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  • Buffalo, New York: It’s A Wonderful Strife

    There’s a scene in the classic holiday film, It’s A Wonderful Life, that always grabs me. It’s a brilliant summer day, and protagonist George Bailey and his wife Mary are helping to dedicate the new home of their friends, the Martinis. George’s second-generation company, Bailey Building & Loan, built the home in its working-class suburb…

  • HTC-GO Reintroduced in Congress

    When Congress returns from recess on April 28, 2025, it will immediately tackle federal budget reconciliation, including making permanent certain aspects of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Those budget conversations will include consideration of the fate of the various business and investment tax credit programs. Advocates for one such tax credit –…

  • Digging Deep: Cleaning Up New York’s Brownfields – Part 2, The Tax Credits

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    I have been actively developing real estate for ten years, and, through my law and consulting practices, have advised real estate developers for almost three decades. So, when I say that we’re living through the most challenging commercial real estate development environment of my career, I offer that with some perspective and context. And the…

  • Digging Deep: Cleaning Up New York’s Brownfields – Part 1, The Program

    Two decades, and four programmatic generations, into New York’s Brownfield Clean Up Program (BCP), most participants should consider it successful. New York State surely should appreciate help cleaning up its brownfields, as well as the multi-fold return its program offers New York taxpayers on their investment. Real estate owners and developers (and their lenders and…

  • Digging Deep: Cleaning Up NY’s Brownfields

    Around 3:30 AM on December 6, 1970, an eastbound freight train derailed in the town of Le Roy, New York. Several of the train’s cars ruptured, spilling a ton of cyanide crystals and over 30,000 gallons of trichloroethylene (a common industrial degreaser at the time). Officials were able to clean up the cyanide, but the…

  • Adaptive Reuse America

    The COVID-19 global pandemic changed American cities forever. New proposed federal legislation attempts to address two of the biggest pandemic impacts on American cities: the rising cost of housing and the emptying of downtown cores. Myriad factors, including pandemic-related migration and generationally high interest rates, have driven up the cost of both rental housing and…