NYC EDC Faces Widening Deficits as Past Bets Falter

The New York City Economic Development Corp. is heading into the Mamdani era with big expectations and a thinning balance sheet, according to a Bisnow investigation of the agency’s financial records, board meetings and interviews with anonymous insiders.

The public benefit corporation manages the city’s $1.3 trillion real estate portfolio and is a major driver of private investment and job creation. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has handed it a long to-do list: grow the workforce, establish city-run grocery stores, strengthen infrastructure and help solve the housing crisis.

But the agency’s finances are under strain. Budget projections shared with its board in June show EDC expects to run deficits in each of the next four years, Bisnow reported. Its net position, broadly its assets minus liabilities, is projected to fall from roughly $715 million at the end of fiscal year 2025 to $587 million by the end of fiscal year 2030.

The most recent annual numbers show the pressure. Property rental, lease and interest revenue dropped $29.3 million, or 10%, in fiscal year 2025, while property operating expenses climbed $22.3 million, or 22%. EDC posted an operating loss of $73.4 million for the year, per Bisnow’s review of the documents.

Bisnow pointed to a string of projects aimed at fledgling industries that have fallen short. One example is the Brooklyn Army Terminal bioscience plan announced by then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2013, which envisioned 486,000 square feet of lab space. Thirteen years later, only 44,000 square feet has been delivered, and EDC has all but abandoned the effort, according to the report.

Bisnow also detailed a smaller setback on the Upper East Side. The city recently bought back a site where Hunter College had planned a nursing school, another idea dating to the Bloomberg years. The college never built it, and EDC reacquired the lot 14 years after selling it. The transaction occurred in December, though the deed was not filed publicly until Oct. 7, after Bisnow inquired about it. Bisnow reported the vacant site’s value fell from $253 million in 2011 to $149 million in 2024. Hunter’s nursing school is now slated for the Science Park and Research Campus at Kips Bay, backed by $474 million in EDC funds.

A former EDC official involved in its South Brooklyn portfolio, speaking anonymously to Bisnow, said many of the agency’s projects do not appear to have real demand. At a September 2025 board meeting, board member Kathryn Wylde, the former president and CEO of Partnership for New York, said the board should understand what happens when EDC is forced into political decisions, citing the Army Terminal outcome two decades on.

A deeper structural question looms. Real estate is EDC’s main source of cash, through leasing or selling city-owned property. Yet the city is increasingly offering land as a subsidy rather than collecting ground-lease rent. Mamdani aims to build more than 50,000 housing units on over 100 city-owned sites, building on efforts by former Mayor Eric Adams. Under that approach, affordable housing developers can use savings on land costs to help cover construction, and the city avoids longer-term subsidies. For EDC, that could mean cutting off a core revenue stream.

“If you’re going to shift your strategy towards that, then you have to shift the way EDC is funded, and maybe even the way EDC works,” Marc Norman, associate dean at NYU’s Schack Institute of Real Estate, told Bisnow. “Something has to give.”

Bisnow said EDC did not respond to a detailed list of questions, and spokesperson Seth Schuster stopped replying to repeated requests for comment.

The agency does have a record of success. Formed in 1991 by merging the city’s land and capital arms, EDC helped revitalize Coney Island’s amusement parks, modernize the Hunts Point food market, build sports stadiums and expand greenways. Whether it can fund the next chapter of ambitions is now the open question.