34 newyork| october12–25, 2020
Newfieldreferredtoasthe“Permanent
Government.”Newfielddidnotmeanit asa
compliment,butthenamestuckandgradu-
allylostitscriticalovertones.
Atleastinitsownmythology,it is thePer-
manentGovernmentthat asserts leadership
intryingtimes.After9/11,poweroverthe
rebuildingoflowerManhattanwashanded
toanotherappointedauthority, ledbyJohn
Whitehead,a retiredchairmanofGold-
manSachs.Duringthefinancialcrisisof
2008,MayorMichaelBloomberg—the
li vingembodiment ofthe Permanent
Government—engineereda onetimesus-
pensionoftermlimitssohecouldmanage
thecitythroughthecrisis.In eachcase,New
Yorkemergedstrongandprosperous.
Thekeytothecity’sresiliency, themem-
bersofthePermanentGovernmentargue,
is itsdevotionabovealltoeconomicgrowth
andreal-estatedevelopment.It is growth
thatproducesnew taxrevenue,allowingthe
cityto provideservicesto itscitizens,making
it anat tractiveplacetoliveandwork,creat-
ingnewgrowthanddevelopment.It is this
cy cle,they say,that hasallowedMayor
deBlasio togovernlike a progressive,
increasingthecity’s annualbudgettoa
record$90billion,expandingitsworkforce
bysome30,000people—manyofthem
teachersforhisuniversalpre-Kprogram—
andpayingforamenitieslike a heavilysub-
sidizedferrysystem.Withoutgrowth,they
warn,it canalldisappearveryquickly. This
summer,facingacovid-relatedtaxshort-
fall,thecitycut$100millionfromtheSani-
tation Department’sbudgetand trash
startedpilingupinthestreets.DeBlasio
scrambledtoredeploygarbage trucks.
“Peopledon’t yet realizehowperilousit
actuallyis,” saidDanDoctoroffwhenI met
himfora drinkatCafeLuxembourgonthe
UpperWestSideearlyoneevening.Docto-
roffservedasdeputy mayorforeconomic
developmentintheBloombergadministra-
tionandhasspenthislifepromotingambi-
tiousdevelopmentinitiatives:a planto
at tractthe 2012 OlympicstoNewYork,the
rebuildingoflowerManhattanafter9/11,
HudsonYards. He now works for Sidewalk
Labs,Google’s urban-planning shop. I had
alwaysknown him to be an optimist—he
wrotea book on the city titled Greater Than
Ever—soit jarred me when I heard he had
beentryingto rally the Permanent Govern-
menttoaction, warning the city was on the
brinkof“a’70s-style” decline.
“Wefacea huge risk that the population
ofthecityand the number of people work-
inginthecity will shrink by a lot,” Doctoroff
said.“Companies are questioning the value
of high-costreal estate in New York.” Mean-
while,headded, “many of the drivers of the
uniqueurban experience, like subways and
officebuildings, are now viewed as risks.”
Doctoroffsketched out his doomsday sce-
nario:Residents and companies leave
becauseofcovid, resulting in a decline in
taxrevenue, forcing cutbacks in services,
causingthe quality of life in the city to
worsen,leading to more departures.
If thatsounds dire, consider for a moment
thatveterans of the 1970s crisis are saying
thatthisonecould be more threatening than
theonethecity faced in those days. The
urbanrotof the 1970s was at the margins;
thistime,it is the core that is hollowing.
Eveninthedepths of 1977, the year of the
blackoutand the Son of Sam, Manhattan
wasvibrant—“a luxury fantasyland,” in the
wordsofone contemporary journalistic
account.Manhattan boasted the headquar-
tersof a fif th of the Fortune 500 companies,
a thirdofthe largest law firms, and almost
allofthebig ad agencies and investment
banks.Residential real-estate values rose by
30 percent.Celebrities were crowding Stu-
dio54.TheYankees won the World Series,
drawingmore than 2 million fans.
Thepaidattendance for the 2020 New
YorkYankees season, by contrast, will be
zero.What’s more, the government so far
seemsincapable of mustering a response to
thecurrentcrisis. Cuomo has taken a cau-
tiousapproach to reopening, focusing on
keepingthepositive-test rate belowone per-
cent.DeBlasio appears to be trying to stag-
geralonguntil November, hoping for a Joe
Biden victory and federal relief funding. The
mayor has attempted to address the impact
of the pandemic by appointing advisory
boards, which have done little of conse-
quence. “Nobody’s rallying around right
now,” Doctoroff lamented. He has been try-
ing to organize a new political group he is
calling the Coalition for Inclusive Growth,
aiming to raise $10 million to shape the
debate over the issue ahead of next year’s
citywide election. The use of the word inclu-
sive is his way of repenting for the failings of
the Bloomberg era, when the benefits of eco-
nomic development were distributed
unevenly to the wealthy.
News of Doctoroff ’s coalition was greeted
with some skepticism, in part because the
Times coupled its unveiling with news that
Stephen Ross, the founder and chairman of
Related, was said to be talking about raising
$100 million to spend in the coming may-
oral election. The rumor was that Doctoroff
was his candidate. Doctoroff says he has no
interest in running for mayor, and Ross
later said he was committed only to “some-
one not named de Blasio.” But the very
notion that the city’s most powerful real-
estate developer—and a Trump fund-raiser,
at that—might try to pick the next mayor
sounded like something cookedup at a
Bridgehampton clambake.
“These guys have a stake in thegloom-
and-doom department,” said Alicia Glen,
the former top economic-development
official in the de Blasio administration.
“Because by talking about how terrible it’s
going to be, it legitimizes and empowers
their vision: superrich white people com-
ing to save the city again. I mean, that is so
obnoxious.”
Glen, like Doctoroff, is a member of the
Permanent Government. She used to be a
managing director at Goldman Sachs and
now runs a firm called MSquared, which
finances and builds affordable housing, an
issue she handled for de Blasio. We met in
September by the fountain at Lincoln Cen-
ter and chatted on a brownstone stoop near
her home on the Upper West Side. “I would
argue that fundamentally nothing has
changed with respect to New York City
being, at the end of the day, the center for
global commerce and culture,” Glen said.
The question, she added, is: “How long
until the end of day?”
Already, Glen sees signs that the city is
returning to its old profit-driven ways.
Opportunistic investors are looking at the
pandemic as a temporary dislocation pro-
duced by an external force and are assem-
bling huge sums of money to buy New York
property. She foresees a coming “feeding
frenzy” focused on distressed debts and
assets. “When you look at the globalpicture,
“THEBUSINESSCOMMUNITYANDTHEESTABLISHMENT
POLITICALCLASSWILLNOTSAY IT PUBLICLY, BUT
PRIVATELYTHEYTALKLIKETHEWORLD’SGONECRAZY.”
NEW YORK ON THE BRINK ... OF SOMETHING ...
