Latest news with #Naftali
Montreal Gazette
10-07-2025
- Business
- Montreal Gazette
St-Victor: Flamboyance isn't enough to be a good leader
I have an interest in connecting the dots between personal traits and leadership styles. It's an exercise I do when evaluating elected officials and business leaders. I head a business, and I'm sensitive to how one's identity affects how they lead, as well as how shifting times mean evolving expectations, whether from clients or constituents. Those expectations evolve in different ways in different places. Here in Canada, tariffs and talk of annexation shook our usual steady flow. I've sought to understand how our leadership should handle the change from having a neighbour led by presidents who saw us as allies to a neighbour that voted for Donald Trump, who, as soon as he was re-elected, declared economic and territorial threats. Montreal-born Timothy Naftali is a senior research scholar at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in New York and a presidential historian on CNN. Radio-Canada's all-news network RDI also has him on its roster; that's where I met him last year, as we were on-air analysts during the U.S. presidential campaign. We had coffee one afternoon, and after comparing notes on our daily lives, I switched the mode from two friends exchanging pleasantries to that of a forever-student wanting to learn from the professor. I asked Naftali who his favourite U.S. presidents were. He singled out George H.W. Bush — not his actual favourite, per se, but because Bush Sr. had been capable of changing his mind. As Naftali recalled, paraphrasing: 'George Herbert Walker Bush said: 'I know you gave me the mandate to do X and Y, but now that I see the entire landscape, it's not that special interests are forcing me to change my mind, it's that I know more and I'm a little smarter and let me explain to you why what I ran on and what I believe today are two different things.'' Leadership is very much about humility. There's no growth if you can't step back to realize your initial plan may not be best for the current situation. Bush's capacity to reassess by no means made his presidency perfect, but it made him a better leader for the moment. That was then. How about now? What does it take to be a good POTUS in 2025? 'Americans elected a candidate in 2024 whose personal characteristics would have disqualified any previous traditional candidate' before Trump's first presidency, Naftali said. 'This begs the question of whether enough Americans are now looking for something completely different in a president — have 'we' changed, rather than has the presidency changed?' What we need to be more vigilant about, as electors and consumers, is that our new expectations should require leaders to be better — not just 'different.' I continued my quest to better grasp the moment we're living in by asking the good professor about differences in character between leading the U.S. and Canada. 'Until Donald Trump's '51st state' nonsense, Canadians, I believe, were traditionally demure flag-wavers and expected their PMs to follow suit,' Naftali said. 'It was a quiet pride. 'Effective Canadian PMs, like all effective parliamentary leaders, must be decent debaters,' he continued. 'There is nothing like question period for presidents. The closest are press conferences, but those are not designed to be debates. As a result, Canadian PMs need to have a more detailed understanding of policy than U.S. presidents. 'The Canadian PM isn't the head of state, so he, she, has not traditionally been the unified embodiment of the nation in any way similar to the U.S. president. One consequence of that is that the PM has more latitude to have a private life than the U.S. president.' As someone who observes the impact of image, I think Naftali's points are essential. We can't lose track of what's needed to be a good leader. It's not charisma, and it's certainly not flamboyance, even at a time when that is too often what's rewarded. Something to remember as we'll soon head to the polls to elect a new leader for our city.
New York Times
31-01-2025
- Business
- New York Times
A Chelsea Arts Building Is for Sale, and the Artists Cry ‘Foul'
One tenant wore furry clogs with black ankle socks. Another recalled keeping bees on the roof and making 'High Line honey.' A third spoke of plans to invest thousands of dollars in air-conditioning. At a tenants' meeting earlier in January, dozens of artists and gallery owners gathered to protest the sale of their workplace: 508-534 West 26th Street. The 400,000-square-foot complex next to the High Line has long been an anchor of the West Chelsea arts district. But with the September 2022 death of its owner, the philanthropist and art collector Gloria Naftali, the building is in the hands of her estate, whose representatives say they do not consider it profitable enough to keep. It is currently on the market for $170 million. Dominick Porto, 91, the estate's co-executor, and Derek Wolman, 68, its lawyer, told tenants at the meeting that revenue from the sale of the building would be used to support the activities of the Raymond and Gloria Naftali Foundation, which was established in 2008 and of which both men are trustees. The organization supports not only the arts, but also initiatives that fight antisemitism. (Mr. Naftali, Ms. Naftali's husband, who died in 2003, was a Holocaust survivor.) Tax documents from 2023 show total foundation assets of $4.57 million. For many tenants, the decision to sell, which was first reported in the Commercial Observer in December, means not just a painful disruption in their lives but a nail in the coffin of their neighborhood. 'Artists and the art galleries bring a lot of money to the neighborhood and enlist services which will also sadly disappear,' said Judi Harvest, the beekeeping artist, who has rented in the building since 2001 and gives her age as 'over 65.' Ms. Harvest said she came to West 26th Street after being displaced from studios in TriBeCa, Chinatown and SoHo that became luxury residences. 'The West Chelsea Building is more than a piece of real estate — it is a vital part of our city's identity and a testament to the enduring power of art to bring people together,' stated a Jan. 17 letter to the Naftali Foundation signed by five local elected officials: Council Member Erik Bottcher, State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, Assemblyman Tony Simone, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine and Representative Jerrold Nadler. The building consists of two connected structures built in 1910 and 1927 that were used for printing and binding books. In the mid-1970s, Mr. Naftali (no connection to the real estate development family of that name) bought the property for use as a warehouse for his garment business. At that time, New York's arts scene was concentrated in SoHo, but Ms. Naftali, a French-born former actress and model, caught a whiff of where it was heading. In 1993, the couple turned the building into studios and exhibition spaces for artists and allied professionals, some very glossy. Among the roughly 200 tenants today are the Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto, who built a teahouse on the 12th floor with Ms. Naftali's blessing, and the American painter Ross Bleckner. Galleries include Berry Campbell, Galerie Lelong and Greene Naftali, the last co-founded by Ms. Naftali and Carol Greene in 1995. After Mr. Naftali's death, his wife continued fussing lovingly over her creative brood, dancing at parties into her nineties and making pledges that the building would remain an artists' community forever, tenants said. It was a rude shock to many when they were informed that Ms. Naftali's will, executed in 2009, expressed her desire but not a legal directive to keep the building as it is. At the tenants' meeting, Mr. Porto and Mr. Wolman emphasized that they had a fiduciary duty to support the foundation's diverse interests. They also said the building lacked the liquidity to allow them to fulfill minimum annual distribution requirements of 5 percent of the foundation's assets, plus an additional 2 percent in excise taxes. Though at the time of her death, Ms. Naftali also owned a West Village townhouse, several New York City investment units, the Manhattan homes of her son and daughter, two houses in Southampton, N.Y., properties in West Palm Beach, Fla., and South Londonderry, Vt., as well as a substantial art collection, Mr. Wolman said at the meeting that the West 26th Street building represented most of her wealth. He and Mr. Porto declined to disclose to the Times the amount of rent the West 26th Street building collects , and the building's manager, David Smyth, did not respond to several requests for information. The building is profitable, Mr. Wolman said, 'just not profitable enough.' Emilio Madrid, 28, an entertainment photographer who was the tenant contemplating a large investment in air-conditioning, said he pays $8,000 a month for his roughly 1,650-square-foot studio, which he has occupied for less than four years. Ms. Harvest rents 550 to 600 square feet for $3,000 a month. The tenants pay for their own electricity, and hers averages $100 to $150 per month, she said. A licensed real estate broker, Ms. Harvest added that the average asking price of commercial loft space in West Chelsea is $40 to $45 per square foot, slightly less than what she pays. 'It is a nice building, but not a bargain,' she said of the complex. According to Mr. Madrid, a group of tenants is seeking a buyer who shares Ms. Naftali's dedication to the arts. They are also considering the possibility of tenants buying the building themselves, 'though that is a heavy lift,' which would mean higher rents, he said. Some tenants have also suggested classifying the building as a charitable asset of the Raymond and Gloria Naftali Foundation and removing it from the distribution requirements. Asked about this proposal, Mr. Porto said, 'If someone has an idea and they think it can work, and they show us feasibility, by God, I'll go to bat for it.'
