Hochul freezes data centers, MetroLoft buys again, horses face a vote. New York Explained for July 14, 2026.

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Hochul's data center moratorium

The governor froze the permits before the Legislature could force her hand on who eats the bill.

Politics & GovernmentCitywide4 newsroomsRead the story →

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Photo: crain

MetroLoft buys its next tower after the Pfizer scare

Housing & Real EstateManhattan3 newsrooms

Photo: the city

Central Park's carriage horses face a Council vote

Politics & GovernmentCitywide1 newsroom

Hochul's data center moratorium

The governor froze the permits before the Legislature could force her hand on who eats the bill.

Gov. Hochul signed an executive order Tuesday pausing state environmental permits for data centers of 50 megawatts or more, for up to a year, the first statewide moratorium of its kind in the country [24][32]. The pause lets the Department of Public Service write rules on water and energy use while operators pay a premium or build their own power supply, and Hochul says she'll push to repeal data centers' sales-tax exemptions come January [32]. Her order is narrower than a bill the Legislature passed last month covering centers as small as 20 megawatts, which she has not signed [46][37].

“As data center development threatens to hike up utility bills, deplete our natural resources and create uncertainty for New Yorkers, it's my responsibility to take action and lead.”

By the numbers

• 50 megawattsthe threshold above which Hochul's order freezes permits, versus 20 megawatts under the unsigned legislative moratorium [24][46]
• $77 millionin tax breaks a Rockland County agency approved for JPMorganChase's data center expansion, the kind of deal now drawing "outrage" [32]
• 50%of New York voters polled by Siena called the moratorium a good idea, versus 21% who called it bad [37]

The thread

1. Dec 2014Gov. Cuomo banned high-volume fracking by executive order after a state Health Department review, a ban that took six more years to become permanent law (Forbes).
2. TodayHochul reached for the same tool, a permit freeze while the state studies impacts, this time for data centers instead of gas wells [24][32].

WatchWhether Hochul signs the Legislature's stricter 20-megawatt bill, which her office says she's still "reviewing" [32].

FromPolitics | Spectrum News NY1The City ReporterGothamistBreaking NYC News & Local Headlines | New York Post

MetroLoft buys its next tower after the Pfizer scare

The city's biggest office-to-apartment developer didn't pause for a second before buying its next building.

Three days after two structural columns buckled on the 21st floor of 235 East 42nd Street, the former Pfizer headquarters MetroLoft is converting into apartments, the same developer closed on 1 Whitehall St., a 23-story Financial District tower it now plans to convert too [64][66]. MetroLoft bought the tower from lender LoanCore, which foreclosed on its previous owner, partnering again with private equity firm Quantum Pacific [66]. The Manhattan DA and the city's Department of Investigation are both probing the near-collapse, while the Buildings Department still hasn't determined whether a planned 10-story horizontal expansion overloaded the columns beneath it [64][66].

“Based on our 30-year track record as a responsible developer of office to residential conversions, we are hopeful that last week's incident... won't negatively impact any of our future deals.”

“I think they have to stop all the work going forward, do a failure analysis exactly what went wrong, then they can figure out how to fix it.”

By the numbers

• 10office-to-residential conversions MetroLoft has completed citywide since 2020, totaling 4,200 apartments [66]
• 44more such projects have permits filed or are under construction citywide, over 13,700 apartments, as the city leans on conversions against a 1.4% apartment vacancy rate, a near 60-year low [66]

The thread

1. Jul 8Two columns buckled on the Pfizer building's 21st floor, triggering an FDNY evacuation and a DOB and DA investigation [64].
2. TodayThree days later, MetroLoft closed on 1 Whitehall Street and said it's "hopeful" the incident won't cost it future deals [66].

WatchThe Buildings Department's cause finding, and whether the DA's probe reaches MetroLoft before its next conversion breaks ground [66].

FromCrain's New YorkGothamistPolitics | Spectrum News NY1

Central Park's carriage horses face a Council vote

A teenager fell to his death from a carriage last month; this week City Hall finally has to answer for it.

The City Council holds a Wednesday hearing on a bill to ban Central Park's horse-drawn carriages, after 18-year-old tourist Romanch Mahajan died June 17 falling from a spooked carriage, the industry's eighth on-the-job incident since May 2025 [33]. Speaker Julie Menin and Council Member Lynn Schulman called the hearing on Council Member Christopher Marte's bill, newly renamed "Romanch's Law," which would phase out roughly 200 carriage jobs [33]. Mayor Mamdani says the horses should go, following Eric Adams and Bill de Blasio, but Transport Workers Union Local 100 opposes a ban and backs a rival bill that would keep the carriages while adding hitching posts and shifting their hours [33].

“We are not in disagreement that there needs to be a conversation... I don't think that someone can die and you just say, 'Hey, let's go on with business as usual.'”

“We need this industry stopped forever. That is the only legacy worthy of our heroic boy.”

By the numbers

• 8on-the-job carriage-horse incidents in Central Park since May 2025, the latest killing Mahajan [33]
• 70%of 834 New Yorkers surveyed by the Central Park Conservancy support a ban, a poll the union calls "a load of horse manure" [33]
• 42 millionvisitors Central Park drew in 2025, more than Disney World, per the Conservancy [33]

The thread

1. Jan 2016Mayor de Blasio, who'd campaigned in 2013 on abolishing horse carriages, instead struck a deal cutting the fleet by two-thirds and building an in-park stable, never actually banning them (NY1).
2. TodayA decade later, the Council has its most serious ban bill yet, backed for the first time by the Central Park Conservancy itself [33].

WatchWednesday's Council hearing, and whether Menin and Schulman get Marte's bill further than de Blasio's compromise ever went [33].

FromThe City Reporter

Around the Boroughs

• Manhattan (East Village): An NYPD parking lot at 324 East 5th Street will become The Aurea, 131 affordable apartments with a senior center, the first city land deal of the Mamdani era, with 30% reserved for the formerly homeless [79].
• Brooklyn (Greenpoint): Gotham Organization's Monitor Point, 1,324 waterfront apartments with 662 affordable, heads to a full Council vote July 16 after Council Member Lincoln Restler held it to a 50% affordability floor [44].
• Bronx (Wakefield): Two decomposing bodies were found in a Carpenter Avenue apartment after neighbors reported a foul odor; police aren't treating the deaths as suspicious [42].
• Bronx (Longwood): A third teen, 17, was arrested in the May bodega shooting that wounded a 5-year-old girl holding her mother's hand [43].
• Queens (Maspeth): Council Member Phil Wong's district office had windows smashed and got threatening calls after two attacks on his staff near a proposed battery storage site; Speaker Menin vowed tighter security [28].
• Citywide: Mayor Mamdani launched five "PIT crew" tech teams, funded with $5.24 million plus $2 million from the Rockefeller Foundation, starting with a portal to enforce the city's new Click to Cancel subscription law [25].
• Manhattan/Queens/Brooklyn: Hand recounts are underway in three tight primaries, including a 15-vote Manhattan Assembly race and a 2-vote Queens Assembly race [26].
• Citywide: A Council bill for a $10,000 stabilization payment to DOE paraprofessionals, who start around $34,000, comes to a vote this week over the mayor's own lawyers' legal objections [96].
• Manhattan (East Village): Rat sightings jumped 37.6% in Community Board 3 even as citywide reports fell 23%, with one block seeing a 400% spike blamed on buildings still exempt from trash-container rules [36].
• Manhattan (Upper East/West Side): New curbside "Empire Bins" will each claim roughly 1,500 street parking spots on the Upper East and Upper West Sides, the steepest losses anywhere in the city [45].
• Brooklyn (Coney Island): A state senator is demanding emergency Riegelmann Boardwalk repairs now, warning residents can't wait for a $1 billion rebuild that won't finish until 2032 [56].
• Citywide: World Cup hotel revenue rose only a third of what the Hotel Association projected, while sports bars like the Bronx Beer Hall saw revenue and tips more than double on match days [93].
• Albany: LGBTQ+ state lawmakers are moving to form the Legislature's first-ever caucus, entering 2027 with at least 10 out members between both chambers [5].
• Citywide: ER doctors say e-bike and scooter crashes now drive more than half of Bellevue's trauma caseload, up from under 10% in 2018, with pedestrians suffering the worst brain injuries [107].
• Bronx: Jay-Z's final Yankee Stadium show ran nearly five hours late after ticketless crowds stormed the gates, forcing a lockdown the venue itself ordered [112].

Only in New York

For 139 years, Our Lady of Mount Carmel's summer feast has ended the same way: hundreds of men hoisting a four-ton, 70-foot Giglio tower onto their shoulders and dancing it down Havemeyer Street to a brass band mixing Neapolitan hymns with "Mr. Saxobeat." John Perrone, this year's apprentice capo, says his mother used to tell him to skip any wedding scheduled on Giglio Sunday. Most of this year's lifters don't even live in Williamsburg anymore, driving in from Long Island, New Jersey and Florida because, as capo Joe Cicileo put it, the tradition "just kind of trickled down" through families, his own nephews and sons-in-law among this year's crew [113].