The Powers of New York

(John's note: this article was in Sundays paper and features Steven Ross as one of the power players in New York City real estate. )

Influence in New York is now wielded by a larger and more diverse array of people. As part of a special issue of Metropolitan, here’s a look at who is at the top and who may be on the way, as identified by the reporters of The New York Times.

Steven M. Ross

The developer Stephen M. Ross is not afraid of a fight. Mr. Ross, 72, the chairman and chief executive of Related Companies, has clashed with fellow developers like Donald Trump and Joseph Moinian, and has wrestled with New York’s powerful construction unions over wages and work rules. Now, at the planned $15 billion, 26-acre Hudson Yards development on the West Side of Manhattan, he is trying to overhaul the way projects are built in the city by getting more concessions from the unions and by eliminating subcontractors, cutting a traditional layer of costs.

It is unclear if he will win, but it is hard to bet against him. Mr. Ross and his partners at Related built the $1.7 billion Time Warner Center — twin 80-story towers at Columbus Circle with shops, a hotel and luxury apartments — after a 16-year battle over the site, and he is trying to revive the long-stalled transformation of the James A. Farley Post Office into Moynihan Station. In his latest scheme, he has offered to build Borough of Manhattan Community College a larger campus inside the post office in exchange for the school’s land downtown.

In fact, Related is juggling six projects in the city right now, including the first phase of Hunters Point South, the largest affordable-housing complex built in New York since the 1970s. On the weekends, Mr. Ross has been trying to turn the Miami Dolphins, the N.F.L. franchise he bought for $1.1 billion, into a championship team.