NY Monthly Update With REBNY

Welcome to the New York Monthly Update. My name is James Nelson. I'm principal and head of Tri State Investment Sales. And I'm here at Rebny's office with Jay Ackerman, who is director of Strategic initiatives. Jay, thanks for having me here.

Great. Always happy to talk to you. Thank you.

Perfect. So in this show every month we're going to do a quick overview of what's going on at the city and state level. So I know the elections have been a big topic for conversation. So maybe give us a recap of what happened in June and what to look forward for this upcoming year.

Well, I'd say, you know, same thing that we've been advocating for for the last few months, you know, goes to that saying, you know, your voices were heard in this election cycle. We had a huge turnout. Now we're going to see that again with the June 2022 primaries. There's a lot more at stake. Governor Hochul, our new governor. Governor Hochul is going to be up for election on that cycle. We have public advocate Jumani Williams, who is forming an exploratory committee. And there's been a lot of different names as well of other people who are interested in running. On the Republican side, you have Congressman Lee Zeldin, who represents Suffolk County. He's put his name in the hat for governor. We also Rudy Giuliani's son, Andrew Giuliani, who's also suggested that he's going to run. So, you know, the election for the general cycle isn't until 13 months from now. But, you know, by no means are we seeing a Democratic ticket be a safeguard for governor. It could be a Republican this time. But it goes without saying there's going to be a lot of different things to look forward to in the next few months. You know, it all depends on how the Hokul administration runs things. It all depends on, you know, what people are seeing in the city. With the Adams administration, there's going to be a lot of different seats up for reelection or new incumbents as well with the assembly, with the state Senate. So there's going to be a huge shakeup in things. Now is now the time to turn down the dial. And it's very important that we pay attention to these cycles and that we get ourselves advocated and acclimated to the upcoming election.

Perfect. And one thing that we all have been incredibly grateful to Rebny for is the get out the vote. And it's really about educating voters to understand who's running and the process. And I think Certainly, there was a big impact in the primary, so. But if people want to learn more about how to go out and vote, where would you suggest they visit?

I mean, the Board of Elections has done a tremendous job at advocating for different election cycles, deadlines, dates, that sort of thing. The deadline to register for this upcoming cycle actually is February 16th. If you'd like to change your party affiliation, we discussed that last year. It's very important that if you are an independent and you'd like to participate in the Republican or the Democratic primary, well, it's important to change your registration so that you understand that you can participate that. That's February 16th. The deadline to register and participate in the election itself is May 28th of 2022. So those are two key deadlines to note. But Rebny has put together a multitude of different resources to follow. We had a very successful candidate meet and greet with mayoral candidates last summer. We'll be definitely putting together a different resource guide as well for our members and our agents to make sure that they're acclimated, educated, and they know everything that's going on ahead of time.

Wonderful. Once again, we really appreciate everything you're doing here. So lastly, we'd just like to give a quick recap on the Small Business Survival act, which I know has been referred to as commercial rent control. It certainly feels that way. So the city Council has put forth this proposal for decades. Maybe you could talk about what your latest response was to those efforts.

Of course. And this is something that us as an industry is particularly proud of. So when we heard that this was going to receive a hearing, this is a bill that was proposed by council member Steve Levin a few years ago. It's always been something that we've kept in the back of our minds. And when it was finally granted a hearing, we had learned about it the Friday before the hearing, which was next Friday. So ultimately, we had seven days to prepare for this. Our teams at Rebny worked collectively to make sure that we had our policy points intact, that we wrote testimony, but also we wanted to get the agents and our members engaged and informed as best as we could. And so very short time frame. So what we did was our Vice President of City Legislative Affairs, Ryan Monell, worked directly with our policy team to make sure that we identified different commercial agents who'd be receptive to this message and who would be able to face forward on this initiative and advocate on this behalf at the hearing. We put together a website where other members who weren't able to attend the hearing could write an email to their council member directly to make it easy to make sure that they're informed on it. We also gave the opportunity for members to tweet during the hearing. And we had over 10,000 emails get sent in those seven days to council members all across the city, to the bill sponsor. We also had 50 tweets that were sent during the hearing. So as they're hosting the hearing and hearing from the public and different experts on this, they're getting tweets in real time and saying, oh, man, I think that this is something that my community doesn't really care about too much. And additionally, we provided a way that we can get our members as informed, acclimated to this as we could by providing them talking points, providing them the link to testify. I believe we had close to 75, if not 100 different agents and members sign up from membership, but also from co op and condo boards across the city. And I think we had. It was a very long day. Like, the hearing lasted from 9am until, I think about 6 or 7pm and I think we had roughly 50 different members from that. From that area talk in opposition to these bills. And we're very proud that we were able to put that together. We were proud of the hard work. But ultimately, our thanks goes to all those members who advocated, all of those agents who wanted to make their voice heard. And the battle is long from over. This is an issue that we're definitely going to see come up in the state. It's definitely something that's going to be on the minds of a lot of different elected officials as they maintain their office or as they run for different offices. So keep up the pressure, stay informed, stay engaged, and we're definitely here to make sure that that continues.

Perfect. And just to remind the audience, again, the proposal that was on the table, I believe, was for commercial spaces under 10,000 square feet. So the intention was that if a legacy tenant wanted to renew that, the city would basically arbitrate that and there would be the ability for them to stay at a negotiated rent, which is that a fair assessment of what things.

Are going to happen, Right? Exactly. It would work the same way as it would establish a rent commercial Guidelines board that would cap annual rents at, as you mentioned, 10,000 square feet or less for many different retail stores. And additionally, the bill provided ground to commercial tenants with the ability to automatically extend a lease upon expiration. And the industry has already experienced a lot of rigidity this. So, you know, to have these two bills, you know, come up in a time when we're trying to get the industry back on its feet. We're trying to get, you know, as as much business as we can back to the city. This just wasn't the time to do something like this. It just wasn't something that was, you know, is going to be relative to industry or it's going to help industry. And we advocated for a lot of different things that could help these commercial tenants in these retail stores, you know, anywhere from eliminating the commercial rent tax to developing a legacy business tax abatement program and just reducing a lot of different barriers that cause people to not do business in the city. Whether that's, you know, licensing, water bills, electric, you name it. There's a lot of different things that happen to these retails and this just wasn't covering it.

Wonderful. Well, Jay, thank you as always for everything you're doing and letting our audience know what they need to know this month in New York. Thank you.

I appreciate it. Thank you, James.

Perfect.