Last month Jesse Hamilton, a longtime ally of Mayor Eric Adams who oversees the city’s real estate transactions at the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS), stepped off a plane at JFK Airport returning from a trip to Japan and had his phone seized by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.
That was just the start.
Since then three separate investigations have begun into the secretive, behind-the-scenes way the city signs leases, including potential conflicts of interest by Hamilton — including on a pending deal to move a city agency to a Wall Street tower owned by a billionaire mayoral donor.
On Monday, Councilmember Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan) revealed that the City Council has begun looking at a handful of DCAS leases, including two in Manhattan office buildings arranged by real estate broker Cushman & Wakefield. The Cushman official in charge of handling DCAS leases, Diana Boutross, accompanied Hamilton on his trip to Japan, as did Adams chief adviser Ingrid Lewis-Martin.
City Comptroller Brad Lander also confirmed to THE CITY last week that his team “is in the preliminary stages of a leasing related audit,” according to spokesperson Kat Capossela. (Lander is one of a half-dozen candidates running for mayor against Adams). Capossella declined to share further details about the specific targets of the comptroller’s inquiry.
On Tuesday Councilmember Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn), chair of the Council’s committee on governmental operations, will hold a hearing zeroing in on the pending lease at 14 Wall Street. Owner Alexander Rovt, along with family members, has made multiple donations to Adams’ campaign and legal defense fund.
That hearing had its initial impetus in a story from THE CITY revealing major lease deals involving Boutross and Rovt. Subsequently, Politico reported that Hamilton had meddled in a pending lease with another landlord to steer it to Rovt’s Wall Street property instead.
Brewer, chair of the Council’s oversight and investigations committee, said the Council’s investigators will look at leases highlighted in a recent report by THE CITY looking at Hamilton’s involvement in shepherding multi-million dollar transactions with landlords desperate to fill empty office space created as a result of the pandemic.
Since the Adams administration took over City Hall, DCAS has dramatically increased the square footage of new leases the agency has entered into with private sector landlords for office space, from 1,136,000 square feet in fiscal year 2022 to 2,884,000 square feet in fiscal 2024, according to the latest Mayor’s Management Report.
“It’s a huge amount,” Brewer told THE CITY, questioning why DCAS is leasing all this space at a time when there are fewer agency workers coming into actual offices than before the pandemic normalized working from home. Many city workers are permitted to work remotely part of the time.
And Brewer noted that DCAS’ procedures for entering into these types of leases take place behind the scenes with little oversight.
Two real estate brokers, Cushman & Wakefield and CBRE, serve as “tenant representatives,” recommending specific properties in exchange for commission paid by the landlords. These commission payments are also hidden from the public.
Big municipal contracts are subject to competitive bidding which allows the public to see all the bids submitted and get an explanation for why one was chosen as the lowest responsible bid. The way leases are chosen is very different.
The comptroller registers leases but does not routinely look at how one site was chosen over another and whether the lease DCAS favored gives taxpayers the best bang for their buck. The City Council can also weigh in but there’s no indication that they’ve done so in the last several years.
“There’s zero visibility as to how this process works and there’s a lot of money changing hands,” Brewer said. “The city should make the process very transparent.”
In the case of 14 Wall Street, THE CITY reported, CBRE handled the transaction and in September DCAS declared the building to be the best possible site to locate 80,000 square feet of office space for the Department for the Aging’s headquarters. Department officials say they were unhappy with the agency’s current location in a city-owned building at 2 Lafayette St.
The proposed lease — without specifics on how much it would cost city taxpayers — then began a public review process that includes a vote from the City Planning Commission.
Manhattan Community Board 1 registered their support for the new site, but at the time did not know the building’s billionaire owner, Alexander Rovt, and two family members had already made three donations of $5,000 each (the maximum allowed) to Adams’ legal defense fund, and that Rovt and one relative had given Adams’ 2025 campaign donations totaling $1,150. Two CBRE executives also gave to Adams’ 2025 campaign, making donations of $2,100 each in July.
After THE CITY reported on the 14 Wall St. lease and the Rovt donations, CB1 Chair Tammy Meltzer wrote to City Planning Commission Chair Dan Garodnick, stating that the article prompted “concerns that this transaction might not be in the best interests of the city and CB1 feels compelled to bring this to your attention before final decisions are made.”
The next day the commission acknowledged receiving CB1’s letter, but approved the 14 Wall St. lease anyway, with one abstention, after hearing from DFTA officials voicing support for the location. No DCAS representative attended the hearing and there were no questions from the commissioners demanding any explanation for how the choice was made.
A source familiar with the commission’s typical approach said the commissioners do not require DCAS to provide their fiscal analysis for choosing sites, and instead focus on whether the proposed site is suitable for the agency’s operational efficiency and supports “development and revitalization” of the neighborhood’s business district.
Because of that approach, the commissioners did not know that another site — an office tower at 250 Broadway that already houses city agencies — had initially been chosen. That landlord had been given a “best and final” offer by mid-level DCAS employees. Then Hamilton intervened, according to two sources familiar with what happened.
Whether 14 Wall St. is a better deal for the city than 250 Broadway is not known because details of both — including the proposed costs — have yet to be made public. The City Council could still call up the matter for a vote, but a two-thirds majority would be required with a vote within 20 days of the City Planning Commission’s approval. That deadline is next week.
Last week Restler wrote to DCAS Commissioner Louis Molina, demanding that he explain in detail how 14 Wall St. was chosen and whether the mayor’s office was in any way involved. Christopher Marte, the Council member whose district includes the building, is co-hosting the hearing.
“For us it’s all about following the money,” Marte said. “250 Broadway has a lot of agencies in it and why didn’t they choose 250 Broadway? What is the potential difference in government funds?”
DCAS spokesperson Anessa Hodgson declined to answer questions about Hamilton’s involvement in switching from 250 Broadway to 14 Wall Street.
Hodgson would also not answer questions about another area of concern about Hamilton’s oversight of city leases that has emerged regarding one of his fellow travelers to Japan, Cushman & Wakefield executive vice president Boutross.
Boutross handles Cushman’s DCAS leases, including a massive 641,000 square feet at 110 William St., a few blocks from City Hall — a building that was struggling with vacant office space last year before DCAS stepped in.
Two weeks before Adams arrived at City Hall, the owner, 110 William Investors LLC, hired lobbyist Suri Kasirer. Kasirer first targeted DCAS and the Administration for Children’s Services, whose headquarters was a block south at 150 William St., looking to get them to relocate their headquarters up the block.
In August 2022, the owners of 110 William St. revealed they’d received a notice of default on their mortgage. Then DCAS stepped in with a lease lifeline. That November the planning commission signed off on the proposed move, and in the ensuing months DCAS and 110 William began negotiating the final terms of the lease, which would fill up two-thirds of the building.
In the spring of 2023, Kasirer targeted Hamilton, and last May DCAS released the details: a 20-year-lease starting at $28 million a year, plus reimbursement for $42 million in renovations. Cushman would collect a percentage of the annual rent, but the firm’s spokesperson declined to discuss the details. A 6% commission, typical in Manhattan commercial real estate, would generate $1.7 million in fees.
DCAS spokesperson Hodgson declined to respond to THE CITY’s questions about who paid for Hamilton’s trip to Japan, and whether he obtained a waiver from the city Conflict of Interests Board since he was traveling with Boutros.
Another participant in the Japan trip, Adam Clayton Powell IV, a former New York politician-turned lobbyist, had also earlier lobbied Hamilton on behalf of another real estate client.
Powell said in a text message to THE CITY that everyone paid their own way.
