Exclusive | Biz leaders pitch exemption to Mamdani and Hochuls pied--terre tax

City business leaders are scrambling to offer socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani a compromise to his planned tax on luxury second homes after one of the prime targets of his proposal — Ken Griffin of the Citadel investment empire — suggested he may reverse a major expansion in midtown, the Post has learned.Steven Fulop, the newish head of the Partnership for New York City, has been lobbying both the mayor as well as the governor’s office about the potential jobs losses and reduction in tax revenues that would ensue if Griffin did indeed reverse course on Citadel’s planned redevelopment of its NYC headquarters.That project is expected to create thousands of jobs and produce billions in tax revenue.Fulop is making the arguments to city and state officials, he tells the Post, as he pushes for an “exemption” to the luxury home tax plan.“If a person creates 100 jobs there should be an exemption,” Fulop said.“That plus the ancillary economic activity is how you help solve the affordability crisis that Mayor Mamdani ran on.”Any compromise would be an uphill battle given the political forces he’s up against.

It’s not just Mamdani who supports the so-called “pied-a-terre” tax, but also Gov.Kathy Hochul and the state legislature.The city faces a $5.4 billion budget gap, and the mayor is refusing to cut his record $127 billion budget to fund his socialist agenda.But Griffin’s recent salvo — a company memo released Thursday to his employees suggesting that the expansion might not happen — could be a game changer, Fulop said.“People aren’t happy,” he told me.

“And I’ve given names to the mayor’s office of other business people who have big concerns and said you should talk to them.”Mamdani has made Griffin the poster child of his tax-the-rich scheme with a recent social media post where he stood outside the Citadel founder’s penthouse on 220 Central Park South and stated “When I ran for mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich ....