First deputy mayor Tony Shorris is testifying today at a City Council hearing about the controversial sale of Rivington House on the Lower East Side to condo developers.
As Politico New York noted, this "will mark the highest-profile public airing of the controversy surrounding the sale of Rivington House"
Back in July, Shorris answered questions during an often contentious 2.5-hour interview with an investigator working on behalf of City Comptroller Scott Stringer.
Through a Freedom of Information Law request, Politico obtained the 114-page transcript of that session.
Here's an excerpt
from Politico's coverage:
It also seems clear, although Shorris never says so directly, that he did not have a particularly robust or effective mode of communicating with Stacey Cumberbatch, who was commissioner of DCAS until January of this year.
Cumberbatch informed Shorris through a routine memo about the potential sale of Rivington House, which had been a city-owned building before being sold to a nonprofit running an AIDS residence in the 1990s.
Shorris explained that he did not read the memo and that some time during the latter portion of his first year on the job, he stopped reading these memos in their entirety because they were too time-consuming.
Instead, he expected commissioners to use their judgment and inform him in person or over the phone of priorities and problems. But that evolution in communication strategy was never made clear to Cumberbatch, Shorris acknowledged during questioning.
And here's
how the Post covered the July 27 Shorris meeting with investigators:
First Deputy Mayor Tony Shorris suffered numerous memory lapses about the Rivington Street nursing-home fiasco, telling investigators more than two dozen times that he couldn’t recall incidents, emails or details, records show.
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s right-hand man claimed he couldn’t remember a meeting with Stacey Cumberbatch, a city commissioner, or the content of any conversations they had about Rivington in 2014.
When investigators tried to press Shorris over the memory lapse, his lawyer, G. Michael Bellinger, repeatedly intervened, the
Post notes.
In February 2015, the Allure Group paid $28 million for the property, promising that 45 Rivington — the former Rivington Center for Nursing & Rehabilitation — would remain a health facility. In November, a city agency lifted the the deed in exchange for the Allure Group's $16 million payment to the city.
Earlier this year, Allure then reportedly sold the property for $116 million to the the Slate Property Group, a condo developer who plans to create 100 luxury residences in the building that overlooks Sara S. Roosevelt Park.
Updated 9/30
Read more about what transpired during the six-hour hearing at
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Meanwhile!
As The Lo-Down reported, the de Blasio administration plans to create affordable senior housing on the Lower East Side to make up for the loss of Rivington House. The facility will be on Pike Street.