know, filling out a form that's like an application for something, it's usually architect first and it's a line of credit. He's back,

AJ Pires:
You know, we don't fit into either of the kind of guilds, right? Right. And we go to the architectural things and although it's less, less happening now because people know us more, but people think we're real estate developer, you guys just want to make money and you ate design and putting, you know, and that, and then we go to the real estate events, right? And it's like you're just a fucking architect and you know, you just want to spend my money and you don't understand anything and you can't do math and

AJ Pires:
I mean, you know, we're spending more time, I think trying to, push on both fronts, which is the architectural practice and needs more advocacy around ways to gain more agency. And how things are made in the city. And you know, it's a tough service profession. It's incredibly difficult and you know, both of us are on boards of organization. What we're trying to push on that front. And similarly, the real estate development community needs a lot of pushing relative to the candidly the ethics of what the responsibilities are of a developer. And you know, I think, that's one of the things that, is important to recognize that, you know, as people recognize bill, no, that's a nice building. How'd you do that? We should be trying to do our part to articulate that there are alternative paths. Right. And to set an example,

Ofer Cohen:
It's kind of like a, a combined DNA in a way. It's not like two different things that you're trying to meld together.

AJ Pires:
There are, you know, it's funny, one of the things that does definitely happen in the past 10 years as we've noticed that there are more real estate development companies that have architectural practices in house, right? But that is still church and state and they're just, they have a division that's in house and do the kind of the earliest point like it's, it is one conversation that is happening simultaneously around what does the value of that and can we build it and will people, is that legible to a broader market and what's the impact where I like it that all of that stuff on the table at the same time is how we work and that's I think possible for other people to get there through just accepting the criteria,

Ofer Cohen:
The connection to Brooklyn I'm in, can you see yourself doing this any out of town? In the world, in America?

Jared Della Valle:
Not at all. Nope. Why? We see a million opportunities and people that are always asking, you know, would you develop here and would you develop there? And our business, again, it's about taking a risk and it's like the intimacy and connection to place and the nuance about knowing that I'm this corner, this is happening in six months that's completely devoid and not having a connection to the process of the making is also an,

Aj Pires:
It's also, it's where, where I am and where you are, which is our kids are going to school here and this is where we live. And so I want to invest capital, right? My, not my dollars but like my industry capital and effecting the place in which I live, right? Like it's to do it in suburban Cleveland, you know, I have no attachment is, you know, what's the meaning?

Jared Della Valle:
But it's also the excitement and the value proposition of, you know, the culture of this place, right? Like there is a collective spirit here and you know, I share the value set. We can have disagreements about urban issues, but, the value set about urban issues.

Ofer Cohen:
What urban issues?

Jared Della Valle:
If we can believe in a different future. Right? And it's a part of that spirit of place that I've really come to enjoy and appreciate and culture. I like participating in and, and, yeah, I don't have that connection to any other place.

Ofer Cohen:
The one thing you would change about the city?

Jared Della Valle:
I think, some of the social equity issues that come up as, as they relate to housing, is an extraordinary challenge if people need to deal with more head-on. And I think that's hard for our industry to do. You know, we're both developers and perceived as rich white guys. Right? And so the challenge of really connecting and being genuine about making meaningful change and you know, how to participate in creating social equity, opportunities is the thing I'd like to do most. And I don't know that everybody shares that value set all of the time.so that's more of a cultural shift. And I think, you know, I think, it's obviously more present today, but I still don't know how many people take it on as a meaningful issue to address. That's a hope for the future. Call it.

AJ Pires:
I think the thing that I'm excited about, which I think is already happening, cause I certainly see it amongst the people that I encounter is, people are starting to abandon Manhattan in its entirety and live entirely in Brooklyn and they go to Manhattan to completely just do a pit stop at a cultural moment or, right, It's not part of their life at all. And you know, they're raising their family here, their kids are going to school here. They eat out here, they work here. They, it's just, and more and more I encounter right people where they're like, yeah, I know. I never go to Manhattan, I don't know the last time I went there. Right. And the more that happens, I think the more, not like there's not enough pride now in Brooklyn, but the more it just kind of starts to create its own real power of momentum, and that's what you're seeing and you know, big companies choosing to like move their entire offices to Brooklyn. Right? And we've had people who show up that are new to New York City as a whole, five Boroughs who are shopping for homes and they're like, I'm just looking in Brooklyn. I'm actually not looking at Manhattan and all, I'm just looking here. Right. And that's kind of amazing. Right. And I think, you know, 5years, 10 years, 20 years, right. It's going to be, it's not just that the center of gravity is shifting. It will be its own center of gravity, you know?

Ofer Cohen:
So we typically, and if you listened to some of these shows, we typically handle this like awkward question.

AJ Pires:
Well, I think it's been weird that we're in our underwear this whole time. At least strange.

Ofer Cohen:
I know. I typically ask, can you tell us something that nobody else knows about you? But I can ask it separately. I can ask you together.

Jared Della Valle:
I've been asking AJ this question for the last 13 years. Never told me anything new. We were, we were trying to think of what to say to the answer of that question way over here. And it's like, no, I'm tired of you. I know everything there is to know,  I think people are always expecting us to sort of a show some side of being just pure capitalist or something at the end of the day. Right. But you know, this shit is real to enjoy. Yeah. I think we both really care about what it is that we're doing and kind of, I don't know how to answer it any other way is, the question is there are no secrets. There is nothing that nobody doesn't know and we're prepared to share just about anything.

AJ Pires:
I play guitar, which I have a played since it was a little kid. , and I only play for myself. I like, nobody ever hears me play guitar. Seriously. It's like my one piece of zen therapy, like whatever, you know, just like picking out songs consistently for like 25 years .

Ofer Cohen:
Wow. You're so lucky. I was trying to get back into playing guitars I play when I was a teenager, but I haven't been able, this was last year. I haven't been able to really get back into it.

AJ Pires:
I would play with it, but I don't, I don't play with anybody. When, when do you have talked to play? Somebody was in early in the morning and sometimes you know, and at the end of the day, you're so lucky. Yeah. That's amazing.

Ofer Cohen:
You're so lucky. Yeah. That's amazing. See, AJ actually had an answer for us.

Jared Della Valle:
I knew that already,

Ofer Cohen:
Oh, you knew that? Yeah, no, I get it.

Narrator:  
Hey Bk with Ofer Cohen.

AJ Pires:
People are starting to abandon Manhattan in its entirety and live entirely in Brooklyn.

Ofer Cohen:
AJ Pires and Jared Della Valle traveled to the HeyBK studio from DUMBO, their home base since they started back in 2006. Welcome to HeyBK AJ and Jared principles of Alloy development. I had a horrible commute this morning to  Prospect Heights. You know, tell us about a little bit.

Jared Della Valle:
Getting here? I had to sit next to AJ in the car. I was looking for a different experience rather than sitting across the table from him at work.

Ofer Cohen:
AJ and Jared finish each other's sentences and are clearly in sync. As you'll hear. And the partners of cofounders of Aloe and have a unique approach. AJ and Jared, have taken on Brooklyn and made their mark throughout with a responsible and thoughtful projects.

AJ Pires:
We got to the same place in a little bit different paths. And I went to architecture school to make buildings because I thought that's where you go to learn how to make buildings. And I got disillusioned pretty quickly from the way that that field talks about their successes, which is often about, you know, I achieve this from the client or I was able to manipulate this and get this design done. And it was all about kind of leveraging design in a service model to get things done. And it just seemed very obvious like, oh I don't, I don't want to be in the service profession. I want to be over there making decisions. I want to do this work. Like I want to tackle the problems and do the design work. But like can't you do both? And through a mutual friend, through sheer luck we were introduced and Jared was, you know, I think that's a thing architect develop where like we can, that's a thing. I was like, yeah, that's a thing I've been studying. I think you know, let's do that thing.

 Ofer Cohen:
So together they decided to do their thing, blending real estate and architecture. They formed an open office with a collaborative approach that considers both the design and overall impact on the city.

AJ Pires:
I think there's a kind of a simple exercise, at least that I do in my own head, which is, okay hey, there's the opportunity, there's this site, there's going to be 13,000 decisions that need to be made to get to the end at the end end end. Really at the end, two years after everything is done. When somebody describes the three sentences of what the project is and you stand across the street and point added what did it achieve, right? What, what is the opportunity and the best simplest of ways. And I think the impact is increasingly becoming one of the key criteria and value sense that the architecture up at the beauty of it is also for me continuing to be kind of one of the foundational principles of our site selection and project selection, which is can we make something beautiful in the built environment? I don't know what you think. Yeah.

 Jared Della Valle:
I mean we're distorting the use of the word value in our practice. I think coming from architectural lense economics has never driven that industry. And,  you know, we are thinking about all of the alternative value sets and how to leverage our capacity with real estate to create alternative values like community connection or political, you know, opportunities or the community benefits in general. Right. And,  yeah, I think our projects need to be financeable, but at the same time, we’re adding in this additional layer of criteria about alternative values. That's super important to us.

Ofer Cohen:
Well, they only take on a few projects at a time. The bulk of their focus has been in Dumbo and they both live in buildings that they designed and developed.

AJ Pires:
No, I think just knowing that, knowing the place right in the ins and outs and who the people in your neighborhood are and what's happening on this corner and that corner. It's just, you know, we have a lot of comfort in the risk because we feel like, okay, I really, I understand this place.

Ofer Cohen:
I understand that dumbo became more and more lucrative as an investment or capital destination. But you know, do you still love Dumbo as much as you love that? And the grittier, you know, it was a little more intimate.

 Jared Della Valle:
They were literally wild dogs there when I moved into the neighborhood and my family moved there in 2001, 2002 and in a little bit post-September 11th, they moved from Chelsea and their most beautiful times and the neighborhood were like this time: of the year of February. They would not be a single car parked on the street. It'd be snow on the ground. And it was just like otherworldly. And I miss those moments of solitude,  in the neighborhood, but it was also completely starved. And with my family and committing to a place and the resources, you know, David and Jed have done an amazing job kind of curating the neighborhood and we love being neighbors with them and participating and engaging and a thoughtful future that we don't collaborate. I think we share a value set about what it is and Regina and her work at the park, which is really kind of created a new neighborhood. So I feel ownership of the place candidly after this many years. And I think my wife and kids similarly are proud to have been part of the history, of that place. And, I  love it and I can never foresee moving.         from there it's home.

 AJ Pires:
I was in Fort Greene for seven or eight years before I moved to Dumbo and you know, my wife and I started our family in Fort Greene and we did the strollers through the brownstone neighborhoods and go into the playgrounds. And, and that was difficult to leave as DUMBO’ a different neighborhood. It's more mixed-use. There's more office space, and, it's busier and there's more going on. There's tourism and certainly, with the park opened, it can be weekends there where it's really crowded. , but it's also more exciting. And it's funny, as my kids get older, it's a little bit more aligned, right? Cause there's, there's more stuff going on, right. And so like, everything, it changes. I'm sure five years from now it'll be even different than there'll be other things we couldn't even imagine. And the neighborhood and, you know, it's a physical form. The fact that it's constrained by the river and the infrastructure of the bridges will forever be there. And that is really one of the kind of remarkable and memorable moments of living in the neighborhood. And so,  I think that's sustainable.

Ofer Cohen:
Their first big development was a loft conversion on water street, but ha and Jared expand beyond Dumbo. They remain focused on what they describe is northwest, Brooklyn.

Jared Della Valle:
We have this quality of life thing, right? Written in 2008, 2009 or like just being a developer in New York attack, started to expand and to also be in the real estate broker and also having a construction company. And so the immediacy of the projects to our office became incredibly valuable to the culture and success of execution, which is we'll go to the job site twice a day, three times a day between everybody in our office, maybe five times a day. And we're looking to make sure that we can execute quickly and really understand everything. And, that market intimacy is hard to get a feel for and other places. And so, you know, sometimes we even joke about it, it's like this is a great site and we'll be in Long Island City or something like that. And it's like, this is an amazing site. But man, that's gonna take like two and a half hours out of our day to come here. I don't, I don't want to do that. And there's a degree of selfishness with that.

 AJ Pires:
There's also though, we've always been very aligned and I think everybody in the office is about what we're doing and what the legacy is, which is, you know, I always use the anecdote, like I kind of, you know, 15, 20 years from now, I want to walk around and with, my mom or my daughter and pointed the 12 buildings we've done and be proud about each one. It's not about how much a dollar is we're making or ego in that way, right? It's about the legacy of the thing and the built environment and the impact that thing had at the people who live with it and use it and encounter it and all of that. And so that does require the discipline of saying, no, whatever that quote is, right. The success is defined by what you say no to is, is absolutely true for the model. And it is sometimes it's, you know, I'm not going to say I don't second guess things where it's like, God, we could have done that and then we would have done this

Ofer Cohen:
Would you say that you have more moments of regretting not seizing an opportunity versus, you know?

 Jared Della Valle:
oh, those are so rare. I mean, we're hardly reflective. I mean, everything is perspective. There's only maybe been one or two deals in our history where we're like, shit, that was stupid were you lost for $50,000 and you know, a week on closing timing where it was like, right. You know, why didn't we do that? But when you look back at the time, there was a reason it was a reason, you know? And, yeah, we're so careful about it, but it's not how I spend our time. I'm so proud of our work.

Ofer Cohen:
I, get what you big picture are proud of, but to the point about walking around Brooklyn and being proud of specific projects so far, what would be the thing?

 Jared Della Valle:
I love them all. No, I  have to say I think, One John Street is recognizable and part of the Brooklyn Skyline and the amount of,  personal recognition and connection to our company has been kind of overwhelming you know, I hear it every day.  I ride over the bridge and blah, blah, blah, and I saw your building. It's the best building in Brooklyn. And you know, we get a lot of that from our architecture peer set, which is validating because it was really uncomfortable moment when I was stopping producing and it worked for others where I had to actually say I quit architecture. Right. And we’re like, oh, so you don't care and you know what's happening and how is that going to go? Why'd you quit architecture and why are you being a mean developer? And, and so, you know, our participation in the architectural community has been kind of important. One of the most rewarding moments of our career. We had at recent landmarks hearing where we were: presenting 168 Plymouth and the interim commissioner said, I don't think there's another owner or architect in the city who's had more of a positive impact on a neighborhood.  Then you guys. And it was, it was awesome. It was an incredible moment.

AJ Pires:
I started crying, just started crying.

Jared Della Valle:
It was really a moment of recognition of feeling like the imprint and the subtlety and the small choices we're making and the execution and certainty if that outcome is, recognizable as a place. And so for us, we walked out of that meeting like completely elated

Ofer Cohen:
Recently. They've taken on a bigger challenge, a larger mixed-use project in one of Downtown Brooklyn busiest corridors on Flatbush avenue.

 AJ Pires:
Like all things right. It was the part intention and part luck and circumstance. We didn't acquire our first piece of property there with the intention to develop what we're currently developing, and so through. And that was four years ago now, and you know, the opportunity with the RFP that the city led to make public schools and to do just a much more complicated phase mixed-use development was just kind of too good to pass up. Right? It was like what you get. We get to do public infrastructure like schools and you know, there was a big affordable housing upon its cultural component that we added. And it, it was the same, skillset that we applied, which is the project became a lot more complicated, you know, three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle on an irregular site in a mixed context. And it required a lot of, iteration and a lot of design thinking to come up with a plan that, you know, met a lot of criteria and kind of achieved whatever it is looking to achieve.

Jared Della Valle:
The complexity of that site and the political landscape and the sensitivity to the other neighborhoods was, an incredible like complete mind fuck for a long time, you know, and, I think we enjoyed, it was going to say the discussion, it was incredibly rewarding to have the 150 meetings we had. And to think through the problems and to accept the community is our client and to think through what a successful outcome could be. It was, yeah, it's a period of our history as a company that I'm exceptionally proud of.

AJ Pires:
I know our work there is not done and we won't be judged until that project is complete. And we follow through on a lot of the, you know, intent that we've described. Right. And that's, that's always the case with development. You're spending most of the time, whether it's with your internal team or your partners or communities or whatever, talking about something that doesn't exist yet. Right. And when it's done, the work is over to a certain extent and so, it's, you know, it'll be that judgment that will be the most, I think rewarding eight years from now or whenever that's going to be

 Ofer Cohen:
AJ and Jared create innovative designs. I went back to that initial question, what are they architects or developers when filling out forms? How do they describe themselves?

Jared Della Valle:
If I'm, if I'm speaking publicly, which happens often, I say I make buildings and people understand that that's the kind of most accurate version of it. If I'm, you know, filling out a form that's like an application for something, it's usually architect first and it's a line of credit. He's back,

AJ Pires:
You know, we don't fit into either of the kind of guilds, right? Right. And we go to the architectural things and although it's less, less happening now because people know us more, but people think we're real estate developer, you guys just want to make money and you ate design and putting, you know, and that, and then we go to the real estate events, right? And it's like you're just a fucking architect and you know, you just want to spend my money and you don't understand anything and you can't do math and

 AJ Pires:
I mean, you know, we're spending more time, I think trying to, push on both fronts, which is the architectural practice and needs more advocacy around ways to gain more agency. And how things are made in the city. And you know, it's a tough service profession. It's incredibly difficult and you know, both of us are on boards of organization. What we're trying to push on that front. And similarly, the real estate development community needs a lot of pushing relative to the candidly the ethics of what the responsibilities are of a developer. And you know, I think, that's one of the things that, is important to recognize that, you know, as people recognize bill, no, that's a nice building. How'd you do that? We should be trying to do our part to articulate that there are alternative paths. Right. And to set an example,

Ofer Cohen:
It's kind of like a, a combined DNA in a way. It's not like two different things that you're trying to meld together.

 AJ Pires:
There are, you know, it's funny, one of the things that does definitely happen in the past 10 years as we've noticed that there are more real estate development companies that have architectural practices in house, right? But that is still church and state and they're just, they have a division that's in house and do the kind of the earliest point like it's, it is one conversation that is happening simultaneously around what does the value of that and can we build it and will people, is that legible to a broader market and what's the impact where I like it that all of that stuff on the table at the same time is how we work and that's I think possible for other people to get there through just accepting the criteria,

Ofer Cohen:
The connection to Brooklyn I'm in, can you see yourself doing this any out of town? In the world, in America?

Jared Della Valle:
Not at all. Nope. Why? We see a million opportunities and people that are always asking, you know, would you develop here and would you develop there? And our business, again, it's about taking a risk and it's like the intimacy and connection to place and the nuance about knowing that I'm this corner, this is happening in six months that's completely devoid and not having a connection to the process of the making is also an,

Aj Pires:
It's also, it's where, where I am and where you are, which is our kids are going to school here and this is where we live. And so I want to invest capital, right? My, not my dollars but like my industry capital and effecting the place in which I live, right? Like it's to do it in suburban Cleveland, you know, I have no attachment is, you know, what's the meaning?

Jared Della Valle:
But it's also the excitement and the value proposition of, you know, the culture of this place, right? Like there is a collective spirit here and you know, I share the value set. We can have disagreements about urban issues, but, the value set about urban issues.

Ofer Cohen:
What urban issues?

Jared Della Valle:
If we can believe in a different future. Right? And it's a part of that spirit of place that I've really come to enjoy and appreciate and culture. I like participating in and, and, yeah, I don't have that connection to any other place.

Ofer Cohen:
The one thing you would change about the city?

 Jared Della Valle:
I think, some of the social equity issues that come up as, as they relate to housing, is an extraordinary challenge if people need to deal with more head-on. And I think that's hard for our industry to do. You know, we're both developers and perceived as rich white guys. Right? And so the challenge of really connecting and being genuine about making meaningful change and you know, how to participate in creating social equity, opportunities is the thing I'd like to do most. And I don't know that everybody shares that value set all of the time.so that's more of a cultural shift. And I think, you know, I think, it's obviously more present today, but I still don't know how many people take it on as a meaningful issue to address. That's a hope for the future. Call it.

AJ Pires:
I think the thing that I'm excited about, which I think is already happening, cause I certainly see it amongst the people that I encounter is, people are starting to abandon Manhattan in its entirety and live entirely in Brooklyn and they go to Manhattan to completely just do a pit stop at a cultural moment or, right, It's not part of their life at all. And you know, they're raising their family here, their kids are going to school here. They eat out here, they work here. They, it's just, and more and more I encounter right people where they're like, yeah, I know. I never go to Manhattan, I don't know the last time I went there. Right. And the more that happens, I think the more, not like there's not enough pride now in Brooklyn, but the more it just kind of starts to create its own real power of momentum, and that's what you're seeing and you know, big companies choosing to like move their entire offices to Brooklyn. Right? And we've had people who show up that are new to New York City as a whole, five Boroughs who are shopping for homes and they're like, I'm just looking in Brooklyn. I'm actually not looking at Manhattan and all, I'm just looking here. Right. And that's kind of amazing. Right. And I think, you know, 5years, 10 years, 20 years, right. It's going to be, it's not just that the center of gravity is shifting. It will be its own center of gravity, you know?

Ofer Cohen:
So we typically, and if you listened to some of these shows, we typically handle this like awkward question.

 AJ Pires:
Well, I think it's been weird that we're in our underwear this whole time. At least strange.

Ofer Cohen:
I know. I typically ask, can you tell us something that nobody else knows about you? But I can ask it separately. I can ask you together.

Jared Della Valle:

I've been asking AJ this question for the last 13 years. Never told me anything new. We were, we were trying to think of what to say to the answer of that question way over here. And it's like, no, I'm tired of you. I know everything there is to know,  I think people are always expecting us to sort of a show some side of being just pure capitalist or something at the end of the day. Right. But you know, this shit is real to enjoy. Yeah. I think we both really care about what it is that we're doing and kind of, I don't know how to answer it any other way is, the question is there are no secrets. There is nothing that nobody doesn't know and we're prepared to share just about anything.

AJ Pires:
I play guitar, which I have a played since it was a little kid. , and I only play for myself. I like, nobody ever hears me play guitar. Seriously. It's like my one piece of zen therapy, like whatever, you know, just like picking out songs consistently for like 25 years .

Ofer Cohen:
Wow. You're so lucky. I was trying to get back into playing guitars I play when I was a teenager, but I haven't been able, this was last year. I haven't been able to really get back into it.

AJ Pires:
I would play with it, but I don't, I don't play with anybody. When, when do you have talked to play? Somebody was in early in the morning and sometimes you know, and at the end of the day, you're so lucky. Yeah. That's amazing.

Ofer Cohen:
You're so lucky. Yeah. That's amazing. See, AJ actually had an answer for us.

 Jared Della Valle:
I knew that already,

 Ofer Cohen:
Oh, you knew that? Yeah, no, I get it.

 Jared Della Valle:
He actually, he says that, but the real story here is that there was a night and he's true and we did. We were out and teaching in Syracuse and we were drunk enough that AJ was out and played live. I was in front of a group of people that we didn't know, so I was not sober. It's true.

Ofer Cohen:
There we go. We found one secret joint secret actually. You were listening to, Hey, BK, the podcast about the people behind Brooklyn's transformation. You can find us at heybk.nyc or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Ofer Cohen. Thanks for listening.

Jared Della Valle:
He actually, he says that, but the real story here is that there was a night and he's true and we did. We were out and teaching in Syracuse and we were drunk enough that AJ was out and played live. I was in front of a group of people that we didn't know, so I was not sober. It's true.

Ofer Cohen :
There we go. We found one secret joint secret actually. You were listening to, Hey, BK, the podcast about the people behind Brooklyn's transformation. You can find us at heybk.nyc or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Ofer Cohen. Thanks for listening.

S1 | E7 | David Ehrenberg

David Ehrenberg:            

We're now at about seven thousand, Seven thousand five hundred people working at the yard, doubled in the last 15 years or so, but in the next four years, based on the projects that we've been talking about, and these are not speculative projects, these about projects that are under construction there, nearly complete. We will go from 7,000 to approximately 20,000, nearly tripling the number of jobs at the Navy Yard

New Speaker:                   

Hey BK with Ofer Cohen

Ofer Cohen:                      

Welcome to Hey BK, the show about the people behind the Brooklyn transformation and when talking about transformation. We're talking about Brooklyn. There's no better place to start at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. David Ehrenberg, the president, CEO. of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Welcome.

David Ehrenberg:            

Thank you.

Ofer Cohen:                      

I remember a few years ago, and I don't remember exactly when it was. We had lunch at Sushi restaurant in Park Slope and David told me: How do you feel about joining the board of the Navy Yard? There's a lot going on and I remember questioning it a little bit, doubting it a little bit. That's the way we kind of started this relationship.

David Ehrenberg:            

It's kind of the way I started the relationship with the Navy Yard myself. I had been doing economic development for the city for seven or eight years and so knew of the Navy Yard, but didn't really have a full appreciation of its scale or the amazing potential of the place until frankly I started, but I was really in my first week struck by how much was going on already and how much Andrew Kimball, my predecessor had kind of set in motion, but also how much more potential there was. I think that that's really one of our challenges, continues to be to get that story out there to the wider world that there's a huge amount of stuff happening at the Navy Yard. We're also, you know, right up against Dumbo and Clinton Hill and Williamsburg and all these amazingly dynamic and diverse neighborhoods. But we're still kind of a little bit unknown. I do think that there's still an element of, you know, the Navy Yard, where is that ? Like kinda hard part to get to. I'm convinced that a big part of that is that if you look at the subway map where one of those gray blobs on the subway map and there are very few of them, and if you're not on the subway map, you're not on the average New Yorkers mental map of the city.

Ofer Cohen:                      

David says the secret will get out in the next year or two when the high quality supermarket chain, Wegmans opens at the yard

David Ehrenberg:            

We're expecting that people from all over the city are going to kind of all of a sudden wake up the next day and say, oh my God, I got to go to the Navy Yard.

Ofer Cohen:                      

At its peak in World War II, 70,000 people worked in the Navy Yard building warships. During peacetime, that number was more like 20,000.

David Ehrenberg:            

You know, it was really the life blood of New York and Brooklyn's middle class. This was back in the day when every street car dead ended into into the waterfront. That's where the jobs were. The subway was secondary. It was the streetcars that led to the waterfront. That was really the path that people talk to you to the middle class. The Navy closed down in 1966, and by the time I was growing up in Brooklyn in the seventies and eighties, there were like two or three hundred people working in the yard down from 70,000 to 200 and you know, growing up you hear about the Dodgers moving out of Brooklyn and that was the worst day of Brooklyn history and and that's just silliness. It's the closing of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the subsequent disinvestment that happened along the Brooklyn waterfront, but really it was that day when Mcnamara announced maybe Brooklyn Navy Yard was closing. That was the Gut Punch to Brooklyn.

Ofer Cohen:                      

The Navy Yard has slowly crawled back from stabilization to rebuilding its infrastructure. The Bloomberg administration made huge investments and money started pouring in.

David Ehrenberg:            

There's an interplay, I think between the Brooklyn Navy Yard and Brooklyn and the Brooklyn brand is extraordinarily strong and who knows what it would have been without the Navy Yard. But to a large extent I think the Navy Yard really has led the way back to the bar. You know, us and what Jed Walentas has done in Dumbo really kind of convinced a lot of people that there is potential and commercial potential along the Brooklyn Waterfront, which is now a large part of the strength of Brooklyn and, and why I think Brooklyn's kind of best days are ahead of it. We're now at about seven thousand seven thousand five hundred people working at the yard that doubled in the last 15 years or so, but in the next four years, based on the projects that we've been talking about, and these are not speculative projects, these are projects that are under construction that are nearly complete. We will go from 7,000 to approximately 20,000 people for nearly tripling the number of jobs at the Navy Yard,

Ofer Cohen:                      

The Art for Film, the largest film and television studio outside of Los Angeles and manufacturing facility Building 77 along with New Lab, the advanced technology hub created by David Belt.

David Ehrenberg:            

At the end of the day, we have this extraordinary asset. We have 300 acres on the Brooklyn waterfront. Uh, but it's owned and controlled by a nonprofit. So what we're trying to do is really take all of the good things about the resurgence of Brooklyn and the revitalization of Brooklyn and pivot it ever so slightly to say how do you include the widest diversity of Brooklyn Heights and New Yorkers in the success of Brooklyn. We do that by focusing on trying to curate a set of companies and recruiting a set of companies to create high quality middle class jobs and then connecting local job seekers and local students and workforce and all that to those opportunities. So we're really trying to kind of leverage the market and leverage all the extraordinary stuff happening in Brooklyn that all of your other guests talk about, but also asks, you know, for the greater good of Brooklyn, how do you take all of that energy, all of that capital flowing back into Brooklyn, and make it as equitable and accessible as possible. You know, we're really a city within a city. Uh, and it gives us a lot of flexibility to think about what does that equitable city really what does that equitable economy really look like and what are all the ingredients that need to be put into it.

Ofer Cohen:                      

David Ehrenberg is Brooklyn, born and raised. He knew he wanted to lead the Navy Yard even before the job was open and he put himself in the running. It was the tail end of the Bloomberg Administration and David was working for the city on some it's biggest projects

David Ehrenberg:            

And at my level I became just, you know, the kind of the fix it person. So when a project got off the rails, I went in and had to solve it, which is great learning experience and I've got to say I learned most of what I know about negotiating by negotiating Atlantic Yards across the table from Maryanne Gilmartin very early in my career. I like to say I learned a lot by just watching how Maryanne was screwing me, how she was setting me up in the negotiations and then kind of going home that night and saying what did she do right, and what did I do wrong in that situation? So, you know, I got to a point where I kind of needed to make a change just for my lifestyle. I've had two kids getting home really late at night, stressed out and frazzled and all that kind of stuff. The thing that really attracted me to, it was twofold. One was the scale. We're adding two and a half million square feet of space to the yard today. That's a big development project by any scale. Uh, I believe it was the second day on the job I got onto the roof of our Building 77, which is our largest building. And I was up there with our chief operating officer and head of construction and a few other people and they kind of pointed out to the horizon like, okay, so the Navy Yard goes from there to all the way over here and then back along there and I remember just standing up there trying to keep a good game face on in front of my new team. But just thinking, oh my God, what did Mayor Mike do? How did he put me in charge of this? But we're also really deeply connected to the community. And that spoke to the job. The work that I had done before, the movie administration where i had been a community organizer here in Brooklyn or four or five years and had lived abroad in southern Africa studying community based economic development models in rural southern Africa. And so the combination of being able to do big projects, which is academic kind of intellectually stimulating, interesting gets your kind of negotiation, juices flowing and all that. But also being able to turn around and really say like, how does this effect the community? How does this affect these people? That I know,was really what attracted me to it and I think is actually the special sauce of the Navy Yard.

Ofer Cohen:                      

When you recruited new people for the board, when you recruited your new team, you had to create the vision. Now I think it's easy now people see Building 77 to complete and they see Dock 72 top out, and New lab is open.

David Ehrenberg:            

When I spoke with Mayor de Blasio to try to keep my job, what I said to him was, look, Mr Mayor, if we haven't done something extraordinary in a few years at the Navy Yard, you should fire me because we have all of the ingredients to really elevate the place to something that just New York can be proud of, but that the country should be proud really. We really should establish a national model or what this kind of development kind of place based mission oriented policy oriented development should look like because we've got 300 acres on the Brooklyn waterfront and something like 16 million square feet of unused FAR over one zoning.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Most recently David's proudest moments was working with students at the new technical high school at the Yard. The aim was to create new paths to success from culinary arts to media.

David Ehrenberg:            

When you really dial it down, like these kids and these kids are going to have a better high school experience because of this. It's really exciting.

Ofer Cohen:                      

You felt like you were proud of the impact on sort of the real. How meaningful your contribution there.

David Ehrenberg:            

Exactly.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Building 77 in that regard was unique because it wasn't a public private partnership.

David Ehrenberg:            

Yeah. We do development a couple of different ways. The Wegmans supermarket and the building we call Dock 72, which is going to be a creative economy, office building. We ground lease to private developers and they build those buildings because we're not. We're not a retail developer or landlord. We don't want to be, but for Building 77 and the green manufacturing center, which together is about 1.3 million square feet of development. We've done. We've self develop those, you know, soup to nuts. It's us and it gives us a level of control to make sure that the and the tenants that end up there and the programming ends up there is really true to who we are. The ground floor is another really good example of Building 77 where most of the yard is behind a security wall because we're an industrial facility and there is kind of big forklifts and things like that rumbling around the Navy Yard. But we took the opportunity to open up Building 77 to Flushing Avenue. People will walk right in, bike ride in off the Greenway. And we really curated, to an extraordinary degree, the tenants who are on the ground floor where we're doing a food manufacturing facility, similar to what Chelsea market used to be like where there's real large scale food manufacturing happening, but then they're all selling retail into the lobby. And when we sat down with the team and said, okay, I said, okay, here's what I want in the tenant base. I said, I want good food. I want a diverse set of entrepreneurs. I want diverse kinds of food. And by that, you know, God bless the hipsters have of Brooklyn, but I don't want a bunch of pickle makers. I want like New York, Brooklyn Diversity, um, and, and I want all the food to be really good but also really cheap because our average workforce here is a middle class worker who can't afford $12 for a sandwich. And the team just went out and pounded the pavement across all kinds of neighborhoods in Brooklyn and found some of the best food entrepreneurs they truly stocked. And some of them, the owners of a food company called food sermon, which is this amazingly good cafe in Bed Stuy and really got freaked out by our work, by our team as they were kind of coming by pretty much every day and saying, hey, you want to move to the navy yard that's a, that's a Caribbean food company that does some of the best food, I think in Brooklyn. Look them up. And we just went out and kind of did the hard work to find this awesome diversity of, companies. And again, it's like what the Navy Yard is all about.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Give me some other examples of some interesting or some of your favorite kind of tenants. Big Picture, not just Building 77.

David Ehrenberg:            

So I love all of our tenants equally, but so I'll tell you one of the stories, and this really kind of symbolizes what the art is about. So we had a tenant, called Fera Design and they are one of the highest quality metal working companies in the country. We gave them a beautiful large building for them can move into. They knew they were going to have a long term home with the yard. We offered affordable rents, but most importantly we offer stability to these companies. And so this company did exactly what we want. When we take that longer term risk company, they went off and bought a $500,000 laser cutter, the laser cutter that laser cutters, and perhaps not surprisingly, can't cut reflective metal. This laser cutter, can. It is the only one of its kind in the region. And the owner was running this extraordinarily important complicated piece of machinery. The truck driver came to him and say, can I take the manual home? Uh, ended up finding a training in Wisconsin or Michigan somewhere, went out there, got trained on it, and now has become the operator for this, you know, this extraordinarily complicated piece of machinery has a very high quality job now and is employable, you know, forever basically. And that's the kind of career path and the growth that we see both in our companies and also in our, in the employees of the companies.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Mayors from all over the country and the world have visited the yard taking note of what's happening in the long abandoned property.

David Ehrenberg:            

When we say to the folks who come to visit us from the other cities is, look, you can look at Brooklyn and say, well, of course, right, like the Brooklyn Navy Yard and you're in the middle of Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Of course you're being successful. But 12, 15 years ago it was radically different. You know, there were packs of wild dogs, I think 15 years ago who would chase our tenants and investors off their property. And so what we say to them is look the city could have taken what perhaps would have been an easier path years and years and years ago and just sold the Brooklyn Navy Yard and what happened there would have been great for sure, right? But it would have been another residential and retail development and New York's got a lot that. What it doesn't have is a lot of areas that are solely dedicated to curated for the sole purpose of creating high quality middle class jobs and the city, the scale of New York and certainly lots of other cities. They need that diversity and you don't want to become a mono culture. We kind of council other cities to take a longer view of it. You have to start that reinvestment cycle, but if you've got cool, old buildings are cool old areas, take a breath, take a moment and ask yourselves, in 20 years if the rest of everything we're doing is successful, what awesome thing could we do here that would it be different than everything else and set it aside and put it under control of an onsite passionate group of people who are just going to take the incremental steps that are required to get you there.

Ofer Cohen:                      

In the next two to three years. David expects the Navy Yard to employ as many people as the day it closed its doors back in 1966. That will be his proudest moment.

David Ehrenberg:            

The amazing thing about the yard bring this full circle is it's scale and we really can say, look, we're adding 10,000 jobs to the Navy Yard in the next couple of years and what are all of the ingredients that's necessary from high school and lower? We have programs we do with middle schools and elementary schools all the way up through an adult to make sure that those opportunities are accessible to all New Yorkers

Ofer Cohen:                      

And a lot of these things to not happen anywhere else in New York, right?

David Ehrenberg:            

That's right. I mean this is a lot of what we do is not the job that provided something that just isn't yet. We also, you know, you asked me how some of this can happen. We have 300 acres on the Brooklyn waterfront and we don't pay rent on it, so you know, our acquisition costs, our basis is zero. That gives us an enormous amount of flexibility that the private sector just doesn't have.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Thank you. David Ehrenberg, the Brooklyn guy with the coolest job in New York City. You're listening to Hey BK, the podcast about the people behind Brooklyn's transformation. You could find us at heybk.nyc or wherever you get your podcasts, please download and subscribe to our episodes. I'm Ofer Cohen. Thanks for listening.

S2 | E6 | Andrew Kimball

Announcer:                   

Hey BK with Ofer Cohen

Andrew Kimball:              

You know, there's nothing more exciting than seeing, you know, people flow into the Brooklyn Navy Yard through their gates in ways that they hadn't been, you know, since the mid sixties. And, and same thing at industry city. When you see masses of folks coming down the hill, you know, from Sunset Park and the surrounding areas.

Ofer Cohen:                      

You are listening to Hey BK, I'm Ofer Cohen. Today, I talk to Andrew Kimball chief executive of Industry City, the largest privately owned industrial complex in New York City on the Sunset Park waterfront, totaling 6 million square feet. The site is being transformed by Andrew and his partners into an eclectic mixed use project. But before taking on Industry City, Andrew was at the helm of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation. Like Industry City, the new navy yard signifies a new era for innovation and manufacturing on the Brooklyn waterfront. Are you proud?

Andrew Kimball:              

Incredibly proud and incredibly appreciative of the time I spent there.

Ofer Cohen:                      

We've already devoted three Hey BK episodes to the Navy Yard, David Belt of New Lab, David Ehrenberg, the duke over for Andrew and Doug Steiner of Steiner studios have all been on the show. Now, Andrew Kimball, a key force behind the Brooklyn transformation.

Andrew Kimball:              

You're generous giving me that credit. The truth is that, you know, one of the great stories of the Navy Yard is that the series of competent and strong executive directors, presidents, and then a really strong board, the governance piece, you know, you can't overstate the importance of the governance piece. People who both understood real estate really well and were very hardheaded and and really grilled us on every single deal.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Innovations to modernize Industry City began with Jamestown and partners took over five years ago with Andrew at the helm. The tremendous amount of capital thoughtfulness and the hard work is starting to pay off with industry and workers coming back and activating the area. I asked Andrew, where do you start?

Andrew Kimball:              

It was tough the first couple of years. I mean, you know, you're looking at a site where the electric, you know, barely worked. We had blackouts every summer or the first three summers I was there. I mean, that's, that's not a happy day when you're moving in. Companies that are tech reliant, whether they're manufacturing or they're designing or they're, you know, a tech office and, and you have an outage, I mean, that's, that's not a happy moment as landlord and you know, so a 144 elevators that needed to be upgraded, 17,000 windows that needed to be replaced, you know, the list just went on and on and on. And you're exactly right. Where do you start? Um, and, you know, look, we tried to be very disciplined. Obviously it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out, hey, one of the great competitive advantages we have, there's only one block from the subway, the N, R and the D with very fast access to the rest of Brooklyn into Manhattan. Um, so of course you want to start with those buildings closest to the subway. The finger buildings, as we call them, they tend to be a little narrower than the buildings along 39th street. Those are much bigger floor plates. So we tried to stay focused there. Um, but then of course the Brooklyn Nets came along and the first year and said, hey, we want to build a $50,000,000 practice facility on your roof. Um, so we were delighted to try to make that work. Um, and they're there, but they needed to be in the buildings along 39th street because of the size of the footprint so that, you know, that was a pleasant distraction to have, but a but a distraction, a, it's now safe for pedestrians. And so that was number one. Number two was, and others had this idea but never executed creating a common walkway through the middle of all the buildings that we call innovation alley. Um, that really created a campus feel connected the building's otherwise you had to walk the full block length to get around these buildings. And you know, that's been incredible in terms of creating more food amenities, what I like to call maker retail. So you know, the hat maker where you can actually see the goods getting made and buy it. And that piece has been so successful. We're now looking at creating more common area, publicly accessible area where you walk up to a second floor and have more maker space. The glass blower, the Woodworker, the guitar maker, um, those sorts of amenities. Um, and then the third I would say is the courtyards. I mean, we're, we're blessed to have these beautiful courtyards. When those buildings were built in 1890 and 1910 by Irving T Bush, sort of Andrew Carnegie type character who built really the nation's first inter-modal center. So goods would come in by ship first it was coffee than bananas, garment. They get off the ship, they get on rail that come into the courtyards, they'd go up in the buildings that get stored, they get work done, they'd go out on the streets, you know, those days are over of that use of rail. So the courtyards, you know, remain. And when we got there, most of them were overgrown with weeds, 10 feet tall and we've now renovated three of them. Created five acres of publicly accessible space and know that's incredibly satisfying. It's a place where the tenants congregate. It's a place where the community comes down to hang out and you know, now if you come down and Industry City on the weekend, they're, you know, 15 to 20,000 people there every weekend and that's only growing.

Ofer Cohen:                       I was there a couple of weeks ago at the ABC store and that was amazing to see that corner of 39th street activated this way, was for me like a big moment because I've seen, you know, every few months I've seen everything you've been describing the sidewalks and the loading docks and the inner courtyard and the retail activation. But that corner of 39th street for me was a big moment of like, wow.

Andrew Kimball:              

And it's a challenging intersection from a transportation point of view. You've got the coming off the BQE, you've got second and 39th meeting, you've got a street that probably hasn't been touched in 120 years. So that's one of the key parts of the infrastructure work that's going to happen down there.

Ofer Cohen:                      

That will be some pedestrian...

Andrew Kimball:              

Improved pedestrian, improved lights, improved safety. The greenway will run along second avenue and then down 39 street. So that will be terrific in terms of bike access.

Ofer Cohen:                      

You make it sound so easy now five years into the job.

Andrew Kimball:              

You know, there were days in the first couple of years, you know, forgetting the blackouts, like you'd, you'd come down to the ground floor at lunch and there's nobody there and, you know. Or You'd come on the weekend and, you know, the only way we'd get people there as to have a specific event to draw people there. That was stressful. Will they ever come? I think we've passed that moment like we're on the map. People certainly know what Industry City is. A funny story, you know obviously we've done a lot in terms of events and marketing to try to encourage people to come down there. But Lyft has done an interesting advertising campaign. This was well before they took over motivate our tenant. But I think maybe six, eight months ago a billboard went up in Chelsea, that was, you know, a really cool sort of cartoony image of Industry City and, you know, essentially the message was Lyft can get you there.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Industry City is in the middle of a rezoning process to support the commercial growth and activate more retail around the area. What's division, like closing your eyes and thinking like what would Industry City be in like seven, eight years?

Andrew Kimball:              

Yeah, I mean, look, its challenging as you know, it takes a very, very long time. Zoning is really outdated in New York. I mean it was designed in the fifties and sixties for things that, you know, for a very different economy that said we've got to keep things apart and separate. The noxious uses need to be way over here. The less noxious uses over here or the office over here and the residential way far away and, you know, we all know those things can mix a lot more. There's obviously going to be no residential in our project and that's core, that's something that the community wanted. But there should be more academic as an example. And so, you know, under the M3 zoning, we're very constricted there. We can do some narrow vocational, academic collaborations and we're doing that with Cuny City Tech. We're doing it with St Francis now and an innovation space and through internships. But if any one of those schools said, hey, you know, we love being embedded here. This is great for our students. We want a place where they could see stepping out of school and starting their own business. And more and more schools are coming to us with that, but we can't have classroom space under the M3 zoning. So we want the flexibility to add to the vocational, to the maker spaces up to 600,000 square feet of classroom space. We think that's fundamental. It's sort of that great intersection of good public policy, right? Really good for the city that the academic sector is growing. Really good at those students are being connected to those jobs, and good real estate because it's, it's a great component. And Brooklyn College Graduate School of Cinema at the Navy Yard is a big example of that. An amazing example and one that ought to be replicated in multiple different sectors. So that's one big piece of the zoning. We want to have some more flexibility on retail. So, you know, ABC is there, it's great. They've got a very small store and you know, a huge amount of warehouse distribution space. But it's challenging. You couldn't do a sporting good store underneath the Nets because, you know, under the M-3 you could sell baseball bats a hard good, but you can't sell a baseball glove, a soft good.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Also feels like ABC could use some co-tenancies

Andrew Kimball:              

100 percent and that, you know, there's some co-tenancy moving in along 39th street. There's a really cool company called gumption coffee. It's an Australian, a roaster so it's mostly manufacturing, but they're going to have a small cafe but you're absolutely right. Some bigger players and obviously retail is evolving very quickly. But that corner of 39th and second facing Costco, and then on the other side of Costco, in our building one that could be a very dynamic retail center, be great to have a grocery store that, serves industry city and serves the broader Sunset Park community. Increasingly, people are doing business at the Navy Yard or a Downtown Brooklyn or at Industry City or at BAT or in Domino. They're coming from all over the nation, all over the world. We want that. We want more tech companies that are going to say, you know, hey, it's one thing being in a suburban campus somewhere in California. But where the real action is in Brooklyn.

Ofer Cohen:                      

And at that point you would think at least in the 10 years at that point, that would be a lot more demand for housing around Industry City.

Andrew Kimball:              

Yeah, there's no question. Look, there's a lot of heat and debate and anger around issues of gentrification and affordability and the issue when I was growing up in New York was, you know, crime and creating diversity in the economy and jobs. Now crime is at record lows and jobs are coming, but that's obviously creating economic pressures because everyone wants to come into the urban core again, and this is not a New York phenomenon. This is Cleveland, Detroit, San Francisco, LA, like it's happening everywhere. These pressures and you know, the answer to that pressure is not stopping job growth or slowing it down. You want to continue to increase that job growth, particularly in job sectors that are accessible to people with limited educational backgrounds. But you're absolutely right. Like the answer is and this mayor deserves kudos for putting it at the top of the agenda is more affordable and workforce housing and we need to be much more aggressive. Throughout that Long Island City to Sunset Park corridor at building that kind of housing.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Now as Amazon announced their plans for a large footprint in Long Island City. Andrew predicts that it won't be long before the next industry giants take on Brooklyn

Andrew Kimball:              

You know, I think what makes Industry City and the Navy Yard, and now increasingly the Brooklyn Army Terminal, so compelling though is the eclectic mix of the businesses and that ecosystem. I have no doubt that at some point a much bigger player is going to come along for us, whether it's 100,000 or 250,000 or it's a whole new building. But core to what makes us special is that, you know, there are 500 plus companies on the way to 1000 and the dynamism that you get from that as opposed to just, you know, one company taking the whole thing. This is not the manufacturing of the 1950s. Those smoke stacks are gone. It's looking very different. And what has happened along the Brooklyn Queens waterfront is primarily driven by the innovation economy. That broad range of making a physical, a digital or an engineered product. Now that's very, very broad. I mean, having grown up here in the, you know, in the seventies and eighties when people were fleeing the city, you know, we couldn't keep the talent here. The Brooklyn Queens waterfront was a wreck, unsafe. We had an incredible over reliance on, on the fire sector, you know, Wall Street, finance, insurance. And here we are diversifying the economy in these amazing ways, bringing this waterfront back to life. I mean, it's an incredible success story, but both the Navy Yard and Industry City, what really gets my engines going, they're really two things. One is interfacing with the tenants and you know, I think there are 400 plus tenants at the Navy Yard. Now there are 550 tenants at Industry City. That's up from 150 when I got there in 2013. There's 7,500 people working there now that's up from 1900 when I got, that's equivalent of 100 new jobs a month. So interacting with those entrepreneurs, those businesses that, you know, these folks are putting everything on the line everyday. They're creating, they're innovating, you know, whether it's a ceramicist or a software startup or a candle maker, a designer, a woodworker. And that's exciting to be around. I love that energy. And then I think that's one. And then two, I love, you know, there's nothing more exciting than seeing, people flow into the Brooklyn Navy Yard through their gates in ways that they hadn't, you know, since the mid sixties. And same thing in Industry City when you see masses of folks coming down the hill from Sunset Park and the surrounding areas walking from the subway at Thirty Sixth Street, coming onto the BQE, which for years and years had been this barrier. Many of them, local, many of them folks who need these jobs badly to move up the economic ladder in New York and deal with some of the issues of inequity that we have. That's the other exciting piece for me is the workforce component.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Tell us something that nobody knows about you.

Andrew Kimball:              

When my younger son Elliot who is now a 17, I think was 10, he decided that he wanted to have a chickens and so, we told him he had to make up a business plan and a pitch to his parents and do some research and of course we helped him a little bit, who's going to take care of these chickens? What kinds of cages would they need? How do they get fed? How do you find them? How do you order them? How noisy are they? Are they allowed? Ultimately we ended up with having two chickens in the backyard, Buddha and Himalaya for about two years. They were called Easter Eggers, so they had blue and green eggs that were delivered, almost every morning. Incredible tasting eggs. So we really loved them. Our neighbors tolerated it. But unfortunately Ricky the raccoon and found them about two and a half years now and that was the end. So there's a little Brooklyn story and you may not have known about me.

Ofer Cohen:                      

I actually thought if you're going to say that as a result of it we're allocating a chicken farm space in Industry City and a 17 year old is going to run.

Andrew Kimball:              

I will say though, on a more serious point that the urban farming movement is something that really gets my engine going. And obviously Brooklyn grange at the Navy Yard, which you've seen is just extraordinary. They're expanding now down to Sunset Park. They're not in our buildings yet. They're going on the top of liberty view, which is about 100,000 square feet. We will get to the point where more of our roofs can be used in that way, but there's a guy that's making honey on our roofs. He's got a beehive. We had something like that at the Navy Yard. That kind of local sourcing I think is so important on every level of sustainability, supporting local farms, etc.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Great. Andrew Kimball Thank you so much.

Andrew Kimball:              

Thank you.

Ofer Cohen:                      

You're, listening to the podcast about the people behind Brooklyn's transformation. You can find us at heybk.nyc or wherever you get your podcasts. Please download and subscribe to our episodes. I'm Ofer Cohen. Thanks for listening.

S1 | E8 | Jonathan Butler

Jonathan Butler:              

Even though Brooklyn population-wise, it's so big, I was struck early on by how it felt like it was a place that actually has an impact on whether it was creating something, you know, entrepreneurial you come to Brooklyn. I was like, oh my God. People are like, really woven tight here.

Ofer Cohen:                

In this episode of, Hey BK, I speak to Jonathan Butler, the blogger, and entrepreneur behind some of Brooklyn's coolest projects. Brooklyn Flea, Smorgasburg and 1000 Dean. Johnathan and I shared an Uber to the interview. We both live in Clinton Hill. We both moved to Brooklyn around the same time in the early two thousands. We were 30 somethings with young families and had discovered the magic. So you've been at it a very long time starting with Brownstoner.

Speaker 1:               

Indeed, I was a little bit bored at my, Wall Street job at the time. So I just went on a lunch break one day and started a blog about my house and about what was going on in Clinton Hill, Fort Greene and beyond.

Ofer Cohen:                      

When you started writing Brownstoner, it was just, you just kinda did it on a whim almost.

Jonathan Butler:              

Oh yeah

Ofer Cohen:                      

You didn't think it would be a business?

Jonathan Butler:              

I didn't even know, I started it on blogger.com or it was Brownstoner.blogspot.com. I did, you know, have the foresight to buy the domain name Brownstoner.com before I started the blog there and thought, you know if this goes somewhere I want to at least be able to have the name. And so after three months, it was going well enough that I then created it in January 2005, I created the first sort of standalone website version of Brownstoner and it just just kept kind of catching on. It was early days of blogging and, you know, a lot of success in life is timing and clearly you know started capturing a moment and the thing that was happening in Brooklyn and you know, probably captured and also helped in some ways propel certain things that were underway in Brooklyn.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Yeah. Remember, I mean, back then I mean there was the real kind of, almost like a DIY feeling, you know, of buying a brownstone, having a piece of Brooklyn, having a piece of the neighborhood, a piece of real estate.

Jonathan Butler:              

Yeah, there was a sense, you know, and, and it's, it's hard, hard to use a word like, you know, pioneering because clearly, people had, people were living in Brooklyn forever but certainly for at least for a certain segment of the population that might have lived in Manhattan by default before we're waking up to and realizing that this incredible, beautiful culturally diverse place existed across the river certainly it was. It was really. There was a sense of sort of fun and discovery and adventure. For me, having been a lifelong Manhattanite. And I found myself in this really interesting, huge, incredibly diverse place that I just wanted to keep exploring. And really the, I think part of the charm of the blog, in the beginning, was that I was not holding myself out as an expert at all. I was more saying, woah, here's this thing I'm, I'm really into. And I'm discovering and come along for the ride and a lot of the early days of the blog posts especially were more interactive or I'd say, I don't know, you know, what, what parks should I go explore this weekend or you know, ask people questions and you know, sometimes people would call me stupid and an idiot and that kind of stuff or not, you know, not knowing everything I was supposed to know about Brooklyn. But I think to me, part of the fun and part of the charm was that I was just bringing people along on this, ride as I discovered it and as I literally rode my bike around and took pictures of empty lots or beautiful buildings, whatever it is and some reason and under-tapped into something that people related to.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Feels very romantic now, that you talk about it, those days specifically but also that sort of period.

Jonathan Butler:             

Yeah, believe me, we were talking about being middle-aged on the way over here and it's sometimes hard to not feel wistful for those days. Yeah, that was 13 years ago, so I was 35 instead of 48. One year old and a three-year-old. Yeah, there was, you know, jumping on my bike and take pictures of things and feeling like I was at the beginning of trying to build something that was mine and creative. And you know, I don't think you'd get those moments very often in life

Ofer Cohen:                     

After years of looking to leave Wall Street, Jonathan finally took the risk. He got his bonus and moved onto Brownstoner full time.

Jonathan Butler:    

Oh yeah. January 2007 was kind of like, I was also hated my job so much that I was like, this point I'm going to go for it and if it doesn't work, I'd rather like move to a farm in Vermont and start over then being stuck to this horrible job, Wall Street on the hamster wheel of New York City for the rest of my life.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Jonathan sold Brownstoner in 2015, but it was his role as a blogger that helped him launch his first big entrepreneurial project: The Brooklyn Flea.

Jonathan Butler:           

It wasn't much. It was that fall 2007 when they had the idea to start a flea market. That's really what enabled me to live a more comfortable life. That kind of launched a whole other part of my life business life and also it was a whole other role and sort of this, ambassadorial role in spreading around the gospel of Brooklyn in both, you know, both the sort of Manhattanites who were coming out of the C train in Fort Greene, and look around and be like, holy crap, this is the most beautiful place I've ever seen. I didn't even know this was here. To, you know, tourists from Europe and Asia or wherever. There was a lot of this energy and momentum that was happening. And obviously, that was already apparent, on Brownstoner online. But this really was, ended up being a more physical manifestation, and meeting place. It was kind of like the town square effect, where all of a sudden, there was like a meeting place and there was something to do even if you weren't in the market to buy an old piece of furniture, still wanted to push your baby's stroller over the Brooklyn Flea and buy a pupusa and you know, maybe a t-shirt for the birthday party you're going to later or whatever. But it became a place where you go, you probably bump into people and it's really it had that community building fact. I think that really brought a lot of connections and made people feel really connected and created a real sense of place. Not only Fort Greene but kind of are all around brownstone North Brooklyn.

Ofer Cohen:                      

He turned to then-city councilwoman Tish James with the idea, which as it turns out is a relatively safe business model.

Jonathan Butler:              

So I love flea markets and I just thought it was as simple as here's this huge dynamic place where full of creative people who don't have quite as much money as Manhattan and we don't really have a big flea market. So let's try one.

Ofer Cohen:                 

Sounds like no-brainer right now.

Jonathan Butler:    

I mean the other nice thing about it, just like blogs, starting to flea market doesn't take a whole lot of capital. So I went to Tish and said, I have this idea for a flea market. There's this schoolyard or a Catholic high school or I think it'd be a great place to do it. On Vanderbilt and Lafayette. And she put me in touch with Brother Dennis at Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School. The first year, I can't remember if we did it on a handshake or a one paragraph deal that first year. But anyway I announced it on my blog in October 2007 I'd known Eric Demby for about probably about a year because he had been the communications director for Marty Markowitz. Who was the borough president at the time. And he saw the announcement and reached back out to me and said, this is a great idea. I love to be a part of this. And it's sort of jives with a lot of things I've been thinking about. So we got together and decided to work together on it and it launched in April 2008 and you know, we had, it was crazy. We had like 20,000 people show up that first day.

Ofer Cohen:                   

What about the vendors? How did the vendors show up?

Jonathan Butler:              

Well, the vendor that, that was sort of the idea of leveraging the existing media platform I had, right? Because the challenge of any kind of marketplaces, how do you get buyers and sellers there at the same time and in the old days you would have been like, you know, putting up flyers on telephone poles and hoping people showed up. Um, you know, this, uh, when, when I announced it on the blog in the fall, I think we had close to 100 vendors signed up in the first 48 hours. So we knew we were onto something and that was also through the perfect timing with the blogs and the newspapers that were around, there was this great echo chamber that would happen. So I announced it and then curved wrote about it and then Brooklyn paper wrote about. And so it sort of and then sort of culminated on the second day of the flea market when New York Times showed up and did a big photo shoot for the cover style section that really put it on the map. A lot of stuff too. We decided to have some food at the flea market too, which was sort of a novel idea, believe it or not back then, but we thought, oh, people are gonna be coming out fort Greene and the vendors will need some coffee and donuts in the morning. And at that point 10 years ago in Fort Greene and there weren't that many places to get food. And so that ended up being a fortuitous decision because it ended up becoming sort of ground zero for like street food, entrepreneurial who seen Brooklyn, which then led to the creation Smorgasburg.

Ofer Cohen:                      

So, Smorgasburg sort of got incubated in Brooklyn Flea and now it's own.

Jonathan Butler:            

Yeah, we realized we had this great food scene going in Brooklyn Flea and a lot of people coming to Brooklyn Flea for the food. But it got to the point where we were having to turn away really interesting food vendors because, you know, we wanted to not have more than, let's say 25 percent of the market be food, otherwise it would still stop feeling like a flea market that we realized we were saying no to a lot of people. Eric and I sat around for a couple of weeks scratching our heads, trying to think we didn't want to just create a flea market that would compete with our flea market, you know, it was three miles away in Fort Greene. So it seems so obvious in retrospect, but we, you know, are like, oh, should we have an art market, craft market? And I'll feel like no, food would make a lot of sense. We have a lot of food vendors. Um, and I just kind of, I remember I was sitting in front of the TV, I just thought of the name Smorgasburg texted it to Eric and he's like, that's a little silly but might work. And then kind of stuck. So that launched in May of 2011.

Ofer Cohen:                   

Smorgasburg has moved around a lot from Brooklyn Bridge Park to Williamsburg. What helped activate the waterfront Most recently it has expanded to Los Angeles.

Jonathan Butler:   

It is sort of arbitraging short-term real estate opportunities because we need to get the space for cheap. And one of the nice things about the business model is we only pay for our retail space on the best retail days of the week. We were three or four different locations in Brooklyn Bridge Park because Brooklyn Bridge Park was getting built out, so we sort of always, you know, one, one step ahead of the bulldozer. And uh, ultimately two years ago there's no room left in Brooklyn Bridge Park and we moved the Sunday market to Prospect Park.

Ofer Cohen:                   

It has created a business model that has been copied all over the country.

Jonathan Butler:              

They don't require much capital. So even if you fail, you know, haven't wiped yourself out, at least. I didn't know how to run a flea market. But I was like, how hard could it be to figure that out? You know, I never had. There was something, even though Brooklyn population-wise, it's so big, I was struck early on by how it felt like it was a place to actually have an impact on whether it was creating something entrepreneurial or just even. It never occurred to me in Manhattan that I could like call up a politician and ask them for help or providing an opinion or complain about something like I came to Brooklyn I was like, oh my God, people are like really woven tight here and there's not a lot of artificial barriers, you know, everyone can talk to each other. For me, it was really eyeopening. The ways people worked on a community level that I'd never really seen in Manhattan before.

Ofer Cohen:                

Jonathan has embarked on his own real estate project at 1000 Dean in Crown Heights. In 2011, he pitched a conversion of the abandoned studebaker service station to Goldman Sachs, the commercial workspace for Brooklyn's creative classes. An extension of all of his other projects.

Jonathan Butler:          

Really my sales pitch to Goldman was, it's like a map and drew two concentric circles. One was half a mile, one was a mile and showed all the residential neighborhoods that had been booming for the last seven years, that touched there and said, look, there's no place for all these creative, successful people who are moving into neighborhoods to work.

Ofer Cohen:                   

Right. It would be cool if there's going to be a place for them to hang out.

Jonathan Butler:           

Kind of a hub, you know, and people who are running small businesses still want to feel like they have people around them and they're seeing people in the hallway and, in our case, we built a beer hall and a food court on the ground floor. That's pretty crucial to the success of the building probably. They still want to have that sense of community. No one wants to sit in the kitchen by themselves all day long if they don't have to. And I think, you know, in the car over, we were talking a little bit, I think about, how it feels like we're in a different era now than the era in which I started. I mean, it's hard to know it's being filtered through my own eyes. It certainly feels less exciting and that sort of, as I was saying, before there was personally for me, there was a sense of discovery and that there was a lot of stuff, you know, whether it's a grocery store or a bar or whatever, you know, that a lot of neighborhoods still needed. Um, and there was the ability to have an idea that someone else hadn't had and make it happen and feel like it was impactful. And I certainly look, I still think people are moving to Brooklyn, not for many of the same reasons, you know, of community and scale, all that kind of stuff, quality of life, the kids, all that sort of thing. But it's just, you know, it's less a, it's already picked over and it's, it's hardly a new idea. Yeah I bumped into a guy now if I hadn't seen it a couple of years, I bumped into him at Smorgasburg in Prospect Park Sunday and he's like, I was like stressed out. I saw some garbage can overflowing and something. He was like, it must feel great to stand here and look at this and think you created it. It's like, I guess you're right. I don't usually think about it, but yeah, you know, Eric and I created this thing that however many thousands of people are coming to and even more, you know, the one thing we haven't talked about that is that the most satisfying and some ways impactful piece of what we've done is we actually created a platform for small businesses. So between Brooklyn Flea and Smorgasburg, I think, I can't think of anything else. Let me know if you can think of anything else. I can't think of anything else that basically incubates and supports more small businesses in New York City. I really think we're the biggest small business incubator in New York City, sort of unintentionally, but it's really about a platform and created that change. The economics of the food business.

Ofer Cohen:                 

Johnathan and his partner Eric Demby have a keen eye for identifying the vibe of the neighborhood and the sensibility to create a business around it. But they aren't ready to take the credit for expanding the so-called Brooklyn brand, even as food markets expand throughout the country.

Jonathan Butler:         

I would probably steer away from calling it, bringing the Brooklyn experience. Um, I think that they sent you on a use Brooklyn as a verb or an adjective, you know, there's probably 30 or 40 cities already in the country that you could say have been, have there Brooklyn or have, you know, have been Brooklyn eyes in some ways. And basically just means there's a creative community and food is important there. And you know...

Ofer Cohen:            

In the real estate business, they call it millennial clusters.

Jonathan Butler:           

Certainly has to be some. Impacted. You can trace back to Brooklyn. But no, I think, I think if you go to another city, it's more about how do we take what we know about creating a platform to celebrate these local businesses. Um, you know, it'd be interesting if a couple of our Brooklyn vendors or a couple of our LA vendors want to use that as a way to expand their businesses to come to a new city. But the primary focus is going to be about going in celebrating what's happening locally and hopefully, what's interesting is when people start creating new ideas to be in Smorgasburg, not just like a restaurant, you know, we don't really want us to go into a new town and just like have all the good restaurants create one, you know, the one thing that's popular on their menu and reproduce it in one place. It's much more about people creating new ideas for this new experience. That's what makes it special.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Johnathan Butler, thank you so much for joining me at Hey BK, you're listening to Hey BK the podcast about the people behind Brooklyn's transformation, you could find us at, heybk.nyc or wherever you get your podcasts, please download and subscribe to our episodes. I'm Ofer Cohen, thanks for listening.

S1 | E6 | Jacqui Williams

Jacqui Williams:                

New York City is about real estate. To me, this is the baseball game and without real estate working the way it needs to work.and wants to work. Nobody else will work.

New Speaker:                   

Hey BK, with Ofer Cohen

Ofer Cohen:                      

Why are you lobbyist?

Jacqui Williams:                

Because nobody else is doing anything

Ofer Cohen:                      

That's Jacqui Williams, advocate and real estate lobbyist. In the last two decades, Jacqui has been behind the scenes with some of Brooklyn's biggest real estate projects.

Jacqui Williams:                

You know, I used to be the director of economic development for the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce and helped create it and/or expounded on their programming. The lobbyists for that, for the chamber recruited me. I didn't know what it was and with you approach me and I was like, Oh, you want me to do is take this information, go tell these people why they should be doing it and ask them for money. Sound like a plan for me. Yeah, that makes sense.

Ofer Cohen:                      

So you fell into it?

Jacqui Williams:                

I fell into it and then I learned how I can use it as a tool to affect things that I care about, but also happen to get paid from it.

Ofer Cohen:                      

You found yourself in a situation where you realized you, you suddenly have the power?

Jacqui Williams:                

Right. Especially because there are about 12,000 registered lobbyists in the state of New York, of the 12,000 registered lobbyists, the're only 17 of color of the 17 of color, they're only seven of us that own and this phenomenon of people of color being included. I was the first that started lobbying on business matters when I got recruited to be a lobbyist and that was 2003.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Let's backtrack a second. Where did you grow up?

Jacqui Williams:                

Chicago

Ofer Cohen:                      

And how did you find yourself in New York?

Speaker 2:                          

After I got out of the military I was in the navy.

Ofer Cohen:                      

How did you find yourself in the navy?

Jacqui Williams:                

Being resentful towards my mother. She wanted me to go to Tulane and at the party for me graduating high school. My mom was getting ready to announce college and I was like, hold up now. Uncle Sam will be here in the morning at 4:30 to pick me up. I'm leaving, I'm going to the navy.

Ofer Cohen:                      

And so are you happy about that choice?

Jacqui Williams:                

Yeah it's probably one of the best things I ever did. It gave me structure, it taught me discipline. It also prepared me for how I will be treated in the regular world. I was one of 76 women in the entire navy. That's like pretty much the rest of the world once you get out of it in the private sector. When I got out, I went home to Chicago. My mom and I still did not see eye to eye. I um, started working in construction because I operated cranes in the military and mu mom and I didn't get along and I decided I was going to come to New York and visit my aunt Sarah. She lived in the housing developments. And you know, Chicago is very segregated.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Right

Jacqui Williams:                

So I had never seen, and I'm an adult after serving my country had never seen black people, Hispanic people live on the same floor, let alone in the same building. New York blew my mind.

Ofer Cohen:                      

But it still felt like significantly less segregated then where you grew up?

Jacqui Williams:                

I thought when I first got here, I had never seen Hassidic Jews before. I didn't even know what that was.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Right, when you are saying it blew your mind, what did you feel?

Jacqui Williams:                

It scared me to death. I had never seen black people that spoke with accents of other than Africans. So to me, Trinidadians, Jamaica's. I've never had been exposed to that. This is not the norm. This is the petri dish for the world.

Ofer Cohen:                      

So initially you're intimidated by that?

Jacqui Williams:                

Very much. So I stayed with my aunt at Marlboro Houses in Coney Island. She put me out and I went to the homeless shelter after my mfirst month here. And I went to the homeless shelter on Twenty Third Street in Manhattan, they stole all of my papers. They beat me up. I was sexually assaulted really bad. I left and walked from 23rd street in Manhattan until I saw Black people. And unbeknownst to me that was Harlem so I walked to 119. It was because I was in the military. My state of mind is I'm going to be all right. It's going to work itself out. Well. I ended up finding a spot on the ground on 119th, between fifth and Lenox, between two tenement buildings choosing and had cardboard boxes and milk crates.

Ofer Cohen:                      

That sounds like a pretty low point in your life.

Jacqui Williams:                

It was a very low point and, coming from somewhere that would be viewed as somewhat middle class. I used to walk the welfare every day I get out there, I will go fill out all the paperwork, sign up for a jobs program. Do my resume, the whole nine yards. I'm pretty skilled. I couldn't get a job. Went back to welfare and was this lady named Ms. Jones. She did like the intake and at the cme. Well about a week or two she would give me fruit because my savings was gone. One day I was regurgitating and she was like, what's wrong with you. Find out from the sexual assault. I ended up getting pregnant. So with that being said,she broke a few of her work rules and let me stay at her home, her best friend lived up in the hallway and she worked for the State University of New York Educational Opportunity Program. They connected me with a place called Inwood house in Manhattan. Which was a program for teens and I chose adoption so I was able to give the child up for adoption. Because I wasn't able to take care of a child and put roof over my head and after I dealt with that. I was able to get into the State University of New York at Farmingdale. Because that was the only place where they had dorms for people over 21. So they got me and air go. I started turning into an advocate when I first got there at the school, Governor Cuomo, the father was trying to put guns on campus and I organize the students, Cause I'm like why does the campus police need guns for? What is that about? And most of the students that lived in the dorm just happened to be black and brown from the five boroughs.

Ofer Cohen:                      

And how do you find yourself through this path, sort of in the midst of, you know, lobbying for real estate interests and organizations both private and public.

Jacqui Williams:                

It's interesting because, to go from living on the street after serving my country to representing the interests of some of the most powerful people in not only New York but in the world, I better than anybody else can advise them on their behavior in which to accomplish the things they want to get done and what they should not be doing as a person that has been impacted by it . And they can either choose to take my advice or not. And I'm very candid as you can see. I think that works for me.

Ofer Cohen:                      

So when do they come to you? Those very, very powerful people.

Jacqui Williams:                

When they need to either get a rezoning, meaning go through a city system where I call it a nine month birthday process. It takes three trimesters to bring a child into the world. It's a minimum once you turn your application in for rezoning it's going to take us three trimesters for the baby to be born i.e the building,

Ofer Cohen:                      

So you've been hired by real estate developers to help so convince the community or the councilman?

Jacqui Williams:                

The community, the council, the administration, city planning, every level that you need in order to go through a process of rezoning I have been before it or advise the client and it's colleagues or investors what you need to do and how you should do it and who we should go get to support it. Why it would be in their interest to support it. And I've been on the other side where I've been hired to stop people from building things,

Ofer Cohen:                      

It sounds to me like given the background that you have to believe, I mean yes, you have to make a living, but you have to believe in the cause or the project or the change that you're trying to help.

Jacqui Williams:                

Right. And I don't represent anything that I don't believe in.

Ofer Cohen:                      

So how do you feel about, just in general, the the power of lobbyists in the real estate industry in New York? I mean if it's over $100,000,000 reportedly spent on real estate lobbying

Jacqui Williams:                

New York City is about real estate. To me this is the baseball game here and without real estate working the way it needs to work and wants to work, nobody else will work. Some of these real estate organization's been around since the 1800s. My people were slaves when they started organizations about real estate. Real estate is not to be toyed with here. It needs to be lobbied, It has to. And just like you have people for real estate transactions that lobby that people will be against it, you know, a lot of them that are, I find them to be selfish. You know, all of a sudden you hear and you don't want somebody to build x, y, and z, why?

Ofer Cohen:                      

You essentially see your work. Even when he worked for the real estate interest, you see your work as working for the people.

Jacqui Williams:                

I do both. I help my client get what they need. And want for their industry and in those elements that I can extract for people who need tools and resources and access to things, I'm going to extract that. It takes a long time to convince nine people of color that is okay to be user friendly and, create pathways to success for other people.

Ofer Cohen:                      

You just walked us through sort of the lowest point. I mean, I can't imagine. I mean the lowest point in anyone's life. Walk me through some of the highest points in your career in contrast to that feel really, really proud.

Jacqui Williams:                

Well, I became proud when I first started working for [...]. How many black people can say that I never met one of those before, communities of color they are like, what do you mean a pharmacist? How I explained it to a lot of people who don't have access to that information. I'm a drug dealer and my drug of choice is information and power. And that's what I'm selling. And I give advice and I teach them how to use the drug and I stand on a corner in the lobby, in government. That's what I do, and on the behalf of the people I represented.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Was there one project or one assignment that you worked on, when the deal got done and when the project got built you felt like...

Jacqui Williams:                

Ikea.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Ikea, interesting.

Jacqui Williams:                

I broke my chops on that. It took us two years to get that done. I pass that every time and I go in there, I'm like these people have no idea.

Ofer Cohen:                      

I think it is the highest grossing IKEA in the country.

Jacqui Williams:                

In addition to it was the first big box in Brooklyn and It cracked open that door.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Your ability to make sure that the project takes care of the local community in terms of providing jobs was..

Jacqui Williams:                

I didn't know if it was real. Are they telling me the truth? I know the structures they're allowing me to put in place. Yes. Jackie was gonna do it. I know what I'm reading on paper, but to see it become real. It's unbelievable.

Ofer Cohen:                      

How many jobs are there?

Jacqui Williams:                

Like 300 or so, full time, you know, I don't even remember the numbers because Ikea has been open over 10 years. It takes at least three that go through the process. But then that's where I got to learn how the system works. It wasn't just about getting new rezoning, it was about the teams of professionals that exist in the city that do shuttle diplomacy to get projects done. Then I got to learn the system.

Ofer Cohen:                      

It's still is a very meaningful project in Brooklyn.

Jacqui Williams:                

Yes it is. I'm very blessed to be able to have the opportunity to even be exposed. I live in one of the, from going from on the street and now I live in Dumbo and my business is in Dumbo. Who does that? I'm glad to start the block association. The crazy Black girl that used to be homeless on the street.

Ofer Cohen:                      

And Dumbo is Is the only the most expensive neighborhood in Brooklyn right now.

Jacqui Williams:                

That's what they say. And with that being said, you know, I experience the Trumpish behavior, from everyday white people.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Every business meeting, I'm sure you're not only the only woman, but definitely the only woman of color.

Jacqui Williams:                

Right. I'll go to the events it's like me, a half a bag of pepper and a whole ton of salt. I used to do no press or radio or podcasts, nothing. And I decided in 2018 there was time for me to have a discussion about it and I'll start sharing about what my experiences have been and my thought process. I'm pretty bright. I can look around the city, see where my advice and counsel has create a lot of opportunity. It made a lot of people, a lot of money

Ofer Cohen:                      

You were behind the scenes a lot.

Jacqui Williams:                

Right

Ofer Cohen:                      

Now you feel like you want to be a little more upfront.

Jacqui Williams:                

Well, they need to know that there's this wonderful veteran. That happens to be a woman that happens to be black that's behind the scenes helping make some of these great things.

Ofer Cohen:                      

I agree

Jacqui Williams:                

You know, shame on me for being afraid and then I ran into you.

Jacqui Williams:                

Amazing. Well thank you so much Jacqui.

Jacqui Williams:                

Thank you.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Really appreciate it. I'm Ofer Cohen. This is Hey BK the podcast about the people behind the Brooklyn transformation. You can rate and subscribe to all of our episodes wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for listening.

S1 | E9 | Doug Steiner

Announcer:                          

Hey BK with Ofer Cohen

Doug Steiner:                   

Developer is still my real job, the studio was like my midlife crisis.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Doug Steiner is a Jersey born real estate developer and now fully immersed in Brooklyn. He lives in Williamsburg and most recently he has developed the hub, the tallest building in Brooklyn, but he's best known for Steiner Studios at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The largest film and television studio outside of Los Angeles. In our conversation Doug talks about how he became a key force behind the Brooklyn's rebirth. He stuck with the studio taking on the first major redevelopment in the abandoned Navy Yard in 1999.

Doug Steiner:                   

It was dead when I started. There were packs of wild dogs running around, literally just looked like bombs and got off and nobody wanted to be there. We had to tread carefully with the city. Uh, we figured out that the site needed a lot of infrastructure. Infrastructure being utilities, that were over a hundred years old, we needed a $28,000,000 worth of infrastructure met with the corporation counsel for the city of New York, Michael Hess on the Friday before 9/11 and shook hands that the city would provide the infrastructure that you know, went out the window once 9/11 hit. Our neighbor sued us because they claimed we didn't have permits that claim to us, alluded neighbors outside, some of the Hasidic community was against it because they felt like it was going to change the character of the neighborhood and they're worried about the outside world. The quote from the Grand Rabbi at the time was that movie stars, were going to move in and steal their women.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Well that didn't happen.

Doug Steiner:                   

And now I have a very good relationship with the community. I'm glad to say.

Ofer Cohen:                      

So this is completely out of whack.

Doug Steiner:                   

I had no business doing this. I didn't know what I was doing. I just thought it was an easy no brainer and nothing is easy. Nothing is a no brainer.

Ofer Cohen:                      

At that point, was your dad was involved?

Doug Steiner:                   

My Dad was somewhat involved. I've been running the company for 25 years at this point.

Ofer Cohen:                      

So what was your dad saying?

Doug Steiner:                   

I just do my thing, but about six weeks after I signed up the deal, I started divorce and really I say, and it's really true, the studio would not have gotten built if I had not been so distracted by my divorce. It was a real acrimonious divorce. Took five and a half years and my head was not where it should have been. So I had milestones to meet for the city and the Navy Yard and I got more and more invested and before I knew it I was really invested pretty heavily and there was no turning back. But had I not been going through a divorce and you're more focused on what I know. It would've never happened. As it got closer to completion, I completely freaked out. I really, really stressed out that I was in over my head, you know, what I was doing and new industry, unproven in New York City at that point because the business was more of, only thing shooting in New York was law and order and the occasional Woody Allen.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Right. So six months before the studio was set to open the Steiner family lobbied for tax credit for film production in New York state.

Doug Steiner:                   

And that was signed into law essentially at a ribbon cutting with Mel Brooks, Governor Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg, in our first production was the remake of the producers, by Mel Brooks. At the time, all we heard was no one will ever go to Brooklyn, you guys are crazy. And at the time Brooklyn was not a popular destination and was a second choice of best. I think luckily it turned out to be one of the transformative projects for Brooklyn. I think Barclays, I think Brooklyn Bridge Park, I think our project, I think what Walentas did in Dumbo, and I think the rezoning Williamsburg, what really were the catalyst. But our business is very difficult, if not impossible to finance. There are no long term leases. These companies come for a feature film or a season of television, no guarantee or subsequent seasons that season isn't even a full year. And some dependence on that tax credit, which has to get renewed every few years so it's difficult.

Ofer Cohen:                      

And you still run the studios?

Doug Steiner:                   

I work in the studios and own the real estate business.

Ofer Cohen:                      

That's like two different, completely, two different brawls, two different jobs

Doug Steiner:                   

The studio businesses more fun because it's much more dynamic. We have 1200, 1500 people on the lot on a given day. If it's everyone that shooting in that same day, and to have that many people happy to be at work and loving what they do. There's a vibe that I have never felt anywhere else in any other business in my real estate life. And also I've never felt that LA lots it's just doesn't, it's not the same as New Yorkers all working in this cool environment that nobody really knows about and it's behind a wall. But that's great.

Ofer Cohen:                      

How do you convince a big productions to do this in Brooklyn.

Doug Steiner:                   

We have the only real LA style lot in New York City and that's a function of being in the Navy Yard where we have 60 acres, a private gated entrance, all the security they need and really state of the art facilities similar to what they'd have in LA and we've eliminated all the obstacles to working in New York. So I think that's really why we have our success. And what I like about the businesses, it's a handshake business. It's a small community, you know, a dozen, two dozen top producers in New York City. They all talk to each other and if you tell them you're going to do something, you better do it. Purely, it's a service business. The physical plant is only part of it. I used to think, you know, it's all about the building, about the design, about construction, it really doesn't matter if the people that work there don't really jump through hoops to accommodate our customers. And I used to think that was lip service from company said it's all about people. I thought it was bullshit. I think it's really true. And the best compliment that was paid was a producer who came back at about a year after we opened for another show. And he said, I have to tell you Doug, I've never heard any of your people tell me no. They always said, let me see how I can do that for you. That was really the highest compliment. I think I could have received.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Yeah and I'm assuming in LA that that may not be, that might not always be the vibe.

Doug Steiner:                   

I think in LA they take the business for granted, I think there's a lot more nepotism through the generations and I don't think they have the same New Yorker grit and get it done attitude. And I think because work was so scarce here for so long, if there's the gratitude, um, and and an intensity that they don't get up there.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Doug says, production in New York City is now booming almost year round in part because of the explosion of shows for digital outlets such as Netflix and Amazon. His passion lies in the studio. Though, he describes a constant struggle over the need to expand at the yard.

Doug Steiner:                   

From what I'm told, it was about a $5,000,000,000 business before we came in and now they say it's like a seven and a half, eight. I'm saying it's a $10,000,000,000 business, easily a direct and indirect jobs at the margin are about 80,000 are a lot of level and at full build out at 60 acres will be one point 8 million feet of space 160 acres and five, 6,000 people. We want to be the content creation immediate district for New York and the creative classes based in Brooklyn. We lucked out in terms of being in the right place and we are around the water, seeing the water every day is great. And we have this light and air and historical infrastructure and I think pretty good design and ambiance that I think is what people really respond to. The number of productions ranges from at this point five to ten at any given time and different production run from 250 to 350 plus actors I would say be very satisfying to look out for my office and see a very full parking lot, economic boost that the create how we got the credit passed by by demonstrating that, and if you think about all the locations they pay to be at, even just nonprofits, I think it's been phenomenal for a lot of different institutions and it's just it saved some businesses upstate, that would have gone bust without a shoot happening. I think prior to what we were able to do with tax credit and have first class facilities. Everyone thought you had to go to LA to have a career in film or TV. And I think we have changed that profoundly. And there's no reason why New York can't be on par. Same amount of business as la overall right now, new stuff is more in New York and in LA. I think over time New York can equal it and then surpass it and I think part of that it's because it's a much more diverse workforce here and I think that makes for a better product and it's a more culturally enriching space.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Meanwhile, Doug has also taken on some of the most exciting real estate projects now underway in Brooklyn.

Doug Steiner:                   

Developer is still my real job, the studio is like my midlife crisis.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Doug is bringing the high quality supermarket Wegman's to the Navy Yard. Construction is complete at the hub, the rental tower in Downtown Brooklyn.

Doug Steiner:                   

It's funny. It was under construction, the foundations of pilots and our construction manager, a third party construction manager told me: "You know we're the tallest building in Brooklyn", no we're not. He's like, yeah we are like, okay, I'll take your word for it, but that was never the objective,

Ofer Cohen:                      

But that's good because that's a temporary kind of. If that was the object, it wouldn't last too long,

Doug Steiner:                   

It's nice to say, tallest buildinging in Brooklyn and once we're not anymore, we'll say we were the tallest building in Brooklyn in uncompletion. That's what i see people do with buildings. I've never built a high rise. My Dad who's 88 and still working his dream had always been to build a skyscraper. So I think partly it was my gift to him, let him have some stress and build a skyscraper. But I wanted to build rental and I don't like a lot of brain damage. So we did an 80/20 project.

Ofer Cohen:                      

As Steiner tries to develop his company's name brand. He has moved away from his roots in New Jersey. He's developing projects in the East village and all over Brooklyn.

Doug Steiner:                   

I think this business, it's a long gestation period for real estate, five, seven years for a project from start to finish. And who knows where the market will be when you're done. So my philosophy is you pick a fight to pick a great location and build a really solid product that will be somewhat timeless in its design and try for timeless and hope for the best.

Ofer Cohen:                      

So you're talking about what makes you sort of what makes you happy and proud. Look outside your window and seeing all the people working and doing what they love at the Yard. When you look at the tallest building in Brooklyn that you didn't know it's going to be the tallest that may not be the tallest forever. What makes you proud on that project? Of the hub.

Doug Steiner:                   

I've never built such publicly visible products before as the studios and now the hub a high rise and I do feel pretty good in the side and take the subway over the bridge and I see the hub in the distance and then I see the radio antennas we have in lined up at the studio. It's kinda weird. Happy to see my impression on the skylines. It's embarrassing to say, but it's cool when I never, I don't think I set out to do that. But it's a nice effect.

Ofer Cohen:                      

The real development business is known for a lot of Egos and you know, I guess you're not, a good fit with the crowd of like, you know, real estate people. All the real estate developers all they care about actually is to be the tallest building on the skyline. Right?

Doug Steiner:                   

Right. I just want to build something that I think is really attractive and it doesn't hurt an area, but it improves it or advances it. When we built in Williamsburg, that was my first residential project. We had a performance artist dance, a figure. She had like three or five years left on her lease for a building there. And I didn't really want to get into a fight with her to get her out early. So we worked with her and the end the city so that she could buy her building at our cost. And my thinking was, it wasn't so noble, it was really to get good press and looked like I was a good guy. Turned out I love this woman, nearly Elizabeth Strebb. She's crazy and brilliant. We were able to convince our partner and the city, that she could buy her building at our cost. And I feel good about it in hindsight. I feel great because I didn't chase out what was attractive about the neighborhood in the first place. I helped stabilized it. I'm there. My kids love it and I feel a little old though, I feel like I live on a college campus.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Yeah, Williamsburg has a certain feel get off the L train on Beford and it's just something that's really hard to replicate, the energy.

Doug Steiner:                   

It's developing and changing so fast and in such creative ways, in artistic ways that amount of a concentration of creativity and change I think is remarkable. But it's still a 20 to 35 year old crowd. When I started in Brooklyn, you know, we would never see a stroller in Williamsburg, went out to lunch park anywhere on the street, there were three or four good restaurants and you know, it was super mellow and everyone was super cool and living in lofts or squatting so far. And it's a very different crowd now, you know, the artsy edge has gone for most of it because it's just got, the artists have been priced out, but they left a pretty indelible stamp

Ofer Cohen:                      

Looking back, Doug says he's proud of the impact he's had on Brooklyn.

Doug Steiner:                   

When the studio was nearing completion and I thought it was going to be a complete failure. I thought it was going to personally bankrupt me, and I'd have to start new, it was really traumatic worse then my divorce.

Ofer Cohen:                      

This was when it was completed?

Doug Steiner:                   

Just when it gets getting completed and bleeding money and not knowing what I was doing.

Ofer Cohen:                      

And not knowing knowing where the productions are going to come?

Doug Steiner:                   

And then just the having invested heavily in something I know nothing about in a place I'd never developed and just thinking I really screwed up and when I say aged, you know, 15, 20 years. It's really true, and the upshot though, after all this is the last 10 years are the best 10 years of my life with my kids, it's the best thing I've done. I was living, working, developing in New Jersey. I say it's like the proverbial frog being boiled alive on low heat, on an open clot, realize it, but it's really changed my life to be here, is developing in the major leagues. I think I'm holding my own. It was very satisfying about my dad's shadow, which I think a problem 10, 15 years ago. I get along great with my ex wife so you know, a happy ending.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Doug Steiner, Thank you so much.

Doug Steiner:                   

Ofer, thanks.

Ofer Cohen:                      

You’re listening to Hey Bk, the podcast about the people behind Brooklyn's transformation. You can find us at heybk.nyc or wherever you get your podcasts. Please download and subscribe to our episodes. I'm Ofer Cohen. Thanks for listening.

S1 | E5 | Regina Myer

Regina Myer:                    

When I took the Brooklyn job, I really knew that I could do something there because I loved Brooklyn. I moved to Brooklyn in 1991 and started to get sort of obsessed with the fact that there was so much potential here. We just knew that Brooklyn couldn't be the second city anymore.

Narrator:                   

Hey BK with Ofer Cohen

Ofer Cohen:                      

So, welcome to Hey BK, Regina Myer, one of the most important people in the Brooklyn transformation in the last 25 years. A couple of days ago I sent Regina an email or text and I forwarded her a picture on Instagram that had the opening of Brooklyn Bridge Park. What did you say? You said Best Day in Brooklyn, no, "best day for Brooklyn". Tell me about that moment a little bit.

Regina Myer:                          

Opening up Brooklyn Bridge Park was really, I think one of Brooklyn's best moments in the past 10 years. Um, it was really a transformational idea to build Brooklyn Bridge Park. And for 20 years the community fought to build the park on those piers. But nobody really got it. Nobody really believed it at first. And honestly, when it was first proposed, it was the wrong thing to do, there was so much more to do in Brooklyn in terms of rebuilding Prospect Park and rebuilding our neighborhoods. But when it got going and when Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki decided to hit the go button, I was in the right place at the right time. I got to the state offices and I was overwhelmed with how much had to get done and we worked so hard the first three years to prove to everybody that there could be a great park on the Brooklyn Waterfront. So that moment was really a coming out party.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Was it the biggest moment of your career?

Regina Myer:                    

Yeah, it was the biggest day in my career. I would say, honestly I just had this flashback that I think the approvals, the city council approvals for Greenpoint, Williamsburg were huge, huge day for me too. That was just such a Gargantuan effort. But yes, I mean building Brooklyn Bridge Park was clearly, I think once in a lifetime opportunity for anybody. And that moment really encapsulated it all.

Ofer Cohen:                      

As I was going through your biography and I saw that, you know, you worked as a city planner for many years and then you became the head of the Brooklyn office for city planning. And so the first thing that I was wondering about was who wakes up in the morning and decides that that's what they want to do.

Regina Myer:                    

I always loved New York City. I grew up on Long Island, um, but my parents owned a liquor store in midtown Manhattan. And I fell in love with coming into the city with my parents really, really early on. So coming to the city planning department, I felt really privileged, that this was that I had the opportunity to work in, in a place that was dedicated to the future of New York City was a pretty special gig for me.

Ofer Cohen:                      

So that's basically what you want it to do. I mean, you kinda took that path strategically?

Regina Myer:                    

Not really. I was in college. I went to the University of Michigan. I really, I got off, I got out of the East Coast and I was messing around playing in the music business. I was the music director of a college radio station, WCBN, which was an incredible time for me. Had nothing to do with loving New York City.

Ofer Cohen:                      

What kind of music did you guys play?

Regina Myer:                    

It was, it was the, you know, the hay day of punk and new wave era. But we really got into a lot of music. I mean, we were in Detroit, so, you know, I had a lot of special times playing music and then it sort of ended for me. I realized that I didn't really want to do that. And um, then I realized I had to find something to do and I remember I had a temp job in the Upper East Side and one day I just said, you know, I love the city, let me just check this out. And I started taking planning classes at Michigan and decided to stay on and was really lucky enough to come home. And, I had a neighbor who was one of the city planning commissioners, Marty Galland and he got me my first job.

Ofer Cohen:                      

That's amazing. So when you took the head of the city planning in Brooklyn job, did you know what you got yourself into?

Regina Myer:                    

When I took the Brooklyn job, I really knew that I could do something there because I loved Brooklyn. I moved to Brooklyn in 1991 and started to really get sort of obsessed with the fact that there was so much potential here and I had a lot of colleagues who felt the same way and that was an amazing time. I was promoted to director during Mayor Giuliani's And we just knew that Brooklyn couldn't be the second city anymore, that there was a place here that was as special Manhattan and I had worked in the Manhattan office. So I had become obsessed with turning the Brooklyn Office into a place that was as dynamic as the Manhattan office.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Fast Forward to that period 2004 or five when all the big rezoning processes took place. Walk us through this year.

Regina Myer:                    

What was incredible was when Mayor Bloomberg came into office, he hired an incredible team, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, he chair of the city planning commission was Amanda Burton and when we started talking to them about what the future could be in Brooklyn, all they said to us was go, no one said that was a bad idea or think about it a different way. They were like, that's a great idea. Let's do it. So the three things that we pitched to Amanda and Dan, right off the bat, were rezoning for Downtown Brooklyn, rezoning Park Slope, and rezoning Greenpoint and Williamsburg.

Ofer Cohen:                      

These are the three districts with the most amount of density in Brooklyn.

Regina Myer:                    

We just really knew that they were great places for the borough to grow that could really be a spin off what was already happening in Brooklyn. I mean we knew that people were investing in our brownstone neighborhoods. I lived in North Park Slope and really love that neighborhood. But we also just knew that more people, more things could happen and that there was room for growth in the right ways. And we also loved these neighborhoods. These neighborhoods really deserved recognition and we spend a lot of time in the years before studying them and getting ready. But when Dan and Amanda said, go, we were ready and we had really basic concepts, planning concepts, it made perfect sense for Park Slope. It was preserved that old, the wonderful mid-blocks. But, let growth happen on Fourth Avenue, which sits right above the subways and was really sort of an obvious place to connect Gowanus to Park Slope. But Downtown Brooklyn, it was a zone really spinning off the success of Metrotech along Flatbush and Willoughby. And that's where the idea started was that Metrotech had stabilized Downtown Brooklyn. Now, what's the next phase? And I really pushed during that era to really look at both sides of Flatbush Avenue. And, that's what really spawned, I think, the growth into a great vibrant mixed-use downtown and for Greenpoint and Williamsburg there were a few different things happening that were really, really an incredible story for New York City. And the neighborhoods were really, although they'd been disinvested in, they started to be rediscovered by not just the artist community, but young people taking the L train to NYU and the community really started to fight against the manufacturing land on the East River waterfront and we started to really think hard that residential and park uses with the right thing to do when we did a lot of analysis, a bit how much illegal use within, in the neighborhood already, which was basically loft conversion and really started to understand how important the L train was. That Bedford Avenue was going to be the place

Ofer Cohen:                      

You guys probably had no idea the residential development is gonna take off. Nobody had an idea that rents are going to go up and support The residential development that eventually happened in such a massive scale.

Regina Myer:                    

No one in the early two thousands understood how strong the residential market would be in any place in Brooklyn. When did you move to Brooklyn?

Ofer Cohen:                      

I moved to Brooklyn and 2004.

Regina Myer:                    

So when you got here, what was it like?

Ofer Cohen:                      

It was a bargain, Brooklyn in 2004 and when I started the company subsequently in 2008, I thought it's going to take 20 years for, for this to be a sort of like in Manhattan market and it took five years.

Regina Myer:                    

Since then, you've made Brooklyn your career?

Ofer Cohen:                      

Yes!

Regina Myer:                    

So we can really relate to each other. We talked earlier in this conversation about opening Brooklyn Bridge Park as one of the most exciting parts of my career. I'd say the other one now that I'm thinking about it is the day that David Walentas came into my office and said we want to rezone Dumbo, and that was the first time in the Brooklyn Office that somebody was ready to make a commitment on the private side of that scale in Brooklyn and I remember sitting in my office and saying, this is going to change Brooklyn, that we have to do this.

Ofer Cohen:                      

That must have been sort of a great opportunity for city planning.

Regina Myer:                    

It was an incredible opportunity because David Walentas thought big, still thinks big and had a vision to take these loft buildings that he assembled almost a decade and a half earlier into a great neighborhood. And what we realized on the government side was, is that it was that kind of investment that could really change the borough. And everybody was exactly right because before there was Dumbo, there wasn't this idea that Brooklyn was really moving ahead and by all of the sudden releasing all of this great energy in an area that had been mostly disinvested in. Really had this moment to lead the borough at a time when really nothing else was happening in Dumbo. And all of a sudden Dumbo was a place and that showed that the energy in the neighborhoods like Brooklyn Heights, would move to other places than that more people were interested in the borough. And this is also at a time when government, for the past previous say 20 or 30 years had been spending all their energy in Brooklyn, literally stabilizing the borough, making sure it was safe. Making sure that schools functioned and making sure that they were using public sector money for housing appropriately. So you know, it's a really interesting mash-up of public sector and private sector involvement.

Ofer Cohen:                      

You know, one of the things that I've noticed and I enjoy working with you, is that you make people that you work with, on different sides of the table, like their partners like we all working towards some kind of a common goal, but how did you harness those skills during those battles?

Regina Myer:                    

I love to listen to people and I love to hear what people have to say. I think all of these efforts are, as you mentioned, big efforts and not one person can make all the decisions. I think one person needs to be really, really decisive and wake up every morning and say we have to schedule another 90 meetings to get this done and we have to put together another schedule and I'm going to. By the way, I'm going to keep you to it, but I really think that it's a lot of listening and then it's a lot of process in a good way.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Just walking on Schermerhorn, or walking on Livingston or walking on Flatbush Avenue. When you go to work in the morning and seeing this radical transformation from when you started working on these rezonings 2004, 2005, what does it make you feel?

Regina Myer:                    

I still love Downtown Brooklyn. I know that there's been a lot of change, but when I started thinking about it, Livingston and Schermerhorn Street were all vacant lots from the 19 forties for when the city and the state started to assemble property for the IND at Hoyt-Schermerhorn and Flatbush avenue had three triple x bars. So to me, there was no question in my mind that Downtown Brooklyn should be a better place and now the downtown is an exciting place and in a different way.

Ofer Cohen:                      

And you must feel very, very proud being at the, in the middle of this entire transformation and then sort of coming back and taking the Downtown Brooklyn and or at least having the opportunity to take Downtown Brooklyn to the next level.

Regina Myer:                    

I'm proud and I'm also amazed and also still constantly surprised and delighted at how the private sector responds, right? We rezoned Downtown Brooklyn, but we didn't know a Brooklyn Fare would open up on, on Schermerhorn Street. Right, and that's to me what the magic is, is that we can work really hard on the government side, but we can't predict how the private sector is going to respond. And so to me, a restaurant like Brooklyn Fare all of a sudden put Downtown Brooklyn on a map that in a way that I could never have done. And the same thing in Williamsburg. We could work really hard to think about what the future would be, but a company like VICE grows from, from the ground up or in Dumbo. A company like Etsy or West Elm decides to make Dumbo it's brand really to this day. Even the West Elm is California owned company. Those are the things that government can't do it all. And that's the magic for me is that we work really hard to think about the future and then the private sector does the same thing.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Now as the head of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, how do you feel about the ability to continue to transform Brooklyn to continue to transform Downtown Brooklyn?

Regina Myer:                    

What's really exciting about what's going to happen next in Downtown Brooklyn is that major sites that really are in I think perhaps the best locations, can transform Downtown Brooklyn to be an office center. And let's be honest, we're competing on the world stage here. Ten years ago there was no flatiron district, so we have to continually be competitive and I think sites like the alloy site at 625 Fulton have the opportunity to be the places where there is the next big move for office growth and mixed-use growth in Downtown Brooklyn. And the great news is that locations are perfect also the idea of the Strand, I think it's really finally people listening to, again because I'm realizing that the rebuilding of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway can have a profound effect on Downtown Brooklyn,

Ofer Cohen:                      

Brooklyn in the next census is scheduled to surpass Chicago and to become the third largest city in America. And so, in a way, it sounds to me like the work that you're doing with the Downtown Brooklyn area has the responsibility in a way for the entire borough of Brooklyn in our city of Brooklyn to kinda position itself in the US, position itself in the world as competitive, right?

Regina Myer:                    

Totally. I think that Downtown Brooklyn is the image for the entire borough and the growth of Downtown Brooklyn really is what's leading the borough. Obviously, there's so many different neighborhoods where there's so much different investment in different strengths. But if it wasn't for this location in Downtown Brooklyn with every single subway line in New York City, except the seven line coming to Downtown Brooklyn Without Long Island Railroad, without Barclays Center without Fulton Street, which is a major shopping street to this day without the kind of new investment of City Point to those, each one of those projects is what makes Downtown Brooklyn Great. And that is what's leading Brooklyn right now.

Ofer Cohen:                      

When you close your eyes and you say, how will this place look in 15 years?

Regina Myer:                    

I think in 15 years, it will be more built out. I think that they'll be better connections to the waterfront. I think that the navy yard will feel like it's around the corner. And I think, the area from Downtown Brooklyn through to Dumbo heights to Dumbo was honestly be one continuum, right? It's all coming together and those are a lot of things that I think will take another decade to really feel all of the impact, especially if the Brooklyn Queens Expressway is going to be rebuilt for the next decade. But that will happen.

Ofer Cohen:                      

What about the BQX?

Regina Myer:                    

The BQX has this huge potential to connect all of our neighborhoods. I love the idea of adding another technology for transit in Brooklyn and I think Brooklyn is the place for the city to get that started and I'm really hopeful that Mayor de Blasio takes a lead on, on bringing new transportation to Downtown Brooklyn.

Ofer Cohen:                      

It feels like almost like Downtown Brooklyn is, the best-kept secret in America. So do you have any thoughts about how we can brand it?

Regina Myer:                    

I think we have to do a better job of making sure people understand how great it is living in Downtown Brooklyn is such a great experience. It has great views, great transportation, and great services and that's something that I think working altogether that of the nightlife culture and the housing is really the brand for Downtown Brooklyn. But the other thing is making new companies come in settle in Downtown Brooklyn and those are the things that I think are key to rebranding Downtown.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Thank you so much for Regina. I really appreciate you being here with me today.

Regina Myer:                    

Thank you Ofer, this has been great.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Thanks for listening to Hey BK the podcast dedicated to the people behind Brooklyn's transformation. You can find us at heybk.nyc or wherever you get your podcasts.

S2 | E4 | Karen Auster

Narrator:                           Hey BK with Ofer Cohen

Karen Auster:                

Can I put my feet up?

Ofer Cohen:                      

We just walked into the studio and she immediately asked if she could put her feet up.

Karen Auster :                   

That's what I'm doing, is that okay?

Ofer Cohen:                      

No, it's perfect. It's perfect.

Karen Auster :                   

Deep breath.

Ofer Cohen:                      

So where do we start with Karen, we got into the studio and I kind of felt like Karen is going to actually interview me.

Karen Auster :                   

Well since we to talk about Brooklyn...

Ofer Cohen:                      

We're here to talk about you.

Karen Auster :                   

Oh really?

Ofer Cohen:                      

I'm Ofer Cohen. Today I'm sitting down with a key force behind the Brooklyn experience, Karen Auster. During the past two decades, her DUMBO-based marketing firm, Auster Agency, has been involved with projects that have shaped the current Brooklyn identity.

Karen Auster :                   

I often say I would do this job for free. I just love creating experiences There's nothing like creating something and watching people love it. I only do projects that I love and that's super important to me. I will only accept projects that I really feel that can be either launched with meaning or you're transforming something that means something and making a difference.

Ofer Cohen:                      

It all started 30 years ago when Karen got the Brooklyn Buzz.

Karen Auster :                   

I had been living in Italy and I came to have an ice cream on Montague street. And I walked to the promenade and I said, I want to live here. And that was the beginning and I fell in love with it. I fell in love with the people. I mean, of course, Brooklyn Heights and that view, but everywhere I went it just, I loved Brooklyn and that's where I knew I was going to stay and I've meandered around. I remember being a pioneer in Boerum Hill. I remember when in-law said, "wow, you're going to move here?"

Ofer Cohen:                      

Karen was born in Brooklyn, but she grew up on Long Island. It was her role as a mom that sparked her first big launch.

Karen Auster :                   

I wasn't fully immersed in Brooklyn. I was fully immersed in being a mom and I wasn't sure what I was going to do. I knew I had a vision of starting a company, I just didn't know with what, I can do anything, you know, life is large. And a friend of mine said, you know, you're really bossy, you should be a producer. I'm just like, yeah, what do you mean? Literally, that's how it started. You know, Dan Zanes, he's a musician. He was just launching his kid's music and I knew because I was in ad sales, how to get advertisers behind concepts. So I took the two, and Dan was launching this music and I got some local sponsors and I produced my first concert in Pierrepont park in Brooklyn Heights and it was a huge success. The more I created these family concerts, the more people came and I started. I was on a roll. That's how from the family concerts, that's how I was hired to then do the park.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Karen was hired by the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy to tell a story about a new park to be developed along the East River.

Karen Auster :                   

Here's an idea folks, and we would have these little parlor meetings and tell people about this idea. They were dilapidated peers at that time and how lucky that I fell into. I love telling a good story. I love telling people about an idea and really get to get them on board. That's what I love. That's what I'd love to do is, you know, you don't know about this. Let me tell you.

Ofer Cohen:                      

First, the niche was Brooklyn, right?

Karen Auster :                   

Right.

Ofer Cohen:                      

And Brooklyn related brands?

Karen Auster :                   

Like the Atlantic Antic. It was a very typical street festival and I was asked to make it more Brooklyn authentic selling sponsorship as well and kind of creating a more equal Brooklyn Festival, not just any festival that was, you know, that you could find it anywhere in New York City. This had, you know, we really invited the local nonprofits as well as the local artisans and the food vendors and just really Brooklyn-centric. And that's why the antic is so much fun with Brooklyn bands. I mean, you know, I often would say when I would produce the antic gets really great showcase of Brooklyn because it's a myriad of cultures. Everyone's happy. It's like the perfect world.

Ofer Cohen:                      

For every new project., the timing is everything.

Karen Auster :                   

But you know, you don't want to just come in as an outsider into Brooklyn. You need to come in with the right mix. You need to hire people that are Brooklyn based, that you know, use Brooklyn designers and you know, hire Brooklyn Musicians and Brooklyn bartenders. You can't just jump into Brooklyn and think you're going to take over. I won't mention people who have tried to do that and had to leave.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Right

Karen Auster :                   

Or they're not accepted gracefully.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Wait, why is that? Why is Brooklyn is such a unique place to enter and you need to be so sensible.

Karen Auster :                   

Because it's still a community and we're very sensitive about the mix of our community and I hope and I am hopeful that we continue to be sensitive about the different cultures that live here and the different talents that are found here. That's what makes Brooklyn different than the rest of the cities. I just feel strongly that the beauty of Brooklyn is not only the architecture or the park, it's the people. I've always said that from the minute I landed and all the little neighborhoods that I've lived in ever since there's authenticity, that authenticity, that word is what people are craving. You know, there's a lot of, you know, I am on social media, I do social media, but a lot of that is not real.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Right.

Karen Auster :                   

It's curated for perfection and a lot about Brooklyn is that we love its imperfections too and we embrace that.

Ofer Cohen:                      

From the antic to Brooklyn designs, she had found her niche and it was time to expand.

Karen Auster :                   

Well, it came and my daughter asked me to leave the house. I was running the company from my house. She was around 12 and she's like, mom, I've had enough people in my house. I need my house, you know? Um, so I moved out to Flatbush Avenue, 33 Flatbush Avenue, which is, I don't know if you know that building all these amazing startups and entrepreneurs.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Yeah, its kind of a cool building.

Karen Auster :                   

It was awesome. It was like this breeding ground for entrepreneurs. I mean, so many people have come out of that building and I was just..

Ofer Cohen:                      

There's a lot of creative energy in that building.

Karen Auster :                   

Ah, it unbelievable. And so that was my launch, he actually gave me, Al gave me free rent for a year. He said I believe in what you're doing. I believe in your passion. I was like, I don't know. I don't want to leave my kids. He's like, no, come, come.

Ofer Cohen:                      

That's amazing

Karen Auster :                   

It is amazing, it was beautiful. He was so kind, so that was an easy segway because bottom line, I love free rent and it just grew from there. And more recently I guess my niche is real estate. I forgot about another really exciting launch that I did. I'm sorry because I'm sure you know about Domino Park. I mean that park is unbelievable also.

Ofer Cohen:                      

I was there, I was waiting for you to bring it up.

Karen Auster :                   

Oh Sorry. Um, well it's funny because I'm actually thinking about moving over there. It's something I've actually considered because it's really cool and really fun and Domino Park was beautiful launch. I mean they did it right. Two Trees gets it. They really got it right. I mean architecturally, it's interesting. It's really, for the kids, it's unbelievable and Tacocina in there is delicious. And with that launch, which was even more exciting, I was heading out to Barcelona and I was in a park, Park Guell, the top of a Park Guell , and I saw all these musicians playing throughout the park, so I called my staff and I said, we need to find a company in Brooklyn that will provide us with all unique kind of musicians and that was kind of fabulous. That was great, you know, we did that for the opening was have all these different kinds of musicians all over the park and just, that was a really amazing day.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Yeah, it was a really nice. It was a really nice evening. And it just also, to see that you know, private, private developer is actually building a park and does it so well. It's kind of a rare.

Karen Auster :                   

Yes, they really do it really well. I mean, they really do it beautifully and the Walentas, I mean, Jane's Carousel is beautiful and, what they touch is well done.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Now that her kids are grown. Karen's taking on jobs outside of Brooklyn, but there's a common thread in all her events.

Karen Auster :                   

We know millennials love experiences, right? Everyone's craving authentic experiences.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Well, I mean that's basically it because, with technology and social media, we're lacking experiences.

Karen Auster :                   

Brands not only need proper creative but indeed to tell their story and that's what we're doing, creating their stories. So if it's a developer that's launching a new building, well there's a lot of buildings out there. So what makes your story different? What makes your property different? If you have a shopping center, you know, we all know retail is not at its height right now. So the properties that we activate our, we create experiences whether they're wellness experiences or our art exhibitions, you know, we drive traffic to look at a new space, a new brand. Any great launch takes a good plan. And that's usually, and depending on how large the project is, takes time because you can't just tell a story because it will not seem authentic if you're not, if you're just telling it in one month, two months needs to really be told and you really need to do what you say. If you're going to hire local, you need to actually hire local. I get it. I get called in early. I mean, how lucky am I to get called in and projects and these people that are creating amazing things, they call me and say, what do you think? Do you think you could help us launch this? I mean, and again, I will not take on every job because I don't need to. My kids. I'm paying my last college bill, I'm very proud. I ran the marathon two years ago and I say paying for college for kids as much harder than the marathon because you know, it just is. And I'm paying my last college bill next week.

Ofer Cohen:                      

That's amazing.

Karen Auster :                   

It is amazing.

Ofer Cohen:                      

Congratulations

Karen Auster :                   

Thank you!

Ofer Cohen:                      

So, what do you think is next for you, more projects, bigger projects is it, you know, doing things in different cities.

Karen Auster :                   

Yes. Now that my kids are launched. I'm traveling all the time and I'm visiting cities and seeing how they do it differently. Let's see what they do well and what they don't do well. And I'm so lucky now. You know, I've been part of this revival of Brooklyn and now I see, I notice what else is going on. So you know, projects come like the BQX friends of the BQX and the idea of selling of creating this new transportation here, through Brooklyn and Queens. I mean, I think I would love it personally. Yeah, you know, I do a lot of work in queens as well, so I wouldn't mind hopping on something like that to get to the next borough. So it's exciting to see and listen to visionaries and be part of what visionaries want to bring. So I'm listening. I just got my first electric scooter, paying attention. You know, how we'll make cities better? I've lived here, I've raised my children here, I loved raising my kids as a career woman, It was so spectacular to be satisfied with my career, have my children close, so I want to make a living in the city better. So how do we improve the quality of life here and whether it's bringing new modes of transportation, quality of life is really important and my head was down for some of it because I was working hard on raising my kids. I was really in the weeds. I now see clearly because I don't have to be in the weeds anymore and so I want to make it a better city for others. I want to help other women and families, but in particular I do have, you know, I like to help other women because it's complicated to raise kids, be very present for your kids who need you and have a successful thriving career. What can we add to this city or change within the city? And that's where I see myself kind of pioneering, kind of moving in that direction. Okay. What am I most proud of? I live in Brooklyn Bridge Park. My office is in Dumbo. I walk to work and I do feel a sense of pride in being part of it. And Brooklyn Bridge Park is so beautiful and when I walk in the park, I do look up the sky and just saying, this is amazing how far I've come after 30 years, you know, moving to Brooklyn.

Ofer Cohen:                      

There's one thing that we always ask, but tell us something nobody knows about you.

Karen Auster :                   

No one knows? Well, you probably. Okay. Here we go. Did you know that Louis Auster invented the egg cream and that in my family it's folklore that he's my great uncle?

Ofer Cohen:                      

Wow.

Karen Auster :                   

I was born Flatbush and being Sicilian and Jewish and very, you know, part of the fabric of Brooklyn and Louis Auster invented the egg cream and that's my uncle.

Ofer Cohen:                      

See, there you go that's a good story. Thank you, Karen.

Karen Auster :                   

Thank you.

Ofer Cohen:                      

You're listening to Hey BK, the podcast about the people behind Brooklyn's transformation. You can find us at heybk.nyc Or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Ofer Cohen. Thanks for listening.

S1 | E4 | David Belt

David Belt:         

And I realized that I could sell every one of my hours for the rest of my life and that would mean success and I just thought it was a horrible thought to me and I had this idea that if I just had time I could think of really cool projects that I'd be interested in, maybe other people would like.

Ofer Cohen:      

Today I have the pleasure of having a true renaissance man in the studio, David Belt, who takes a very different approach to real estate and the world. So David, welcome to Hey BK. We just met on a train in Tokyo and we just chit chatting and I'm asking you what do you do? What do you say?

David Belt:         

These days I would probably tell you since we were in Tokyo that I'm the CEO and Co-founder of New Lab.

Ofer Cohen:      

New Lab opened its doors in 2016. It's a community of entrepreneurs working advanced technology in a former shipbuilding warehouse in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Is New lab just the sexiest thing to put high on your resume or it's just really taking, you know, 99 percent of your attention right now?

David Belt:         

It's taking a lot of my attention. It's the most challenging thing and it's also the thing where I potentially have the most to offer that as a project has the ability to really kind of transcend normal kind of place-based real estate project.

Ofer Cohen:      

I thought I knew a lot about David Belt, but I didn't know that a real estate developer known for his creativity started out in punk bands back in the eighties.

David Belt:         

I will tell you that, that most of my aesthetic and attitude and things that are interesting to me are of direct lineage from the eighties punk rock scene. It changed my life because I had never left the east coast. We circled the country in a van. There were like four of us. You know, I was in San Francisco. We played a show in San Francisco and I was like, I can't believe you're allowed to live here. Like it was so beautiful in San Francisco. Like it was so different, you know? And so I moved to San Francisco as a result of that and I wouldn't have. And then I got a job as a laborer or doing construction and then that kind of set me on a different course. And, you know, one of the things is I grew up kind of broke and I never romanticized being broke in the punk scene that wasn't the appealing part to me or like being dirty.

Ofer Cohen:      

I'm interested in having this show about being about the people, about their path and their journey and I'd want to have the people that are the most interesting sort of people behind the Brooklyn transformation, but I don't want to necessarily make this be a real estate show and your sort of like the perfect guest on the show because it's hard to talk to you about real estate and it's easier to talk to you about everything else. Tell me a little bit about how do you even become a real estate developer in that sense?

David Belt:         

Well so, some people advance in their careers because they're good at things. Some people advanced because they're bad things and they just can't do that thing anymore. I'm in the latter camp, so like, I got a job as a laborer and I didn't like that because it felt like slavery and then I got a job as an assistant carpenter and I didn't like that. And then I was a carpenter but I wasn't a very good carpenter. So then it became like an estimator and then a lot of numbers. And so I became a project manager and so everything in my career was like, I just didn't want to be bossed around anymore, so I want to do the next thing and I wasn't good or comfortable in wherever I was. And so that's sort of been the theme. So it was more on and in my younger days I was doing things almost out of anger, you know, I didn't have a college degree and I wanted to prove that I was as smart as that guy because he's not smarter than me or whatever. And it wasn't until like 2008-2009 that I started doing things more out of love or projects that I was interested in.

Ofer Cohen:      

Because you didn't need the anger anymore, you didn't need to be rebellious?

David Belt:         

I guess you hit a certain age maybe or what happened was, I tasted success, but it was the kind of success that felt unsustainable. I also own a project management company. We're doing about a billion dollars in projects right now and we're building schools and we're building a theater at the World Trade Center. A bunch of stuffs in predevelopment and in 2008-2009, we were doing well and I realized that I could sell every one of my hours for the rest of my life and that would mean success. And that was a horrible thought to me. And I had this idea that if I had time I could think of really cool projects that I'd be interested in maybe other people would like. But I had no time.

David Belt:         

So that moment was around 2008-2009?

Ofer Cohen:      

The economy had collapsed, we had built a bunch of condos. We got out of those okay. We made money, right? But we were lucky we sold a bunch just before and the point is, I did this project in Rome and I was really proud of it and I couldn't believe like every day I was Rome, I was like, Holy Shit, I can't believe I'm in Rome.

Ofer Cohen:      

Right? I'm actually doing this.

David Belt:         

I'm getting paid. And I'm like, it was very glamorous sort of. And, and then I came home and I was at my parents for Thanksgiving outside of Philly and I was driving on route one and the real estate market had tanked and all these shopping centers were closing. And so I had this like weird moment where I'm like, you know, it's one thing to take a beautiful building in Rome and renovate it, but all these strip malls are actually my legacy, like these junk spaces are where I'm from, what can we do with those? So I came up with this like, I don't know what happened. It might've been actually in retrospect, like some kind of a manic episode, I'm not quite sure. So I've made this project, I worked with all these friends of mine who are architects and everyone was out of work so they have plenty of time and we collaborated and we thought about like what to do to repurpose these old things and as part of that, they have big parking lots. So I wanted to take over shopping centers and make them into like community centers and I wanted to do the thing that everyone was thinking about those times for like urban community farms and farmers markets and flea markets and like, you know, all kinds of crazy ideas and we did all these renderings about that.

Ofer Cohen:      

Sounds like it was kinda like a coincidence, maybe like the fact that it was in the middle of the great recession and the fact that you said, you know what, I'm not going to just sell my hourly for the rest of my life. I just want to do something more impactful.

David Belt:         

Well there were some really key signs. Like one sign was like, when you're a consultant you hope to get clients.

Ofer Cohen:      

Right.

David Belt:         

And what was happening to me is like, you've heard of a paperless office? I wanted a clientless office. Like I couldn't take it, like people were calling me up and I was like, I don't want to think about their problems. I want to think about my problems, so I was getting cranky and my leadership was suffering as a result.

Ofer Cohen:      

While David was figuring out what to do with shopping malls. He heard about a plan to turn the dumpsters into swimming pools and that's what he did right here in Brooklyn.

David Belt:         

So I rented a lot in Gowanus. I built these swimming pools and I made a country club in this junkyard and I didn't pull any permits and I didn't ask for permission. We just lined these dumpsters and we put the pumps and filters in and you know, it was not dirty, it was nice. But we had a party of some of our friends who owned a magazine. We ended up on the front page of the art section of the New York Times. And I had no plausible deniability about it. Like I couldn't say, oh, I didn't know you needed a permit. We're building all kinds of stuff. And so we got in trouble. They called us into the health department or not we, me. And then the health commissioner at the time said, we sent you the letter at the end of the summer because we thought it was a cool project and the Bloomberg administration wants to sponsor your pools and make them street legal. So the next year, we built street legal dumpster pools, and we had them on Park Avenue. And so that was like a weird little project, but it changed everything because it weirdly gave me access to a whole other set of people in the creative community. And also weirdly in city government. Like weirdly, it changed the trajectory of my career.

Ofer Cohen:      

But it also unleashed you creatively, right? Because project management...

David Belt:         

I don't know if it unleashed me creatively, but it gave me the confidence to keep trying and keep saying like, well New York City is a wonderful place where money follows vision and it is the kind of place where you can do this kind of bootleg punk rock illegal project in a dump, in a junk yard, and then the mayor's office would sponsor you to be on Park Avenue. And that people with money and people with like civic intention will support you if you have a vision and you prove that.

Ofer Cohen:      

That's empowering. How did you conceive of New Lab? Full disclosure, I'm on the board of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, but tell us about the very beginning of New Lab and how did that come about?

David Belt:         

So 2009, I did the pools. 2010, I did them legally on Park Avenue. I had this idea. My wife was a costume designer and we went a lot to St Ann's warehouse. Susan was going to lose her theater and I love St Ann's and I want to do something that my wife would be proud of, and then I ended up building St Ann's warehouse,

Ofer Cohen:      

That's when he met Andrew Kimball back then president of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The task was to reimagine the abandoned machine shop that housed tens of thousands of workers and it's hay-day. Building the most advanced ships for both world wars.

David Belt:         

When Andrew took me into that building and it was this beautiful rusted out Shell and he said, what should this be? I was like, this should be the new state of manufacturing, right? This should be a nondenominational MIT media lab. This should be like the place in New York where if you're working on a hard problem that has social relevance, but you're an entrepreneur that you want to be. This should be the aspirational place where tech kids and flyover states want to get to. You know what the Castro or fire island was to the Gay community in the seventies and eighties, I wanted New Lab to be the Geeky tech kids and fly over states. Like if I could just go there, that's where my people would be. And so that was the aspiration and that's what we tried to build and that's how we ended up with a project and it took us a long time to raise the money, long time for the Navy Yard to give us the building, a long time for them to believe we could do it a long time for us to kind of cement the vision and figure out the financing. But in the end we did it and now it's great and it's hard and it's not a tremendously obvious business model, but it's, it's something that a lot of people feel passionate about and that I really want to be a good shepherd.

Ofer Cohen:      

New Labs, 84,000 square feet of space featuring over 100 companies working in the most advanced technology, robotics and hardware coexist and collaborate.

David Belt:         

We're not an incubator, just taking kids out of college who might have an idea. These people are real, you know, and what I love about them is that they're at the top of their game intellectually and they're at the top of their game, you know, technologically, but they're very vulnerable because they're entrepreneurs. They could fail at any moment and so that vulnerability is like super attractive and I feel the same way. Like I could fail at any moment. And so I think that needs to be the more of those people in New York.

Ofer Cohen:      

Well, does it make sense to have a second New Lab in Brooklyn, then?

David Belt:         

I've been talking about, again, I'm all about narrative and so I want to understand the why and I understand like the emotional reason to do it as well as the financial and business reason. And so one might imagine that there could be a New Lab geared towards food technology in Brooklyn. One might imagine there could be a New Lab geared to data for social good, right? Or companies, you know, I'm the guy who loved the light bulbs store that only sold light bulbs, you know, so like the more that you can create a community around a specific intention that always feels much more poignant to me. And so maybe there would be another New Lab in Brooklyn. I mean I've been talking to other developers about it, you know, interestingly people like it as content for their buildings and it becomes an attractor, which hopefully it will be for the Navy Yard. But like, and I guess it has been to some extent, but people will give me almost free buildings or free rent, but again, it's, there has to be a bigger why than just, than just that because it's not a real estate model actually.

Ofer Cohen:      

Right.

David Belt:         

It's not. I mean we make about less than half our money from the real estate.

Ofer Cohen:      

What are some of the most amazing technologies or entrepreneurs that you have encountered in New Lab?

David Belt:         

So there's a company called modern meadow that grows leather, not from animals. But it's real leather. It's like they grow it in the lab and Collagen and there are real scale, they've raised a lot of money there. They're a very, very interesting company. They're working with fashion brands and it's a whole different model.

Ofer Cohen:      

What stage is the company in?

David Belt:         

They have the product, they have a huge lab and their design group and their senior managements in New Lab. They also hold a bio-fabricate conference every year. Last years was in New Lab. It was super interesting and some of the most brilliant minds in biofabrication were there. I love people who have an amazingly ambitious idea and are also able to raise a lot of money.

Ofer Cohen:      

The fear is that in order to grow, they're going to move to another town.

David Belt:         

I'm taking another 40,000 square foot of space to create some like flexible situations.

Ofer Cohen:      

You're basically a catalyst for them, a catalyst for Brooklyn, catalysts for the city.

David Belt:         

Yeah and so the multiplier effect of having those companies in close proximity is that they can hire better engineers because they get to collaborate with a bunch of cross-disciplinary companies, right? The place looks cool. That helps. They can raise money better because all the venture capitalists come through. Right?

Ofer Cohen:      

So what's next for David Belt?

David Belt:         

I like people with patient money and who want to do something significant and it follows a vision and that also are good thinkers and want to collaborate, on a high level. So a utopian idea would be to create a living-learning community around something like New Lab where people could come from different areas of the world and stay for a period of time and collaborate. So who knows, something like that could happen on like governors island per se or somewhere like that. But like we have a problem with housing being so expensive and hotels being so expensive in New York and the more expensive it gets, the less interesting things could happen. So, someone who saw both the economic and the social value in doing something where you know, there could be these new platforms for collaboration and didn't need to make an eight percent immediate yield with a 20 percent IRR and an exit in five years, which is basically everybody, which pisses me off, you know, I mean, you're just flipping to another fund. No one wants to build long-term value. No one actually cares. It really bothers me.

Ofer Cohen:      

Can I ask you a question? Why not do something like this as a nonprofit?

David Belt:         

Because I want to make money and I'm on the board of a bunch of non for profits and I don't believe that that's the right model for this. I believe it has to be self-sustaining. I don't want to be at the mercy of rich philanthropists, right? I don't want to be at the mercy of grants. I want to eat what I kill and I want whatever project I do to eat what it kills the other passion of mine, which is going to sound completely crazy to you. Maybe or maybe not, is like. So I guess we don't have all of these panels about like cities of the future. I think actually refugee camps are the cities of the future. I really do like, like an average refugee stays in a refugee camp for 17 years. It was horrible like and with what's happening with weather events and what's happening with like global warming and what's happening with like political unrest and people closing borders. So we're working with a very prestigious Ivy League school who I won't mention and I'm working with the D.O.D and I'm working with all these technologists. I would love to build an off the grid deployable emergency structure for refugees or people surviving storms and stuff and I think that could influence the housing market and other places in the country. We're almost there with batteries and solar. Right. So like when I like think about like what's next for me, that's probably what's next. And I have a lot of experience building small spaces for student housing. I own an insurance consulting business which I mentioned. So I've been in a lot of places, have disasters, like I understand a lot of characteristics of it. And that feels just like a pretty good way to spend some time. So who knows, maybe five years from now when you have me on here, I'll be a refugee housing guy.

Ofer Cohen:      

And as David Belt tackles world problems, as he's doing it from here in his home base in Brooklyn.

David Belt:         

It's an amazing, amazing time to be in Brooklyn. I mean, I can't even believe it, you know, like I mean between like New Lab and what's going on in downtown Brooklyn and St Ann's and pioneer works. It's just incredible, you know? And, and I guess I'm really cognizant of the fact that it's temporal and that it's a time when, you know when interesting things can happen on a bunch of different levels and people are really trying from a civic point of view as well as a financial point of view. I think it's kind of a special time.

Ofer Cohen:      

Thank you so much, David. I really appreciate it. I'm Ofer Cohen. Thanks for listening to Hey BK.

S2 | E3 | Eran Chen

Hey Bk with Ofer Cohen

Ofer Cohen:      

Here's a guy that does not live in Brooklyn but yet reinvented what living in Brooklyn means and built so many apartments.

Eran Chen:         

Right.

Ofer Cohen:      

Tell me about that

Eran Chen:         

Actually, I should feel bad that I don't live in Brooklyn right no.w

Ofer Cohen:      

No, no, I'm not trying to make you feel..

Eran Chen:         

I know, I know.

Ofer Cohen:      

I'm Ofer Cohen on this episode of Hey Bk, I talked to Eran Chen, an Israeli born architect and founder of ODA Architecture. Based in Manhattan, Eran is currently working on developments around the city and abroad, but it's in Brooklyn where his career really took off from several projects on the fourth avenue corridor through the innovative urban design of the old wrangled brewery site and all the way to Eliot Spitzer project on the Williamsburg waterfront.

Eran Chen:         

You know, it's been quite fascinating because Brooklyn in so many ways is different than Manhattan and I know that people compare all the time in a way, uh, even try to kind of copy the successes from Manhattan into Brooklyn. But that's something that we shouldn't do. Because Brooklyn has this kind of character of its of it's own and it has so many more opportunities that Manhattan doesn't have anymore, so the urban texture is already kind of done.

Ofer Cohen:      

Right.

Eran Chen:         

And if you take exceptions, the Hudson Yard is different or the Highline that really was surprising in their scale and the way that they changed the city. Otherwise, we're just building buildings within an existing context. Where in Brooklyn, there's areas of really new invention and great developments and you can, you have the ability to really try to adopt architecture to people's life and to what people want to and how people want to live today

Ofer Cohen:      

Develop more of a neighborhood than working within a confined lot.

Eran Chen:         

Right. I mean, one of the things that always bothered me living in New York City is the lack of intimacy and neighborhood-like feeling. It used to be in many neighborhoods. I think that where I am on the Upper West Side, there's still a sense of it and places like Tribeca and other places, but as you know, density grows, you lose that sense of a community ownership and, how do you create it when you have a building in a street and the relationship is either you're inside the building or outside of the street. It's very tough. You have to make sure that either the streets themselves become a place of community, like we grew up, and that the buildings, the way that they're built, create a sense of belonging in an area that kind of belongs to everyone and it's not just having sort of a series of amenities, if you will, but having a territory outside of the building and inside of the building that is communal and that's a tough challenge. But I think it's exciting.

Ofer Cohen:      

Eran moved to New York in 1999. He studied architecture at the elite art school Bezalel in Jerusalem where he was exposed to new ideas and culture for the first time.

Eran Chen:         

I grew up in a small town in Israel in Ber Sheva, you know, when you grow in smaller towns, regardless of your talent or capabilities, your dreams are smaller than people that live in bigger towns. It's funny, partially because you don't know. You don't know what are the possibilities that are out there. My dreams were modest. Even when I came to New York, I just dreamed of landing a job in a big office and being able to go down and have lunch and eat a hot dog at the park. That was really the extent of my dream. I didn't think that it's going to grow beyond that, to be honest. You know, it was hard to land a job I would say and I'm ashamed to say is ignorance as an Israeli coming into town, I was not prepared. I didn't write my resume the right way. I sent my work experience from Israel with a resume that people didn't know how to read.

New Speaker:   

This is such a typical, very typical Israeli typically

New Speaker:   

Typical Israelis

Ofer Cohen:      

Sounds very familiar.

Eran Chen:         

And I remember. It's funny, I remember that after being denied from so many offices, I was so depressed and I went to one of my friends who was an investment banker who's been at the city for quite some time and I said, look, you gotta help me here. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I thought of myself as a decent architect. Nobody wants to take me. And he said, okay, let's see what you're sending out. And he looks at my resume and he says, no, no, no this is America, my friend. You can't have a typo in a resume. So that was my first kind of lesson. So he tied up my resume and, I applied for a few more jobs and it's the funniest story because I was so desperate. At some point somebody called me back from New Jersey and, he said, okay, can you come for an interview? I said, sure, fine. But I didn't realize at that time how big New Jersey is. And I just said, I'm going to take a cab because I took, I took a cab from the Upper West Side to a place that he's an hour and a half into Jersey. I can't even remember the name of the town. Got me broke. I couldn't even pay the taxi bill. Anyways, I get off the couch when I go into the small office, maybe 10 people. And the guy looks at my work and says, wow, I mean I think you're really good. Uh, how much money do you want to make? And I said, I don't know, maybe, maybe $50,000 a year. And he looked at me and he says, well, we're not paying that kind money. But he said I have a very good friend that I went to school with. His name is Brad Perkins. He has a very, very big company in New York City. Let me call him.

Ofer Cohen:      

That's how Eran landed his big break at Perkins Eastman. But by 2007 he felt antsy.

Eran Chen:         

We had our second child and I lived in a rental, a one bedroom apartment walk up on the upper west side. You know, having to carry the stroller up and down every day, et cetera. And we, we thought that was fine. Everything was fantastic. And I remember this weekend I sat with my wife and I said, look, I'm contemplating this idea of opening my own office. What do you think? And she's like, that's fantastic if you want, go for it. But my wife is a scientist. You worked at Mount Sinai making $40,000 a year. We had two kids and we said, how the hell we're going to do that? There's no way that I can take that risk. And we very quickly decided that it's not going to happen. And then a week after I'm reading the New York Times and New York Times magazine had a cover story about David Adjaye, he's quite famous now, but the story kind of tells, how he opened his firm in London and there's something about this story that totally kind of triggered my hidden desire. And I told my wife that's it. I'm doing it. And that was it.

Ofer Cohen:      

Eran founded ODA just before the economy collapsed. Developer, Yitzhak Tesler gave the firm a chance converting the toy building on Madison Square Park.

Eran Chen:         

He said, well, would you do it for half the fee and I said, of course.

Ofer Cohen:      

Earmuffs, all the developers, earmuffs.

Eran Chen:         

It's all about money. Right? And he said, so when can you start? And I said, Yitzhak, I don't even have a name for the company and frankly I don't have money, yet set aside. I know that I'm going to buy a few computers and stuff. And he said, well look, we need to start in two weeks. And I said, how are we going to do it? And I don't know if you know Yitzhak, he used to smoke a cigar in his office. It was like he's a big guy and I'm sitting there and he says, look, we got to do it. How much money do you need? And I said I think, you know, maybe $150,000 to start. So like in the movies he kind of opened the drawer, he took out a checkbook like this big one and he said $150,000. Who do I write the check to because the company didn't exist in? I said just write Eran!

Ofer Cohen:      

That's a good story.

Eran Chen:         

I'm grateful for this for forever and I love Yitzhak for that. Then he really trusted me and in two weeks we, we bought the equipment. We started working, you know, at the office and that was our biggest project.

Ofer Cohen:      

What was your experience of being a small new office in the middle of a very big recession?

Eran Chen:         

It was terrible. It was really bad. I mean, honestly, when I look back, I tap myself on the shoulder that I sustained it because it was so bad. So we lost the one big project that we had. We had to come up with ideas. So we thought of everything from giving interior design courses for housewives to, open a Bagel shop at the street. I mean, it was so desperate. We had no source of income whatsoever. We had commitment on a lease, that we couldn't pay and I had to pay salaries to people. And thank God I've made some money in whatever year and a half before and I spent it all by paying back my employees, but then a miracle happened and a friend of a friend connected us, to this, guy who was an executive in Blackstone and a billionaire who just bought his penthouse in Trump tower and he thought it's the perfect time to do a renovation of a penthouse because the market was crashed and he conducted, he knew everybody's desperate. So he conducted a competition between international architects around the world, including Richard Meyer to design his penthouse. And, you know, I did my research. He's also an American success story. Originally from Vietnam. He was a refugee of war and my entire design philosophy on this apartment was based on that and he totally fell off. He was just love at first sight, right? And, and we got the project now that was a lifesaver because just in broad terms, we knew he knew that he's going to spend about 20 to $30,000,000 on this apartment. So I spent the years of the recession, a flying around the world and a private jet looking for marble, and artwork. And the stories are so insane, excessive that it was just mine bottling. We ended up spending, you know, two and a half million dollars on a staircase. So it was so extreme from where I was that only in America that could happen, you know, we flew his private jet to yachts around the world and spent, you know, weeks in the Bahamas. It was just..

Ofer Cohen:      

That's a really good recession story. So as I'm listening to you, what strikes me is like, you know, architects usually have a big plan and a path and a vision. And it sounds to me, and I don't, I don't know how much of it is real, is that, you know, you're very innocently kind of fall into things and you had a few instances, you just described a lot of good luck or maybe people are just attracted to your humility.

Eran Chen:         

I don't know that it's true that things just come to me. But that I seize the opportunities in a very nimble way. The impact of architecture today on our wellbeing is absolutely, I believe, critical. And so acting within that complexity you can either be the sort of the macho architect that says, it's my way or the highway and I've got a vision of how we're going to change your life or you say it's very important to me in kind of in baby steps to improve what we do and that sense. I think I always see the opportunity in, every possibility because I think there's always a better way to do things. I was willing to do anything that has to do with design if I can make a small difference. People have mocked me, we didn't talk about this, but my first job as an architect I was a student in Israel was to design McDonald's restaurants in Tel Aviv. You didn't know that, right?

Ofer Cohen:      

That's amazing.

Eran Chen:         

My friend said, are you nuts? I mean, we as architects do not go and design McDonald's restaurants. And I said, why not? What's wrong with that? You can make a better restaurant. Maybe the experience of the people could be better. Maybe the way that it opens up to the street is better and I know, and that's sort of my set of mine and part of how I feel about my profession, which might seem humble, but I think it's not coming out of being humble, it's coming out of looking passionately at architecture and opportunity to improve people's life.

Ofer Cohen:      

Eran's path mirrors that of some of the developers he's worked with in Brooklyn.

Eran Chen:         

If you are a midsize developer or small developer, you need to find a different edge. You have to be more creative. And so by starting projects in Brooklyn, because the midsize and lower or smaller developers, you know, were active here. We've been able to bring creativity that brought success stories to those developers. And then some of the bigger guys looked back and said, hey, you know, that's interesting. Why can't we try to do it here? It's funny when I speak to Europeans because now we've, we spent a lot of time in Europe, they speak about Brooklyn more than they speak about Manhattan, right? It's something about the young, perculating exploding culture that Brooklyn projects outside to the world and I think it's an overlap of art and you know, sort of the free spirit of the young entrepreneurial, the idea that there's more offices and mixed-use projects in Brooklyn and people kind of see their lives today, you know, their mix of personal and professional life in a different way that we saw it 15- 20 years ago. And around the world, everybody's looking at similar problems, similar challenges. And it seems like Brooklyn has been developing these ideas because it can.

Ofer Cohen:      

The rental development of the 10 block mega project that their former Rheingold brewery in Bushwick has tested Eran's creativity.

Eran Chen:         

So there was literally a war where the neighborhood felt this is terrible. And I said, there's no way I can be successful doing what I do as an architect, bringing a huge building into this neighborhood. Everybody is going to just hate and resent and I said there's something wrong with that picture. So I felt the urge to be more involved and that's where I came up with the idea of OPEN, which is ODA public engagement in neighborhood. It's a non for profit organization that aims to basically connect better existing communities where we operate as architects to the act of change to the new buildings that are being developed and find a way to tie, because there's so many benefits in those new projects to them, find a way to tie those existing community to what we do. And the best way to do it I find is through art. So we've raised that about $400,000 and we used that money to collaborate with local artists in Bushwick and kids and other non for profits to do eight mega murals in and around the buildings and then eight sculptures in the public park. So at the end of it, you had the, I don't know, 150 kids that were part of the creation of the art within the project. Would make them attached personally to it and now they can walk in the neighborhood and point out and says, I did this. I thought about it. So that, that's extremely exciting. Beyond the fact that it's just incredible from a vision standpoint of it's like a museum, a mega-museum of street art, in the neighborhood that kind of invented in Brooklyn street art. It just feels like I'm a contributor. Although I don't live in Brooklyn for example, I feel like I belong to these neighborhoods. I feel so connected now to Bushwick. We need to push for in Brooklyn more and more is to put pressure on city planning to change the zoning and their attitude towards mixed-use projects. I mean people say that, but in practicality, I don't see enough of that coming from our administration. What I mean by that is we need to be able in many more neighborhoods to be able to build both office, residential and light industries, including cultural projects and school projects altogether. That would relieve the pressure of being reliant on Manhattan for work and that would bring more communities together because they can live and work at the same location.

Ofer Cohen:      

I mean you talked about some proud moments, some sort of monumental moments in your career, but what are kind of like some of the achievements that you're most proud of when you look at everything you've done in Brooklyn in such, I mean, relatively short period of time.

Eran Chen:         

You know, I think that the corridor of Fourth Avenue, for example, not too far from here, when we've started our first project there, it was a very iffy, you know, neighborhood and I think having a designed two buildings on Fourth Avenue and designing two more, we can bring a critical mass of developments, that are attractive enough that would establish that corridor as almost like the, you know, the Park Avenue of Brooklyn. I'm very proud also on our new building on Kent Avenue because there's something else that always kind of felt a bit shortcoming of the developments that are happening along the East River. There's a lot of them and I feel that there's a lot of sort of generic developments there are seen everywhere from Manhattan and from Brooklyn. And yet they didn't seize the opportunity to celebrate that. The location that they're at so being so prominent. With Elliot, we've been able to, create a building that not only caters, I think in a totally different way to people who wants to live in a high rise building on a waterfront, but also makes a sort of an architectural statement that says, Hey, we need to think differently like it or not, it's different. Design sells. Why? Because even in not only at the high-end, in the mid-end and even in the lower end, it's a generation that is thinking design, this is not the time in New York where you build it and they'll come just because people have no choice. You have to touch their heart, not only their pockets and demonstrate in your building that is something that you've done that would improve their lives and once you do that, you're going to get a return for your money.

Ofer Cohen:      

Right. That's a great sales pitch, Eran Chen, thanks so much for coming to our studio.

Eran Chen:         

Thanks for having me.

Ofer Cohen:      

Only in Brooklyn, two Israeli guys speaking to each other for an hour in English.

Eran Chen:         

How Fun is that?

Ofer Cohen:      

It's really cool.

Eran Chen:         

Very cool. Thank you for having me. It's been such a journey, I think, for both of us in so many ways that it's parallel and it's great to spend time with somebody like that. Thank you.

Ofer Cohen:      

You're listening to Hey BK the podcast about the people behind Brooklyn's transformation. You can find us at heybk.nyc or wherever you get your podcasts. Please download and subscribe to our episodes. I'm Ofer Cohen. Thanks for listening.