The Nonprofit Runway Green has signed a 60-year lease with the National Park Service for a seven-acre campus at Floyd Bennett Field, establishing a permanent home for a new education ecosystem for New York City students.

The long-term lease will transform an underused portion of the historic airfield into a campus where students can learn through career-connected education, agriculture, environmental stewardship, and other real-world learning opportunities. Runway Green ultimately expects the campus and its programming, budgeted at $60 million, to reach as many as 50,000 NYC public school students.

Happy Wednesday in New York City, where the pied-à-terre tax may be getting a do over.

A judge in Staten Island yesterday ordered the Mamdani administration to restart its rollout of the pied-à-terre tax — a surcharge on luxury second homes in the city — after it mistakenly sent notices of potential liability to some 6,000 homeowners of primary residences and published a list of 900,000 properties that could be subject to the tax, most of which were not eligible. The error sparked anxiety and outrage as thousands of New Yorkers were given four weeks to prove that the homes they lived in were, in fact, their primary homes.

“My concern isn’t that people have to prove where they live,” Councilmember Frank Morano told the City Reporter. “My concern is the sequence. The city should verify first.”

Yesterday’s order comes after Randy Mastro, former First Deputy Mayor to Eric Adams, brought a lawsuit against the Mamdani administration on behalf of homeowners who say they were mistakenly targeted.

A spokesperson for the Mamdani administration announced yesterday that they would pursue an “automatic stay” on the judge’s order and continue with the tax rollout. “We will continue implementing the surcharge fairly, efficiently and in full compliance with the law, as we have since day one,” said the mayor’s deputy press secretary Matthew Rauschenbach.

The pied-à-terre tax was hailed as a major victory by members of the Mamdani administration after earning the approval of the State Legislature and Gov. Kathy Hochul in May. It applies to secondary homes in New York City valued over $5 million and is expected to raise $500 million a year.

Mayor Mamdani may have some pie on his face, but then again, it all comes with the pied-à-terre-tory.

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As a historic nor’easter began to bear down on New York City on the evening of Friday, Sept. 25, hundreds gathered in Red Hook for ‘FLOODLINES,’ at cultural arts and science center Pioneer Works.

“There’s a nor’easter brewing offshore. It feels like a poignant, potent time to gather here tonight in our sanctuary of art and science and culture,” said Pioneer Works’ Director of Publishing Joshua Jelly-Schapiro.

“Pioneer Works is a place where we try and endeavor to put together disciplines that aren’t necessarily in conversation out in the world… and tonight where we want to endeavor to turn our hearts and minds to the places where cities and oceans meet.”

This was the second event at Pioneer Works sponsored by the London-based charitable foundation Wellcome, which also sponsored an event about heat for Climate Week 2025.

Read on to learn more.

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