By June 2023, nearly 60% of the office space in the 21-story tower at 215 Lexington Ave. in Manhattan’s Kips Bay was vacant, yet another casualty of the pandemic-triggered collapse of the commercial real estate market in New York.

Soon, however, city taxpayers would come to the rescue to fill at least some of that empty space: in August, the city Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) signed off on leasing 11,500 square feet to relocate the city health department’s 24-hour Poison Control Center there.

In charge of all the city’s leasing is Jesse Hamilton, DCAS’s deputy commissioner for real estate services, who has enormous influence over which tenant-starved landlords receive multi-million dollar bailouts from a city administration that can relocate whole agencies to struggling buildings like 215 Lexington.

In startling fashion on Sept. 27, Hamilton surfaced as a subject of the latest known law enforcement investigation among several swirling around the administration of Mayor Eric Adams.

On that day, Hamilton was among a group of vacationers returning from Japan at John F. Kennedy International Airport. So was Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Adams’ chief advisor. As they exited the gate after their 14-hour flight, representatives of the Manhattan District Attorney and the Manhattan U.S. Attorney confronted the group. The DA’s representative took Hamilton’s phone — and Lewis-Martin’s.

Traveling with them was Diana Boutross, the executive who handles DCAS lease arrangements for the Cushman & Wakefield real estate firm, which brokered the Poison Center lease.

A Cushman & Wakefield spokesperson declined to say whether Boutross’ phone was also confiscated.

When landlords struggling with empty office space lobbied for lucrative city leases, they often turned to the same target: Hamilton, who has longstanding ties to the mayor. After Adams won his campaign for Brooklyn borough president in 2013, Hamilton was Adams’ hand-picked successor to fill his Crown Heights seat in the state Senate. Hamilton lost a 2018 re-election bid — and Adams gave him the DCAS job in August 2022, handing him oversight of vast portfolio of city-owned buildings and leases with private landlords.

A review by THE CITY of a half dozen recent DCAS lease deals with landlords indicates how vital those agreements can be to the financial health of a building — and its owners. While the documents reviewed do not provide precise details, the value of the leases — reliable steady income in an office market bludgeoned by remote work — easily runs into the tens of millions of dollars.

Hamilton was often targeted by lobbyists for the landlords, city records show, and, in three cases, either the landlord or the executives of the brokerage handling the deal made contributions to Adams’ 2025 campaign — or the legal defense fund the mayor set up to pay for lawyers defending him in the federal investigation that resulted in his corruption indictment last month. Adams has steadfastly maintained his innocence of the charges.

When negotiating with landlords, DCAS relies on brokers who are paid a commission by the landlords for each successful transaction. Since 2017 there have been just two: Cushman & Wakefield and another major firm, CBRE. Brokers stand to earn more commissions if the lease transactions go through.

A spokesperson for DCAS, Anessa Hodgson, referred THE CITY to the brokerages on questions about Boutross and Hamilton’s vacationing together, but defended the use of Cushman and CBRE, stating, “They support our efforts to perform strategic planning, manage purchase and lease negotiations, conduct market analysis and more.”

A spokesperson for Cushman did not answer specific questions about Boutross, issuing a brief statement instead: “We have a longstanding, 15-year relationship with the city that spans across multiple mayoral administrations and we are proud of the important work we’ve done for DCAS.”

CBRE did not respond to THE CITY’s questions.

Real Estate Donors Max Out

Not everybody appeared enthusiastic with the decision to relocate the city’s Poison Control Center from its longtime home on First Avenue near Bellevue Hospital to make way for a major city-sponsored science center development project called SPARC-Kips Bay. At an Aug. 21 City Planning Commission hearing on the lease, health department staff testified that admitted the space at 215 Lexington was not fully an improvement over their old home, noting for instance that they will have one conference room instead of two.

“We’ll figure it out,” said one health department employee who testified.

Hamilton also is overseeing another pending move to relocate the Department for the Aging from its longtime home, 2 Lafayette St. — a building the city has owned since 1981 — and into a Wall Street tower owned by a billionaire donor to the mayor who paid more than $300 million in cash to control the property.

The amount the city will be paying for the lease at 14 Wall St. was not disclosed at a City Planning Commission meeting last month on the deal.

Both the owner of 14 Wall St., Alexander Rovt, and key executives at the real estate firm handling the deal to relocate the Department for the Aging, donated generously to Adams.

Rovt and two relatives each contributed $5,000 to the mayor’s legal defense fund — the maximum amount permitted. Rovt and one of the relatives had already donated $3,500 to Adams’ reelection campaign.

Two key officials at CBRE also donated to Adams’ 2025 campaign: vice chairman of CBRE John Maher and Robert Alexander, chairman of the New York Tri-State Region of CBRE, who each wrote $2,100 checks — again, the maximum allowed.

None are on the official list of principals of firms doing business with the city, who are restricted to giving no more than $400 and cannot have their donations matched with public funds. Because he is a city resident, Maher’s donation triggered a claim by the Adams campaign for $250 in public matching funds.

In recent weeks, DCAS kicked into gear to get the Department or the Aging to vacate its decades-old home in the city-owned building at 2 Lafayette St. into Rovt’s Wall Street tower — claiming to the City Planning Commission last month that the city space would require a decade and $87 million to renovate.

In a Sept. 18 memo, Mathew Berk, an assistant DCAS commissioner, green-lighted the 14 Wall St. lease, declaring “there were no suitable properties within the DCAS inventory available to meet the need” of the Department for the Aging.

The City Planning Commission has yet to vote on the proposed lease. The City Council also has power to review proposed leases.

Lobbyists Target DCAS

Another landlord that got a boost from a big city lease is a limited liability corporation called 110 William Property Investors III, LLC — owners of an office building not far from City Hall at 110 William St.

The broker on the deal: Cushman & Wakefield.

In 2022 the investors who owned the building were struggling. They defaulted on a mortgage after several tenants — including the city-affiliated Economic Development Corporation — declined to renew their leases.

Throughout 2022, a lobbyist hired by the owners, Kasirer LLC, targeted several DCAS officials, including then-Commissioner Dawn Pinnock, regarding “real estate issues for 110 William St,” public lobbying records show. This continued into 2023, with Hamilton specifically targeted that May and June.

That July all that effort paid off. DCAS announced it had signed a huge deal to lease 641,000 square feet of office space with the plan to relocate the city Administration for Children’s Services headquarters there from its office down the block at 150 William St. This would account for two-thirds of the building’s 928,000 square feet and cost the city $28 million a year to start, according to disclosures to investors.

The explanation for doing this as described in a “Notice of Intent to Acquire Office Space” filed with the Department of City Planning was “for better operational efficiency in one location with improved and expanded space to accommodate new mandates and needs, support staff growth and provide better customer service to clients and the public.”

The City Council did not opt to exercise its power to review the 110 William St. lease.

Brian Reiver, who’s listed in city lobbying records as the “client principal officer” for 110 William Property Investors, did not respond to THE CITY’s call seeking comment.

Kasirer’s firm and another lobbyist, Patrick Jenkins, also came into play for property owner Salmar Properties to get DCAS to lease space for multiple city agencies above a struggling retail mall in Sunset Park Brooklyn — most recently for ACS.

As THE CITY reported last year in connection to a city deal to lease 158,000 square feet of a warehouse at 850 Third Ave. in a remote section of Sunset Park, Brooklyn, Jenkins targeted Hamilton in early 2023 “seeking to provide rental space to city agencies.” Then early this year, Kasirer joined the effort, pressing Hamilton for “approval of lease terms,” lobbyist records show.

Salmar co-partner Sal Rusi and his son, Selim, each wrote a $2,100 check to Adams’ 2025 campaign. Both are on the list of firms doing business with the city and thus restricted to giving no more than $400.

Last year Adams 2021 campaign spokesperson Evan Thies told THE CITY that the campaign refunded the donations in early 2023 when they discovered the discrepancy. A review of the Adams’ 2025 campaign’s up-to-date filings show the campaign refunded all but $400 of Sal Rusi’s donations.

What Happened in Japan?

Although the fallout from the trip to Japan has yet to be made clear, one other member of the vacationing party has also raised conflict-of-interest issues regarding Hamilton: Adam Clayton Powell IV, the former elected official turned lobbyist.

As THE CITY has reported, Powell had an earlier interaction as a lobbyist with his fellow traveler Hamilton: he’d met with him in February on behalf of Totem Construction, a Bronx contractor, to discuss an unspecified “determination regarding real property.” Totem’s owner, Alexis Pena, made three donations to Adams’ 2025 campaign starting in September 2023, totaling $1,000.

In response to THE CITY’s questions about a lobbyist going on vacation with the target of his lobbying, Powell texted a brief reply: “Nothing came out of the meeting. Japan was vacation and everyone paid their way. We’ve been friends for many years.”

Questions about Hamilton’s handling of city leases come after Adams was indicted last month on bribery and campaign finance fraud charges. Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams alleges the mayor accepted illegal foreign donations in his effort to obtain millions of dollars in public matching funds, and did favors for individuals connected to the Turkish government in exchange for free and discounted airfare upgrades and free stays at luxury hotels.

Several of his top aides, including his first deputy mayor, his schools chancellor, his deputy mayor for public safety and his police commissioner, have all resigned after the FBI and the city Department of Investigation confiscated their electronic devices.

The mayor has pleaded not guilty to the federal charges, and continues to insist that all the resignations had nothing to do with the ongoing investigations. Federal prosecutors have said they expect to file more charges against him and other defendants.