The commissioner of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) appears to have given misleading testimony to the City Council in attempting to justify why his agency made a last-minute switch to lease office space in a building owned by a big donor to Mayor Eric Adams.
With questions around the deal intensifying, the mayor’s office has informed the Council that it’s moving to “pause” the lease to move the city Department for the Aging to 14 Wall St., owned by billionaire and Adams donor Alex Rovt.
Testifying last month at a Council committee hearing on questions surrounding DCAS leases, Commissioner Louis Molina claimed taxpayers will save $31 million by choosing 14 Wall St. over 250 Broadway a few blocks away.
Molina asserted that 250 Broadway had a higher per-square-foot cost than 14 Wall St., and would require the taxpayers to cough up $10 million in renovation expenses for the raw space being offered, while the Wall Street building was move-in ready.
But sources familiar with the matter tell THE CITY that it was the landlord of 250 Broadway who would have swallowed the renovation costs under an agreement that had been worked out before DCAS suddenly switched to Rovt’s building. (The owners of 250 Broadway did not return THE CITY’s calls).
Late Wednesday in response to THE CITY’s questions about Molina’s testimony, a spokesperson for DCAS, Anessa Hodgson, responded, “We have no further comment. This matter is under review.”
Questions about the 14 Wall St. lease center on DCAS Deputy Commissioner Jesse Hamilton, a longtime associate of Adams appointed by the mayor to handle city real estate transactions, and reports that he intervened to nix an agreement with 250 Broadway and switch it to 14 Wall St.
Last week, Councilmembers Lincoln Restler of Brooklyn and Christopher Marte and Keith Powers of Manhattan wrote to First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer asking her to withdraw the 14 Wall St. lease and look into the circumstances that led up to it.
Connor Martinez, director of city legislative affairs for the mayor’s office, responded via email to the Council members late Tuesday, stating, “We have instructed DCAS to pause this lease while we conduct our review.”
Restler said the pledge leaves a host of questions still unanswered about Hamilton’s meddling.
“Jesse Hamilton decided to unilaterally stop conversations with 250 Broadway and chose to only engage with 14 Wall St.,” Restler said. “My question is, why did he do that? And I hope and expect the first deputy mayor, in conducting a comprehensive review of all of this, considers conversations between [Hamilton] and 14 Wall and City Hall staff to ensure that there was no inappropriate influence guiding his decision making.”
In their request to Torres-Springer, the Council members also asked her to perform a “comprehensive review of real estate transactions involving Deputy Commissioner Hamilton.” Martinez did not address that request in his email.
‘Reviewing Leases’
In 2023, DCAS — with help from CBRE, a broker contracted by the agency to assist — began looking for space in dozens of buildings all over Manhattan to relocate the Department for the Aging (DFTA) from its longtime office at 2 Lafayette St. in Lower Manhattan. As THE CITY has reported, in December 2023, soon after the search ended, Rovt and two of his relatives raised $15,000 for Adams’ legal defense fund. A few months later, two CBRE executives gave $4,200 for Adams’ 2025 re-election campaign.
In a process that took place out of public view, DCAS staff deemed four buildings as finalists, including 250 Broadway and 14 Wall St. (The locations of the other two finalists remain undisclosed.) DCAS made a “best and final” offer to the owners of 250 Broadway, but Hamilton steered the lease to 14 Wall St. over the objections of an agency lawyer who worried about the “optics” of doing so.
After THE CITY exposed the pending 14 Wall St. deal, Manhattan Community Board 1’s chair raised concerns with the City Planning Commission, which votes on city agency leases, and Restler scheduled a Council hearing.
During the Oct. 29 session at City Hall, Council members questioned Molina about Hamilton’s actions on the lease. While providing no details about the full scope of financial analysis on the four finalist properties performed by this agency, Molina insisted that 14 Wall St. was the better deal, saving taxpayers $31 million.
He claimed the per-square-foot cost of 250 Broadway was “so much more expensive for the taxpayers,” without specifying what those costs were, and he claimed 14 Wall St. offered 80,000 square feet for DFTA that was “move-in ready,” whereas, he said, 250 Broadway needed extensive renovation.
“250 Broadway, because it was raw space, required the city to contribute over $10 million of capital improvements to that location,” he said. “And 14 Wall St. is a turn-key location in which the DFTA is willing to take the property as is, to include the furniture as is, so that there’s no capital improvement cost.”
In fact, the renovation costs would be paid by the landlord — not the taxpayers — under the “best and final” agreement DCAS had initially worked out with 250 Broadway’s owners before Hamilton intervened, sources told THE CITY.
Following the Council hearing, Adams said Torres-Springer would be “reviewing leases.” On Wednesday Amaris Cockfield, a spokesperson for the mayor, would not provide more details on the review, stating, “As the mayor already indicated last month, a review is taking place on policies and procedures, including 14 Wall Street. As this review takes place we are pausing the process of this lease.”
