A neglected area of Staten Island will get a fresh batch of new eco-friendly housing
Staten Island's North Shore is set to host New York City's largest mass timber residential development.
Mayor Eric Adams and the city's Economic Development Corporation announced their chosen developers for the mixed-income housing project on Monday. Artimus and Phoenix Realty Group will head the massive development on two vacant sites along the North Shore's Stapleton waterfront.
'With today's announcement, we are checking another key box of our North Shore checklist,' Adams said. 'We are not only building the affordable homes New Yorkers need but using sustainable materials to reduce our carbon footprint and help turn New York City's waterways into the 'Harbor of the Future.''
5 A rendering of one of the mass timber residences.
GF55 Architects
5 Developers Artimus and Phoenix Realty Group were tapped by the city to take on the 500-unit job.
GF55 Architects
5 An aerial view of the proposed development at the New Stapleton Waterfront.
GF55 Architects
One quarter of the 500 units will be designated as affordable, or available to households earning between 40 to 80% of the area median income. This carve-out makes the project 'one of the largest mass timber residential projects with affordable housing in the entire country,' according to the city's announcement.
Mass timber, according to the city, will reduce the project's carbon footprint and speed up construction time. The engineered wood, made by bonding smaller wood pieces together, is considered a sustainable alternative to other construction materials. In addition to coming from a renewable source, the mass timber also weighs less than steel or concrete.
The project is a piece of the mayor's 2023 pledge to invest $400 million into the borough's neglected North Shore. In addition to monetary investment, the four-year roadmap for the 'Staten Island North Shore Action Plan: Building a Vibrant, Mixed-Use Waterfront Community,' sets out to build 2,400 homes, more than 20 acres of public space, more than 7,500 jobs and $3.8 billion in economic impact over 30 years.
5 A sign at Stapleton waterfront park.
stefano giovannini
5 Adams at Stapleton Houses in Staten Island in 2021.
white
The New Stapleton Waterfront, in particular, is turning a former US naval base into a 38-acre mixed-use neighborhood. The city's Economic Development Corporation broke ground on the next 6 acres of open space and esplanades at the waterfront in September, including the demolition of the old naval buildings.
'For too long, Staten Island's waterfront sat undeveloped and underutilized,' said State Assemblymember Charles D. Fall. 'This project marks a new chapter — one that brings much-needed housing, creates local jobs, and embraces sustainable building to ensure the North Shore becomes a place that serves our community for generations to come.'
The development is the first publicly awarded project to use mass timber at scale in the Northeast United States, according to the city. The use of mass timber plays into another one of Adams' plans. The mayor's 'Green Economy Action Plan,' sets out to, among other things, provide New Yorkers with nearly 400,000 projected 'green-collar' jobs by 2040.
Construction is expected to start in 2027.
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4 hours ago
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Bitcoiners have always leaned right — challenging the state's monopoly on issuing money can do that — but it was a broadly libertarian right that included latter-day digital goldbugs, hard-money obsessives, anti-state sovereign citizens, and cypherpunks seeking some kind of supranational independence protected by the mathematical magic of encryption. The US president was not envisioned to be among this crew, and Trump famously denounced bitcoin as a "scam" during his first term. But bitcoin's role in the world has changed dramatically in the 16-plus years since the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto published a proposal for a peer-to-peer currency. Whole industries and vast political and criminal networks have grown up around bitcoin. During the conference, the value of a single token reached an all-time high of more than $111,000. For the Republican Party, bitcoin has become a proxy for freedom and a way of activating a motivated donor base that has already yielded major electoral gains. 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Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. had their turns on the main stage ("I truly believe we're just at the beginning. Opportunity abounds," said Trump Jr.), as did the White House crypto and AI czar David Sacks, the Trump advisor and campaign cochair Chris LaCivita, and the White House crypto advisor Bo Hines. On Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance, a former venture capitalist, gave the day's opening keynote to a full crowd that began assembling at 5:30 a.m. "Thanks in particular for what you did for me and the president," said Vance, explaining that the crypto industry's support was "part of the reason I'm standing here." He added: "With President Trump, crypto finally has a champion and an ally in the White House." "The innovators in this room are making people's lives better. You deserve respect and support from your government, not bureaucrats trying to tear you down," said Vance, to vigorous applause. Bitcoin-themed Trump apparel was everywhere. Vendors sold Trump 2028 hats and posters of a hardened-looking Trump covered in bitcoin iconography. With crypto having just come in from the political cold, there was an undertone of subversion to it all. Someone wore a T-shirt that read "Everything I love to do is illegal." Another wore an ivory white suit decorated with the word TEXIT, in support of a Texas secession movement. A company called BitcoinOS was offering a lottery to win a foreign passport — probably from Portugal, though it wasn't yet decided. A number of accountants and financial advisors on the conference floor peddled tax-mitigation strategies, with the sign from Tax Network USA offering the brazen solicitation: "Ask Us About Tax Avoidance." As Trump opened his second administration by pardoning convicted fraudsters while several SEC cases were put on hold, some crypto billionaires found it safe to visit the United States. The Bitcoin 2025 conference featured an appearance by one of those crypto entrepreneurs who had recently benefited from the SEC declining to pursue a multibillion-dollar fraud case it had prepared against him. Tron's founder, Justin Sun, a Chinese crypto billionaire, became the biggest investor in Trump's World Liberty Financial and the largest purchaser of the $Trump meme coin, which earned him a gold watch at Trump's recent gala for the top 220 owners of his token. A peripatetic executive who lives in Hong Kong and claims citizenship from St. Kitts & Nevis (he's also the prime minister of an unrecognized country called Liberland), Sun hadn't been seen in the US in years. But there he was at Bitcoin 2025, where he was applauded on the main stage and photographed with industry figures. Equally feted was Paolo Ardoino, the CEO of Tether, the world's largest stablecoin company, which operated in Hong Kong and the Caribbean for years before recently moving its headquarters to crypto-and-MAGA-friendly El Salvador. Ardoino gave a keynote speech and participated in a fireside chat on the main stage with Brandon Lutnick, the Cantor Fitzgerald executive who handles Tether's accounts, a position he inherited from his father, Howard Lutnick, Trump's commerce secretary. "This year is your first time in the US," said Brandon Lutnick, more than once. Ardoino nodded. 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Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, the legendary hip-hop group, came out for a performance. Rosie Rios, the chair of America250 who, on a conference panel that day, described herself as a "fiscal conservative," bobbed her head as they rapped about blunts and rum. The goldbug Peter Schiff, who, while facing tax and money laundering investigations over his private bank in Puerto Rico, has made a sideline out of media appearances sparring with bitcoiners, sat on a couch surrounded by a retinue of young women. Bottles of iced Moët rested on tables in poolside cabanas. (Schiff, who sued the IRS, has accused government authorities of conspiring to frame his bank.) Bone Thugs transitioned into their song "1st of Tha Month" — a gold-charting, mid-'90s anthem celebrating the date when welfare checks arrive — as a group of women in cow costumes marched out carrying glowing signs that read "Steak 'n Shake" and "Accepts BTC." Above the stage, a large screen lit up with the Steak 'n Shake logo. A half-dozen suited Steak 'n Shake representatives looked on approvingly from behind a velvet rope. This sort of hallucinatory marketing stunt — part of Steak 'n Shake's ongoing MAGA/ MAHA pivot, as the fast-food chain embraces beef tallow and bitcoin — was essentially standard fare for a week filled with constant offers, giveaways, pop culture callouts, and promises of easy riches and financial liberation. Everyone was hustling, selling, promising the world. "Earn Bitcoin While You Sleep," went a pitch from a mining company handing out branded fedoras. "Unlock Passive Income." The built environment, including some people's clothing and the napkins on tables, seemed overrun with QR codes. There was always another bitcoin raffle to enter or party to seek out, and the difference between what was legitimate and what wasn't could be a matter of interpretation. The next night, at a wood-paneled bar on the 66th floor of the Conrad hotel, a crypto mining company called Digital Shovel threw a party with Maxim, the old lad mag. The names of both brands were printed across a blue curtain, in front of which guests and models hired from a local agency took photos. Asked about the role of Maxim in this venture, Scot Johnson, the president and CEO of Digital Shovel, told a group of journalists that he had rented the brand name for the evening. Later, I ended up at a party for the Taproot Wizards, a kind of low-fi, deliberately unserious group of coiners who wish to "make bitcoin magical again." Walking into the psychedelically lit Discoshow venue at the Linq Hotel, I was handed a shiny silver wizard hat and cape, which I duly put on. A bearded man in full mage garb held out his hand, offering what looked like a brown capsule. "Take it," he said. "What is it?" I asked. "It's drugs." "Can I know which kind?" "It's mushrooms." I took it and enjoyed what seemed like the suspiciously familiar taste of a brown M&M. Inside, the bar served free cocktails and cans of Liquid Death water. A few dozen people milled about in wizard clothes, the place emanating a "D&D fans throw a party" vibe. A handful of folks danced to a DJ set in a room so covered in screens and glowing panels that there was a seizure warning by the entrance. There was goofiness and some networking-free fun. No one seemed to be talking about bitcoin. And unfortunately, it was just an M&M. In Vegas, the future of bitcoin was corporate. "Bitcoin treasury companies," publicly traded corporations that are essentially holding vehicles for accumulating bitcoin, were all the rage, as several CEOs took turns paying tribute to Michael Saylor, the tech executive who has borrowed billions of dollars to turn turn his enterprise software company MicroStrategy into one of the world's largest holders of bitcoin. Saylor has encouraged other companies to adopt his "playbook," and GameStop and Trump Media recently announced that they would follow suit. Nakamoto, the company whose name sat atop most Bitcoin 2025 conference branding and signage, is a bitcoin treasury company headed by David Bailey, the principal figure behind the conference. In panel presentations, CEOs described future markets in which most companies would have bitcoin on their books, if not being explicitly devoted to it. Financial institutions and individual investors could then buy shares in those companies, like MicroStrategy and Metaplanet, which are publicly traded, and benefit from those companies' bitcoin exposure, broadening the circle of prosperity. A similar philosophy undergirded the growing adoption of ETFs, Wall Street funds that provide investors exposure to bitcoin without making customers go through the trouble of purchasing actual bitcoins. (These financial firms, in turn, benefit from the fees they reap from managing investments in ETFs, bitcoin treasury companies, and other crypto-based financial products.) "At the end of the day, it's a game and we're all going to win together," said Fold CEO Will Reeves, whose company had recently begun building its bitcoin treasury. "We're going to be the biggest companies in the world," said Simon Gerovich, the president of Metaplanet. Saylor, the silver-haired 60-year-old executive whose self-described "religious" embrace of bitcoin has catalyzed this corporate treasury movement, was one of the conference's chief draws. His keynote, on the event's third and final day, was standing-room only. Wearing all black except for a silver bitcoin pendant that hung below his throat, Saylor emerged to rock-star-level applause. Speaking in his typically craggy voice, he preached a post-cypherpunk prosperity gospel under the unassuming title "21 Ways to Wealth." Acknowledging that he was used to speaking to top corporate executives and politicians, Saylor said he was happy to now be speaking to the people, bringing them the digital fire of Prometheus. "Satoshi gave you an idea worth half of everything on earth," said Saylor. "The greatest idea in the history of the human race." Scrolling through 21 instructive axioms — "master artificial intelligence," "domicile where sovereignty respects your freedom" — each accompanied by an AI-generated image, Saylor told his audience not to "chase your own good ideas." Only one pursuit mattered. Everyone listening should sell or mortgage everything they have, take out loans upon loans, and use it all to buy as much bitcoin as they could as quickly as possible. "Raise and reinvest capital relentlessly — velocity compounds wealth," read one slide. Saylor described how a dentist whose practice brought in a couple of hundred thousand dollars in annual revenue could theoretically — through a series of corporate maneuvers, loans, share sales, and lines of credit — become a bitcoin billionaire. Why aspire to be merely rich when you could be the "first billionaire dentist on your block," he said. A constant on the bitcoin media circuit, Saylor talks in comically overwrought tones about bitcoin's power and perfection. He exhibits the personal commitment and persuasive abilities of the leader of a sophisticated multi-level marketing scheme. Over the past few years, Saylor has raised billions of dollars in debt to make periodic bitcoin purchases, MicroStrategy's stock has soared, and his once criticized thesis of constant corporate bitcoin accumulation is on the verge of being widely imitated. (Last year, Saylor agreed to pay $40 million to settle a tax fraud lawsuit filed by the Washington, DC, attorney general.) "This is a race to capitalize on bitcoin," Saylor said, sounding far more zero-sum than the we're-all-going-to-win CEOs who had praised him hours earlier. "He who has the most bitcoin at the end of the game wins." The crowd cheered. Ross Ulbricht, the speaker who followed Saylor, had attained practically mythological status among diehard bitcoiners. One of the first major dark web drug markets and a transformational event in bitcoin's history, the Silk Road provided it a clear use case: buying drugs online. As one former Silk Road customer turned crypto industry professional once told me, the Silk Road was the greatest onboarding event in bitcoin history. For years after Ulbricht received multiple life sentences without parole, coiners had lobbied for his release, until Trump pardoned him on January 21 of this year. After an introductory video chronicling his years in prison followed by shots of him surfing, swimming, and diving into waterfalls, Ulbricht came out to warm applause. But the crowd had thinned since Saylor's commanding speech — some chairs sat empty — and would get thinner as Ulbricht went on. He tried to rouse the audience with a cry of "Freedom!" and a raised fist. "I'm so, so thankful that we elected him and he is who he is," Ulbricht said of Trump. "He's a man of integrity." However foundational Ulbricht had been to bitcoin's early growth, the movement seemed to have passed him by. In his speech, he acknowledged starting the Silk Road but said almost nothing about why he went to prison, the drug war, or the flawed criminal justice system (some Silk Road investigators were prosecuted for stealing evidence). There were some general appeals to principle, but it was a stilted, overlong presentation by a figurehead who seemed to have been far more appreciated when he was locked up out of view. Ulbricht offered a stem-winding anecdote about renting a secluded cabin, where he planned to grow magic mushrooms for his nascent drug market. He found the cabin covered in seven wasp nests. The wasps reflected some of Ulbricht's most treasured principles — freedom and decentralization. But they lacked another, unity, which made it easy for him to destroy each nest in turn. What kind of unity Ulbricht was looking for wasn't clear. No one seemed as jazzed about Ulbricht's stoic devotion to decentralization as they did about Saylor promising to share the everlasting cyberfire of half the world's wealth. The conference's closing keynote — an appearance by the bitcoin political cause celebre, on the 10th anniversary of his being sentenced to a lifetime in prison — ended with tepid applause and a rush to the exits. In a week of politically infused celebrations, this was supposed to be Ulbricht's moment. There had been a special lunch for him that day, one of many fundraisers since his release. The conference included the auctioning of his prison art and the jumpsuit he wore on the day of his release. "Free Ross," a mantra that had been printed on stickers handed out at every bitcoin event for a decade, had won. But bitcoin's top political prisoner, its once occluded hero, had bored a crowd with abstract talk of freedom and insects. That night, I went to another bitcoin-related party at a nightclub in the Venetian. A healthcare recruiter in her late 40s named Jen, who lived in Atlanta, told me about converting her retirement account to bitcoin tokens and shares in bitcoin ETFs. A DJ played some recent hits while a mix of middle-aged coiners and Gen Z club kids swayed and pawed at each other's bodies. Some women in gravity-defying dresses danced on an elevated bar while velvet ropes denoted exclusive areas, where tables could run a couple of thousand dollars. "I've had such a hard time orange-pilling my friends," she told me. But her bitcoin investments had gone up 140% in the past year. Wasn't that proof of something? She asked if I had done the same. I gave a halting answer about not investing in what I write about and not really having much of a retirement account anyway. She looked at me as if I were from another planet before her face adopted a look of profound concern. "You have to do it." I said I would. Jacob Silverman
New York Post
13 hours ago
- New York Post
NYC now has a 15 mph speed limit for e-bikes, but critics doubt it will make a difference
Mayor Eric Adams announced the speed limit for out-of-control electric bike riders would be reduced to 15 mph — but locals doubt whether it will make the streets any safer. The new speed limit for e-bikes, electric scooters and pedal-assist commercial bicycles comes as it's become a fact of life for pedestrians to have to duck and dodge delivery riders at breakneck speeds. 'I have heard, over and over again, from New Yorkers about how their safety — and the safety of their children — has been put at risk due to speeding e-bikes and e-scooters,' Adams said this week. 'Today, our administration is saying enough is enough. Advertisement 3 The rise in e-bike use has led to increased tension between cyclists and pedestrians. Bloomberg via Getty Images The city previously did not have a specific speed limit for e-bikes and followed the state's rule, which allowed speeds up to 25 mph for certain e-bikes. Citibikes cannot go over 18 mph. A 15 mph threshold already applied to stand-up e-scooters in the Big Apple. Aligning the standards will reduce collisions across the city's expanding bike lane network, according to the Adams administration. Advertisement But critics wonder how the speed limit will be enforced — with the riders already routinely going through red lights, traveling in the wrong direction of one-way streets and breaking a long list of other traffic laws. Republican candidate for mayor Curtis Sliwa blasted Adams' new limit. 'It's the bare minimum, and I don't even think it's enforceable,' Sliwa posted to X. 'This is just throwing red meat to the masses.' E-bikes are not required to be registered, don't have license plates and they face no mandatory inspections. That would make it hard for cops to keep track of which driver they gave a ticket to and even harder for the city to collect any fines. Advertisement 3 Couriers on e-bikes sometimes speed to make tight delivery windows handed down by employers. Bloomberg via Getty Images 3 Critics said Mayor Eric Adams' new e- bike speed limit will be difficult to enforce. REUTERS Queens Councilmember Bob Holden said a new limit is 'nowhere near enough.' 'It's good that people acknowledge the e-bike chaos on our streets, but it's nowhere near enough,' Holden said. 'These riders have been ignoring traffic laws for years, and without license plates and real enforcement, the danger will only grow.' Advertisement Holden penned a letter to the mayor after news broke of the new limit, pushing for City Hall to use the same charter interpretation to tackle the issue head-on by requiring license plates. 'Without visible identification, enforcing traffic laws and speed limits will remain practically impossible. Riders who violate the law—racing through red lights, riding on sidewalks, or endangering pedestrians—are effectively anonymous,' he wrote. 'If the DOT can move to lower speed limits through the Charter's rulemaking process, it can and must do the same to require e-bike license plates. New Yorkers deserve better than symbolic gestures.' Others welcomed the limit, even if it wasn't clear it would make a difference. 'But my DoorDash,' one anonymous New Yorker said after a Post reporter told them about the new limit. Madeleine S., 29, said change was needed after she only got a 'sorry' after nearly being mowed down by a speeding e-biker in Soho. 'At least he took accountability,' Madeleine said. 'My lack of awareness probably contributed, but he was going fast.' Adams first called for reforms aimed at regulating the largely unregulated commercial delivery industry during his 2024 State of the City address, but has done little to further the regulation. Advertisement In the same speech, he also floated creating a Department of Sustainable Delivery and a new commercial delivery license system for e-bike delivery drivers — but in the 18 months since, the proposals have gone nowhere. Adams accused the City Council of 'stalling' his legislation by refusing to meet with members of his administration or hold a hearing, according to a press release from the mayor's office on Wednesday. However, the Department of Transportation sent a letter to the council on Thursday, claiming the agency had the authority under the city charter to create a 15 mph speed limit. A spokesperson for the City Council shot back, arguing the administration had no power to circumvent the legislative body and blasted the mayor for trying to use publicity to legislate. Advertisement 'The mayor has repeatedly failed to demonstrate an understanding of the city's lawmaking process, which has made him ineffective,' Julia Agos said. 'The mayor seeking to negotiate legislation by press release may get him headlines, but doesn't contribute to delivering for New Yorkers, and that's been his problem.' Councilmember Keith Powers introduced a bill Thursday that would also change the speed limit for e-bikes to 15 mph. 'Biking is a crucial tool to tackle the climate crisis and help New Yorkers get around the city, but we also must address the well-documented concerns about safety,' Powers said. 'Many New Yorkers are concerned about the reckless behavior we've seen from e-bike operators that haven't been properly regulated, and it's time to ensure that e-bikes can't speed down the street, causing chaos.'
