AS CHAIR OF CNU NYC, I was part of the Empire Station Coalition’s long opposition to the efforts of Governor Cuomo and then Governor Hochul to turn the area around Penn Station into a towering Vornadoville (Vornado calls it “The Penn District.”) Vornado’a Chair and CEO Steve Roth talks about office towers “river to river,” from Hudson Yards to Murray Hill (primarily a residential neighborhood). Seeing these images, was he Separated at Birth from It’s a Wonderful Life villain Mr. Potter?
After New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani stood in front of 220 Central Park South, developed by Vornado, to announce a pied-a-terre tax on expensive second (third and fourth) home condos in Manhattan, Roth responded by saying
“I consider the phrase ‘tax the rich’ — quote, tax the rich — when spit out with anger and contempt by politicians both here and across the country, to be just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs and even the phrase, ‘from the river to the sea,’” Mr. Roth said, referring to the pro-Palestinian phrase that some Jews believe amounts to a call for ethnic cleansing. Mr. Roth said “tax the rich” suggests that the wealthy are evil…” (New York Times)
And from X:
