october12–25, 2020 | newyork 35peoplearegoingtowanttobuycommercial
realestate inNewYorkCity,”Glensaid.“I’m
sorry, that’stheGod’shonest truth.”
It isn’t just thevultures,though,that see
an opportunity. The pandemic has
unleasheda torrentofadaptations,someof
whichmaybeheretostay.Outdoordining
is oneobviousexample.Anotheris theredis-
tributionofcommercialactivity totheresi-
dentialboroughs.Overthesummer,the
PermanentGovernmentwasbuzzingabout
a long-debated plan to expand Industry City,
the massive warehouse conversion project
along the South Brooklyn waterfront. The
private developers behind the project were
proposing to build over a million square feet
of new office and retail space, which, they
projected, would create 20,000 jobs and
provide the city with $100 million in yearly
tax revenue. The project, which needed no
government funding, seemed perfectly tai-
lored to a future in which offices were dis-
persed around the city, rather thanconcen-
trated in a few dense blocks.
The privately financed development
required a rezoning, and an ambitious pair
of young City Council members were push-
ing for its approval. “That is the most hope-
ful thing I have seen,” said Jonathan Rosen,
a veteran Democratic campaign strategist
andpublic-relationsexecutive. “The idea
thatthere’s thisnext generation of leaders.”
Theproject wasopposed by the local City
Councilmemberandactivists from the
DemocraticSocialistsof America, who
arguedthatit represented the wrong kind of
waterfrontdevelopment. And it received
littlesupport fromdeBlasio, much to the ire
ofthePermanentGovernment. Glen was
criticalofheroldboss,accusing him ofmis-
handlinganessentialpart of his job—his
relationship with the business community.
“What you’re seeing is that peopleareso
disappointed with the mayor’s leadership,”
Glen said. A group of 163 top businessexec-
utives had recently released an openletter
to the mayor warning of “deterioratingcon-
ditions in commercial districts andneigh-
borhoods.” At one point, when the mayor
was asked whether the mutual antipathy
had damaged his ability to respond to the
current crisis, he responded by quoting Karl
Marx. “He’s so managed to piss off the peo-
ple that need to be the participants,” Glen
said. “He didn’t have a solid foundation to
begin with, and when the chips are down,
and your behavior is so dismissive, you wind
up in the situation where the civicinstitu-
tions and the business community are all
abandoning ship.”Still, Glen rejected the notion that busi-
nesses and the wealthy would give up on
New York. covid is everywhere, and where
are they going to go? The real danger, Glen
argued, is not that rich people will flee New
York but that they will behave so arrogantly
that it drives a counterproductive backlash.
“Don’t let the increasingly reactionary left
use the pandemic to advance an anti-growth
agenda,” she said. “You have the old guard
feeling super-threatened. The new guard is
trying to figure out how to hold off the crazi-
est left-wing stuff.”
We headed up to 72nd Street. It was that
first brisk day at the end of summer. The
sidewalks were full of people walking with
purpose. You could allow yourself to imag-
ine the pandemic was over. That day,
though, the head of the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention was testifying
before the Senate, managing expectations.
He estimated that a vaccine would be
widely available by mid-2021. Maybe.
“Who’s going to lead us out of the dark-
ness?” Glen asked, before descending into
the subway. “That’s what’s so tragic about
what’s going on with the mayor.”he future of the city will de-
pend in large part on three un-
knowns. One is the delivery date of
the still-not-yet-invented vaccine.
Another is the result of the presi-
dential election. The third is next
year’s citywide election, when not
only the mayor’s office but many
City Council seats will be open. In
that campaign, the question of how
the city is to be saved, and for
whom, will be central.
“So much of this crisis of covid is about
capitalism taking away the little dignity that
people have left,” said Zohran Mamdani. It
was 9 a.m. on a Friday morning, and we
were walking down Steinway Street, where
the line outside the makeshift Astoria Food
Pantry ran down the block and curled
around the corner. Mamdani is a 28-year-
old Democratic candidate for the New York
State Assembly and a member of the DSA.
In April, he turned over his storefront cam-
paign headquarters to a group of volunteers,
who are using it to distribute bags of vegeta-
bles, canned goods, and other staples. Mam-
dani has had less use for an office since he
unseated an incumbent in the Democratic
Party primary in June, all but assuring that
he will go to Albany next year.
Mamdani was wearing a KN95 mask, a
patterned Nehru-collared shirt, and groovy
sneakers. He was born in Uganda, and we
were introduced by his father, Mahmood, a
scholarofAfricanpoliticsat ColumbiaUni-
versity.(His mother(Continued on page 102)