Sanctuary City For Sale

THE CITY

It was already dark when Mayor Eric Adams and his security detail pulled up to the curb of the Wyndham Garden, a drab hotel next to a strip mall in Fresh Meadows, Queens.

At the time, his administration was paying for the hotel to shelter more than 100 formerly incarcerated New Yorkers integrating back into society after their release.

But the mayor wasn’t here to check in on one of his criminal justice initiatives. On that November evening nearly two years ago, Adams was visiting Winnie Greco, a top mayoral staffer, who had recently moved into one of the rooms at the Wyndham Garden.

Adams got out of the car, walked through a side door and went up to Greco’s specially arranged suite on the 11th floor, according to two sources with knowledge of the visit.

The mayor had been to the hotel before. Its owner, Weihong Hu, had thrown two campaign fundraisers with Adams present when he was running for mayor in 2021. Now Hu, who was reaping millions of dollars in city business through this very facility, was housing Greco in a room paid for by taxpayers, business and government records obtained for this story show. 

Greco ended up staying at Hu’s hotel for more than eight months, initially as she recovered from surgery, according to two sources with knowledge of her stay.

The lodging arranged for the mayor’s advisor is just one facet of a mutually beneficial relationship between Adams, an aggressive campaign fundraiser, and Hu, an ambitious hotel operator who bundled tens of thousands of dollars in campaign checks for his mayoral campaign and subsequently scored behind-the-scenes benefits and millions in contract dollars from his administration, an investigation by THE CITY, The Guardian US and Documented reveals.

The details of how this relationship blossomed in the odd setting of a hotel-turned-shelter offer a rare window into the way transactional dealings have taken shape in the Adams era. 

This report is based on a review of thousands of pages of city and business records and interviews with more than 20 of Hu’s former associates and current and former government officials. Nearly all sources spoke on the condition of anonymity citing fears of retaliation from Hu or the administration. Several provided reporters with photos, text messages, emails and videos to back up their claims.

In Hu’s case, multimillion-dollar city-funded contracts to her companies’ hotels continued to flow as she befriended a tightly knit core of the mayor’s longtime associates, some the subject of law enforcement investigations and ethical controversies who multiple sources say pledged to go to bat for her with city agencies.

It was at a 2021 fundraiser with Adams at her hotel that Hu became acquainted with a longtime pal of the future mayor, John Sampson. Formerly a state senator, Sampson had been released from federal custody only a month earlier, after being sentenced to a five-year prison term for trying to obstruct a probe investigating allegations that he embezzled more than $400,000. 

Hu named Sampson as CEO of one of her hotel companies in early 2023, and, according to a former city official familiar with the situation, he committed to helping her land a lucrative contract for a migrant shelter at a hotel she operates in Long Island City, Queens. A month later, the Department of Homeless Services approved a city-funded migrant contract slated to disburse $7.5 million annually to the hotel.

Hu also enlisted the help of another trusted Adams advisor, Rev. Alfred Cockfield II, whom she introduced to colleagues as a “consultant,” according to one former associate who said he attended business meetings with Hu and Cockfield. The former associate and another source with direct knowledge of the matter said Hu enlisted Cockfield to help her reverse city orders halting construction at two major hotel developments in midtown Manhattan.

Cockfield is a politically wired pastor who, after Adams won the mayoral primary, launched a political action committee, Striving for a Better New York, which he told Politico was intended to uplift “moderate,” “pro-business” candidates in the Adams mold. 

“The work I’m doing is God’s work,” he said. 

Yet campaign finance records show the PAC paid Cockfield $144,000 in wages and consulting fees — many times more than what it ever gave to an individual candidate. It also gave $60,000 to a charter school Cockfield leads. Last year, the school returned the entire sum after the state’s Division of Election Law Enforcement sent inquiries to the PAC about some of its allocations. 

The mayor’s son, Jordan Coleman, dressed in black and pushing a roller suitcase, and an unidentified woman also stayed in a room in November 2022 at the Fresh Meadows hotel where Greco was staying, according to a former worker at the hotel. That room, too, was among the 148 paid for by taxpayers.

Coleman hung up on a reporter and didn’t respond to text messages seeking comment. In a phone call, Hu’s attorney, Kevin Tung, denied that the mayor’s son stayed at the hotel overnight, but said he may have visited to discuss business with Greco, who has at times accompanied him to events.

The administration’s largesse flowed back to Hu in a variety of ways, the investigation’s findings show. After Adams came into office, his administration authorized the renewal of Hu’s six-month shelter contract at the Fresh Meadows hotel four times, reaping her business $6.2 million a year in income. 

It also finalized a second contract sending $6.3 million a year to Hu’s hotel in Long Island City, despite a history of elevator breakdowns and minimal housekeeping detailed to reporters by former workers and claimed in court documents. 

Last year, the Department of Homeless Services twice approved a more lucrative arrangement for the Long Island City hotel, bumping its annual potential revenue to a total of $8.8 million, government records show.

The help a close Adams ally can offer was evident on two occasions in which, according to sources, Hu tapped Cockfield for assistance with city authorities.

After a building inspector halted construction at one of her hotel developments, near Bryant Park on West 39th Street, citing a serious safety issue, the minister made a late-night call to top Department of Buildings officials and urged them to allow construction to proceed, according to a source familiar with buildings department operations. 

Roughly an hour later, the agency reversed the stop work order, which department records show was lifted just after 11 p.m.

At the second hotel development, Hu retained Cockfield to help lift a city Department of Buildings stop-work order issued after Hu’s team had begun an illegal demolition of rent-stabilized apartment buildings on West 35th Street in Manhattan, according to a source who said he attended meetings with Hu and Cockfield about the situation. That source said Cockfield and another individual he couldn’t identify promised to call city agencies on the hotel owner’s behalf. 

In late 2022, the Department of Buildings gave Hu permission to resume construction on that site, approving a plan that ignored a previous commitment to neighborhood leaders and the city’s housing agency to preserve affordable apartments.