From Where I Sit: Episode 9 with Kathryn Wylde Transcript

Tom McGee:

Welcome to From Where I Sit, I’m your host, Tom McGee, President and CEO of ICSC, the preeminent membership organization serving the commercial real estate and retail industries. Each episode, I’ll be joined by top experts to explore the trends impacting communities and commerce and the spaces where people shop, dine, work, play and gather.

I'm happy to have Kathryn Wylde, President and CEO of the Partnership for New York City on today's episode of From Where I Sit. Kathryn is an urban policy expert representing the business community here in New York City on issues that impact the economy and public policy. In her role, she works with leaders in business, government, labor, and the civic sector to build a stronger city with a focus on economic development, education, and infrastructure. She has written numerous opinion and policy papers and has been widely recognized for her leadership here in the hub of American commerce. Kathryn, welcome to the show.

Kathryn Wylde:

Thank you, Tom. Happy to be with you.

Tom:

Well, it's a pleasure to talk about New York City, a city I know you love and I do as well. But let's start out first, just explain for the audience what the Partnership for New York City is.

Kathryn:

Well, the Partnership for New York City is a nonprofit organization of the city's business leaders across all industry sectors. It was started at the end of the ‘70s after the city had faced near bankruptcy, technical bankruptcy. We fortunately worked together, the public and private sector to bail it out. But David Rockefeller, who was then the CEO of Chase Bank and a number of other CEOs of major institutions in New York, felt that the city got in trouble because business was asleep at the switch, not paying attention to the interests of the city. And they organized the Partnership with CEO leadership to be really both the voice of business, but business working in the interests of the city.

We're not a trade association. We're not a chamber of commerce. We try and be an advocate for a good economic climate, but also a resource to government and other sectors as to what the kind of public policies are needed to build our economy and to support New York as remaining the greatest city in the world.

Tom:

New York is a great city. I know Kathryn, that you being a fellow New Yorker, I see you often talking about many of the big issues that are impacting our city, both from a business perspective, but also from a livability perspective.

Let me ask you first, before we leave that, I know you're originally from the Midwest. So now you're in this role from Madison, Wisconsin. So a great Midwestern city, but now you're in the biggest city in the country and the financial capital world.

Did you see this happening? I mean, you've been here for a number of decades. Did you see yourself in a role like this?

Kathryn:

It would have been hard to predict, but New York, the wonderful feature of New York is that you can come here and people come here from all over the world and find their opportunities are unlimited in New York City.

So I took advantage of every opportunity that came before me. I was very lucky 40 years ago to meet David Rockefeller, who was then taking on how he was going to rebuild the city from, in many neighborhoods, the ashes of what we've gone through in the ‘60s and ‘70s. And I went to work for him with the Partnership to rebuild the neighborhoods as a place where middle-class people could invest and live. We built affordable home ownership housing, over 40,000 units that really started the renaissance of communities that today are thriving.

So I've been very fortunate but I've taken advantage of every opportunity that New York offers to everybody.

Tom:

You made reference to the ‘60s and ‘70s and to some extent, even the early ‘80s were very challenging periods of time here in New York City. And there's been lots of periods throughout history where people have kind of written the obituary of New York City and said, it's never going to be what it once was. And then somehow New York City always rises again and becomes even greater than what it once was. Why do you think that is? Before we get into the details of talking about what's going on in New York City right now, how does New York City always constantly reinvent itself?

Kathryn:

Well, it's a good question. This is our 400th anniversary. We were colonized and organized way back by the Dutch merchants who really set a culture in New York City that is described in a great book by Russell Shorto called “The Island at the Center of the World.” And it's about how the Dutch came here and imprinted on New York a culture of commercialism and tolerance. Religious freedom was very important.

And so this is 400 years of a culture that really started out of the Dutch Enlightenment. And we've exported that culture across the country in terms of the unique form of American capitalism, freedom of expression, very important. And it's really defined the culture of New York, where we have for centuries welcomed people who speak all languages, who are of all faiths, and there's a place for all of them in New York, contributing citizens and merchants. It's a mercantile kind of approach. That is why we're the capital of commerce throughout the world.

Tom:

I love how you went back to the very beginning, 400 years ago and how that culture has continued through today. You said one thing that New York has exported its culture of commerce throughout the country and often what happens in New York influences the rest of the country and in many respects, the rest of the world.

One of the things that you made reference to was when the founding of the Partnership for New York City and the need for business and government to work together. That was one of the premises upon David Rockefeller founding the organization. That brings up the concept of public-private partnerships, which is a buzzword that's often used. “I wish government and the private sector worked more closely together.” And its very core, talk about what is a public-private partnership? I mean, is it a co-mingling of investment? Is it working together in a non-financial way? Is it both of those things? Just for the listeners, when we say public-private partnership, what do we really mean?

Kathryn:

Well, let me start by saying what we don't mean. And I'm going to quote David Rockefeller again here. He said, he told President Reagan when he came to New York in 1981 and launched the Partnership with David Rockefeller. Rockefeller said, “I want to make clear that a public-private partnership is not business taking over the job of government. It is figuring out what are the challenges facing us and what do we both have to contribute to get over that hump, to deal with those challenges, to find solutions.” It's drawing on the expertise and the resources of the private sector, but it's not taking over government's job. It's really working together. And that's been very important.

And the history in New York, I'll give you another example, has been, for example, when the financial crisis struck, the leaders of the AFL-CIO in Washington asked labor unions to join with Occupy Wall Street, which was the anti-financial services, anti-Wall Street radical groups. They asked the labor unions in New York City, join with them and march down Broadway, march down Wall Street and declare that we're against the financial industry. And the unions in New York said, no way. This is our bread and butter. This is our meal ticket. We're sticking with our financial industry. So that's just an indication of how in New York, pragmatism and a sense of our common interest in a very complicated environment. You know, this city has thrived because in a practical way, business, labor, government have learned how to work together to identify areas of common interest and focus on those areas to get stuff done.

Tom:

A classic New York style. doesn't mean they always agree, but they always share their opinion, but they find a solution, don't they?

Kathryn:

Absolutely.

Tom:

Give an example again, it doesn't have to be a recent example, just an example that our listeners could relate to about a successful public-private partnership.

Kathryn:

Well, one of the recent ones, 2017 was described as the summer of subway hell. It was a falling apart of our subway infrastructure. Trains were delayed, unreliable. The signal system wasn't working. People were stuck in the subway, etc. And it was a real challenge. And what we found was that the giant agency that runs the subway and commuter rail and the bus system in New York was really, was a government bureaucracy that was out of touch with all the innovative things that were going on around the world in transit and transportation. That there were tools out there that new technology was developing that could make our system much more reliable, that were within our reach, could make it safer, could make it easier for people to access and navigate, and we weren't using any of them. And so what we did was put together a public-private partnership with both the transportation agency that runs the commuter rail system and the subways, also bringing in the Port Authority that runs the airports, and the city transportation department that is charge of the streets.

And what we've been doing for the past years has been working together. Every year, we have a competition. The agencies say, here are our biggest challenges. Here are the biggest problems. And then we go out to the world through our business community to identify who has got solutions to these problems that are working around the world. What's being introduced on the innovation that's making a difference. And then instead of going, what's usually a three or four year procurement process with a public agency, where many of the new ideas are obsolete by the time they get to buy them, we set up a system where they can really, where the agencies can test products before there's any procurement. And then after they experience what the innovations are and if they work, they can actually deploy those solutions working with us, our Transit Tech Lab, as the intermediary. So we figured out a way around the bureaucracy's own challenges by working through the nonprofit organization to identify and deploy these new products. And it's made a big difference in our transit system.

We got, from Switzerland, we got a company that can predict bus breakdowns before they happen and can therefore do the preventive maintenance necessary to keep buses from being stuck on the highway, blocking everybody else, etc. So lots of examples of how that has made a real change. And most important change is a change in the culture of a bureaucracy. Bureaucracies, as we know, are risk averse and not necessarily going to try something new. That culture has changed in our transit agencies and there's now a real appetite to look at new ideas and take a chance on them that didn't exist before and it's really improved our system.

Tom:

Well, adding a spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship to—any of us that live in New York know how critical the mass transit system is, particularly the subway system. So now let's move to today. And one of the challenges that's facing New York and facing many big cities across the country and across the world is a remnant of the pandemic, work from home, utilization of office, just the challenge of people commuting in and out of the central business district every day.

New York is iconic and is looked at as the financial capital of the world, the financial capital of the States. And people look at the office market in New York. So first just level set as to how you see the office market in New York right now in regards to utilization, back to work, etc.

Kathryn:

The office market is pretty bifurcated. We just did a study on return to office and we found that we're now at about 76% of where we were pre-pandemic in terms of the number of people coming into the office on the average weekday. So forget about Fridays, but in terms of office occupancy, we are absolutely moving in the right direction and about 25% of the companies we surveyed said over the next year, they will become much more demanding on return to office. So we have consistently, since the lockdown of the city ended in 2020, we've consistently seen a gradual increase in people coming back to the offices.

Frankly, the real estate industry was the most successful in getting people back quickly. A bit self-interested, but nonetheless, right after them are law firms and financial firms. The slow pokes are our fastest growing industry, the tech sector. They have a very young workforce that really didn't appreciate the value of the office culture, how much it meant for the boss to see what great work you were doing in person, how valuable it was to be learning as part of a team and the direct exposure to customer clients, etc., that the office provides. That's now, they're catching up, they're figuring that out.

So we're moving in the direction of getting people more into the office, but with more flexibility than they've ever had. When they need time at home, when they need to be out of the office, that's forgiven very readily. So there's been a very positive change in terms of employees feeling better.

In addition, there's been a tremendous investment in new offices and renovated offices and amenities in those offices. So people have much more fun coming to work in a brand-new office with a ping pong table and a coffee bar and etc., than sitting at home in a studio apartment with three roommates. But since the pandemic, we've had a real positive change in our office culture that is a magnet.

We also should go to your other point about the conditions in the commercial office market at this point. That is doing quite well. I mean, we're doing better in terms of office occupancy than most of our sister cities around the country. As I said, the attractiveness of new buildings, we had over 20 million square feet of new office space come online during and right after the pandemic. So we've got these big, glamorous new developments and we had a lot of relocation out of older, not very fun office buildings of companies relocating into new facilities, which had been built. And they're commanding the highest rents ever, $130, $140 a foot. So that's a positive net gain.

Then you ask the question, so what do you do with the empty older buildings that nobody wants to occupy? And we have passed legislation at the city and state that is creating incentives for the conversion of many of those buildings, both the upgrading of those buildings for office space, but more importantly in terms of our crisis we haven't mentioned, the housing crisis, conversion of those buildings to residential use. And there's a big activity going on now, and we expect millions of square feet to be coming online of buildings that have been converted into housing, and that they once again are going to be economic for their owners.

Tom:

Those are all good things to hear. know walking the streets of New York for those folks that are not New York residents, I will tell you that Manhattan is bustling and particularly the neighborhoods, know, the Upper East Side, West Side, Chelsea, Tribeca, etc. East Village where my daughter lives. I mean, it just seems like that's 24/7, the restaurants and bars and so forth are packed. Midtown and Financial District, which have more offices, that transition is taking a little bit longer.

I did want to talk a little bit about that last point you made, Kathryn, around conversion of office to housing. And I know there is a housing shortage in New York City, particularly affordable housing. Just talk about how you see that transition happening. Taking a large office building and converting it into an apartment complex or a multifamily housing complex can be challenging. That could take some time. How long do you see that transition happening? Some of the challenges associated with the other zoning challenges and how the city is trying to ease some of the blockages around them?

Kathryn:

We have a good model because after 9/11, a lot of the older office buildings in lower Manhattan, Wall Street surrounding the World Trade Center were converted to residential use. And so we started there and lower Manhattan became the fastest growing residential neighborhood in the city. That was kind of a forerunner of what's happening now that's going on throughout Manhattan and not just in that immediate lower Manhattan district.

So what we're seeing is that the state and the city have both passed laws that provide incentives that support the financing and the expanded zoning allowances that were needed for additional square footage. They have both passed things and they are actively, the city is actively encouraging the conversion of these buildings. So that's going on now and many of buildings, if you come to Water Street in lower Manhattan, which is part of Financial District, those conversions have started and you've got very large footprint office buildings that have been converted to residential and are already occupied, mostly as condominiums, some as rental. So there's a very consistent pattern and we expect to see more and more of it in the coming years with the new zoning and legal incentives to do so.

And it's going to make our neighborhood in New York City more 24/7. That's what we saw in lower Manhattan with bringing housing in. It created 24/7 neighborhoods. It was great for the retail sector because they had a local community that was buying from them seven days a week and not just the nine-to-five crowd. Not that anyone works nine to five in New York, but nine-to-nine crowd. We've done it before. We're now doing it at scale and it's a very exciting process.

Tom:

You raised a very good point that I hadn't really thought, recollected when you said it, immediately resonated with me, which is what happened after 9/11 and down in lower Manhattan. And that Financial District has become a very cool place to live. And before that was where people worked and commuted in every day. And it has become well populated with, nice new housing. A lot of our listeners are from New York and they're living in other cities that are dealing with this challenge around central business districts and office utilization. You mentioned some things the city are doing. Are there things that you think could be portable to other cities in regards to public-private coordination around this challenge?

Kathryn:

Well, I think that very much in terms of designing programs, incentives, zoning changes, it really has to be informed by the folks who are actually going to finance and do the work. And we've got a good history of that in New York, of not having government planners design programs that aren't going to work. So I think that is one thing to keep in mind, that every community is different, everybody's situation is different, but that collaboration on defining programs and policies before you enact them is really important. And we've been pretty good at that in the city.

Tom:

But one of the things you said is that it takes a tremendous amount of capital to make that conversion. So I think that governments would be wise to talk to the folks that are the source of the capital and vice versa about what might make sense before those large investments are made. You mentioned retail, which is near and dear to ICSC's heart and core to who we are. Talk about the retail market in New York City right now broadly and then as it relates to this conversation around, as you said, the nine-to-nine crowd, there's no nine-to-five crowd in New York per se, but there has been some challenges around some retail that it was very dependent upon office. And so your assessment of the retail market in New York right now.

Kathryn:

Well, there are two things that have happened. The work from home phenomenon, starting with lockdown during the pandemic, has ended up being a real boon to retail districts in the neighborhoods. As you mentioned, neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs and actually the suburban communities surrounding New York, where many of the commuters come from, those retail markets have really bounced back and are stronger than ever. So that's one positive impact of the pandemic, is everybody's not coming to Manhattan to shop. They've got much more robust activity in their community. In New York, Brooklyn has seen that more than any place. Brooklyn has had more new business formation, most of it retail. I mean, we've had almost 50,000 new businesses start since the pandemic in New York City.

Brooklyn is in the lead, Queens is second. Actually, Manhattan is lagging in that regards because again, our economy has diversified, which is, in the end, a good thing. So everybody's just not coming into the Manhattan's central business district to shop. They're shopping all over the place. So that's been a very positive outcome of the pandemic.

In fact, our foot traffic is up. Our retail sales and restaurant sales are up. In January, over January in 2024, our Broadway attendance was up 21%. So we've seen on every front that we are back, we are thriving.

The one area that retail is having real trouble with is that tourism is not back, particularly from China. We're very worried about with the contretemps between Washington and Canada because New York enjoys a big tourism presence from Canada. We're worried about the impact that tariff wars may have on our tourism industry and our international tourists are the biggest spenders, whether it's on hotels or on retail, particularly luxury retail. So that's a challenge that we're facing. And I think most of the other cities in America that are tourism centers have the same problem.

Tom:

Yeah. And you mentioned the areas where people live and that phenomenon extends across the country. mean, suburban retail, suburban restaurants, it's kind of on fire right now because people have, they're at home or they're working from home. They have the opportunity to shop and go out to eat and so forth. Actually, one of the biggest challenges in our industry, and this could surprise some folks that live in Manhattan and maybe see some empty storefronts that are dependent upon office traffic, is that the supply of retail space isn't sufficient to meet the demand for retail space, particularly in kind of open-air, grocery-anchored retail in the suburban U.S. You know, when you're home more, you have more time to spend shopping and eating out. There was a number that you shared, I think you said 50,000 new businesses were-

Kathryn:

Just about, very close, yeah, and in the last five years.

Tom:

That's mostly small businesses, I take it. So talk about the small business community of New York.

Kathryn:

Startups.

Tom:

Yeah, startups. Just talk about that because when people think of New York, they think of obviously the financial industry and it's a growing tech hub for large tech companies. What people often forget is how, you know, New York is an incubator for so many small businesses, small service businesses, small retail, small restaurant, but even emerging companies that will one day become a large company, but they came to New York to be founded because of the access to capital. Just talk about the entrepreneurial environment in New York.

Kathryn:

Well, that's been a major change in our economy in the past couple of years because we were, you know, traditionally through the ‘90s, a top-down corporate economy, big headquarters city driving most of the jobs, retail, small business. But now we are second only to Silicon Valley, San Francisco area as the number two in tech startups in the country. We've got now a thriving life sciences startup community, which is new in the last decade. And we have all sorts of new retailers coming online in communities throughout the city. Etsy has something like 700,000 makers in New York state. So, I mean, we've got a huge group of people that are doing artisan work, that are doing creative work. So we've got a very broad base of this growing entrepreneurial economy, which we're thrilled about because it's given us a new energy, as you know, entrepreneurial energy, that, as you mentioned earlier, this kind of the reinvention of New York that we're once again going through and the pandemic actually contributed to that.

Tom:

And the pandemic in some ways accelerated some things that were likely beginning to take shape. And it does go to that concept that New York over history always finds a way to reinvent itself for the time. One challenge with that is affordability, housing affordability, it's expensive. How do you see that evolving? I know there's some conversations or proposals around increasing affordable housing. Share a little bit about that.

Kathryn:

So we've gone in the last 12, 15 years, we've gone from being in the double digits in terms of most expensive city in the world to being the third most expensive city in the world. Only Singapore and Zurich are ahead of us. We're tied with Geneva. So we've had a dramatic increase in the cost of living and the cost of doing business in New York in recent years.

And that is our number one challenge today, is what are the sources of those cost increases and what can we do about them? Part of it is that about 25% of our population lives in poverty and supporting that population off a local and state tax base is extremely expensive. Half the people in New York are on Medicaid, which is deeply subsidized by the state and city. So we have that challenge of providing services and support for a very large, very low income population. Much attention has been given to the migrant population. We received over 240,000 migrants who came in over the border in a very short period of time in less than two years. Landed in New York with no resources and the city and state spent about $4 billion out of a two-year budget dealing with that challenge and that challenge goes on. And we have a population that half people are rent burdened, meaning they pay more than 30% of their income in rent and a large portion more than 50% of their income in rent so even working families are hard pressed. The average New York apartment that came online this year was a two-bedroom apartment for close to $4,000 in rent, which I know I couldn't have afforded as a young professional in New York. I don't know how these young people can do it.

We now have to dig down and say, okay, what is contributing aside from very high taxes, which go to support the larger needs of our population. Aside from high tax burdens, what is contributing to these costs? Well, the one thing we've been looking at that people are surprised about, the cost of insurance in New York, all kinds of insurance, property and casualty, fire insurance, car insurance, is 20% higher than the average in the rest of the country. And why is that? We have the strongest lobby in Albany in our state capital, are the trial lawyers. We have very onerous litigation terms, which result in very high risk for insurers, and as a result, the premiums are way up. So that's one set of costs that we could fix by not attaching a private right of action to every piece of legislation, by putting a cap on returns on medical malpractice suits or on other kinds of returns.

 And in terms of construction, 7% to 10% of our costs are due to—protective to laws that basically have driven up the risk of insurance. There's something, a law called the Scaffold Law, for example, where it's strict liability for the owner of a property on a construction site. And we have a lot more staged accidents as a result of this law that just we can't afford. That's all built into the cost of affordable housing, the cost of office space. We can't afford.

The other thing that contributes to our costs is time. If it takes seven to 10 years to get a project into construction, any major project in construction, because of the legal approval process, the planning process, zoning changes, etc., the carrying costs on that are enormous. And so that's the other piece we're looking on. I'm a member of a charter commission that Mayor Adams appointed that is looking at how can we adjust the land use procedures in New York so that we can reduce the time, make more activity as of right. This effort was started with the end of last year. The City Council passed legislation called the City of Yes, which in fact, meant that a lot of activity that would involve both commercial properties, small commercial properties in the neighborhoods and smaller residential properties, could move forward. It changed the zoning law, which had been in place since 1961, so that as of right, you could develop mixed use activity, that you could get more flexibility in commercial uses, in retail uses. So it's really, we're starting to take those steps necessary to make it easier to build and to operate in New York City. And we've got to keep that going. That's really the key.

Tom:

Yeah, 1961 zoning, well, I think it's fair to say that should be, that should definitely be updated. Your reference to seven to 10 year, you know, carrying costs to get to construction. I mean, that's an awful lot of costs for somebody to carry on the land to get it ready to build. So I'm hopeful that some of the office conversion to housing will also help too in regards to affordable housing and bringing the old supply and demand. If you can bring more supply on market, that will obviously help fill the demand.

One of the items that we need to talk about as we're getting close to the end is congestion pricing. Before we get into what the funds are going to be used for, just explain how the congestion pricing works in the year. What's the mechanism? What's the cost, etc.?

Kathryn:

So on January 5th, we put in place a program where people who drive into the central business district, this is Manhattan below 60th Street, will pay a toll, one toll a day. For cars it's $9, for trucks it varies up to $24. They'll pay a toll once a day to drive in. The theory of congestion pricing was that it would divert enough traffic so that the city would be more efficient. Excess traffic congestion—we did a study, several studies, but we did the analysis. Excess traffic congestion was costing New York City and our surrounding region more than $20 billion a year in lost productivity, extra fuel, health and environmental costs. But the biggest one was time, lost time, sitting in traffic, unproductive time. And our city is a great commercial center because we have the most productive workforce in the world, we think. And the idea of congestion pricing was to help reintroduce greater mobility, make it easier to navigate the city, and eliminate those vehicles that didn't have to be here. Those trucks that were just cutting across Manhattan between New Jersey and Long Island because it was the cheapest way to go, or the passenger vehicles that were coming in when the people could just as well have been on subways or buses, but wanted to come in for the convenience of their car, which was costing everybody else who had to drive in. And so what we found is before we implemented the program, there was a lot of concern. “It's a money grab. We're going to be paying a toll that's going to go into the deep black hole of the MTA. We won't see any results from it.” And what's happened since we implemented the pricing, we did a Morning Consult poll, and found that 66% of the people who are paying the toll say they love it and are begging the President not to cancel the congestion relief zone because people didn't believe that it was going to work, that things were going to move faster and they were going to save time. In fact, we have several million fewer vehicles coming into the central business district. It's working.

I don't know if you heard the other night when calling the basketball game with the Knicks, Clyde Frazier reference that he loves congestion pricing because he's getting around the city like never before. And he likened it to a play that the Knicks had made where everybody got out of the way and you were able to move. So it has turned out that it's working. It's very successful. It was easy to criticize before we did it because people thought it's another tax for which we'll get nothing. Now the people who are paying that tax are saying, we're getting more for this investment than we'd ever expected and are successful. And the pedestrians in the city and the merchants are all saying, this is working. We're getting the benefits of it. We've got more people enjoying the city, using the city. Our foot traffic is up. So it's a positive result.

Tom:

And Kathryn, the proceeds from the congestion pricing will go into…?

Kathryn:

The proceeds are all going into the capital program of mass transit, new buses, subways, improved signal systems, subway safety, greater accessibility, more elevators, as we've got an aging population in the city, more elevators to the subways, etc. So yes, the investment is going right back into the mass transit system to make it easier, more convenient, and safer for everybody.

Tom:

All right. Final thoughts. I want someone who's lived in New York for a long time. You've seen the city go through many iterations, but now I want you not to look back. I want you to look forward and let's look forward, say five to 10 years, your wish list for New York in let's say, 2030.

Kathryn:

Well, we want to make sure we solve this affordability problem. So we do not want to be in the top 10 most expensive cities in the world. So we want to fix that number one, and that's going to require a lot of work. But a piece of that is making sure we build a large number of affordable housing units. And I think there's a commitment to do that. And that's going to be a public-private partnership, as you mentioned earlier.

We want to remain the safest big city in the world, and that's going to require an investment in making sure that we have the protection we need in the police department. We've had a crisis of morale in law enforcement with both the DA's offices and the police department. We need to fix that. And I think we're well on the way to doing that under current leadership. And we want to continue to be a great entrepreneurial economy.

Our economy is going the right direction with providing creative opportunities for entrepreneurs in the tech sector, in the cultural and arts sector, across the board, and obviously, most important, the retail sector. So we want a great, thriving commercial districts, both in the Manhattan, but in every neighborhood in the city.

Tom:

Kathryn, we're at the end of our time. We could have talked a lot longer because New York is such a vibrant, wonderful city and there's a whole lot going on both. Yes, some challenges, but lots of opportunities as well. And I'm glad that we had a chance to touch on many of them today. So thank you.

Kathryn:

Well, thank you, Tom. I appreciate the opportunity. As a longtime champion of New York, I love to talk about it.

Tom:

Please follow and rate this podcast five stars on Apple and Spotify and share it with others that might find it interesting. Thanks for listening.