Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan will become chair of the New York City Economic Development Corporation’s board of directors.
Anthony Shorris, a longtime city-government official and former McKinsey partner, will serve as NYCEDC’s president and CEO. The administration says the two will work together to make the agency deliver more effectively for working New Yorkers across the five boroughs.
The appointment is being discussed as another chapter in Khan’s campaign against concentrated corporate power.
But the more important economic story is the institution she is entering.
NYCEDC sits near the center of New York City’s development machinery.
Through the corporation and related entities, the city facilitates projects using publicly owned property, tax benefits, financing assistance, infrastructure investment and partnerships with private developers.
Its fiscal-year 2025 investment report covered 443 projects receiving loans, grants, tax benefits or energy benefits, along with 29 sales and 99 leases of city-owned land. Its capital division oversees more than 100 active projects representing nearly $6 billion in construction costs.
That makes Khan’s new position more than a symbolic appointment.
It places an antimonopoly advocate inside an organization that helps determine who receives access to scarce land, public support, development rights and the future value created around major projects.
The power is in the assets
Economic-development agencies rarely generate attention comparable to elections, corporate mergers or Wall Street deals.
Yet their decisions can shape a city for decades.
A parcel of public land transferred for development can become housing, commercial space, industrial infrastructure or a private asset that appreciates as the surrounding neighborhood changes.
A tax incentive can make a project financially viable—or transfer part of its cost to the public.
An infrastructure investment can attract jobs and businesses, but it can also increase nearby land values, rents and displacement pressure.
A public-private partnership can create community benefits while allowing private investors to capture much of the long-term appreciation.
The central question is therefore not simply whether NYCEDC promotes growth.
It is who owns the assets after the growth occurs, who receives the contracts and who captures the increase in value.
Khan and Shorris represent two forms of power
The leadership structure creates an important tension.
Khan built her national profile by challenging market concentration and arguing that economic policy should examine control, competition and the power corporations exercise over workers, suppliers and consumers.
Shorris brings experience operating within New York’s governmental and institutional development system. His appointment has been interpreted as a stabilizing signal to the business community, while Khan’s selection suggests that the administration wants economic justice to influence the agency’s direction.
Those roles are not identical.
As president and CEO, Shorris will lead the organization’s operations. Khan, as board chair, will participate in governance and strategic oversight. The public announcement does not yet establish how aggressively the board will redirect individual projects or how responsibilities will be divided in practice.
That distinction matters.
Khan’s appointment may change the questions asked inside the agency. Whether it changes the allocation of land, capital and contracts will depend on policies, project requirements, performance measures and enforcement.
What economic justice would look like in practice
For Black communities, the appointment should not be evaluated only through rhetoric or representation.
It should be evaluated through measurable changes in who participates economically.
That includes whether Black-owned businesses gain access to prime contracting opportunities rather than remaining concentrated in smaller subcontracting roles.
It includes whether public land is used to expand affordable housing and community ownership—or merely subsidize projects that accelerate neighborhood appreciation for outside investors.
It includes whether local entrepreneurs receive affordable commercial space, patient capital and access to development opportunities.
It also includes whether workers receive stable jobs, benefits and career pathways that remain after construction ends.
Economic justice becomes concrete when it changes allocation.
- Who receives the land?
- Who qualifies for incentives?
- Who is selected as a development partner?
- Who owns the retail space?
- Who controls the completed asset?
- Who receives recurring revenue?
- Who carries the debt and construction risk?
- Who benefits when property values rise?
Without answers to those questions, “equitable development” can remain a broad aspiration while ownership and wealth continue moving through familiar channels.
Procurement may be the first visible test
Public contracting is one area where the administration’s priorities could become measurable relatively quickly.
A project may announce participation goals for minority- and women-owned businesses, but headline percentages do not always reveal the quality of that participation.
A Black-owned company providing a limited service under a larger prime contractor does not capture the same economics as a firm that leads the contract, controls the customer relationship, hires multiple subcontractors and builds a portfolio that qualifies it for larger future projects.
NYCEDC could therefore be judged not only by how much money reaches certified firms, but by:
- the number of Black-owned prime contractors,
- the average contract size,
- payment speed,
- access to bonding and working capital,
- participation in professional services and high-value technical work,
- and the number of firms that graduate into larger contracts.
The difference is between using procurement to meet a participation target and using it to build durable business capacity.
Public land creates private wealth
Land may be the most consequential part of NYCEDC’s portfolio.
City-owned property gives government leverage before a project is built. Once land is sold, leased or committed under a long-term development agreement, much of that leverage can disappear.
The city can use that moment to require affordability, local hiring, community facilities or minority-business participation.
It can also examine deeper ownership structures.
- Could community land trusts retain control of the ground?
- Could local organizations or minority developers receive equity positions?
- Could affordable commercial ownership be included alongside affordable residential space?
- Could public investment generate a continuing public return instead of only a one-time payment?
These questions move the debate beyond whether a development includes community benefits. They ask whether communities can own part of the economic system being built around them.
Who carries the development risk?
Large projects are often presented through expected benefits: jobs, housing units, tax revenue, public space and neighborhood investment.
The risks receive less attention.
Residents may face displacement as land values increase. Small businesses may lose leases during redevelopment. Workers may be promised jobs that are temporary or inaccessible. The city may commit subsidies before projected benefits materialize. Communities may absorb years of construction disruption without receiving ownership in the completed project.
Developers and investors carry financial risk, but public institutions and neighborhoods carry risk too.
A stronger economic-justice framework would identify those risks before approving a deal and specify who is responsible when promised outcomes fail to materialize.
That could mean enforceable community benefits, subsidy clawbacks, transparent performance reporting and consequences when hiring, affordability or contracting commitments are missed.
The Black economic-development question
Khan’s move from federal antitrust enforcement to municipal development governance expands the meaning of competition policy.
At the FTC, the central concern was often whether dominant companies could use their power to weaken competition or harm consumers and workers.
At NYCEDC, the comparable question may be whether development markets repeatedly privilege the same large firms, capital providers and institutional partners.
A city can announce hundreds of projects while still concentrating ownership.
It can create jobs without creating Black-owned assets.
It can improve infrastructure while pricing existing residents out of the value that infrastructure creates.
It can support entrepreneurship while reserving the largest opportunities for firms that already have capital, relationships and scale.
That is why the appointment matters.
Khan now has a role inside a system that can influence not merely prices or corporate behavior, but the physical and commercial ownership structure of New York City.
The real test will not be whether NYCEDC adopts the language of economic justice.
It will be whether public power changes who gets the land, who receives the contracts, who owns the completed assets and who captures the upside.
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