Mayor Adams said the city aims to reimagine the 122-acre port, which is nestled between Red Hook and the Columbia Street Waterfront District. The terminal is set to be transferred to the city from the Port Authority under a lease agreement.

Any potential redevelopment of the waterfront would hinge on a city planning process that is just getting underway and would include community input. Today, the fenced-in marine terminal is a sprawl of pavement dotted by cargo sheds, shipping containers and soaring cranes. It was built in the 1950s and ’60s; two of its piers are so dilapidated that they are no longer in use.

The port sits above the Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel and a short walk from Brooklyn Bridge Park, which was transformed over the last 15 years from an industrial waterfront into a breathtaking green space with athletic fields, covered basketball courts and sweeping views of lower Manhattan.

Adams said the marine terminal carries its own untapped potential. The land swap deal — in which the city has agreed to trade the Howland Hook Marine Terminal in Staten Island in return for the Red Hook waterfront — is one of the city’s largest real estate transactions in recent years, the mayor said.

“Just look at this space, and just see the reimagination that is possible,” Adams marveled, promising that the trade would ultimately produce a “neighborhood on our shoreline.”

The city will immediately invest $80 million in the port, according to City Hall. Those investments are to go toward repairs and a new electric crane to expand container terminal operations. The state has also pledged a $15 million investment in a cold storage facility at the site.

Gov. Hochul said the lease transfer is a step toward realizing the dreams of New Yorkers who for decades have imagined turning the marine terminal into “something more useful for the neighborhood.”

She said she and the mayor are impatient to revive the waterfront, but suggested they will make sure to consider community input. The announcement Tuesday was light on detail about any future projects unrelated to shipping at the site.

Still, Hochul suggested the time has come to “set sail on a whole new chapter for New York’s maritime future.” She said it would be “irresponsible” not to reimagine the terminal.

“Yes, this was once a thriving port,” Hochul acknowledged. “But reality has settled in. It’s no longer the port that it once was.”

The plan to shift the terminal out of the Port Authority’s hands was not warmly received by all.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a Manhattan Democrat who represented the port for three decades before redistricting changed his district’s lines, said the site has unique shipping value as the lone container port facility with eastern access to the Hudson River.

Nadler argued that converting the port into housing could imperil supply chains in the event of a local maritime disaster, like the dramatic bridge collapse that snarled the Port of Baltimore earlier this spring.

“Instead of arbitrarily changing the ownership of Red Hook piers, the City, State, and the Port Authority should be doing everything possible to expand and invest in the port in Brooklyn,” Nadler said in a statement, adding: “I strongly urge the State, City, and the Port Authority to abandon this transfer.”

But Rep. Dan Goldman, the Democrat who represents lower Manhattan and the Brooklyn area around the port, celebrated the deal and vowed the project would carry on Nadler’s vision for the area as a shipping hub. He described the terminal as a “massively underused area with incredible potential.”

“We’ve now embarked on a very collaborative, cooperative process,” Goldman promised.

Clooney, a two-time Oscar winner and one of Hollywood’s most familiar faces, served as a writer and director on the film version of “Good Night, and Good Luck,” which was released in 2005 to rave reviews. It was nominated for six Oscars including two for Clooney’s screenplay and directorial work.

The story centers on conflict between Murrow and Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin during the Republican lawmaker’s far-reaching mid-20th century crusade against Communism and suspected Communist sympathizers.

The real-life Murrow said McCarthy’s chief achievement was “confusing the public mind as between internal and external threats of Communism.” McCarthy castigated Murrow’s network, CBS, as “dishonest” and “arrogant” when it refused to grant him air time.

In the movie version, Clooney played Fred Friendly, a leader at CBS. In the stage adaptation, the actor is to portray Murrow, the role originated by David Strathairn.

“Good Night, and Good Luck” is set to reach Broadway in spring 2025. It is not clear which theater will host the production.

In a statement, Clooney, 63, said he was “honored, after all these years, to be coming back to the stage and especially, to Broadway, the art form and the venue that every actor aspires” to reach. Clooney is an alum of the Beverly Hills Playhouse Acting School and also cut his teeth with Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

David Cromer, who directed “Prayer for the French Republic” this winter, has been tapped to lead the stage version of “Good Night, and Good Luck.”

“Edward R. Murrow operated from a kind of moral clarity that feels vanishingly rare in today’s media landscape,” Cromer said in a statement. “There was an immediacy in those early live television broadcasts that today can only be effectively captured on stage, in front of a live audience.”

The decision, issued in Nassau Supreme Court by Justice Francis Ricigliano, delivers a significant victory to the New York Civil Liberties Union, which had sued the GOP-led Long Island county over the ban.

In February, County Executive Bruce Blakeman issued the ban, forbidding transgender women and girls from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity at about 100 county-run facilities.

Issuing his order, Blakeman cited concerns about transgender women gaining an unfair advantage in athletic competitions. He struggled to identify any examples of such an issue materializing in his county, but framed the ban as a preventative measure.

In a 13-page decision, Ricigliano wrote that Blakeman instituted the ban “despite there being no corresponding legislative enactment providing the County Executive with the authority to issue such an order.”

In doing so, Ricigliano added, Blakeman exceeded the “scope of his authority as the Chief Executive Officer of Nassau County.”

The opinion went further than may have been expected by the NYCLU, which had sought a temporary pause on the ban amid the litigation. But by focusing on the limitations of Blakeman’s powers, the judge skipped past the civil rights questions undergirding the case — robbing either side of a conclusive legal victory on those points.

Still, the NYCLU celebrated the demise of the ban Friday.

“We are gratified the court has struck down a harmful policy that belongs in the dustbin of history,” Gabriella Larios, a lawyer for the NYCLU, said in a statement. “The ruling deals a serious blow to County Executive Blakeman’s attempt to score cheap political points by peddling harmful stereotypes about transgender women and girls.”

Blakeman said in a statement that the decision displayed a “lack of courage from a Judge who didn’t want to decide the case on its merits.”

“Nassau County will appeal without much faith in Appellate Division applying the law without far left doctrine being used to undermine women’s sports,” he added, referring to the mid-level court division above the state Supreme Court.

In Nassau Supreme Court, the NYCLU had argued the ban violates New York State’s 2019 Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, which outlaws gender identity-based discrimination in New York’s public spaces.

The Democratic state lawmaker who wrote the 2019 law, Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal of Manhattan, sided with the NYCLU.

“It’s very clear,” he said earlier this week. “You can’t discriminate against New Yorkers — whether they be adults or children — based on their gender identity or expression.”

The county argued in court documents that the ban was supported by the protections for women enshrined in the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

Nassau County suggested in an April court filing that federal protections should be applied to “biological” women in sports, and that those protections supersede any competing protections for transgender women in state laws.

In a separate case, a federal judge, Nusrat Choudhury, wrote that she found the county’s claims based on the equal protection rights of women and girls to be “unpersuasive.”

In the federal case, Nassau County sued state Attorney General Letitia James after she issued a statement urging the county to rescind its ban, which she described as “transphobic and blatantly illegal.”

Choudhury dismissed the county’s lawsuit last month. She ruled that the county lacked standing to bring the lone claim in its complaint against James, a Democrat.

Some Republicans appear to see transgender sports bans as a winning political issue. Democrats say the measures are cruel and potentially dangerous to transgender youth, who report alarmingly high rates of depression.

The NYCLU filed its complaint on behalf of a Nassau County women’s roller derby league. The lawsuit said the league, the Long Island Roller Rebels, has at least one member who could have been barred from playing under the ban.

Hochul described the state’s legal cannabis rollout as a “disaster” and said the Cannabis Management Office has been stuck in a “start-up mode.” But the governor promised the office would be transformed into a more efficient agency, a push that comes less than a month after Hochul and lawmakers approved a state budget that includes sweeping measures aimed at penalizing illicit cannabis retailers.

State officials are pursuing a two-pronged effort — padlocking more unlicensed shops and licensing more retailers — to sweep away the nettlesome illicit market that emerged after the state legalized recreational marijuana use in 2021. Today, New York City’s streetscape is speckled with unlicensed smoke shops selling cannabis in open disregard for the state’s licensing rules.

Mayor Adams’ office has estimated there are 2,900 illicit cannabis shops in New York City. Fifty-six legal retailers have opened citywide, according to the state’s Cannabis Management Office. There may be 50 unlicensed shops for every licensed seller.

Many of the illicit stores target children and attract crime, according to officials. At the same time, thousands of applicants for cannabis business permits are waiting to hear back from the state.

“There are deep-seated issues at OCM — issues that have limited its ability to fulfill its licensing role,” Hochul said in a speech in Albany, spotlighting the knotty application process. She said the growth of the illegal market is “absolutely unacceptable.”

Hochul vowed, “We are going to unclog the licensing bottleneck.”

She also said the state would produce a map to assist applicants in finding locations, and to enable New Yorkers to identify licensed stores.

Hochul’s speech came in tandem with the release of a report, commissioned by the governor in March, that examined roadblocks to the licensing process and deficiencies in the Cannabis Management Office.

The report described the Cannabis Management Office’s staff as “well-intentioned” but said the office often uses needlessly complex procedures, including a byzantine application system. The report further criticized the office’s staffing decisions, saying it has not sufficiently manned “the core of its regulatory operations.”

Redundant decision making by leadership in the short-staffed agency has produced “implementation challenges and resulted in confusion, difficulties, and delays,” said the report, led by Jeanette Moy, the commissioner of the state’s Office of General Services.

The analysis said 90% of the applications the office receives require corrections, underscoring the intricate nature of the submission process.

Chris Alexander, the leader of the Cannabis Management Office since its inception in 2021, will leave his post in September, Hochul said. A replacement has not been announced.

The governor said Alexander “graciously agreed to work with us for the remainder of his term to help implement those operational changes.”

Alexander did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

Aaron Ghitelman, a former spokesman for the office, suggested that the governor was unfairly scapegoating Alexander, and that she had not provided Alexander with “the support, resources and help” needed for the permitting process.

He described Alexander as thoughtful and caring, and said Hochul was deflecting blame and “playing political games.” The governor, he argued, was long disengaged with the work of the cannabis office.

“Gov. Hochul is a day late and a dime bag short,” Ghitelman said by phone. “I’m glad she cares about it now.”

In her remarks in Albany, Hochul commended the cannabis office’s “hard-working” staff and pushed back on criticism that she was trying to point fingers at others.

“It’s about pointing OCM in a new direction and implementing solutions that work for everyone,” she said, adding, “Together we’re taking much-needed steps — long overdue — to make the cannabis program in New York successful.”

The civil liberties group made its case in a court more than 10 weeks after Nassau County issued the ban, which forbids transgender women and girls from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity at about 100 county-run facilities.

The NYCLU has asked a Nassau County Supreme Court justice, Francis Ricigliano, to issue an order freezing the ban as litigation plays out.

In March, the civil liberties organization sued Nassau County, arguing that the ban violates state law. The NYCLU filed the complaint on behalf of a Nassau County women’s roller derby league.

The lawsuit said the league, the Long Island Roller Rebels, has at least one member who could be barred from playing under the ban. The complaint said the ban was issued against a “backdrop of clear statutory protections, regulations and guidance” preventing discrimination on the basis of gender identity in publicly operated athletic facilities.

The lawsuit cited a 2019 state law, the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, which prohibits “discrimination based on gender identity or expression” in public spaces.

The Democratic state lawmaker who wrote the 2019 law, Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal of Manhattan, has sided with the NYCLU.

“It’s very clear,” he said by phone Tuesday. “You can’t discriminate against New Yorkers — whether they be adults or children — based on their gender identity or expression.”

Nassau County, which tried unsuccessfully to move the case to federal court, has asked the state court to dismiss the complaint. The county has argued in court documents that the ban is supported by the protections for women enshrined in the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

In recent decades, federal courts have sometimes applied the clause — with limited sweep — to questions of gender discrimination. The 14th Amendment, a broadly written Reconstruction era amendment aimed at preventing racial discrimination, dictates that no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a Republican, has said he issued his ban to prevent transgender women and girls from gaining an unfair competitive advantage in sports. He has struggled to cite an example of such an issue surfacing in his county, but has presented the ban as a preventative measure. 

He has said the county wanted to “get ahead of the curve.”

BLAKEMAN_PENNY

In an April court filing, Nassau County suggested that federal protections should be applied to “biological” women in sports, and that those protections should supersede competing protections for transgender women in state laws.

“To the extent that these sections of New York State law unfairly and unequally afford opportunities to compete and excel to transgender females while discriminating against and denying identical opportunities to physiologically different biological woman,” the filing said, “they are in irreconcilable conflict with the Equal Protection Clause of the federal constitution.”

Gabriella Larios, an NYCLU lawyer leading the lawsuit, said in an interview Tuesday that the argument is not one “that other courts around the country have bought” and that a federal court had determined in a separate case that the county had failed to prove that quashing the ban would violate the Equal Protection Clause.

In the federal case, Nassau County sued the state attorney general, Letitia James, in a bid to prevent her from bringing a lawsuit over the ban.

A federal judge dismissed the case last month. The judge, Nusrat Choudhury, wrote that the county’s claims based on the equal protection rights of women and girls were “unpersuasive.”

James, a Democrat, has not sued Nassau County. But she has panned the ban as “transphobic and blatantly illegal.”

In recent years, Republicans have pursued transgender bans in athletics, presenting them as efforts to preserve fairness in competition. Democrats say the measures are cruel and potentially dangerous to transgender youth, who report alarmingly high rates of depression.

Gov. Hochul, arguably the most politically powerful Taylor Swift fan in the State of New York, has quoted the ultrapopular singer-songwriter, deemed her a “philosopher” and used the song “Welcome to New York” as music at an important speech to the Legislature. 

Two weeks ago, when Swift released her new album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” the governor told reporters at her Manhattan office that she would make time to listen. She confirmed last week that she had.

“I love her,” Hochul said. Her favorite track on the album is “So Long, London.”

Swift’s publicist did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

It is not uncommon for politicians to make a show of their admiration for musicians who they think speak to their political identity or to their supporters — or, simply, make music they like.

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo maintained a public friendship with Billy Joel, the piano-pounding bard of Long Island, a politically purple region where Cuomo showed unique strength for a Democrat. Former Mayor Mike Bloomberg referenced Jay-Z cuts.

In presidential politics, Barack Obama embraced musicians like Stevie Wonder and Bruce Springsteen, two artists whose music spoke deeply to parts of his base. Frank Sinatra supercharged the candidacy of President John F. Kennedy.

In Hochul’s case, the 65-year-old centrist Democrat seems to have made a calculation that Swift can help connect her with younger voters who have seemed skeptical, said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic political consultant.

In a Siena College survey conducted last month, 41% of New Yorkers ages 18 to 34 said they approved of Hochul’s job performance, making the age group the governor’s weakest.

“She understands the nature of gossip and entertainment in American politics, and talking about Taylor Swift gets younger people and others to pay attention,” Sheinkopf said. “Taylor Swift’s lyrics are the lyrics of that entire generation overall, and those are the people she needs.”

“She may also like the music. Why not?”

Chris Coffey, a Democratic strategist, said referencing Swift also allows the governor to make the byzantine New York State government seem more accessible.

“It’s speaking a language that people understand,” he said. “You can show that you can do big things, lead the State of New York and have some fun while you do it.”

Hochul, the first woman elected governor of New York, may find some personal resonance in the experiences of Swift, who is well on her way to becoming the most popular female music artist in American history.

Swift, after all, has sung about “running as fast as I can, wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man.”

Hochul’s team has bristled at times over perceptions of the governor they viewed as gendered and unfair.

She has been seen, by critics and supporters alike, as a cautious political operator, one who is exacting with words and sometimes slow to jump into a political maelstrom.

For example, while Mayor Adams was embarking upon a rapid-fire — and controversial — press tour defending the New York Police Department’s handling of protests at Columbia University, Hochul was touting wins for New Yorkers in the new state budget. She privately made a visit to Columbia to assess the situation and has also defended the NYPD.

But Hochul, who was slow to react to Lee Zeldin‘s crime-focused, stronger-than-expected Republican run for governor in 2022, has been aggressive in embracing a national role heading into the 2024 elections.

Though she is not on the ballot in November, her political brand is, to an extent. She is set to serve as one of President Biden’s top campaign surrogates, and she has taken a central role in  efforts to recover swing New York House districts that Democrats lost in 2022. In the midterms, Hochul’s weak showing against Zeldin hurt Democratic candidates down the ballot.

Linking herself to a highly popular musician might boost her efforts, Sheinkopf suggested.

“It’s about young people,” he said. “It’s about voters. It’s about message. It’s about making politics look less removed from the people.”

Kennedy captured about 68% of the vote in incomplete election results published by the state Board of Elections. His Republican rival, Gary Dickson, picked up about 32% of the vote, the results showed.

“Oh baby!” Kennedy, 47, told supporters as he basked in his win Tuesday night. “Thank you, Western New York — what a resounding victory.”

The win by Kennedy cements Democratic control of New York’s 26th Congressional District. The area’s former Democratic congressman, Brian Higgins, resigned in February and moved on to a job leading a Buffalo theater.

The 26th District runs north from Buffalo up to Niagara Falls.

Kennedy’s elevation continues the troubles of House Speaker Mike Johnson, the Louisiana Republican who is presiding over a fractured GOP caucus in a nearly split chamber.

Kennedy said his victory brings America “one step closer to preserving Democracy” and “one vote closer to a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives.”

It was not immediately clear when Kennedy, who joined the state Senate in 2011 and is known as a strong fund-raiser, would be sworn into Congress.

As a state lawmaker, he was heavily focused on transportation. His congressional campaign platform centered on support for reproductive rights and gun control.

Gov. Hochul, a moderate Democrat from Buffalo who once served in the House, celebrated Kennedy’s victory.

“Congratulations, Congressman-Elect Tim Kennedy!” the governor said in a statement on social media Wednesday morning. “Tim is a dedicated public servant who will fight for the needs of Western New Yorkers. NY-26 will always be home, and I’m proud to have strong Democratic leadership in Congress.”

Alicia Keys’ Midtown-set musical “Hell’s Kitchen” and the 1970s-era, music studio-set play “Stereophonic” led the way with 13 nominations each. The winners are due to be announced at a June 16 ceremony broadcast by CBS from Lincoln Center in Manhattan.

Here is a full accounting of the contenders across 26 awards categories.

Best Play

• “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”
• “Mary Jane”
• “Mother Play”
• “Prayer for the French Republic”
• “Stereophonic”

Best Musical

• “Hell’s Kitchen”
• “Illinoise”
• “The Outsiders”
• “Suffs”
• “Water for Elephants”

Best Revival of a Play

• “Appropriate”
• “An Enemy of the People”
• “Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch”

Best Book of a Musical

• “Hell’s Kitchen”
• “The Notebook”
• “The Outsiders”
• “Suffs”
• “Water for Elephants”

Best Original Score

• “Days of Wine and Roses”
• “Here Lies Love”
• “The Outsiders”
• “Stereophonic”
• “Suffs”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play

• William Jackson Harper, “Uncle Vanya”
• Leslie Odom Jr., “Purlie Victorious”
• Liev Schreiber, “Doubt: A Parable”
• Jeremy Strong, “An Enemy of the People”
• Michael Stuhlbarg, “Patriots”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play

• Betsy Aidem, “Prayer for the French Republic”
• Jessica Lange, “Mother Play”
• Rachel McAdams, “Mary Jane”
• Sarah Paulson, “Appropriate”
• Amy Ryan, “Doubt”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical

• Brody Grant, “The Outsiders”
• Jonathan Groff, “Merrily We Roll Along”
• Dorian Harewood, “The Notebook”
• Brian d’Arcy James, “Days of Wine and Roses”
• Eddie Redmayne, “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical

• Eden Espinosa, “Lempicka”
• Maleah Joi Moon, “Hell’s Kitchen”
• Kelli O’Hara, “Days of Wine and Roses”
• Maryann Plunkett, “The Notebook”
• Gayle Rankin, “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play

• Will Brill, “Stereophonic”
• Eli Gelb, “Stereophonic”
• Jim Parsons, “Mother Play”
• Tom Pecinka, “Stereophonic”
• Corey Stoll, “Appropriate”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play

• Quincy Tyler Bernstine, “Doubt”
• Juliana Canfield, “Stereophonic”
• Celia Keenan-Bolger, “Mother Play”
• Sarah Pidgeon, “Stereophonic”
• Kara Young, “Purlie Victorious”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical

• Roger Bart, “Back To The Future: The Musical”
• Joshua Boone, “The Outsiders”
• Brandon Victor Dixon, “Hell’s Kitchen”
• Sky Lakota-Lynch, “The Outsiders”
• Daniel Radcliffe, “Merrily We Roll Along”
• Steven Skybell, “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical

• Shoshana Bean, “Hell’s Kitchen”
• Amber Iman, “Lempicka”
• Nikki M. James, “Suffs”
• Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer, “Monty Python’s Spamalot”
• Kecia Lewis, “Hell’s Kitchen”
• Lindsay Mendez, “Merrily We Roll Along”
• Bebe Neuwirth, “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club”

Best Scenic Design of a Play

• “Appropriate”
• “An Enemy of the People”
• “Purlie Victorious”
• “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”
• “Stereophonic”

Best Scenic Design of a Musical

• “The Outsiders”
• “Hell’s Kitchen”
• “Water for Elephants”
• “Here Lies Love”
• “Lempicka”
• “Back To The Future: The Musical”
• “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club”

Best Costume Design of a Play

• “Appropriate”
• “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”
• “Stereophonic”
• “Purlie Victorious”
• “An Enemy of the People”

Best Costume Design of a Musical

• “Hell’s Kitchen”
• “The Great Gatsby”
• “Water for Elephants”
• “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club”
• “Suffs”

Best Lighting Design of a Play

• “An Enemy of the People”
• “Prayer for the French Republic”
• “Stereophonic”
• “Appropriate”
• “Grey House”

Best Lighting Design of a Musical

• “llinoise”
• “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club”
• “Hell’s Kitchen”
• “Water for Elephants”
• “The Outsiders”

Best Sound Design of a Play

• “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”
• “Mary Jane”
• “Grey House”
• “Appropriate”
• “Stereophonic”

Best Sound Design of a Musical

• “Here Lies Love”
• “Merrily We Roll Along”
• “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club”
• “Hell’s Kitchen”
• “The Outsiders”

Best Direction of a Play

• Daniel Aukin, “Stereophonic”
• Anne Kauffman, “Mary Jane”
• Kenny Leon, “Purlie Victorious”
• Lila Neugebauer, “Appropriate”
• Whitney White, “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”

Best Direction of a Musical

• Maria Friedman, “Merrily We Roll Along”
• Michael Greif, “Hell’s Kitchen”
• Leigh Silverman, “Suffs”
• Jessica Stone, “Water for Elephants”
• Danya Taymor, “The Outsiders”

Best Choreography

• “Here Lies Love”
• “Hell’s Kitchen”
• “The Outsiders”
• “Illinoise”
• “Water for Elephants”

Best Orchestrations

• “Illinoise”
• “Stereophonic”
• “The Outsiders”
• “Hell’s Kitchen”
• “Merrily We Roll Along”

The nominations announcement arrived after the ceremony’s 44-member nominating committee scoured Broadway’s third season since COVID to pluck out the strongest performances and sharpest productions.

The packed season has brought back familiar shows, including “The Wiz” (which was not nominated for any Tonys on Tuesday), and surfaced popular new arrivals such as “Suffs,” a musical about suffragists fighting for the vote, which picked up six nods.

Tuesday’s nominations were headlined by some household names, largely appearing in star-studded revivals. Those nominees included the velvet-voiced Leslie Odom Jr. in a nonsinging role in “Purlie Victorious,” the intense Jeremy Strong in a revival of Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People,” Liev Schreiber in “Doubt” and Rachel McAdams in “Mary Jane,” a new play that hauled in four nominations.

Daniel Radcliffe and Jonathan Groff also scored nods for their starring roles in a hugely popular revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along.” Eddie Redmayne picked up a nomination for “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club,” which received a strong nine nominations despite checkered critical reviews.

Tuesday was also a bright day for a musical interpretation of the Oklahoma coming-of-age story “The Outsiders,” which scored 12 nominations, and a revival of the sidesplitting, boundary-pushing “Appropriate,” which is led by an impressively gruff Sarah Paulson and earned eight nominations.

The five nominees for the Best New Musical honor were “Suffs,” “The Outsiders,” “Hell’s Kitchen,” “Illinoise,” which is inspired by the 2005 Sufjan Stevens album and received four nominations, and “Water for Elephants,” about life in a traveling circus (seven nominations).

The 13 nods for “Stereophonic” made it the most-nominated play in Tony Awards history. The show, beloved by critics, is centered on a fictional band as it records an album in 1970s California.

“I think the play has many resonances,” said Juliana Canfield, who plays Holly and was nominated in the Best Featured Actress category.  “I think it speaks to people who make art. I think it speaks to people who have ever been in love or had their heart broken. So, that’s basically everyone.”

It is seen as the favorite to take home the Best New Play honor.

This year’s ceremony will be held June 16 at Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater. The Tonys, which have often been held at Radio City Music Hall, have never been held at the Koch Theater, the home of City Ballet.

The relocation represents a continuation of the Tonys’ broadening geographic horizons. A year ago, the awards show was held at the United Palace in Washington Heights. Ariana DeBose is set to host for the third straight year.

A team of 836 voters has been tapped to select the winners, according to the Tonys. CBS broadcasts the ceremony.

After a bustling season, 36 shows were eligible for Tony Awards consideration this year. A flurry of productions arrived in April ahead of the nominations announcement.

“This season is so abundant with so many beautiful stories and expressions of art, and I hope that it just keeps going that way,” said Eden Espinosa, who snagged a Tony nomination for “Lempicka.” In the show, she morphs into Tamara de Lempicka, an influential Polish painter.

“I think people after the pandemic are hungry for art,” she said, “And for substance. And for escape.”

Even as New York theater has survived the pandemic with a parade of productions and attendance near the pre-COVID years’, Broadway has also changed.

Ticket sales have sagged and grosses have failed to keep up with inflation. More suburban theatergoers, who may have more money to throw at shows, now seem to stay home, according to Broadway League data. And producers, who face a financial high-wire act even in the best of times, have made some not-to-subtle calculations.

Many of today’s Broadway productions — even the most tantalizingly innovative and impressively executed — are scaled down. Some have sets more reminiscent of small-town productions. Others, such as last year’s revival of “A Doll’s House,” hardly have sets at all.

Since Broadway reopened after closing for 16 months due to COVID, there have been only scattered attempts to conjure the ambitious, broad-shouldered Broadway musical of yore. The rare showy productions — including “The Music Man,” “Funny Girl” and “Sweeney Todd” — have mostly been low-risk revivals.

But in seeking to channel the glitz, glamour and grandiosity of New York’s roaring 1920s, a musical adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby” has bucked the recent trend.

This “Gatsby,” driven by old-school ballads and backed by a producer who has said he’s not worried about losing money on Broadway shows, is brimming with bells and whistles.

Like Jay Gatsby as he woos his former lover, Daisy, the production team behind “Gatsby” plainly spared no expense in its drive to deliver 150 minutes of razzle-dazzle to theatergoers.

“When people think of ‘The Great Gatsby,’ they think of opulence and excessiveness and over-the-top and just glam for days,” said Cory Pattak, the planner of the show’s intricate lighting. “We really wanted to deliver on that.”

The goal, he added, was to create a show that feels “larger than life.”

Among the musical’s 42 scenes are trips to Gatsby’s gilded and labyrinthine Long Island mansion, a downtrodden and industrial Valley of Ashes in eastern Queens, and a flowery cottage that serves as the setting for Gatsby and Daisy’s reunion.

“Each one of them is uniquely opulent,” Marc Bruni, the show’s director, said of the sets, before clarifying, “and not opulent when it needs to be,” such as in the rusted-over Valley of Ashes.

There are 26 cast members, a 19-piece orchestra, two large retro automobiles and two types of fireworks that crackle above dancers’ heads. One visually arresting 1,644-square-foot LED video screen ties together the succession of complex set pieces that shuttle across the stage.

Sustaining the muscular musical, which opened Thursday at the cavernous Broadway Theatre, requires a “superhero team of stage managers and deck hands and electricians and props individuals,” said Paul Tate dePoo III, the show’s scenic designer.

“It’s kind of a marvel,” said Jeremy Jordan, who plays Gatsby and described the production as the biggest he has done “by far.”

Behind it all: A single pulsing tungsten light bulb, encased in green gel. It’s the green light at Daisy’s dock that Gatsby peers at longingly across Long Island Sound — and that, for decades of readers, has represented the elusive American Dream.

The story centers on Gatsby’s efforts to eclipse class differences in his romantic pursuit of the old-money Daisy, who loved him when she was younger but got married while he was away in World War I.

“Gatsby is a man with a big dream,” Bruni said. “And so that is something that very much lends itself to music.”

His production may not be the only or most successful musical interpretation of Fitzgerald’s handiwork headed to Broadway. A second show, titled simply “Gatsby” and directed by the Tony-winning Rachel Chavkin, is due at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., next month, with Broadway seen as its likely next stop.

There has been a mad rush to bring “Gatsby” to the stage after the novel’s copyright protection expired and the book entered the public domain in 2021, giving producers a green light to bend it into a musical.

One South Korean producer, Chunsoo Shin, immediately saw an opportunity in the material and recruited a team to take it to Broadway. Shin has had success as a producer in his home country. He has had a tougher go in the U.S., persevering through a series of flops, including this season’s Britney Spears-inspired “Once Upon a One More Time.”

But where “Once Upon a One More Time” recycled well-worn songs, “Gatsby” has its own original score from Jason Howland, who was behind the music for “Little Women” and “Paradise Square.”

Most Broadway shows do not turn profits. And Shin has said he’s less concerned with making money than with helping to elevate the Asian theater market on the world stage, in part by being a player in his own right on Broadway.

It’s unclear if Shin’s “Gatsby” will run long enough to cover its expenses. Critics have offered mixed appraisals. The Daily News’ Chris Jones deemed its scale “massive” and its score “lush” but its storytelling ultimately cold.

Even if “Gatsby” careens quickly offstage, it will have succeeded in reviving a degree of ambition that can sometimes seem relegated to Broadway’s boom-time past.

In that way, it may have something in common with its title character, who offers a defiant reply when another character, Nick, tells him one “can’t repeat the past.”

“Why, of course you can,” Gatsby says.