Dan Doctoroff

Eliot Brown reports that Michael Bloomberg's former deputy mayor, Dan Doctoroff, has hired Eliot Spitzer's former state director of operations for a big job over at Bloomberg L.P. 

I just came across this video of Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries speaking at a forum in Brooklyn recently (according to the YouTube user, it was on May 31).

Jeffries slams the mayor for promoting so much development in the city, and jokes that there should be a movie called “Development Gone Wild," which Jeffries says would be "starring Mayor Bloomberg and co-starring Dan Doctoroff.”

(It’s not my favorite visual, either.)

Jeffries says his issue is less with safety than with the problems associated with gentrification.

The city will conduct an “intensive, in-depth assessment” of high-risk construction in the city, the Department of Buildings announced Wednesday, one day after commissioner Patricia Lancaster resigned.

"This year, we have seen an increase in accidents and injuries related to high-risk construction activities," acting commissioner Robert LiMandri said in a statement, "and we must make sure that as construction activity in the City continues to increase, the Department’s ability to hold the construction industry to higher safety standards keeps pace."

The department will spend $4 million to bring in outside engineers and others to oversee the review.

Full release after the jump.  read more »

Azi Paybarah, on our brother blog The Politicker, reports that former Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Daniel Doctoroff said last night he "would do anything" for Michael Bloomberg, including run "his shitty little company."

Mr. Doctoroff made the remark at a private going-away party at the New York Public Library. (He was joking, of course.) Mayor Bloomberg tapped Mr. Doctofoff last month to run his Bloomberg LP.

Dan Doctoroff "would do anything" for Mike Bloomberg, including running his "shitty little company.”

That’s what Doctoroff, the former deputy mayor for economic development and rebuilding, said to the approximately 500 people at his going-away party last night at the New York Public Library, according to two attendees I spoke to, and another who left early but claims to have heard about the joke from other guests.

The event was closed to the press, but was something of a hot ticket for political insiders.

Doctoroff is taking over as president of Bloomberg LP. The tone of the comment, in case it's not clear, was intended to be humorous.

I saw City Councilman Larry Seabrook running into City Hall just now, and asked him his predictions on tonight’s primary vote in New Hampshire.

“Predictions? That’s over man. That’s Obama!" said Seabrook, who hasn't endorsed a presidential candidate yet.

A few minutes later Dan Doctoroff strolled in (without a tie!). His predictions?

“I don’t know any more than I read in the newspapers,” he said.

More from Robert Lieber, New York City's next Deputy Mayor for Economic Development. The Observer met with him in November.

What about Coney Island? Why are you looking for another developer aside from Thor Equities to operate the amusement area there?

What we would like to try to do is look for ways to broaden seasonality of the business there so that it’s not just from Memorial Day to Labor Day, but in a way that emphasizes outdoor amusements so you don’t just have it overrun with projects that look like the Mall of America.  read more »

More from The Observer's November interview with Robert Lieber, the new Deputy Mayor for Economic Development:

Why did you take this job?

Because I had a great career at Lehman Brothers. I had been there for 20-some-odd years and had always been intrigued by New York City. I was not born here and didn’t go to school here. I moved here in ’76, ’77. If you look back, it was kind of New York at its worst. I told my girlfriend that I would go to New York because she was going to graduate school. I said I was going there for a year and a half; there was no chance I was going to stay there in that hellhole.  read more »

Robert Lieber will be the city's Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and not its Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Rebuilding, the old title used by Daniel Doctoroff, who announced earlier this month that he was leaving the position. Mr. Lieber was appointed today as Mr. Doctoroff's successor.  read more »

In announcing that he’s found a replacement for Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, Michael Bloomberg announced Rob Lieber as the “Deputy Mayor for Economic Development.”

Which is slightly shorter than Doctoroff’s title, which had included the words “and Rebuilding,” a reflection of the work the administration needed to do in response to the Sept. 11th terrorists attacks.

When I asked Bloomberg about this title change during his press conference this morning, he said:

“Yes, we decided to drop the reconstruction since, I think, we’re beyond that. It’s economic development and Ed [Skyler] is Deputy Mayor for Operations. I think that says something about where the city is, and what we’re focusing on. Reconstruction time has come and gone. Development time continues.”

The Observer's intrepid political reporter Azi Paybarah made this amusing discovery this morning: City Hall News and New York Press, owned by the same company, carried the same Daniel Doctoroff covery story but under a different headline, differnet packaging, a few different edits, and a slightly different byline.  read more »

Ever wonder what happens when a fairly-new monthly paper, City Hall, operates in the same vicinity as a more rambunctious alt-weekly, the New York Press, and they are both owned by the same company?

City Hall's cover story is about Dan Doctoroff’s departure from the Bloomberg administration, with the nostalgic headline “One Last Look.” The cover story in the New York Press is virtually the same article, by the same reporter--"Andrew Hawkins" in C.H.N. and "Andrew J. Hawkins" in the Press--headlined “Development Hell.”

One line in the N.Y.P. story that does not appear in the City Hall News version is this line: "As he looks back over his tenure, Doctoroff articulates for the first time what has been obvious to others for awhile: the adjustment period wasn’t easy."

Atlantic Yards opponents in the blogosphere loved reading Dan Doctoroff eat crow in this week's Observer, but Forest City Ratner's admission in a New York Times article that construction of the Nets arena would be delayed until 2010 was greeted with a collective "duh".  read more »

Once there was Yankee Stadium. Now there is Coney Island.

Once there was the West Side Stadium. Now there are the West Side rail yards.

Once there was Atlantic Yards. Now there is Moynihan Station.  read more »

Another excerpt from The Observer's interview last winter with Daniel Doctoroff.

Here's how he feels about all those comparisons of him to the late Robert Moses, the original New Yorker who Got Things Done:  read more »

More from The Observer's February interview at City Hall with outgoing deputy mayor for economic development Daniel Doctoroff.

Location: What about Hudson Yards? The city and the M.T.A. are preparing bids for the eastern and western yards at the same time. What sort of thing will be built there?  read more »

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In February of this year, The Observer's Matthew Schuerman sat down with Daniel Doctoroff at City Hall to discuss his policy achievements and his goals for the last couple of years of the Bloomberg administration. Mr. Doctoroff on Thursday announced that he was resigning as deputy mayor of economic development and rebuilding to become president of Bloomberg L.P.

We will have exchanges on various topics from that February interview throughout the day.  read more »

At the press conference today announcing his departure from his City Hall position, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff said that he will stay somewhat involved in public life.

“I could potentially remain as the chairman of [the] Hudson Yards Development Corporation, as I am today,” he told reporters. “Queens West, we haven’t even formed a corporation yet but I could, theoretically, remain or become the chairman."

With respect to PLaNYC, the city’s long-term sustainability plan, Doctoroff said he would be involved, but in “much more as an informal role.”

More after the jump.  read more »

People knew Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff would leave before the end of his boss’s term. The only questions were when, and where he would go.

The rumor mill said it would be this March, after things got squared away with the West Side rail yards and congestion pricing, and that his destination would be real estate development, or a return to the investment world, or some new venture of his own invention.  read more »

Our fellow Observer blog The Politicker reports that Dan Doctoroff, the Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Rebuilding, is leaving the Bloomberg administration for Bloomberg L.P. We will have more on the resignation soon.

A notably unhappy Michael Bloomberg just announced that Dan Doctoroff is leaving City Hall, saying, "Dan brought muscle to economic development.

Bloomberg also said that "unlike Robert Moses, Dan did it by working with the communities, not bulldozing them."

UPDATE: He's going to become president of Bloomberg L.P., the mayor said.

Jim Whelan, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff’s chief of staff, will become senior vice president for public affairs at Muss Development sometime in January, according to an informed source. He will be playing the role there that the late Harvey Schultz played—though people who knew Schultz, a legend in Brooklyn politics and development circles, say that no one will quite be able to fill his shoes.

Mr. Whelan got to know Josh Muss while director of the Downtown Brooklyn Council from 2000 to 2003. Mr.  read more »

Michael Bloomberg is about to announce a personnel change, and Liz has word that it's the long-anticipated departure of Dan Doctoroff, the deputy mayor for "Economic Development and Rebuilding."

If so, it will be a rare loss for Bloomberg, who's managed to keep many of his top aides deep into his second term (in part, perhaps, because of the ongoing speculation about a bid for higher office).

Any good development firm worth its salt has got to have a former City Hall staffer or two on hand to navigate the bureaucracy. Last month, Brookfield Properties sent its latest government hire, Joshua Sirefman, into a meeting to help present the company’s multi-billion dollar plan for the West Side rail yards to a joint city-Metropolitan Transportation Authority selection committee.  read more »

Michael Bloomberg and Eliot Spitzer just unveiled a new sign at the 42nd Street station pointing to the expanding 7 subway line, which, when completed, will extend to 10th Avenue by the Hudson Yards.

"Whereever the subways have blazed a trail, the people have followed,” Bloomberg said.

“The city’s growth has mirrored the subway’s growth,” Spitzer said. “That is a fact. It is a historic reality."

When asked about Chuck Schumer’s criticism of the funding mechanism of the extension (which the city is paying for by selling bonds, not in partnership with the MTA) and the elimination of one proposed subway stop on the extension, Bloomberg jokingly replied, “Senator Schumer is never critical about anything. You must have confused him with someone else.”

Then, he called on Dan Doctoroff to answer the question. “This really is an economic development of the subway system,” and “we have an option to build out” in that area, he said.

Here's Andrew Mangino's dispatch from a politician-packed press conference this morning:

Eliot Spitzer, Michael Bloomberg, Sheldon Silver, Dan Doctoroff and a few other people just wrapped up a press conference in the governor’s midtown office to announce that JP Morgan is moving its headquarters from that part of Manhattan to a spot near Ground Zero.
The financial giant will be returning to Ground Zero - 1.3 million square feet at Site 5 - after striking a $300 million, 92-year lease with the Port Authority.

But talk eventually turned to that other project all the men are working on: the city's far-reaching plan for environmental sustainability that includes congestion pricing.

Doctoroff said that he was late to the 10:30 a.m. event because he was (inconveniently? conveniently?) stuck in traffic, offering that it took him an hour and ten minutes to get to Midtown from White Plains.

"I'm not going to make any observations about that," Spitzer joked.

When the officials were asked whether they were still working together to come up with a congestion pricing plan, Bloomberg jumped in: "Everybody understands we have a problem, and we've got to work collaboratively and collectively to find a solution,"