Crains New York - July 30, 2012 - (Page 3)

BOXED IN: Young Woo’s downtown Brooklyn market features shops in steel shipping containers. Now he’s setting his sights on redeveloping the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx. City’s gun business is fully loaded It’s hard to pack heat in this town. There’s help—for a price BY ADRIANNE PASQUARELLI The Colorado shooting has again put the firearm industry in the national spotlight. It has also focused attention on the handful of New York City shooting ranges, shops and consultancies that have survived by dutifully playing by a complicated set of local rules designed to make gun ownership burdensome. Some have thrived on that complexity. Consultants and attorneys charge as much as $15,000 to help gun lovers like Donald Trump pack heat. “There are high-profile people as well as average businessmen who want a permit but don’t feel comfortable doing the process themselves,” said John Chambers, an attorney who helped start consultancy Gun Permits Inc. four years ago. Gun entrepreneurs prefer a low profile to avoid controversy.Though the number of illegal firearms has been roughly halved, to 3,980, in the city in the past five years as the crime rate has dropped, bloodshed remains in the headlines. There were 314 shooting homicides in 2011. Last week, a 4-year-old was shot to death while playing in a Bronx park, just days after gunshots critically injured a 3-year-old in Brooklyn. “For some city people, the only time they hear about guns is if someone is shooting someone else—they don’t understand the culture that’s involved in the industry,” said Tom King, president of the Troy-based New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, a 141-year-old affiliate of the National Rifle Association. Better not to attract unwanted attention. The ground floor of Beretta’s New York flagship townhouse, housing cashmere sweaters See CITY’S GUN on Page 18 WOO HOO! Developer Young Woo’s unconventional approach yields results BY THERESA AGOVINO As a 19-year-old Korean immigrant who had just settled in the Bronx,Young Woo recalls being intrigued by the hulking Kingsbridge Armory as he biked past, delivering groceries. “I wasn’t sure what it was,” said the 59-year-old founder of real estate development firm Youngwoo & Associates. “It was big and unusual.” As the city prepares to pick a company to redevelop the longvacant structure, Mr. Woo knows what it should become. He sees it as not just another shopping mall, as earlier plans for the site envisioned, but as a 21st-century “town square,” a lively spot with a concert venue, sports stadium and rockclimbing wall, plus movie theaters and unusual retailers. Unconventional thinking is Mr. Woo’s trademark. From developing a Chelsea condo with a car elevator that allowed owners to bring their vehicles up to their doors to snapping up American International Group’s art deco headquarters in the depth of the recession, Mr.Woo is full of surprises. Last year, his firm opened the DeKalb Market in downtown Brooklyn, housing its shops in old, multihued shipping containers. Soon, he hopes his firm’s plan to transform the dilapidated building on Pier 57 in Hudson River Park into a vibrant mixed-use market will enter the city’s formal review process. “Young looks at building differently from most people,” said Adam Schwartz, managing director and head of U.S. real estate at See DEVELOPER on Page 18 The secret to genomes? Lotsa juice Few buildings in city can power data-heavy business. Here’s one BY JEREMY SMERD While Gov. Andrew Cuomo helped broker a deal between Consolidated Edison and its biggest union last week in the name of keeping the electricity flowing, a less heralded but perhaps more significant power play was made by the New York Genome Center. The 11-institution medical research group announced its plan to build a $47 million headold New York Telephone quarters at 101 Sixth Ave. Co.: access to a huge The deal would have been amount of electricity. unlikely were it not for an“Access to that power other building, 375 Pearl is, in our view, probably St., the 32-story structure worth more than the at the foot of the Brooklyn building,” CEO Dave Bridge known for the VerSabey said, “because you izon sign that adorns it. just can’t replicate that Last year, Seattle-based infrastructure.” Sabey Corp. bought 375 Data-heavy busiPearl for $120 nesses in finance, million, drawn by technology and a rare feature that health care inowes its existence BYTES IN A PETABYTE (equal to 1 million creasingly need Genome Center to the building’s gigabytes). The New York fuel computers nearby highneeds enough power to origin as a switchspeed data warethat will generate 5 petabytes of data over the next two years. ing center for the houses to help them execute complex algorithms at the speed of light. Those warehouses need major wattage. Few buildings in the city have 375 Pearl’s electricity access. One exception is Google’s Ninth Avenue building, a former Port Authority headquarters and freight station. Another is 60 Hudson St., the former Western Union building that’s now a full-block telecom structure acting as a worldwide Internet hub. The Pearl Street data center will ultimately be able to draw as much as 40 megawatts of electricity.The juice will help power the New York Genome Center’s immense data volume. Each sequenced genome buck ennis 1,000,000,000,000,000 generates 130 gigabytes. After two years, the center expects to have 5 petabytes (or 5 million gigabytes) of information. Most will be stored at Sabey’s data warehouses in Washington state (where electricity and space are cheaper) and connected via a secure network to 375 Pearl, which will serve as a hub for scientists at the center’s Sixth Avenue centerpiece. Given the limited supply of these juiced-up buildings and the cost of outfitting them, Mr. Sabey expects competitors in many fields to increasingly collaborate on their data needs. “Not one of these research institutions,” he said of the genome group’s members, “has the money to buy the computing infrastructure necessary to really be able to model these massively complex interactions between genetic communities.” July 30, 2012 | Crain’s New York Business | 3 istockphoto

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crains New York - July 30, 2012

Crains New York - July 30, 2012
Contents
In the Markets
The Insider
Business People
Real Estate Deals
Opinion
Alair Townsend
Greg David
Small Business
Corporate Finance
Classifieds
For the Record
From Around the City
New York, New York
Source Lunch
Out and About

Crains New York - July 30, 2012