Looking beyond Scott Stringer's real-estate rhetoric (what's next) and Eric Adams's questionable trips (there's more to that China connection)

A couple of recent articles on the mayoral race have relevance to Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park. In Stringer’s high-wire act: A real estate agenda for developers and leftists alike, Politico reported 2/7/21 that Comptroller Scott Stringer "is subsidizing his campaign with real estate donations he collected for years, up until progressive Democrats declared them verboten following Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s insurgent congressional victory in 2018."

And that real estate players are comfortable with Stinger in understanding their constraints. And while Stringer criticizes "real estate’s role in the de Blasio administration’s housing policies," he has a reputation as a pragmatist.

Here's the most controversial section:

While publicly implying he will pose an obstacle to that sector, Stringer is quietly telling developers he will work with them if elected, according to interviews with seven people in the business who have direct knowledge of his comments.

In meetings with developers over the past two years, when pressed on his public posture, he has said he needs to pivot left to win the primary, they said in recounting the talks.

Note that a Stringer rep tweeted that that wasn't true. Well, it's certainly plausible. Mayors--unlike those representing smaller constituences--have a stronger interest in cutting ribbons, rather than leaving sites static, so it's in their interest to make a deal.

In the case of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, that would imply a willingness to help get the "affordable housing" and project finished, perhaps by approving certain subsidies and/or touting income-targeted housing that, while technically affordable, doesn't help those who once marced for the project.

About Eric Adams's trips

NYC mayoral candidate Eric Adams accepted foreign travel to countries with a history of corruption, the Daily News reported 2/6/21, with some tabloid gotcha fever:

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams has accepted thousands of dollars in travel and other perks from China, Turkey and Azerbaijan, three counties with a well-documented history of suppressing their citizens.

His predecessor Marty Markowitz went to Turkey, at least, so it's not violation of a rule, it's just... unseemly. From the article:

China’s government reportedly paid $787 for a hotel, local travel and meals for him when he visited the country in the summer of 2014. A nonprofit run by a volunteer Adams staffer also paid about $7,000 for the borough president and a deputy to make the 11-day trip.
Around the time of Adams’s visit, Chinese authorities “unleashed an extraordinary assault on basic human rights and their defenders with a ferocity unseen in recent years,” according to Human Rights Watch, and accelerated a brutal crackdown on its ethnic Uighur population....
Pressed on the funding sources, Adams said in July 2014 he would not decline offers from China’s government or nonprofits given the chance again.

Commented John Kaehny of Reinvent Albany, "The goal of foreign countries is probably to have American politicians or the next generation of American leaders look favorably on them and be receptive to what they want."

That China connection

I'm more concerned about the "nonprofit run by a volunteer Adams staffer," which paid for that trip to China. 

I reported on that trip in September 2014, and the efforts by Forest City Ratner, the original developer of Atlantic Yards, to have Adams meet with representatives of Greenland Holdings, whose subsidiary Greenland USA was about to invest in the Brooklyn project. 

In Brooklyn, (l.-r.)  Borough President Eric Adams,
Greenland's Xu Jing, Borough Hall Liaison Winnie Greco

That meeting instead happened at Borough Hall and, until my Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request dislodged documents, had not been publicized by Adams's office.

As I wrote, also present was Borough Hall's questionable volunteer liaison to the Chinese community, who lives in the Bronx and claimed on one web site that she is "director of China-US affair in Brooklyn."

That liaison, Winnie Greco, is likely more focused on organizing business deals in China than representing the interests of the Brooklynites who are neighbors to the project Greenland now controls.

The travel was paid for by the Sino-America New York Brooklyn Archway Association Corp., which was raising money for an arch in Sunset Park.

In June 2014, the New York Post reported that the Sino-America New York Brooklyn Archway Association Corp., which spent nearly $7,000 on trip expenses for Adams and Deputy BP Diana Reyna, had no discernible institutional history. The Post reported:

The Brooklyn Eighth Avenue mailing address for the group has no signs bearing its name, and a worker in the sixth-floor suite said that its members meet there only once every couple of months.
Court records show Greco, who lives in The Bronx, was sued by banks three times since 

Greco, who ignored the Post's queries, was finally buttonholed at a rally. She reportedly said, “Right now we don’t get money from nothing — the private [donations],” before walking away, offering the excuse that she speaks English poorly.

Her LinkedIn biography, perhaps stale, describes herself as connected to aaecdac, which is the American Asia Economy and Culture Development Association Corp (via Internet Archive), which according to my previous Google translation:

purpose is to establish a Sino-US two State bridge friendly exchanges, promote bilateral cooperation and exchanges in diplomatic, cultural, commercial, social, scientific, educational and sports fields; promote friendly exchanges and interaction between American and Chinese governments and parliaments; promote the city between the United States cooperation and exchanges between the conclusion of friendly relations and urban matchmaking; promote friendly exchanges with the United States and non-governmental exchanges....

Greco was CEO of the food exporting company Valley Fresh Direct, in Warwick NY, in Orange County near the New Jersey border.

Her bio (via the Internet Archive) not so coherently traded on her volunteer role, stating, "As the director of China-US affair in Brooklyn, Mrs. Greco is an active business developer and has been widely recognized by her outstanding efforts in bilateral business."

There's no such position as "director of China-US affair in Brooklyn."

There's little documentation on the Sino-America New York Brooklyn Archway Association Corp. and its Form 990 tax returns do not list officers, or have an officer sign the return, for 2018 and 2017. In 2016, there's no signatory, but the address, 7207 13th Ave., is Guan Realty, headed by Kenny Guan, an officer in the organization.

For 2015 and 2014 returns, the same officers were listed, but no officer signed it. For the 2013 return, the signatory was illegible, but there were two different officers with Greco, Paul Mak and Victor Shing Wong, and also two donors listed.