August 18, 2026
Mayor Mamdani @ The Brooklyn Navy Yard
I was quoted in At Brooklyn Navy Yard, Mamdani’s Jobs Agenda Collides with His Anti-ICE Politics. It reads, in part,
… BNYDC’s leases generally do not give the corporation authority to govern a tenant’s customers or what those customers do with products they purchase.
Asked specifically whether Crye had come up in her conversations with Mamdani, Greene said it had not.
A City Hall source similarly said the Mayor’s Office does not get involved in individual Navy Yard leases and that evictions may only take place when tenants violate contractual requirements such as financial obligations, legal compliance or permitted uses.
However, Council Member Shekar Krishnan, chair of the Council’s Oversight and Investigations Committee, said public ownership should change the equation.
“Public land like the Navy Yard should not be doing business with companies that dress ICE officers and support ripping families apart,” Krishnan said, adding that he was exploring “all tools at our disposal to keep public land away from ICE operations.”
Asked what those tools could include, his office said it was still exploring its options.
Cornell Law School clinical professor David Reiss, a real estate law expert, who reviewed two other Navy Yard leases and BNYDC’s bylaws but not Crye’s private agreement, told amNewYork that the legal options may look very different depending on whether Crye is still in the middle of a lease or seeking another term.
“Based on other Navy Yard leases I have reviewed — not Crye’s own, which I have not seen — Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation leases can only be terminated for specific things like nonpayment, misuse of the space, or sanctions-list status, not because of who a tenant’s customers are or how they use a tenant’s products,” Reiss said.
“Lease renewal is a different question,” he added. “Landlords generally have much broader discretion about whether to keep renting to a tenant once a lease has fully run its course.”
Reiss said BNYDC would likely have broad discretion not to renew Crye, unless the company has an unexercised option giving it a contractual right to another term. A nonrenewal could still draw a lawsuit.
“Crye might argue the decision was arbitrary and capricious or exceeded BNYDC’s corporate authority under state law,” Reiss said. Federal constitutional claims involving retaliation, viewpoint discrimination or equal protection, he added, “could face significant doctrinal hurdles on these facts.”
That makes the terms of Crye’s lease, and who sits on BNYDC’s board when a renewal decision arrives, central to what happens next.
BNYDC’s bylaws allow the mayor to appoint up to 29 members, including as many as 25 discretionary appointees who serve at the mayor’s pleasure. The mayor may also remove members with or without cause.
Reiss said that structure gives Mamdani “real leverage” over such decisions even though BNYDC itself is the landlord.
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