Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to extend REAP and create a new program (with a new acronym).
As part of her executive budget, the governor pitched extending the city’s Relocation and Employment Assistance Program, which provides tax credits to businesses that relocate from outside NYC or from below 96th Street in Manhattan to above 96th Street or other boroughs.
The program was slated to expire this year, but Hochul wants to push that deadline out to 2030. The governor also pitched a new program: Relocation Assistance Credit Per Employee Program. State officials are ignoring the Ps, and going with “RACE” as this program’s acronym. I haven’t seen marketing to this effect, but I assume the hope is that businesses from out of state will race to move their businesses to New York before this program expires in 2028.
This program would provide $5,000 credits per employee (though the city could only issue credits for 3,000 employees across the whole program) to businesses that:
— Move from outside of New York, who have conducted “substantial business” outside the state for 24 consecutive months.
— Take space that spans at least 20,000 square feet and that was constructed pre-2000. The idea here is to incentivize these businesses to move to buildings that would otherwise not be good contenders for residential conversions.
Hotels and retail are not eligible.
The Five Borough Jobs Campaign, which includes the Real Estate Board of New York, praised the governor’s proposal, saying that the extension of REAP “not only fosters our regional economy and creates jobs, but helps everyday New Yorkers thrive.”
Opponents of REAP believe the state will REGRET or RUE or REPENT of renewing it without assessing whether the tax credit actually accomplishes what it set out to do. The Citizens Budget Commission told Erik Engquist that the benefit program should not be renewed without a thorough evaluation to ensure the credits are “only spent to induce investment or job creation that would not otherwise occur.” Obviously with the proposed renewal and the pitch for another tax credit program on top of REAP, the governor does not agree.
After the governor’s budget address, CBC called the spending plan “short-sighted” because it did not reel in spending to account for possible federal cuts in the future. When asked about the prospect of these cuts, Hochul said it will be up to the federal government to fix funding decisions that hurt New Yorkers.
“Elections have consequences,” she said.
It’s going to be an interesting four years.
What we’re thinking about: We’re in the early days of the second Trump administration. What issues are you watching closely? Send a note to kathryn@therealdeal.com.
A thing we’ve learned: A fire at an ancient library is to thank for the first discovered copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh. The library of Assyrian king Ashurbanipal was burned to the ground in 612 BCE, but its contents survived. In the 1840s, archeologists excavating the ancient city of Nineveh found tens of thousands of clay tablets that had hardened in the blaze. Gilgamesh was among the literature found, per the podcast “99 Percent Invisible.”
Elsewhere in New York…
— Assaults on the subway tripled between 2009 and 2024, but half of these incidents occurred at 30 of the city’s 472 stations, Gothamist reports, based on an analysis by Vital City. The city reported 540 serious assaults last year. Incidents of other crimes, including robberies and thefts, have dropped.
— Attorneys general of Democratic states have pledged to sue the Trump administration if it moves forward with its mass deportation plan, Politico reports. “It is well-established — through longstanding Supreme Court precedent — that the U.S. Constitution prevents the federal government from commandeering states to enforce federal laws,” the attorneys general from a dozen states, including New York, California, Colorado, Connecticut, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Vermont, Maryland and Illinois, said in a statement.
— After Mayor Eric Adams attended Trump’s inauguration and has fueled speculation that he may jump back to the Republican party, a 2018 video of the then-Brooklyn borough president bashing the president has resurfaced, the City reports.
Closing Time
Residential: The priciest residential sale Friday was $8.8 million at 760 Madison Avenue. The Lenox Hill condo unit is 2,400 square feet and was listed by Douglas Elliman’s Madeline Hult Elghanayan and Sabrina Saltiel.
Commercial: The most expensive commercial closing of the day was $87.7 million for apartments and land at 671-735 Lincoln Avenue in Brooklyn. The land includes well over 500,000 square feet of lot space. Camber Property has taken over the multifamily complex from RY Management’s Linden Plaza Preservation, per reports.
New to the Market: The highest price for a residential property hitting the market was $8.8 million for 61 Jane Street. The co-op unit has five bedrooms and five bathrooms. Sotheby’s International Realty had the listing. — Joseph Jungermann