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Mark interviews journalist Steve Cuozzo. · The Mark Simone Show

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: In Mark on demand by setting a preset for his
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  Speaker 1: podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Now back to Mark Simon on wor Well.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Steve Cuzo is the great columnist for The New York
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Post nobody better on real estate, on restaurants, on New York,
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  Speaker 1: on What's going on? And all his columns are up
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  Speaker 1: on the New York Post website. Steve Cuzo, how you doing?
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  Speaker 2: Hey, good morning Mark. I always hope I can live
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  Speaker 2: up to your great doing.
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  Speaker 1: And you always do.
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  Speaker 2: Uh.
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  Speaker 1: Now, when it comes to apartments, rentals, sales, offices moving,
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  Speaker 1: how is New York doing? It's not true that everybody's
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  Speaker 1: leaving New York, is it?
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  Speaker 2: No? Sure isn't. The office market has strongest it's been
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  Speaker 2: in about ten years. And you think about what that means.
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  Speaker 2: They're recovered from the pandemic. People are back offices. It's
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  Speaker 2: hardly any space available, that's how strong the market is.
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  Speaker 2: And housing a very interesting story, you know, right. I
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  Speaker 2: wrote a piece yesterday in the Post. It's up on
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  Speaker 2: our website about the whole myth the fallacies around so
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  Speaker 2: called affordable apartments. So you know you've got the incoming
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  Speaker 2: mayor all on Magoni and many others complaining about we've
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  Speaker 2: got to build affordable housing, you know, get people off
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  Speaker 2: the streets into affordable housing. There's a number of issues here.
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  Speaker 2: Number one, most of the people, many of them at least,
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  Speaker 2: do not they'd rather be on the street because they
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  Speaker 2: are not They're not normal people. They're psychos, they are
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  Speaker 2: drug addicts, they are dangerous homeless people. They're not people
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  Speaker 2: by and large, living on the street simply because they
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  Speaker 2: can't afford to make ends meet despite working three jobs. Okay,
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  Speaker 2: so let's get that straight. Number two, there's a myth
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  Speaker 2: that the city doesn't have or doesn't create affordable apartment
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  Speaker 2: You can look it up. This is not a matter
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  Speaker 2: of opinion, but of objective truth. The City of New York,
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  Speaker 2: through various meanings, rezonings, et cetera, has generated the creation
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  Speaker 2: of over three hundred thousand new rental apartments in the
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  Speaker 2: last weughly ten years. That's an extraordinary number. And of
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  Speaker 2: those a significant percentage, a minority percentage, but still a
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  Speaker 2: meaningful percentage. Twenty percent typically are earmarked for people with
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  Speaker 2: incomes below average. They are intended for people who make
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  Speaker 2: a certain percentage of the median area income. That is,
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  Speaker 2: to say, by and large, people who are working class,
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  Speaker 2: not middle not up, not affluent. They have families, some
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  Speaker 2: of them were two to three jobs. And these are
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  Speaker 2: apartments that are set aside for people with those lower
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  Speaker 2: incomes and not set aside for people with no incomes,
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  Speaker 2: which is of course what Mamdani and his fellow travelers
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  Speaker 2: in what I call socialists the sophistry want. They're intended
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  Speaker 2: for people who earn a living. They're tax paying citizens
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  Speaker 2: of the city, and they deserve a place to live
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  Speaker 2: that they can afford. And the city has delivered. Okay,
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  Speaker 2: let's say three hundred thirty thousand new units altogether. Rentals
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  Speaker 2: were talking about, not condos, twenty percent of that, so
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  Speaker 2: sixty thousand, roughly, very roughly are affordable in a meaningful sense.
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  Speaker 2: So you read all this propaganda and Bologne. It's propagated
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  Speaker 2: by the activist organizations, the New York Times and other
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  Speaker 2: left leaning media that the city has failed its homeless
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  Speaker 2: population by not building or not creating affordable home to them.
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  Speaker 2: It's malarkey, just not true.
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  Speaker 1: Well, sometimes you don't have affordable housing because the place
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  Speaker 1: is booming. You know, if you went to a garden
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  Speaker 1: city long Island. It's very expensive. There's no affordable housing.
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  Speaker 1: But the next town over, Hempstead, not so good, a
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  Speaker 1: lot of affordable housing. But so is every place have
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  Speaker 1: to have affordable housing, Just go to the next town.
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  Speaker 2: No, The truth is, I don't Mark, I don't really
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  Speaker 2: know the Garden City situation. But one of the point
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  Speaker 2: is that I mean, you can't have uniform You can't
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  Speaker 2: have affordable housing by any definition, distributed uniformly. Of course,
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  Speaker 2: the five boroughs hundreds of different neighborhoods. Obviously some areas,
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  Speaker 2: some neighborhoods wind themselves more to higher income residents than others.
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  Speaker 2: But what's remarkable is that you look at the city now.
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  Speaker 2: The city has generated entire new skylines of mostly of
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  Speaker 2: rental apartment buildings in the last fifteen years in places
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  Speaker 2: like Gowanas in Brooklyn on the Canal, in the parts
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  Speaker 2: of downtown Manhattan in the South Bronx, Long Island City,
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  Speaker 2: and Hunter's Point in Queens. These are success stories. These
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  Speaker 2: stories help explain why we're not seeing a massive exodus
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  Speaker 2: of people from the city's Obviously, there will always be
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  Speaker 2: some people who want to go. Let them go, and
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  Speaker 2: they will quickly find the new York Times actually had
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  Speaker 2: a terrific story about a week ago about how people
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  Speaker 2: who think they're going to leave the city suddenly discovered
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  Speaker 2: that it's not as easy as they thought. They thought
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  Speaker 2: they could get the tax benefits of living in Texas
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  Speaker 2: or Florida just by you know, pilling out a change
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  Speaker 2: for transform or something, and it turns out this is
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  Speaker 2: far from the case. So nine out of ten people
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  Speaker 2: who say they're leading the city for good don't.
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  Speaker 1: Hey, So these big, big, big real estate guys, they
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  Speaker 1: know their stuff. These guys are brilliant. Now I noticed
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  Speaker 1: they're building a ninety story skyscraper Madison in fifty eighth
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  Speaker 1: Park Avenue. Fifty second they get one hundred story skyscraper going.
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  Speaker 1: They got all these skyscrapers going to this one on
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  Speaker 1: fifty seventh coming. They wouldn't be doing this if they
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  Speaker 1: didn't believe in the future of New York.
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  Speaker 2: Would they. They? Of course, they believe. They're not infallible.
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  Speaker 2: They often make a lot of them make big mistakes
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  Speaker 2: and go, you know, if not broke a minimum, they
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  Speaker 2: lose their umpires. They'll look back to the case of
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  Speaker 2: William Zeckendorf, one of the famous developers of all time.
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  Speaker 2: He ended up living in a I think I'm like
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  Speaker 2: a furnished room or something in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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  Speaker 2: A lot of these characters that too much, you know,
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  Speaker 2: they're intoxicated by easy money. The banks are too willing
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  Speaker 2: to lend. Sometimes interest rates are very low. Interest rates
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  Speaker 2: obviously fluctuate, but when they're very low, everybody sees they
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  Speaker 2: don't see any possible downside. And yet there are buildings,
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  Speaker 2: rental apartment buildings and condo buildings that did not do
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  Speaker 2: well and had to be taken over by someone else.
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  Speaker 2: By and large, I agree with you that generally speaking,
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  Speaker 2: real estate developers have a greater you know, they're more
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  Speaker 2: attached to the reality the pulse of the city's economy
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  Speaker 2: than journalists are, and they wouldn't be making taking the
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  Speaker 2: kinds of gambles that they take if they weren't confident.
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  Speaker 2: So the buildings you mentioned Madison Avenue, there are two
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  Speaker 2: of them. One is being developed by related companies at
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  Speaker 2: fifty eighth Street and Extel I think, two blocks north.
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  Speaker 2: They're both putting up giant you know, the buildings, not
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  Speaker 2: even certain exactly what the mix will be of apartments
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  Speaker 2: or offices, perhaps a hotel. But yeah, of course they
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  Speaker 2: have confidence and they those buildings are going to do fun.
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  Speaker 1: Also, the big new restaurant's opening all over the place, right,
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  Speaker 1: You've covered a lot of big restaurants that opened recently.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, the one I wrote about last week is
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  Speaker 2: called Palladinos and it's in Grand Central Terminal. It's on
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  Speaker 2: the you know, the plant, the mezzanie, the balcony's overlooking
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  Speaker 2: the main concourse. I never heard of this guy, Joe Palladino.
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  Speaker 2: He's from New York, but he made a career in
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  Speaker 2: Texas opening steakhouses. Now he's come to New York and
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  Speaker 2: it's magnificent. It's absolutely beautiful. It's a great place to
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  Speaker 2: sit even if you didn't eat or drink anything. Not that,
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  Speaker 2: not that they're promoting asking people to come and not
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  Speaker 2: spend any money, because the setting is so magnificent over
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  Speaker 2: the you know, the main floor of the terminal, and
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  Speaker 2: the food's great. And I had a story in my
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  Speaker 2: real estate column today that there's another steakhouse coming and
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  Speaker 2: it's called something like Jay. I'm sorry, I just can't
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  Speaker 2: remember the gent Jack D's.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Jack D's.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's going to be on in the building
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  Speaker 2: known as seventy five Rockefeller Plaza. Now it's really the
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  Speaker 2: restaurant will actually be on the West fifty second Street side. Ye,
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  Speaker 2: the space is currently vacant. That's another big one. So
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  Speaker 2: over two hundred seats and the two guys doing it
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  Speaker 2: are professionals. One of them is the son of Jack Dorian,
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  Speaker 2: who is creative Dorian's red hand on the on the
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  Speaker 2: east side. And uh, it's the New York City has
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  Speaker 2: an unlimited appetite, it seems for steakhouses. I often think
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  Speaker 2: there are too damn many of them. But there you go.
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  Speaker 2: That's what that's what the public wants. They don't want,
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  Speaker 2: you know, eight seat counters where you just need you know,
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  Speaker 2: vegan weird stuff.
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  Speaker 1: All right. So bottom line, New York is booming, right,
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  Speaker 1: it's doing very well.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there is nothing is permanent. Uh and
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  Speaker 2: uh in terms of the real estate aspect of it.
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  Speaker 2: People forget that it's a cyclical industry. It goes up,
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  Speaker 2: it goes down. Everybody nobody knows what's really coming. Everybody
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  Speaker 2: is old saying fighting the last war. Yeah, and uh,
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  Speaker 2: so god knows where we're had it. But a couple
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  Speaker 2: of weeks ago. You know, I sat down with the
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  Speaker 2: uh Mark Holliday, who's the CEO of sl Green, the
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  Speaker 2: city's largest commercial landlord, and he's very optimistic. I said
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  Speaker 2: to him, Mark, this, you know, vacancy writes her down
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  Speaker 2: and prints are up and blah blah blah. You know,
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  Speaker 2: am I missing something? Is there is there a weak
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  Speaker 2: link here in this picture? And he said, well, basically
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  Speaker 2: not all right?
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  Speaker 1: Good good news.
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  Speaker 2: Now for now.
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  Speaker 1: Excellent news everybody. If you want to read Steve Cuzo's columns,
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  Speaker 1: they're all up on the New York Post website. You
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: can find all his columns there and make sure you
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: read them regularly in the New York Post. Steve Cuzo,
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  Speaker 1: thanks for being with us.
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  Speaker 2: Thanks Mark, always fun takes.
• 11:00
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• 11:02
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