On Sunday, the leader of New York City pulled the plug on his reelection campaign.
After months of speculations — and years of scandals — Eric Adams officially dropped his bid to come back as mayor of New York City.
Even as Adams resisted pressure to abandon the race, his departure felt inevitable as he struggled to keep up in the polls with three other candidates. A coalescing around a candidate to compete with Zohran Mamdani has long been a clarion call among watchers.
Adams still has a few months left at Gracie Mansion, but The Real Deal columnist Erik Engquist evaluated the real estate legacy the 110th mayor will leave.
While Adams was dropping out of the race, the New York Mets were putting the final nail in the coffin of a collapse that left the team out of the MLB playoffs. But this week wasn’t all bad for owner Steve Cohen.
His plan for an $8 billion casino complex is heading to the final round of the state’s casino licensing competition after a community advisory committee voted unanimously to advance Metropolitan Park, a project that would transform 50 acres of parking lots next to Citi Field.
That leaves a list of four contenders for three downstate gaming licenses: MGM Empire City in Yonkers; Queens Aqueduct Casino, operated by Resorts World; and Bally’s in Throggs Neck.
Most expect the state to grant MGM and Resorts World two of the licenses because they both already operate as racinos. That would leave Bally’s and Metropolitan Park proposals competing against each other for the last license.
On the legal front, Meyer Chetrit was criminally indicted in Manhattan for harassing rent-regulated tenants in Chelsea, accused of waging a five-year campaign of harassment against two septuagenarians to force them out of their building.
Charges include two counts of harassment of a rent-regulated tenant in the first degree, a class E felony carrying a maximum sentence of four years in prison.
Get excited, connoisseurs of Swedish meatballs. An entity connected to Ikea purchased 529 Broadway in Soho from Jeff Sutton for $213 million. It’s a 58,000-square-foot commercial building occupied by Nike.
The investment group is planning to open an Ikea location across the first and second floors, totaling 25,000 square feet.
Also, of interest this week, the developers behind the iconic Flatiron Building’s conversion have unveiled the project’s initial pricing, where the projected sellout is $375 million for 18 of its 35 residential units.
Prices for the available units start just under $11 million; the two most expensive condos are asking $48 million and $50 million.
The Brodsky Organization and Sorgente Group are the developers, while Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group is handling sales, which appear to have begun.
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Eric Adams drops out of mayoral race
Mayor Adams’ real estate legacy will endure, even if few remember him for it
Steve Cohen’s casino proposal advances to final round of competition
