Location: Where is New York headed now that its main economic engine, financial services, is on the rocks? Do cities normally survive when the main employer, job generator, income generator, goes belly up?

Mr. Kotkin: Well, in the case of financial services, it’s less a job generator than an income generator just because the jobs are such huge providers of income. Basically, New York has been on what you could call the ‘plutonomy wagon.’ Plutonomy is a term used to describe the intersection of plutocracy and economy. So New York has been the ultimate trickle-down economy—it’s been a relatively small group of people driving the economy.  read more »

Location: Since you bought Harlem’s Delano Village, now called Savoy Park, in 2006, how many of its 1,800 apartments have been deregulated?

Mr. Rubler: None. Or, under 10. I mean, occasionally, an apartment will achieve a legal rent that’s over $2,000, which, at least under today’s regulations, means that it’s technically deregulated, but it’s never a part of our business plan to deregulate apartments. Specifically, it’s part of our plan to keep 100 percent of our apartments within rent stabilization.

 
The New York Times reported that last year when you refinanced Savoy Park, it was underwritten for an ultimate cash flow of $19.  read more »

Location: In 2006, you went after the developer Aby Rosen’s plans for a glass tower at 980 Madison in The Times, writing that the Landmarks Preservation Commission would let him build whatever he wanted. They’ve since made him and his partners redraft and scale back plans. Are you glad you won?

Mr. Wolfe: Well, that’s not over yet. They did try again, with what was in effect a plan for a tall glass building lying down. You see in plans and renderings a slab maybe three stories high, but it stretches over a huge area. That building, between 76th and 77th, 980 Madison, is a whole block! .  read more »

Location: The financial industry is changing before our eyes. What’s your outlook for the city’s economy in the short term and midterm?

Mr. Lieber: There’s no question that this is unprecedented in any kind of shape for Wall Street since the ’20s. So we’ve never seen anything this bad, at least not in a long, long time. But having said that … around the economy, our unemployment rate is still relatively low—5.1-ish percent right now—which is up a little bit. Our tax collections going forward are on target so far, though we still are fearful about some of that declining.

 read more »

Location: You used to work in finance at Merrill Lynch and Wexford Capital. Now you’re in restaurants, as CEO of Pump Energy Food. Which is tougher?

Mr. Eskin: [laughing] Finance is a joke. You just kind of sit in an office and you tell people what to do and send e-mails, and you’re like, ‘Why aren’t these numbers the way they should be?’ Now, I’m on the other end, getting barked at about why our numbers aren’t where they should be, and now I get it.

Most Pump locations are pretty tiny.

They average about 500 to 600 square feet.  read more »

Location: Does Craigslist scare brokers, in the sense that it opens up access to real estate information?

Mr. Baum: No, Craigslist doesn’t scare me; in fact, I think that Craigslist is fantastic, if used properly. The problem with Craigslist is that it lends itself to ridicule because there are many posts that are either false or absolutely untrue, and there are scams where people have lost thousands of dollars because they think they are renting something when they are not. So Craigslist has its flaws in that respect, but at the same time, the opening up of information I personally think is a great thing.  read more »

Location: Let’s talk about the Summer Streets program. Has it gone as good as you would have hoped?

Mr. White: You know, when the city first announced Summer Streets, we were thrilled. The indications from other cities are that when streets are given over to biking and walking on weekends, it’s been a huge success, but skeptics here in New York thought that not enough people would come out; but we have just had throngs of people coming out walking and biking, and it has really just exceeded our expectations for success. We are calling the summer of 2008 the ‘Summer of Car-Free Streets,’ and a few years from now we might look back at this summer as the summer when car-free streets hit the big time and people woke up to the enormous latent demand for car-free living and walking.  read more »

Editor's note: A shorter version of this interview will run in the Aug. 13 print edition of The Observer.

LOCATION: Explain why Amtrak wants New Jersey Transit's planned ARC (Access to the Region's Core) tunnel under the Hudson River to connect with the Penn Station tracks.

Mr. Kummant: Basically, look, this goes back to a process we're leading, which is a process for the whole Northeast corridor. And, at the end of the day, we're in a completely different world, where capacity matters a great deal. You're looking at 2030 projections where commuter volume and Amtrak volume in total is almost doubling.  read more »

Location: Last year, a Legal Media Group study named you the best-connected and most powerful real estate lawyer in the world. That’s sort of extraordinary.

Mr. Mechanic: I did get a kick out of that, I have to admit. That was fun. I went to a meeting with a tenant I was representing with a pretty good sense of humor, and I walked in and he said, ‘Aha! We now have the best real estate lawyer in the galaxy!’ So you have to enjoy all that. But I think I’m pretty good at what I do, and certainly I have lots of relationships that I’ve developed in almost 30 years in the business.  read more »

Location: After years of bubbling real estate prices, the market is changing, and now is not exactly a good time to be selling an apartment—let alone thousands, which is your job. Do you lie awake panicked in bed?

Ms. de França: I mean, I realize it’s a challenging market, but I can’t say I’m living in fear of it.… We’ve enjoyed an incredibly robust market in the past five or six years, which is now stabilizing; I think that buyers are much more skeptical, consumer confidence is lower than it’s been. With that said, it gives us an opportunity to be patient with the consumer, educate them.  read more »