Two researchers at The New School ran the math. Bridget Fisher and Flávia Leite at the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. Their numbers hold. Three point three billion in tax revenue got redirected through Hudson Yards Infrastructure Corporation, the quasi-public entity Bloomberg's deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff stood up in 2005 to issue bonds for the 7 train extension and the parks. One point four billion in foregone property taxes, structured as PILOTs, payments in lieu of taxes, giving Stephen Ross's Related Companies discounts of up to 40 percent off the tax bill for the next quarter century. The Great Recession knocked Hudson Yards revenue $556 million below projection. The city paid $359 million in interest to keep the bonds current. Add $281 million in capital expenditures. Add $367 million in 421-a residential abatements.
Total: $5.6 billion.
That number does not include the visa money.
EB-5 is an immigrant investor visa program. Half a million dollars into an approved real estate project, your family qualifies for a green card. Congress wrote the law in 1990 to direct foreign capital toward distressed urban or rural neighborhoods. Places where unemployment runs at least 150 percent above the national average. Hudson Yards is the most expensive real estate development in American history. It has never qualified as distressed by any working definition.
Empire State Development drew a different map.
The agency strung census tracts together. Nearly 100 blocks running north into Harlem. Public housing got pulled in. High-unemployment corridors got pulled in. The boundary cut a line through Central Park, where nobody lives, because that is where the math worked. Once the gerrymander cleared, Related solicited investment from roughly 3,200 EB-5 applicants at $500,000 each. Federal law caps the program at 10,000 visas a year. Related claimed roughly a third of the country's annual EB-5 capacity for one luxury enclave on the far west side of Manhattan.
Total raised: $1.2 billion in capital meant for distressed neighborhoods. Redirected to Hudson Yards.
When the pandemic hit, Related stopped paying its EB-5 investors. They sued. Some are still waiting on their $500K more than ten years in. Last year, Related CEO Jeff Blau filed a lawsuit of his own. He alleged investors were harassing him at his Upper East Side home. The investors want the money they were promised. Blau says they are out of line.
Phase 2 just got approved on the same playbook.
City Council signed off on June 30, 2025. Another $2 billion platform, financed via the same PILOT model. Mayor Eric Adams's press release described the financing as "a proven tool to finance infrastructure improvements without requiring direct public subsidies." Bloomberg's 2005 phrase was "self-financing." Same mechanism. Different label.
Related Companies manages over $60 billion in property. The first Hudson Yards platform got financed with private money and EB-5 capital when the area was unproven. Phase 2 will rise on a working district pulling $118 per square foot in office rent and remitting surplus revenue back to the city. The financing case is the easiest Related will ever make. They are using public money anyway. Nobody made them stop.
Now look at what got built.
Hudson Yards opened in March 2019 with Thomas Keller curating the food. TAK Room was Keller's throwback to 1950s American steakhouse cooking. Bouchon Bakery had been a Rockefeller Center fixture for years. David Chang opened Momofuku Kāwi, a modern Korean fine dining room that landed acclaim out of the gate. Estiatorio Milos. José Andrés's Mercado Little Spain. Neiman Marcus on a 50-year lease. The Shed.
Eighteen months in, the bottom dropped out. Keller closed TAK Room and Bouchon. Chang closed Kāwi and the to-go concept Peach Mart. Neiman Marcus declared bankruptcy after 16 months and Related now markets that space as office. Citarella out. Forty Five Ten out. 3Den out. Beta out. In August 2025, Related hired Odyssey Retail Advisors to clean up the leasing.
The 2025 and 2026 replacements are documented. Joe & The Juice. Just Salad. Dunkin Donuts. Yono Sushi. Viva la Crepe. NAYA. Eataly Caffè. Sailor's Choice. José Andrés brought Oyamel into 10 Hudson Yards.
The most expensive real estate development in American history runs on the food court formula.
The office numbers prop the rest of it up. By early 2024, more than 90 percent of Hudson Yards office space was leased. Class A rents averaged $118 per square foot. The catch sits in the fine print. Roughly 90 percent of those tenants moved from elsewhere in Midtown. They did not come from Connecticut. They did not come from New Jersey. They walked across town to a newer building the city paid to build, leaving older buildings half-empty behind them.
Time Warner moved from Columbus Circle to 30 Hudson Yards. Coach moved from 34th Street and Madison to 10 Hudson Yards. BlackRock relocated from its long-time Park Avenue base to 50 Hudson Yards. KKR moved from Hudson Square. Wells Fargo took a flag at 30 Hudson Yards. Each relocation generated a press release framing the move as a vote of confidence in the new neighborhood. None of them generated new headcount. They moved seats, not jobs. The buildings they left behind have been bleeding occupancy ever since.
Hudson Yards did not create new economic activity. It moved existing economic activity. The public paid for the move.
Now the other side.
A bodega in Mott Haven that has fed three generations on the same block can apply for a $5,000 microgrant. A Senegalese restaurant on 116th Street can apply for a $10,000 grant prioritizing immigrant-owned businesses. The federal Restaurant Revitalization Fund closed in May 2021. It ran out of money and never reopened. Empire State Development's small business loans cap at $150,000. The Bronx restaurant pays 30 percent on every DoorDash order. The Flushing dumpling spot fights a lease renewal at twice the previous rate. The Jackson Heights operator runs payroll on margins thinner than the lease.
They do not get an EB-5 zone gerrymandered to their door. They do not get 40 percent off their property tax bill. They do not get a $2 billion platform built on the city's tab.
A single PILOT discount on one Hudson Yards tower outweighs every microgrant program in this city, combined.
The visa money meant for distressed neighborhoods went to Hudson Yards. The infrastructure money meant for the boroughs went to Hudson Yards. The press cycle that should be covering bodega closures and lease pressure and platform extraction covers a Joe & The Juice opening at Hudson Yards as food news.
Hudson Yards is a corporate office park with a curated food program built on $5.6 billion in public money, partially funded by a visa program meant for the neighborhoods it now ignores.
It does not represent New York.
The operators who actually feed this city never had access to any of that capital. They never will.
The city built Hudson Yards. The bill came due. The operators who pay this city's taxes, hire this city's workers, and feed this city's neighborhoods were never the customer.
They were the funding source.
That is the bullshit in the debt.
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