Slate Property Group and Breaking Ground are snapping up the shuttered Stewart Hotel beside Penn Station for $255 million, aiming to transform the 31-story shell into 579 affordable flats for low-income New Yorkers and the formerly homeless. With $8…
Mount Sinai, one of New York’s wealthiest hospital systems, has spent over $100 million on artificial intelligence—most notably a generative AI assistant named Sofiya—even as it shutters Beth Israel, leaving lower Manhattan’s neediest with fewer options. As public hospitals brace for $1 trillion in federal cuts, staff wonder whether “angelic patience” is a fair trade for overworked nurses and contracts still left in the waiting room.
The US Food and Drug Administration gave the green light to Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy pill, the first oral GLP-1 drug for obesity, offering an alternative to injections for millions of Americans. Backed by OASIS 4 trial results showing up to 17% weight loss, the company eyes a full US rollout by January from its North Carolina plants—just in time for any lingering New Year’s resolutions.
Despite headline inflation dipping to 2.7% in November, the practical cost of groceries in places like Los Angeles has pushed even middle-income Latino families to queue for hours at food banks such as MEND, with demand sometimes topping 600 people a day. Feeding America reports that food insecurity now grips 47 million Americans—14 million of them Latino—a far cry from those Hollywood holiday feasts we keep seeing on TV.
Ride Health, a Flatiron District start-up, has secured $15 million from 21 investors to expand its medical ride platform, which links patients—via providers like Memorial Sloan Kettering—to tailored transport, often covered by Medicaid, grants, or large health systems. With federal 1115 waivers now funding such non-medical services, they’re hitching a ride on a $7.5 billion experiment; as ever, we hope better coordination arrives faster than New York City traffic.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority unveiled futuristic glass fare gates at Manhattan’s Broadway-Lafayette station, touting both Parisian chic and a $1.1 billion bid to curb the estimated $400 million lost annually to fare evaders. Yet by Monday, New Yorkers—irresistibly inventive—were already brainstorming creative “parkour” methods to dodge payment, while a parallel set of shiny gates at 42nd Street languished, unopened, behind a construction fence: innovation, meet inertia.
Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s incoming mayor, will be sworn in on January 1st—first privately by Attorney General Letitia James at midnight, then publicly by Senator Bernie Sanders outside City Hall before a “block party” for the tens of thousands expected. We admire the logistics: back-to-back progressive heavyweights and a populist street bash, which, at the very least, should keep spirits warmer than Times Square in January.
Governor Kathy Hochul spent the holiday tidying Albany’s legislative inbox, finishing off the year by signing 73 bills—including new rules for artificial intelligence safety and extra cameras in New York’s prisons, these passed after much wrangling with lawmakers and advocates. Still, opponents grumbled that reforms got watered down and costs postponed, but we suspect that in Albany, half a loaf remains the menu’s daily special.
Mayor Eric Adams’ office has struck a deal for a 280-unit, all-affordable apartment block—complete with a public pool and gym—on a city-owned lot in Manhattan’s West Village, irking locals who prefer restoring the shuttered Tony Dapolito Recreation Center. Officials insist the old center is beyond repair; preservationists, led by Andrew Berman, beg to differ. We suspect the only thing deeper than the new pool may be local nostalgia.
