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.