NYC Mass Timber Studio opens third cohort focused on housing. September 25, 2026 New York Construction Report staff writer The New York City Economic Development Corporation has opened applications for the third cohort of its NYC Mass Timber Studio, with the program focusing exclusively on housing for the first time. The technical assistance program helps development teams incorporate mass timber into projects across New York City. Up to eight active housing projects will be selected for the latest cohort. The program is part of Mayor Zohran Mamdani's housing strategy, which identifies industrialized construction, including standardization and prefabrication, as a way to speed up housing delivery and improve construction costs and quality. Mass timber uses engineered wood components that are fabricated for assembly on site. The approach can reduce embodied carbon from construction materials while also allowing elements of building construction to be manufactured off site. "Mass timber can advance our housing and sustainability goals, delivering faster construction and greener buildings," Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning Leila Bozorg said. The third cohort will support projects that demonstrate ways to combine modular planning, off-site manufacturing and mass timber construction in residential development. Participants will receive technical assistance, project-specific feasibility analysis, peer learning, regulatory support and connections to workforce and supply-chain resources. The Studio launched in 2023 and its first two cohorts supported 14 projects, including multifamily residential buildings, community centres and public libraries. The latest cohort will be operated by NYCEDC in partnership with WoodWorks, the New York City Department of Buildings, the Fire Department of the City of New York, the Mayor's Office of Climate & Environmental Justice and the American Institute of Architects New York. The program is also supported by the Softwood Lumber Board, the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities and the USDA Forest Service. Buildings Commissioner Ahmed Tigani said the housing focus reflects the need to deliver projects on accelerated timelines while maintaining sustainability and design standards. "Delivering housing on accelerated timelines is a key objective of the Mamdani administration's housing agenda," Tigani said. WoodWorks President and CEO Jennifer Cover said the program can help multifamily projects improve design efficiency and material use while making mass timber more competitive. The Studio also supports the goals of New York City's Green Economy Action Plan, which seeks to expand sectors that address climate change and create green-collar employment. NYCEDC said 40 per cent of annual emissions come from the built environment, with 13 per cent attributed to materials and construction.

Last week in antitrust litigation (#077). Week of September 7, 2026 Top Takeaways * City-Backed Grocery Discounts Face Predatory-Pricing Claims: Supermarket plaintiffs challenged New York City's planned grocery program, alleging that mandated discounts supported by public subsidies would exclude private competitors. The suit puts public-private operating arrangements - not just traditional corporate pricing strategies - under antitrust scrutiny. * Capacity Decisions Can Strengthen Price-Fixing Allegations: In Artuso, repeated, closely timed price increases, mill closures, and other supporting facts allowed containerboard price-fixing claims to survive dismissal. The court treated capacity reductions as evidence supporting the pricing conspiracy, while finding no separately pleaded output-restriction conspiracy. * Foreign Collusion Allegations Need a Concrete U.S. Connection: The Concrete & Cement Additives court dismissed claims despite plausible allegations of European coordination, finding insufficient facts establishing a U.S. conspiracy or qualifying domestic effects. The ruling also underscores that corporate affiliations cannot substitute for allegations connecting each defendant to the challenged conduct. New Cases Filed Nat'l Supermarket Ass'n v. City of New York (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 9, 2026): National Supermarket Association, R&E Corporation, and The Real Chance filed suit against the City of New York and the New York City Economic Development Corporation alleging that defendants' tax-financed N.Y.C. Groceries program constitutes predatory pricing designed to attempt to monopolize, and through agreements with selected private operators conspire to monopolize, the market for the retail sale of general consumer groceries at full-service grocery stores inside each Service Radius in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act. The complaint alleges that defendants will require privately operated, City-owned grocery stores to sell a Core Basket of everyday groceries at prices averaging 30% below competing retailers while subsidizing the resulting losses through free rent, property-tax exemptions, $70 million in public capital, and ongoing taxpayer-funded Affordability Payments. According to the complaint, the subsidized pricing would prevent private full-service grocers within the Service Radii from matching the mandated discount while recovering their costs, threaten those competitors with elimination or absorption, and reduce independent centers of grocery competition and consumer choice. The follow-on cases that were filed are: * Kessler v. Verisign, Inc. (C.D. Cal. Sept. 4, 2026) (alleging defendants unlawfully monopolized the market for .com domain registry services like in Mo v. Internet Corp. for Assigned Names & Nos. (C.D. Cal. Sept. 22, 2025)) * Davis v. Amazon.com, Inc. (N.D. Cal. Sept. 7, 2026) (alleging Amazon unlawfully wielded monopsony power in the labor market for Amazon delivery service partner drivers like in New Jersey v. Amazon.com, Inc. (D.N.J. Aug. 4, 2026)) * Gen. Mills, Inc. v. ASR Grp. Int'l (N.D. Ill. Sept. 4, 2026) (alleging defendants conspired to fix prices for granulated sugar like in Olivares v. ASR Grp. Int'l (D. Minn. Sept. 13, 2024)) * Atwood v. Tyson Foods, Inc. (D. Minn. Sept. 4, 2026) (new complaint filed in the In re Cattle & Beef Antitrust Litig. MDL) * Macon-Bibb Cnty. v. REV Grp. (E.D. Wis. Sept. 8, 2026) (alleging defendants conspired to inflate the price of fire trucks like in City of La Crosse v. Oshkosh Corp. (E.D. Wis. Aug. 20, 2025)); City of Toledo v. REV Grp. (E.D. Wis. Sept. 9, 2026) (same) * Rich Holdings Inc. v. ASR Grp. Int'l (D. Minn. Sept. 8, 2026) (alleging defendants conspired to fix prices for granulated sugar like in Olivares v. ASR Grp. Int'l (D. Minn. Sept. 13, 2024)) * Dormdudesbreaks, LLC v. TikTok Inc. (C.D. Cal. Sept. 8, 2026) (alleging conspiracy to monopolize sports memorabilia market like in GFC & Supply Inc. v. TikTok Inc. (C.D. Cal. Oct. 20, 2025)); MVP Breaks PLLC v. TikTok Inc. (C.D. Cal. Sept. 10, 2026) (same) Dispositive Orders and TROs Artuso Pastry Foods Corp. v. Packaging Corp. of Am. (N.D. Ill. Sept. 4, 2026): In this case alleging that leading containerboard manufacturers engaged in a per se unlawful conspiracy to fix prices and restrict output for containerboard products, the court denied defendants' joint motion to dismiss and the individual motions filed by Pratt and PCA. The court reasoned that (a) plaintiff plausibly alleged a price-fixing conspiracy through six rounds of substantially parallel, closely timed price increases and announcements, reinforced by plus factors including abrupt shifts to "value over volume" strategies, risky mill closures and capacity reductions, a highly concentrated market conducive to collusion, and the temporal proximity of a 2023 industry conference to a coordinated price increase, although the allegations did not independently plead a separate output-restriction conspiracy; (b) the complaint adequately tied Pratt and PCA individually to the alleged scheme through their participation in repeated lockstep price increases and opportunities for coordination; and (c) defendants could not obtain dismissal on limitations grounds because the complaint did not establish that plaintiff discovered or reasonably should have discovered the alleged conspiracy more than four years before filing suit. In re Concrete & Cement Additives Antitrust Litig. (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 2, 2026): In this case alleging that multiple corporate groups conspired to fix prices in the market for concrete admixtures, cement additives, and related products ("CCAs"), the court granted defendants' motions to dismiss with prejudice. The court reasoned that (a) although the amended complaints plausibly alleged coordinated pricing conduct among French executives in Europe, they did not plausibly allege either direct evidence or parallel U.S. pricing sufficient to infer that the agreement extended to the United States, and the alleged investigations, market structure, trade-association activity, and motive to avoid international price arbitrage did not supply adequate plus factors; (b) plaintiffs separately failed to plead facts tying each U.S. and parent/sponsor defendant to the alleged conspiracy rather than relying on corporate relationships and group pleading; and (c) to the extent plaintiffs alleged only a French conspiracy producing U.S. effects, the claims were barred by the FTAIA because plaintiffs did not plead imports covered by the import exclusion or a sufficiently direct, substantial, and reasonably foreseeable domestic effect, including any mechanism by which French price fixing caused U.S. prices to rise. The court denied further leave to amend as futile because plaintiffs had already amended once with the benefit of the court's prior ruling and additional cooperation evidence, yet still could not cure the deficiencies. Trotter v. NCAA (S.D.W. Va. Sept. 9, 2026): In this case alleging that the NCAA's eligibility rules are anticompetitive, the court denied plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction. The court reasoned that (a) the challenged eligibility rule is commercial and subject to antitrust scrutiny because it limits athletes' participation in labor markets where they may earn NIL and revenue-sharing compensation, but (b) plaintiffs failed to present sufficient sport-specific evidence to define the relevant markets or to show actual market-wide anticompetitive effects such as underemployment or wage suppression, particularly because the new rule did not remove previously eligible athletes from the market but merely declined to add athletes who already had exhausted their eligibility; the court therefore found plaintiffs unlikely to succeed on the merits and did not reach the remaining preliminary-injunction factors. *** *** *** If you have any antirust questions or would like more information about any of these matters, please contact one of the following authors: This newsletter has been prepared by Kressin Powers LLC for educational and informational purposes only regarding selected recent legal developments and does not constitute advertising or solicitation. 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