During a recent press conference at City Hall, Mayor Eric Adams angrily defended his team’s practice of putting certain millionaire real estate developers and business interests at the top of the FDNY’s “priorities” list for fast-track required inspections.
His argument: all sorts of elected officials make the same demands for faster service from the Fire Department all the time.
“The interpretation was that only Eric Adams tried to get stuff done,” the mayor said. “We need to really discuss what was on that list. That weren’t there elected officials on that list that also were asking the Fire Department? Okay? I hear silence.”
There were indeed other elected officials on that list, but what Adams did not say was that more often than not, they were seeking help for day care centers, small building owners and affordable housing, not mega-developers such as The Related Companies, Vornado and SL Green — all companies that City Hall under Adams deemed “a top priority.”
Take the FDNY “Prioritized” list dated May 11, 2022. The big money VIPs pushed by City Hall and lobbyists are all at the top, but farther down are more humble applicants placed there by City Council and state Assembly members.
Number eight on that list is a request by Councilmember Gale Brewer and Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine on behalf of Morningside Playcare, a dual-language pre-K program that had struggled to open on the Upper West Side.
Brewer told THE CITY that the day care center first contacted her in February 2022 after trying in vain to get the FDNY to perform mandated inspections. The original time estimate Morningside Playcare got was 13 to 16 weeks.
That March, a frustrated Brewer wrote directly to then-interim Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh stating that because of the delay, the school could only offer its pre-K program remotely.
“We have received multiple distressed calls and emails from the program’s working parents needing in-person pre-school,” she wrote. “Morningside Playcare needs an inspection to be scheduled as soon as possible so that it can open and parents can return to work because their children are in care.”
The list of requests by elected officials on May 11, 2022 goes on:
Queens Councilmember Lynn Schulman sought a speeded-up inspection of a Department of Homeless Services shelter run by the Fortune Society.
Queens Councilmember James Gennaro wanted help for an affordable housing complex called Tree of Life.
Councilmember David Carr, whose district includes Staten Island and Brooklyn, requested an expedited inspection for a movie theater, the Alamo Drafthouse.
Upper East Side Councilmember Julie Menin wanted the FDNY to speed up its inspections of a preschool on Second Avenue.
In an interview with THE CITY, Councilmember Brewer blamed the fight between the haves and have-nots for timely FDNY inspections on inadequate staffing at the department.
“All I can say is, you have to do them all. It’s terrible to be doing those [fast-track VIP inspections] but you should have enough staff to not only do the SL Greens,” she said. “I always heard we don’t have enough fire inspectors. I heard that constantly.”
Mayoral spokesperson Charles Lutvak did not respond to THE CITY’s questions about the May 11, 2022 priorities list, but in the past has pointed out that the FDNY is doing fire alarm inspections 33% faster this year. He pointed to the mayor’s Get Stuff Built initiative to speed up approvals across city agencies.
Adams VIPs to the Top
The list in question was originally set up in 2021 by Adams’ predecessor, Bill de Blasio, as a way to cut red tape for New York City’s mom-and-pop businesses, shelters, schools, health clinics and other small outfits. On de Blasio’s watch, it appears that’s what it did. A snapshot of the list from Oct. 27, 2021 obtained by THE CITY, for example, shows that all top seven slots went to NYCHA developments in need of fire alarm inspections.
But under Adams, the character of the list changed, internal FDNY documents obtained by THE CITY show.
Starting the month Adams arrived at City Hall and continuing into the summer of 2022, big development VIPs and the clients of major lobbyists started popping up on the list — almost always at the very top. On at least one occasion, the non-VIP applicants who had finally landed an inspection date were jilted by inspectors to make room for the City Hall VIPs.
In April 2022, the FDNY canceled a dozen already scheduled inspections for these ordinary New Yorkers — including a Brooklyn elementary school trying to open an annex in an overcrowded district — to fast-track inspection of The Related Companies’ 77-story office tower at 50 Hudson Yards, records show.
One chief called the Hudson Yards reshuffle “extremely unfair,” while another worried that this re-prioritization was “bad customer service to the public at large who for the most part do not have the influence to move their projects along.”
In some cases the priorities list left the “source” column blank, which explains who made the request, but in many cases it spelled it out. In the case of Hudson Yards, Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer and ex-Police Commissioner Dermot Shea, now an executive at Related, pressed the FDNY for an expedited inspection, documents show.
Inside the fire department, this transition to catering to big fish triggered a months-long discussion in the spring and summer of 2022 documented by the internal FDNY emails. Top chiefs of the Bureau of Fire Prevention — the unit that handles safety inspections — worried that the initial “cut red tape” mission had gone off the rails to favor “friends” of City Hall, particularly when they were forced to cancel non-VIP inspections to make way for the VIPs.
The question of fairness came to a head in April 2022 when Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh’s aide sent chiefs in the fire prevention bureau a “new Top 7” of applicants for fast-track inspections.
The Related Companies’ 50 Hudson Yards’ request was Number One, followed by The Ritz Carlton’s (brought to the FDNY by prominent lobbyist James Capalino), then a request regarding the former James A. Farley post office on Eighth Avenue run by Related and another mega-developer, Vornado Realty, where Facebook was set to lease a huge space. The source of that request was Justin Meyers, Office of the Mayor, Chief of Operations Public Safety.
At that time, records filed with the City Clerk show all of these prominent real estate interests had lobbied various top mayoral aides, including then-chief of staff Torres-Springer and Meyers, along with the mayor’s former chief of staff Frank Carone, and one of Adams senior advisors, Menashe Shapiro, seeking favorable treatment on the developments in question.
In response to Kavanagh’s “new Top 7” list, Deputy Chief Brian Cordasco warned in a responding email that the Hudson Yards inspection alone would require the cancellation of numerous non-VIP inspections.
“This is not only extremely difficult for FAIU (Fire Alarm Inspection Unit) but extremely unfair to the applicants who have been waiting at least 8 weeks for their inspection. Industry opposition will include questions as to why certain projects are advanced while others need to be canceled and pushed back?” Cordasco wrote.
Fast Track for Turkey, Sushi, Swingers
The FBI and federal prosecutors looking into whether Adams received illegal donations from foreign sources via illegal “straw donations” are also looking at whether any of the favored applicants got expedited FDNY treatment thanks to City Hall in exchange for donations to the mayor’s 2021 campaign.
Adams admits that in the fall of 2021 he passed on a request to the then Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro from the Turkish government to expedite an inspection at a new building that was to house the Turkish consulate. At the time he was still Brooklyn borough president, but he’d won the June mayoral primary and was expected to win the general election.
Amongst other things, the FBI is looking at whether illegal donations from the Turkish government wound up in Adams’ campaign coffers via a Brooklyn contractor, KSK Construction. The company’s CEO hosted a fundraiser for Adams in May 2021 that raised $69,720 for the mayor’s campaign. THE CITY spoke with one donor who said their donation, recorded at the event by the Adams campaign, had been reimbursed by their employer.
Another major donor to Adams’ cause was the real estate giant SL Green, whose CEO Marc Holliday hosted an August 2021 fundraiser that raised $30,900 for Adams’ mayoral campaign. Holliday and SL Green also contributed $60,000 to A Better New York For All, an independent spending committee that spent $375,000 on Adams’ behalf.
In June 2022, an exclusive sushi restaurant in the basement of SL Green’s new signature office tower, One Vanderbilt, landed on the FDNY’s list for a fast-track inspection. SL Green wanted the restaurant’s opening to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the firm being listed on the New York Stock Exchange that September. The inspection was moved up and the restaurant — where the chef’s omakase dinner costs $375 per person — opened on time.
Holliday and SL Green have not responded to multiple requests by THE CITY.
Another donor that jumped to the top of the list in January 2022 was lobbyist George Fontas, whose client, a restaurant called Swingers inside a new luxury boutique Virgin Hotel in Herald Square, needed a sped-up FDNY fire alarm check. Fontas hosted a September 2021 fundraiser that generated $26,000 for Adams’ mayoral campaign. (All but $14,000 was refunded, campaign finance documents show.)
Fontas, too, did not respond to THE CITY’s request for comment regarding Swingers.