Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

395 Flatbush Ave. Ext., with supertall Brooklyn Tower in the background. Image via Crain's NY Business  The announcement May 7 by Mayor Eric Adams of a 72-story, mostly residential tower at 395 Flatbush Avenue Extension, between Fulton Street and DeKalb Avenue, does not just regard governmental support for the second tallest--and, surely, bulkiest--building in Brooklyn, at 840 feet (with bulkhead) and 1,544,875 square feet. The 395 Flatbush Avenue Extension plan, over the DeKalb Avenue subway stop opposite the iconic restaurant Junior's and the Brooklyn Paramount/LIU, also has implications for Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park and environs, I suspect. It would deliver 1,263 apartments, of which 253 (20%) to 379 (30%) would be designated as permanently affordable under the city's Mandatory Inclusionary Housing  program. The developers are Rabina and Park Tower Group. Under 30% affordability, the units would be affordable to households averaging 80% of Area Median Incom...

Winnie Greco, Mayoral Aide Under Investigation, Steered Adams’ Relations With China for Almost a Decade , The City and Documented reported yesterday, detailing yet installment of important but belated reporting on a character who was clearly ethically dubious a decade ago . (Why didn't anyone investigate further? Not enough journalists, and publications, to do so, I guess.) Greco, for example, tilted Adams toward the Chinese government and away from anything to do with Taiwan, which China does not consider independent. From the article: Despite serving as an unpaid volunteer, Greco early on was treated as something more than this. Just months into her tenure, she was shown designs for a business card by Borough Hall staffers that identified her as the “American/Chinese Ambassador” for Adams. The card contained an image of the Brooklyn seal, according to a mockup contained in the emails. She would later get a government email address to go with it:  ChinaAmbassador@brooklynbp.nyc.go...

In Brooklyn, (l.-r.) Borough President Eric Adams,  Greenland's Xu Jing, Borough Hall Liaison Winnie Greco The June 25 New York Post scoop, Feds probing Eric Adams and top adviser’s trips to China , sent me back to the limited evidence I have about a trip that Brooklyn Borough President Adams, now Mayor, and his advisor and Chinese community liaison Winnie Greco made May 22-June 1, 2014. The current Borough President's office was unable to produce any emails regarding the trip. I have a few involving Greco, not Adams, the result of a Freedom of Information Law request I filed in 2014. Evidence, albeit inconclusive, suggests that Greco was not using an official email address from the Borough President's office. The most interesting thing I (re)discovered was Greco's bombastic email signature file, declaring herself--according to a machine translation--"Director, China-U.S. Affairs Department" of the "Brooklyn Borough Government, New York, USA." I expl...

Drip, drip drip. It turns out that a person who looked pretty dubious a decade ago (!) may indeed be pretty dubious. (Another one too, albeit with a shorter horizon--see bottom.) As The CITY reported two days ago,  FBI Raids Homes of Mayoral Aide Winnie Greco and New World Mall, Site of Eric Adams Campaign Operations : FBI agents raided two Bronx homes owned by a top aide to Mayor Eric Adams early Thursday morning, along with the offices of a Queens mall that hosted Adams campaign operations. THE CITY previously uncovered strong evidence of potentially illegal straw donations tied to the mall. The aide, Adams’ director of Asian affairs Winnie Greco , was deeply involved in eight separate fundraising events at the New World Mall that generated tens of thousands of dollars for Adams’ 2021 mayoral campaign...  Greco, who is paid $100,000 a year for her City Hall job, is already being probed by the city’s Department of Investigation in the aftermath of another story by THE CITY ...

Credit HellGate and TypeInvestigations for publishing the Eric Adams Table of Success , connecting the embattled mayor to some of his most prominent, and controversial, associates. Of particular note are the "After Hours" connections, several linked to Woodland, the controversial bar/nightclub, since shuttered , that I've suggested might be be the Rosetta Stone of the Adams administration. They include the bar operators, Robert & Zhan Petrosyants ; Adams's son Jordan Coleman , who--scooplet!--worked at Woodland; "Bling Bishop" Lamor Whitehead ; and even Jay-Z . A few notes Note: the Table of Success page for Whitehead reports, without caveat, that Whitehead’s father was Arthur Miller, a high-profile victim of police violence, killed in Crown Heights in 1978. A New Yorker article raised major doubts about that. Note: the Table of Success page for Jay-Z reports that  he " had agreed to donate over $1 million" to the Brooklyn Public Library, wh...

Winnie Greco, a longtime Bronx resident who somehow served as the liaison ( link ) to Brooklyn Chinese community for Brooklyn Borough Presidents Marty Markowitz and Eric Adams, and now serves as an aide and close advisor to Mayor Adams--close to him at his swearing-in ceremony and  traveling  with Adams’ son, Jordan Coleman--has long struck me as deserving of scrutiny, given her dubious and nontransparent roles. Now, as described below, there are two tough pieces of journalism, from the New York Post and, especially, The City. Flashback, 2014 In Brooklyn, (l.-r.)  Borough President Adams, Greenland's Xu Jing, Borough Hall Liaison Greco As I reported in September 2014, Greco, who claimed on one web site that she was "director of China-US affair in Brooklyn," helped organize Adams's trip earlier that year to China, aiming "to mutually promote economic development and tourism," including discussions with government officials about bringing a friendship arch t...

Adams visited Long Island. Here’s why. , Politico reported Oct. 19: Mayor Eric Adams ventured out to Long Island on Wednesday to attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony in honor of Victoria “Vicki” Schneps-Yunis, a longtime friend and New York newspaper magnate. But the trek to Nassau County is indicative of a long and controversial relationship between the mayor and the Schneps family, who have traded favors with Adams for years. “When I write my book, there’s going to be a chapter on what she did to get me to become the mayor of the city,” Adams said at the event in Garden City. The program was hosted by Life’s WORC, a nonprofit serving individuals with disabilities that was founded by Schneps-Yunis after the closing of Willowbrook State School . The organization renamed one of its buildings in her honor Wednesday. Schneps Media now owns the Brooklyn Paper, amNewYork Metro (which consolidated two publications), among more than 30 publications, The publications endorsed Adams, who, as Brookl...

Mayor Adams, DCP Director Garodnick Unveil Plan for new Affordable Housing, Open Space in Central Brooklyn , the Mayor's Office stated in a press release yesterday, adding that "'Atlantic Avenue Mixed-Use Plan' [AAMUP] Could Bring 4,000 New Homes to Area, Delivers on Decade of Community Engagement."  That could include 1,150 to 1,550 below-market apartments--crucially, the affordability levels, which drew criticism at a session the day before, went unmentioned--along and below Atlantic Avenue between Vanderbilt and Nostrand avenues.  So the city's framing release drove coverage yesterday, such as  Atlantic Avenue rezoning to add 4,000 homes, mayor says , from the Real Deal;   City aims to remake Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue by adding up to 4,000 homes , from Crain's New York Business; and  4,000 New Units Proposed For Central BK In Atlantic Avenue Plan: Mayor , from Patch. While the city also aims to enhance Atlantic Avenue, support jobs, and add communi...

The New Yorker on 8/7/23 published, online, Ian Parker's devastating profile,  Eric Adams’s Administration of Bluster , with the subheading, "The Mayor of New York City tells a personal story that is compelling and often untruthful. With a thin list of accomplishments so far, can he address the city’s problems?" The message, of course, is "unlikely," and it's interesting that Parker in some ways either ignores or downplays some low-hanging fruit regarding Adams.  For example, he barely mentions the felonious Petrosyants twins and ignores their restaurant/club Woodland, which might--as I suggest below--be the Rosetta Stone for the Adams administration. The article does not mention Adams's landlord-friendly Rent Guidelines Board. And it barely mentions the troubled situation at Rikers Island, though it's used for framing: Food is a favored topic. It allows Adams to connect political action to personal anecdote, a rhetorical move that’s harder to pull o...

Just as the New York Times article yesterday helped explain Borough President Eric Adams' reflexive support of the scofflaw nightclub Woodland, a look at another recent article offers an unacknowledged update on one of Adams' public gestures. Remember, as I wrote in January, a bombshell New York article, The Mayor and the Con Man , raised questions about whether the religious figure Lamor Whitehead (aka Miller-Whitehead or Miller Whitehead) indeed is the son of Arthur Miller, a Black man killed in 1978 by police officers in Crown Heights, a notorious episode Adams--as Borough President, not as Mayor--has commemorated with Whitehead as guest. Whitehead has said he is the son of a woman not married to Miller. One of the four children Miller had with his wife told the New Yorker that "she and her siblings offered to fly Whitehead to Florida, where they now live, to take a DNA test. He had declined." The memorials In June 2020, Adams appeared with Whitehead at a public ...

There's a connect-the-dots passage in the New York Times's profile of Ingrid Lewis-Martin, perhaps the second most powerful person in city government,  The ‘Fiercely Loyal’ Adams Adviser Agitating From Inside City Hall . (It was published online two days ago, and on the front page--of the New York edition--today.) Lewis-Martin, the wife of Glenn Martin, who met Eric Adams in the police academy, has pushed ethical boundaries and has been well compensated. And then there's her son: Ms. Lewis-Martin’s family has benefited in other ways. Her son, Glenn Martin II, a professional D.J., has gotten exposure by performing at Borough Hall and Gracie Mansion , and at other events sponsored by Mr. Adams’s offices, including the Rise Up Concert Series last summer. “Big Stage!!” he wrote on Instagram about the Rise Up concert. He tagged Mr. Adams. Mr. Martin for years played a weekly brunch set at Woodland, a restaurant that was run by Johnny and Robert Petrosyants , brothers who are ...

Friends of Eric Adams Have Paid Fraction of Sum Ordered in Federal Case , the New York Times's Michael Rothfeld reported 3/10/23: More than eight years after being ordered in federal court to forfeit nearly $700,000 for financial crimes, two close friends of Mayor Eric Adams have repaid only a fraction of that sum despite operating numerous lucrative businesses, court records show. The mayor’s friends, Robert and Johnny Petrosyants, pleaded guilty in January 2014 to making false reports at a check-cashing business after a federal investigation into the laundering of proceeds of false and inflated insurance claims. That "fraction" is $41,500 out of a combined $667,446.08, or 6.2%. What's remarkable is that no one ever asked for an accounting until the Times pushed. But it explains why they don't have their names on their businesses--to prevent seizure of assets--and casts even more doubt on the "mentoring" allegedly performed by Adams toward the twins. An...

The drip-drip of troubling news about Eric Adams continues, notably the New Yorker report  about his questionable mentoring of con man and "Bling Bishop" Lamor (aka Lamar) Whitehead.  While I  cited  the New Yorker's report on Whitehead's connection to the Barclays Center, I didn't mention the reference to Woodland, where Whitehead and Adams liked to hang out, "the first restaurant run by the Petrosyants brothers [Robert and Zhan, aka Johnny], who now run La Baia," the mayor's current place of choice.  Eric Lach's article notes that "character testimonies to the judge" sentencing the brothers, who pleaded guilty to federal charges, included a letter from Whitehead about a purported an anti-childhood-obesity program--one that Robert Petrosyants didn't recall. In a 1/19/23 article,  Adams fundraising haul buoyed by swell of real estate cash , Politico noted that the mayor held campaign fundraisers at La Baia: And Akiva Ofshtein — the ...