The Wall Street Journal reports that a senior official in the de Blasio administration met with an executive of the Allure Group in December of 2014 about lifting deed restrictions at Rivington House. Multiple investigations are being conducted into the matter following the sale of the former AIDS nursing home to luxury condo developers.
The mayor has, of course, said he did not know about the deed change until March of this year. Here’s the gist of today’s story:
The record of meetings and emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal suggests, for the first time, the presence of de Blasio aides in early stages of discussions about Rivington House with the Allure Group, long before the firm sold the property to a residential developer. Avi Fink, a senior aide to Mr. de Blasio, met with Allure executive Joel Landau at City Hall in December 2014, as Allure was in the process of buying Rivington House, according to records and people familiar with the matter.
The original owner of Rivington House, VillageCare, hired lobbyist James Capalino to work on the deed issue in 2013. As Capalino told us last month, he wrote an October 2013 memo to Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs (a Bloomberg administration holdover) about the proposed change. But there were other overtures to the mayor’s office:
In May 2014, a VillageCare executive wrote to Dom Williams, chief of staff for First Deputy Mayor Tony Shorris, about having the nonprofit deed restriction lifted, according to an email reviewed by the Journal… (In October of 2014), Joel Landau (of the Allure Group) wrote to an official with the Department of Citywide Administrative Services asking about converting the property to for-profit status. Mr. Landau drafted an email for workers to send to City Hall, asking officials to support the property’s conversion to a for-profit nursing home, according to documents reviewed by the Journal and people familiar with the matter. Community board members and local officials said Kevin Finnegan, a political representative for 1199-SEIU, was involved in the discussions with City Hall, according to documents and a person familiar with the matter. The union had backed Allure’s plan to convert the property to a for-profit facility. Mr. Finnegan said he was involved but declined to comment further.
The mayor’s press office declined to comment for the story.
