The Equity Factor

The Man Who Closed Mike Bloomberg’s Real Estate Deals Bolts for Private Sector

Seth Pinsky broadened the reach of New York’s Economic Development Corporation. His successor has big shoes to fill.

Credit: Pop Tech.

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Seth Pinsky, president of New York City’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC), is leaving the administration for the real estate sector. As Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s term nears its end, more departures will come. Pinsky, who was appointed president of EDC in 2008, earned accolades for reinventing the role of the city’s economic development arm, brokering major projects with potential to significantly diversify the city’s economy.

Pinsky worked on big-ticket projects in the five boroughs, including nearly all the major projects done in Bloomberg’s New York, from Yankee Stadium and the World Trade Center to Coney Island and Willets Point to the Cornell-Technion campus on Roosevelt Island. He was also instrumental in leading the mayor’s Special Initiative on Resiliency and Rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy and, according to an internal memo published Tuesday by Capital New York, stayed at EDC longer than planned. He was a Bloomberg stalwart and a protégée of former deputy mayor and current CEO of Bloomberg L.P. Dan Doctoroff, the Observer notes. Beyond all that, he was an incredibly thoughtful public speaker.

His highest-profile project is probably the Cornell-Technion campus on Roosevelt Island, which Nancy Scola wrote about it in a September 2012 Forefront story. Once the CornellNYC Tech campus is firing on all cylinders, the city predicts about 600 spin-off companies and $23 billion in activity over the next 30 years.

“Until fairly recently, even under Bloomberg, EDC was primarily a reactive real estate agency known for big real estate projects,” Jonathan Bowles, executive director of Center for an Urban Future, told me. “[Pinsky] really moved EDC into a whole new area, rolling out incubators and dozens of initiatives for entrepreneurs, tech companies and fashion companies, and being sure that the city did a lot of different things beyond Wall Street.”

But Pinsky’s decision to green-light parking projects, in a city full of excellent mass transit, left many confused and urbanists seething. Streetsblog described his legacy as “years of parking-induced traffic in city neighborhoods, with taxpayers footing the bill.” Hard to argue with that. Under his watch there were numerous parking initiatives, from a 794-space underground garage in downtown Brooklyn to suburban-style parking in the insanely dense Lower East Side neighborhood.

Pinsky is headed to work for RXR Realty, a real estate firm with a penchant for snatching up big, shiny office buildings. The former lawyer, who grew up in the New York suburbs and Minnesota, “will lead a new arm of RXR Realty that the company said will focus on investment in developing New York markets,” including Brooklyn and Queens, RXR chief executive Scott Rechler told Crain’s.

“The goal is to identify areas and submarkets that have strong long-term potential but have suffered from a lack of private investment and apply RXR’s real estate expertise and capital, combined with Seth’s vast experience in economic development, to identify and invest in these opportunities throughout the region,” Rechler said.

Pinsky’s departure leaves a skyscraper-sized hole in the Economic Development Corporation. Kyle Kimball, the executive director who will succeed Pinsky, has big shoes to fill.

The Equity Factor is made possible with the support of the Surdna Foundation.

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Bill Bradley is a writer and reporter living in Brooklyn. His work has appeared in Deadspin, GQ, and Vanity Fair, among others.

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Tags: new york cityeconomic developmentresilient citiesequity factorparkinghurricane sandy

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