The Development Broker
The most influential citymaker in over a generation steps down
All images courtesy the Office of the Mayor of New York
At a special press conference this morning, Mayor Michael Bloomberg made the unexpected announcement that Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff would leave the administration by early January. The most prolific builder the city has seen since the days of Robert Moses, Doctoroff has shepherded the city's massive expansion, both physically and financially, over his six year tenure.
Though Doctoroff is most often associated with his development work throughout the city as Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Rebuilding, he oversaw more than 40 city agencies that included the departments of building, planning, and transportation but also included the departments of finance, environmental protection, and information technology. The scope of his work over the last six years helps explain his next professional endeavor, as president of Bloomberg LP, the mayor’s eponymous media company.
"He took on jobs that had festered for years, like street furniture, and delivered,” Bloomberg said during a brief announcement at City Hall. “When I hired Dan six years ago, the public debate was all about recovery. Dan knew we had to rejuvenate. That job is never-ending." The mayor added that Doctoroff may continue to serve the city in an advisory role, particularly on PLANYC, the sustainability initiative that blossomed under his watch.
Spencer T. Tucker
The mayor (right) and deputy mayor in Times Square station on December 3 to mark the the groundbreaking of the 7th Avenue subway extension, one of the many projects in the city that owes a debt to Doctoroff.
Before joining the administration, Doctoroff was a managing partner at Oak Hill Partners, a private equity firm headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut. (During the press conference, it was even pointed out that, like the mayor, Doctoroff received a ceremonial compensation of $1 a year.) He also founded NYC2012, a nonprofit dedicated to the bid to bring the Olympics to the city—a failed effort that introduced him to city politics and became his first major initiative as deputy mayor. Perhaps as proof of guile and tact, Doctoroff has still managed to turn the trick, as the current developments taking shape at Hudson Yards prove.
Rezoning became a major engine of growth under Doctoroff, who, along with City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden, oversaw 78 rezonings encompassing more than 6,000 city blocks; these have included the Williamsburg/Greenpoint rezoning in 2005 and the Jamaica rezoning earlier this year. He has had a major influence on affordable housing in the city in his direction of the New Housing Marketplace Plan. Doctoroff was also the city’s representative for the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan in the wake of 9/11, a role Bloomberg praised.
“The initiatives Dan has spearheaded and the strong leadership he provided daily to the city’s business and financial communities were essential to the strong and unexpectedly fast economic recovery we made after the destruction of 9/11,” the mayor said. “His efforts were instrumental in helping us create more than a hundred thousand jobs in a climate where business wanted to locate here and people wanted to work. His impact will be felt for decades to come.”
Spencer T. Tucker
Another groundbreaking, this time at the East River Science Park. Doctoroff has been praised for bringing high-paying jobs to the city, but others blame him for the gentrification and suburbanization that they say has gripped the city in recent years.
Following the press conference, AN contacted a number of civic leaders and planners to see what they thought about the influential deputy mayor’s departure, and here is what a few of them had to say.
Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, agreed that Doctoroff has made an a major impact on the city, though he took a somewhat less rosy view than the mayor. “His focus—from his perspective on megadevelopments, like the stadium and the Westside yards, to seemingly holding development of any kind as a top priority—was troubling to many New Yorkers,” Berman said. “I think most New Yorkers want a balance of growth and development with the preservation of what they love about the city, the preservation of its livability, and the preservation of its affordability. I’m not sure that his priorities were always in sync with that.”
Still, the scope of Doctoroff’s work is impossible to ignore, as Hope Cohen, the deputy director of the Center for Rethinking Development at the Manhattan Institute attested. “Dan is really a visionary,” she said. “I think having him in that place has provided visionary thinking for the first time in a long time for the city. People can disagree on many of the individual issues, but there being a vision has been rare for more than a generation.”
“He has reminded us that we can actually change the city we live in,” she added. “We’re in a different place psychologically.
Alex Garvin, the president of and CEO of Alex Garvin & Associates and a long-time Doctoroff confidant who described the deputy mayor as a “friend,” said that in the five administrations he has served under, never has he seen anyone quite like Doctoroff. “I think he’s left a larger mark on the city than any deputy mayor that I’ve ever heard of,” he said. “The entire development strategy of the last six years and probably the next 12 was set by Dan. It’ll be very hard to replace him. People like him, they don’t grow on trees."
matt chaban and alec appelbaum