When he read the news one morning in early September, Ofer Cohen picked up the phone and called key players in Brooklyn real estate. Cohen, 46, the founder and president of TerraCRG, a Brooklyn-focused real estate advisory and brokerage firm, knew immediately that the borough could make a strong case […]
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Rising Costs Make Doing Business at Roni-Sue’s Chocolates Bittersweet
At 6:30 pm on a Saturday night, Rhonda Kave, owner of Roni-Sue’s Chocolates, is doing the dishes in her shop. She’s the only one working – and there’s a lot to clean up after yesterday’s busy chocolate fair. With increases in labor costs, fines, regulations and soaring rents, Kave had […]
Local Liqueur Barrow’s Intense Finds Success in National Sales
Barrow’s Intense is a unique yellow ginger liqueur elixir that goes down smooth but finishes with a sweet zest. Each piece of ginger that goes into a batch is washed, cut and bottled by hand in the Brooklyn-based distillery. Production is not the only unique approach CEO Josh Morton has […]
Minimum Wage Hike Threatens Food Manufacturing Job Growth
Increased pay for low-wage workers has small New York City businesses worrying about expanding, or, in some cases, already downsizing. Others are forced to move out of the state or replace employees with machines. As measured by jobs, food is the city’s largest manufacturing sector. Between 2005 and 2015, the […]
Price cuts at Whole Foods just the beginning of Amazon’s grocery ambitions in NYC
A few weeks after the Amazon deal, New York City shoppers say price cuts at Whole Foods piqued their interest, but had not changed the way they shop. Well, not yet at least. But the newly merged companies have their sights set on urban areas— and smaller chains and independent […]
CONSTRUCTION UNIONS CUT PAY, BENEFITS TO KEEP AFLOAT
Union construction companies, once the dominant builders in New York City, have been forced to cut wages and benefits to compete with the cheaper non-union firms that have increasingly elbowed their way into the metropolitan marketplace. After the recession of 2008, developers looking to build in the city were presented […]
NYCEDC-Backed Companies Juggle Product and Platform as Advanced Manufacturers
As 2016 comes to a close, there’s a term many early adopters and tech fiends thought would have been on the tip of their luddite friends’ tongues: 3D printing. The 2013 opening of MakerBot in Brooklyn was what some thought to be a watershed moment for the 3D printing and […]
How Top Corporate Law Firms Are Buying Influence
In New York City, partners at top corporate law firms are maxing out on donations to congressmen that hold sway over federal court appointments and judiciary hearings. New York lawyers are the top contributors to Brooklyn Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, doling out just under $128,000 for the House Judiciary Committee member’s […]
Groundhog Day in Far Rockaway
For decades Far Rockaway has been a land apart from the rest of the city. Situated on the far east side of Queens, almost on the border with Nassau county, this beach front community has long struggled with the issues of economic growth and social mobility that have plagued other […]
Changing Zones: Making Room for Affordable Housing
Zoning meant to protect New York City residents is being repealed in order to make room for the Mayor’s affordable housing plan. The Presbyterian Church of St. Albans, in a contracting deal with upstate development company Trinity Associates is taking advantage of new leverage to change established zones. Together they […]