New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo | Getty Cuomo leaves an outsized mark on de Blasio's New York City

The Cuomo administration may let two of New York City’s biggest real estate concerns tear down Donald Trump’s first significant Manhattan project, and build a skyscraper next to Grand Central Terminal.

Though the development will, with at least 2 million square feet, rival the Chrysler Building in size, New York City itself will have little formal involvement in the project.


That the Cuomo administration is considering letting TF Cornerstone and RXR Realty’s Scott Rechler (a major Cuomo donor) bypass New York City’s onerous review process in favor of the state’s, speaks to one of the more striking aspects of development in New York City over much of the past decade: For better or for worse, Cuomo is likely to leave a far more conspicuous and lasting impact on New York City’s built environment than the mayor who has governed the city for more than six years.

"I think that may be because [Cuomo] doesn’t have competition from the mayor,” said Lynne Sagalyn, a professor of real estate at Columbia Business School who has written extensively about development in New York City.

Try to name a signature Bill de Blasio development project, and there's a good chance you will fail. With the end of his tenure less than two years out, it’s become increasingly clear that he will shepherd into existence neither a magnificent new park, nor a de Blasio-era Utica Avenue subway extension, like he first proposed in 2015. There’s been little discernible progress in his plan for a light rail along the Brooklyn-Queens waterfront, an idea he rolled out the following year. He’s produced no new stadiums, like the one his former deputy mayor wanted to build for New York City Football Club. His plan to build a new neighborhood on Queens’ Sunnyside Yards remains in the master-visioning stage. If it ever comes to fruition, it will be many years past the expiration of de Blasio’s mayoralty.

To the extent he has shaped the built environment, de Blasio has done so by unleashing private development — in Midtown East, where developers like Rechler can now build taller skyscrapers; and in some residential neighborhoods (though fewer than originally intended), where he’s pushed through more permissive zoning rules and subsidized thousands of units of new affordable housing. Significantly, he’s committed New York City to closing the jails on Rikers Island, and replacing them with smaller facilities in every borough but Staten Island, though he’s advanced no particular vision for what should happen on Rikers, once those jails shutter. He has expanded former Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s bus-and-bike lane program, but that’s the stuff of ephemeral paint and plastic dividers. In more passive fashion, he’s allowed supertalls to proliferate south of Central Park.

De Blasio’s achievements fall more squarely into the social programmatic realm, such as paid sick leave and universal pre-K.

“The mayor’s priorities appear to be loosely tied to social justice,” said Sandy Hornick, a prominent urban planner who spent decades in city government helping shape the cityscape. “And we can have a debate about whether that’s good or bad, but that’s the stuff he ran on ... and that’s what he’s doing.”

Cuomo adores a vacuum. Fancying himself a master builder in the vein of Robert Moses, he has spent years treating de Blasio’s New York like his personal SimCity.

On Jan. 6, the governor embraced a proposal, long-sought by urbanists, to add extra tracks to Penn Station by acquiring a full block of midtown Manhattan. He’s considering using the same “general project plan” approval mechanism that his administration wanted to use for Amazon’s campus in Long Island City. His administration is considering the same mechanism, which bypasses the city’s approval process, for the Rechler project next to Grand Central. Cuomo's turning the old James A. Farley Post Office into a train hall for Amtrak and Long Island Rail Road riders. He’s rebuilding LaGuardia and JFK airports, both in New York City, via the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey that he jointly controls with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy. He’s building an AirTrain of debatable utility through Queens. Cuomo’s infatuation with leaving his physical mark prompted him to rebuild a workaday highway bridge — the Kosciuszko that carries the BQE from Brooklyn to Queens — into a striking cable-stay crossing with spangly lights. It’s changed the Brooklyn-Queens skyline. He’s gilded the MTA’s two East River car tunnels with blue and yellow tiles, and “architectural” towers.

To those who argue Cuomo is merely using institutional powers that the city doesn’t have, one need go no further back in history than the Bloomberg administration. The now-presidential candidate brought New York City the 7-train extension, the High Line, a pedestrianized Times Square, a new university campus on Roosevelt Island, Brooklyn Bridge Park and Hudson Yards. With Bloomberg administration support, Forest City Ratner also launched the development of Pacific Park (nee Atlantic Yards) and its attendant Barclays Center arena.

De Blasio doesn’t seem as interested in those kinds of things. He has a different notion of governance.

"There are many ways to leave your mark on the City," said de Blasio spokesperson Jane Meyer. "The Mayor’s priority is implementing policies and launching projects to strengthen neighborhoods, help New Yorkers afford the rent, and put our kids on the path to success. Whether that means renovating parks in neighborhoods that were ignored for decades or building new affordable homes for seniors, our focus will always be on doing what is best for everyday New Yorkers."

To that end, on Thursday, de Blasio's Parks commissioner hosted the first completed product of a signature de Blasio initiative — Parks without Borders, which aims to break down the physical barriers between parks and the neighborhoods that surround them. The program is intentionally incremental. The $6 million Seward Park project resulted in “new pavements and curbs, benches and tables, a storytelling alcove, fitness equipment, lighting, plants, and lower fences,” according to the city’s press release, and also a Disney+-sponsored plaque dedicated to the “bronze statue of Togo the dog.”

“It just feels to me overall that there are a lot of things about the physical city that are important to us that the mayor is fundamentally bored by, and it shows in the way the city works, and it shows in the way that the city is developing,” said Justin Davidson, the architecture critic at New York magazine.

In the 1970s, Trump and Hyatt converted Penn Central Railroad’s old Commodore Hotel into the Grand Hyatt, using city tax incentives and a lot of black glass. The New York Times described it as Trump’s “first major real estate victory." Next to Grand Central, TF Cornerstone and Rechler were agnostic as to what environmental review process the $3 billion project should go through, a source close to the project told POLITICO.

The state’s development arm — Empire State Development — argues that since the state controls the underlying land, a state approval process makes more sense, even though the land reverts to the city upon the conclusion of the long-term lease and the city hasn’t solicited the state’s involvement, as is traditional.

"In the past, the city invited the state in — at 42nd Street, Battery Park City, the convention center, the entire West side,” Sagalyn said.

The city seems ambivalent about Cuomo’s latest endeavors, too.

“As with Penn Station, we need more information on this project but believe that the City has to have a seat at the table in planning next steps,” said de Blasio spokesperson Olivia Lapeyrolerie, in an email.

City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, whose land use powers under the city’s approval process also stand to be compromised at the Grand Hyatt, declined comment for this story.

"It’s easy to rattle off a big list of things that Cuomo has done to the physical environment,” said Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. “You have to work a lot harder to come up with a similar list for de Blasio.”