NYC NOW - April 14, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: April 14, 2023

Happy Friday evening! New York City has announced new rules regulating hiring tools powered by artificial intelligence, the country’s biggest office-to-apartment conversion is underway inside the old Daily News office and finally WNYC’s Precious Fondren has the details on a multi-sensory experience centered around cannabis that’s just opened in Lower Manhattan. And thank you listeners as we close out our first week of episodes from NYC NOW! We’ll be back Monday.

Good evening and welcome to NYC Now. I'm Jenae Pierre for WNYC. New York City has new rules regulating hiring tools powered by artificial intelligence. The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection released the specifics for the new law this week, the first of its kind in the country. They require employers to tell job applicants they're using such tools like chatbots, automated interview scheduling, and candidate discovery. Companies also have to test the tools for bias every year

and post a summary of the results on their website. CEO Shea Brown of the research consulting firm Babel AI says employers will have to reveal quite a bit. It's really bold what they're doing in terms of forcing transparency. It's pushing people and it's pushing other jurisdictions to really think about what's possible. The final rules will go into effect on July 5th. Stay close.

We'll head down to Lower Manhattan after the break. blocks from the southern tip of Manhattan, construction crews are hauling debris out of an empty 22-story office building. There's a plan to turn the once sprawling office space into a new apartment complex. WNYC reporter David Brand has the details. 25 Water Street is a brown brick tower that once housed J.P. Morgan, the Daily News, and a range of other tenants who mostly left during the pandemic. The new owners plan to turn it into 1,300 apartments,

plus a massive gym, shops, and a couple swimming pools. Owner Brian Steinwortsl says it's the biggest office-to-apartment conversion plan in the country. And the kind of project Mayor Adams and Governor Hockel say New York needs to supercharge housing construction. It'll help to continue the transition of the financial district into a 24-7 mixed-use neighborhood. The developers plan to transform the building inside and out. They'll scoop two courtyards from the center, wrap apartment. around them and raise the height to 32 stories. They plan to squeeze more than four dozen apartments onto each floor,

fitting them together like Tetris pieces. Right now, the imposing facade and narrow window slits give off prison vibes. But the building actually won a design award when it first opened in the 1960s. It was meant to look like a punch card, housing telecommunications offices and equipment. Lead architect Eugene Flotteran says it's now a prime candidate for apartments, with bigger windows and repurposed parts. they'll turn an old loading bay into a parking garage. The great thing for us about conversions is there really are treasure chests that you need to get into and explore and find all the stuff.

The residential plan still needs final approval from the city's buildings department, which should happen as long as it complies with zoning and construction rules. The building won't include any apartments for low-income New Yorkers. That's something many leaders and housing advocates want to change in future conversion projects. That's WNYC reporter David Brand. A new multi-sensory experience centered around cannabis has just opened in lower Manhattan. WNYC reporter Precious Fondren spoke to the curators about their hopes to entertain and educate the public. There's a newly open space in Soho that radiates glowing green light after dark.

It's called THC NYC, and the THC stands for the House of Cannabis. But at a time when weed shops are opening across the city, This space is about showing, not selling. It's very much a hybrid concept between a multisensory experience and what we would guess call a museum. Marcel Fry co-founded the House of Cannabis. The five-floor experience includes 10 immersive exhibitions. One room shows the plant at different stages in its growing process. Others illustrate how marijuana has impacted popular culture, fashion, and even wellness.

It was really important to me for this not to be the obvious choice, but to be an elevated choice in terms of design. That's creative director Dan Coe. People would think big bongs, very cartoony, very theme parky. We really wanted to present the plant for what it was. It's this really magical part of nature that elevates us in endless ways. Coe and Fry also hope the experience educates the public about how cannabis has affected people's lives in negative ways.

In a room called the Forum, five large screens play videos of people who ran into trouble for drug possession. The Room is a collaboration with the Drug Policy Alliance. We believe that every person should be able to work or parent or be housed and have their community and experience joy and live freely, regardless of drug use. Melissa Moore is the Alliance's Civil Systems Reform Director, and she says the Alliance worked with the House of Cannabis to show visitors how even a minor marijuana conviction could land someone in jail

get them fired and affect their ability to care for their child. I would hope that people, visitors to the House of Cannabis and to that room of the forum, walk away with a degree of knowledge about just how far-reaching the impact is of the drug war and the types of drug war logic and the way that it's infected so many other parts of people's lives at this point. And the fact that we can do something about this. The House of Cannabis is doing its part by hiring formally incarcerated people. Marcel Fry hopes the space can become a kind of community center for all. THC includes a cafe and bodega and monthly programming by educators is coming soon.

Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. Now, if you've been listening this week, congratulations. You're our beta testers. It's our first week since starting the show, and we want to thank you for bearing with us as we perfect how we get our episodes up and into your feed. Our production team is tiny, but it's mighty, and it includes Sean Boutich, Ave Carrillo, Audrey Cooper, Jared Marcel, Carrie Nolan, and Wayne Schollmeister, with help from the entire WNYC Newsroom. Our logo was designed by the people at Buck, and our music was composed by Alexis Quadrato.

I'm Jene Pierre. We'll be back on Monday.