Escaped kids, hidden abuse — What happens when private equity enrolls in daycare?
9fin

In April 2025, Jake Stokes was picking up his five-year-old son from his KinderCare Education daycare center in Fort Wright, Kentucky, when a teacher pulled him aside. His son had been involved in a minor altercation with another child, but the staff assured him the boy was OK.

Stokes didn’t think much of it at first. Kids get into minor scrapes all the time, and he figured if it were anything serious, the school would’ve called him immediately. But then he noticed something odd: his son was sitting indoors wearing sunglasses, something the boy never did.

When he took off the sunglasses, he saw that his son’s right eye was red and visibly swollen. The staff then told him some mulch had gotten into the boy’s eye during the scuffle, but insisted there was no need to panic.

“I thought it must not be anything since I trusted their judgment,” Stokes said. “I gave them the benefit of the doubt.”

But the pain didn’t stop at home. As his son cried in agony, Stokes rushed him to a doctor, who diagnosed the boy with a scratched cornea. The doctor warned that if the scratch had gone any deeper, the five-year-old could have been partially blinded.

“That’s a big deal,” Stokes said in an interview with 9fin. “Why was I not told about this?” (Read the full story here)

Derailed — Debt, glitches and lost contracts threaten transit giant Cubic
9fin

Bleary-eyed Bay Area commuters shuffling into BART stations on the morning of 18 May were met with a uniform screen of bad news on ticket machines: “Out of Service”.

The system-wide glitch left straphangers stranded and unable to reload their physical Clipper cards. Commuters scrambled to figure out how to use their phones to pay their fare, while at least one BART station agent elected to open the emergency gate to let riders in, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

What initially seemed like a minor annoyance had quickly escalated into a full-blown transit nightmare as the outage swept through every single station, paralyzing fare collection for an alarming 27 hours.

When the cause was finally determined, it wasn’t a mysterious system bug or the work of a shadowy hacker syndicate. The truth was far more mundane — and embarrassing. Cubic, the contractor hired by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) to operate the fare collection system, had simply forgotten to pay an AT&T bill.

“Cubic not paying their bill, are you kidding me? That’s ridiculous,” Robert Powers, BART’s general manager, said in an emotionally charged soliloquy at a public meeting in June with Cubic executives sitting in the room. “BART is so done with Cubic right now. You have zero credibility, Cubic. Zero.” (Read the full story here)

Gary Barnett Is Suddenly Very Busy in Manhattan
Commercial Observer

If anybody thought developer Gary Barnett was done planting megaprojects in New York City, this year has proved them very wrong.

After a few, in his words, “eh” years, Barnett’s Extell Development came roaring back the past year with nary a week passing without at least some news of a project hitting the press.

SEE ALSO: The Plan: 7 WTC Offers Tenants a Swanky New Prebuilt Space on 34th Floor

There’s the 600-foot-tall office building expected to cost more than $1 billion underway at 570 Fifth Avenue, on which Extell partnered with Ikea parent Ingka Investments. It will have an 80,000-square-foot Ikea store at the base.

Then there’s the proposed 1,200-foot residential tower at the former ABC campus at 77 West 66th Street on the Upper West Side, which would dwarf the two tallest buildings in the neighborhood. That project is near Extell’s 70-story condominium at 50 West 66th Street. It’s nearing completion, and a unit on the 47th floor sold for $47 million in October, the priciest sale in the neighborhood so far this year.

Can’t forget the 71-story mixed-use tower planned at the former Wellington Hotel at 871 Seventh Avenue, or the 1,162-foot-tall residential tower at 655 Madison Avenue (where Chanel is in talks to buy the retail space for around $450 million).

And that’s not to mention a Four Seasons-branded condo project in Park City, Utah, and a large development in Israel.

“We are kind of a very deliberate company, in a way, so it takes time for us to accumulate sites, plan them,” Barnett told Commercial Observer. “Things have come together in a good way.” (Read full story here)

Keeping It Private: Homeowners Struggle With Life on NYC’s Private Streets
Commercial observer

Twice a week, 71-year-old Douglaston, Queens, resident Peggy Kalesis packs her trash-filled garbage cans into the back of her SUV and drives half a block from her home.

She and her dozen Stuart Lane neighbors drop their trash in front of an understanding Depew Avenue resident’s home because Stuart Lane is one of the nearly 1,000 private streets across the five boroughs that doesn’t get its garbage picked up by the city.

“It’s horrible,” Kalesis said. “We do pay taxes. We feel like we’re not getting city services.”

Private streets are owned, and tended to, by residents, homeowners associations (HOAs) or co-op boards. While they show up on Google Maps, they aren’t on the official city map so agencies won’t collect trash, remove snow, pave roads, repair street lights, fix sewer lines and more. Some have even caused issues for 911 dispatchers. (Read the full story here)

The Best New Office Amenity? Beer Brewed Downstairs.
Commercial Observer

When Basil Lee and Kevin Stafford decided to take on their homebrew hobby as a full-time profession in New York, they expected it would take them a year to find a usable and, importantly, affordable space for their new venture, Finback Brewery. The city’s real estate market said otherwise.

“I was actually surprised at how difficult it was to find space,” Lee said. “We were shown spaces where the roof was caving in.”

The pair had hoped to find space in Gowanus, Brooklyn. But after a two-year search, Finback settled on 78-01 77th Avenue, an industrial space tucked at the end of a residential street in Glendale, Queens, a 30-minute walk from the nearest subway. The business opened in 2014.

Finback’s real estate struggles weren’t unique. Ever since craft brewing started its long fermentation to become a booming industry around the country, brewers have had to hunt around the outskirts of cities and industrial areas to find locations to set up shop. But all that has started to change. Beer is now a $100 billion industry, with about 27 percent of that coming from smaller craft breweries last year, according to the Brewers Association, a trade group.

In 2010, only three breweries were operating in New York City, but the city now boasts around 42 throughout every borough. Many have started to open second or third locations — not in industrial areas but at the base of office or luxury residential buildings.

And some landlords are actively seeking brewers to offer the ultimate amenity to some tenants: Beer brewed right downstairs. (Read the full story here)

‘Anti-Adam Neumann’ Sandeep Mathrani Is WeWork’s Best Hope for Survival
Commercial Observer

The beleaguered coworking giant WeWork — which suffered a series of crushing blows last year — took a step towards “growing up” last week.

The nearly 10-year-old company tapped legendary real estate figure Sandeep Mathrani to become its new CEO after the bombastic Adam Neumann was pushed out by investors following reports of his erratic behavior, such as smuggling marijuana on a private plane to Israel.

“Sandeep is basically the anti-Adam Neumann,” said Dror Poleg, a former advisor to flexible office provider Breather and the co-chair of the Urban Land Institute’s Technology & Innovation Council. “He’s older. He has classic real estate experience working for the largest companies in the space. He’s very, very well-liked and experienced in the industry.”

“He’s definitely a responsible adult, if that’s what the investors are looking for,” Poleg added.

The hire also solidified what kind of company WeWork considers itself. For years, WeWork has called itself a technology company, with Neumann embodying the typical Silicon Valley founder and WeWork even reportedly considered hiring the brash T-Mobile CEO John Legere to replace him. All this despite the fact that WeWork is the largest occupier of office space in Manhattan which it rents out to other startups. Mathrani’s appointment cements what outsiders have long known: WeWork is a real estate business. (Read the full story here)

After 16 Years of Construction, American Dream Mall Will Finally Open. Will It Work? COMMERCIAL OBSERVER

The American Dream Mall—once given a deadline to open in 2014 when the Super Bowl was played in New Jersey—has become the butt of many Northern New Jersey residents’ jokes. It’s been empty for years, little more than a garish, multi-colored eyesore to the drivers on the New Jersey Turnpike.

But finally, after 16 years of starts and stops, missed deadlines, three developers, five governors and a major retail contraction, current developer Triple Five claims the $5 billion American Dream Mall in East Rutherford, N.J., will open its 3.1-million-square-foot center in April. That includes 1.5 million square feet of retail, the largest indoor amusement park in the Western Hemisphere, an indoor ski lift, a DreamWorks-branded indoor waterpark, a Cirque du Soleil venue and a National Hockey League-sized ice rink. Subsequent phases call for two hotels and a convention center.

“There’s a lot that you can see with your eye to let you know this thing is coming soon,” said David Townes, a senior director of retail at Cushman & Wakefield whose office is next to the American Dream site in the Meadowlands Complex.

But even as it nears the finish line, not everybody’s convinced the American Dream Mall will really come to fruition. (At least not on the April timetable.)

“We’ve been told this story a gazillion times,” Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, who recently criticized the project on Twitter, told Commercial Observer. “I gloss over these dates on when they’re projected to open.” (Read the full story here)

Families Torn Apart By Opioid Epidemic
Dnainfo

Christopher Perrotto was taking oxycodone with friends in a parked car in the South Shore on April 10, 2011 when he overdosed and died. He was just 22 years old.

His friends bailed and left him alone in the parking lot, but somebody eventually found Perrotto and called the police. His uncle worked nearby and went to identify his body while his mother — who thought Perrotto had gone to a detox center the night before — got an oil change.

When she got back to her Arden Heights home, detectives were already inside. She saw her father sobbing as she walked in and knew her son was dead.

"I just dropped and started screaming," said his mother, Ann Marie Perrotto. (Read the full story here)

'Boat Graveyard' Draws British Tourists to Staten Island
dnainfo

A graveyard filled with the rotting hulks of decommissioned boats is drawing British tourists to Staten Island.

The city is promoting the place where ships go to die — a marshland holding rusted testaments to the borough's maritime heritage —  to visitors from the United Kingdom.

On Thursday the city added the spot, tucked away in a marsh off Arthur Kill Road, to its summer guide for British tourists and promoted the post on Twitter.

On Thursday the city added the spot, tucked away in a marsh off Arthur Kill Road, to its summer guide for British tourists and promoted the post on Twitter.

"It may not have the #MaryRose, but NYC does have a rather spooky Boat Graveyard on Staten Island," the city's official U.K. account tweeted.

The city already has a listing for the spot on its NYCgo tourism website, something Tony Conssean, 55, who's backyard leads directly to parts of the graveyard, isn't surprised about.

Conssean, who grew up in the home and recently moved back to take care of his elderly parents, said on weekends he sees about 15 to 20 people in the morning going to check out the ships.

"I've had people from California, from Michigan, a guy from Wisconsin comes back repeatedly," he said. "This isn't necessarily No. 1 on the itinerary, but it's on the itinerary." (Read the full story here)