Donald Manes's vault

 Impunity City

This scene takes place in Kew Gardens at Queens Borough Hall, office of the Queens Borough President, currently held by one Donovan Richards.

This was taken during the Winter Solstice and Christmas holiday, where there was an incident at the Umbrella Hotel across the street, but it’s being documented now because of the significance of today’s date. Marking the anniversary of the day the longest reigning Queens Borough President Donald Manes attempted suicide by the Grand Central Parkway.

Walking by the disheveled tree the Hall set up, there was a monument that caught my eye

Looks like the long ago World's Borough Prez left a time capsule here just a few years before his personal troubles and city scandals got exposed. And it's got another 61 years until whatever contents will finally be found when the "world's borough" turns 300 (!!!). It's a wonder what could possibly be stored in here, but from the looks of the cracks around it maybe Donnie pried it open on intermittent weekends to store his cash bribes in here in the dead of night?...

 

The history of Tommy Huang

From The Real Deal:

Huang left his native Taiwan in 1974 at age 20 and settled in Flushing, Queens. A few years later, he married Alice Liu, heiress to Taiwan’s Haw Di-I Foods and Bull Head Barbecue Sauce fortunes and cousin to City Comptroller John Liu, a Democrat who is running for mayor.

While studying business at Queens College, Huang saw opportunity in Flushing’s many vacant properties and decided to go into the real estate business.

“I could not believe it,’’ Huang told the New York Times in 1997 of the empty land he saw around him. “How come nobody wants to buy it?’’

With the help of his wealthy father-in-law, Huang built seven high-rises and hundreds of houses. By the late 1980s, he had been credited with helping to revive downtown Flushing with projects such as the Golden Shopping Mall and Main Street Tower, a nine-story office building. In 1986, Huang paid $3.4 million for the dilapidated RKO Keith’s movie theater on Northern Boulevard in Flushing. Huang closed the landmark and began work on the site, with plans to develop it into a major shopping center.

Soon, Huang caught the eye of the Democratic political machine, which at the time was led by then-Queens Borough President Donald Manes. Working with Manes to encourage business development, Huang solidified his ties with the Queens political establishment, which helped him evolve into one of the most powerful real estate developers in the borough.

“They were grooming Tommy to be the fair-haired boy,” said Jerry Rotondi, a member of the Committee to Save the RKO Keith’s and a long-time critic of Huang.

“He was the symbol of the revitalization,” State Senator Leonard Stavisky told the New York Times in 1997. “But it was wrong to entrust so much of it to Tommy Huang.’’

It’s been suggested that Huang’s political ties with the city comptroller and others could partially explain the city’s inaction.

Cuomo involved in the patronage he vowed to stop; Ghost of Donald Manes haunts CD19 race

From the NY Times:

New York State’s economic development agency created a new position last June, and then found a candidate to fill it: a young man named Willard Younger, who had just graduated from Colgate University with a degree in classics and religion. He became a special projects associate, at a salary of $45,000 a year, according to state personnel records.

His father, Stephen P. Younger, is a lawyer and power broker in legal circles who was a member of one of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s transition teams. He has also donated $26,000 to Mr. Cuomo’s campaigns over the years, disclosure records show.

The next month, the agency hired 23-year-old Andrew Moelis, a University of Pennsylvania graduate, for another new position, strategic planning associate, at a salary of $75,000 a year.

Shortly before Mr. Moelis’s first day of work, his father, Ron Moelis, a prominent real estate developer, gave $25,000 to Mr. Cuomo’s re-election campaign, according to the records.

Since taking office in 2011, Mr. Cuomo has repeatedly pledged to bring a new approach to Albany, where politicians of both major parties have long rewarded supporters with jobs that are not open to the general public.

But an investigation by The New York Times into hiring by the agency, the Empire State Development Corporation, shows how Mr. Cuomo’s administration has engaged in some of the same patronage practices that have often prevailed here.

The investigation was based on personnel records obtained through a Freedom of Information request, as well as campaign finance and other state records. Numerous interviews were conducted with state officials, employees and outside experts.



Well, now we know how Austin Shafran got his job there. The Shafrans have been hooked up since the days of Donald Manes. In fact, Austin's campaign contribution list reads like Donald Manes' rolodex.  Here are some of the contributors:

• Lester Shafran (and wife Beth) - Uncle, ex-head of the PVB, found guilty in the scandal.
• Sid Davidoff & Stephen Malito - Davidoff was Manes' best friend and lawyer, pushed for the Grand Prix raceway and represented the USTA for their expansion in 1993. Davidoff and Malito are political fixers, bar none.
• Then we have Sean Crowley working for Davidoff.  Another lobbyist involved in some not-too-civic friendly projects from another family that thrives only on nepotism.
• Michael Nussbaum - Manes' bagman in a bribery scandal - $250,000 to get a cable television franchise - who had his conviction reversed and now is in sole control of the Queens Tribune.

Here's a summary of where some of Shafran's current contributions come from (total = $58,802):
Political / Elected Officials /Candidates /Government $9,890
Donald Manes Associates and Intermediaries $4,200
Lobbyists (they show up on the NYC Lobbyist search) $1,500
Unions $8,450
Real Estate / Developers / Construction $4,275
Lawyers $1,675
Employees of:
Epoch Times $1,850
Union Plaza Nursing Home $1,350
Parker Jewish Institute $800

This constitutes 58% of Shafran's contributions.

Do you folks in eastern Queens want to return to the days of Donald Manes?

Strange rise and fall of Cecilia Chang

From the NY Times:

She was petite. Elegant. Forceful.

“She could walk into a room and dominate a conversation,” said Jonathan Derek, a former assistant of Dr. Chang’s who attended dinners where Dr. Chang entertained potential donors. “Just by being there, she was the center of attention.”

She made her home in Jamaica Estates, Queens, in a $1.7 million Tudor-style house with seven bedrooms, maid quarters, stone fireplaces and soaring ceilings with skylights.

Yet in many ways, Dr. Chang was a woman out of place.

As her legal troubles mounted in recent years, she found friendship among bartenders and casino bus drivers. She would curry favor by lending money to people from Chinese communities in Flushing and to fellow gamblers at the Foxwoods casino in Connecticut, where she was spending more and more time.

And to her embarrassment, she never learned to speak English fluently, writing that she felt isolated from her colleagues, like a “money tree” that was shaken but never nurtured.

Dr. Chang was hired at St. John’s not long after graduating from its master’s program. Three years later, she was named a dean. A big part of her job was to keep the Taiwanese money flowing.

Closer to home, she helped arrange trips to Taiwan for political delegations from Queens that included Donald Manes, the Queens borough president who committed suicide after his role in a far-reaching bribery scandal became public in 1986.

Sid Davidoff, a lawyer, lobbyist and longtime friend of Mr. Manes’s, recalled that Dr. Chang served as the borough president’s political liaison to the Asian community in Queens. Dr. Chang was so close to Mr. Manes that when she renovated her Queens mansion, she asked him to manage the project, according to a former university colleague of hers who was not willing to be named. There was speculation that some of Dr. Chang’s business relationships extended into her personal life.

She followed in Donald's footsteps

Wondering what the tie was between all the tweeders and the recently deceased Cecilia Chang, who was on trial for embezzling at St. John's University?

This Queens Tribune article from 2003 is a great reminder:

I write this on Saturday, and three non-related events of the past two days brought into focus the part of Mike [Nussbaum]’s life that is somewhat separate from our business and his family. Although Mike integrates all that he does – his family members have become my friends and mine his – and his outside ventures often become my causes, there is another Mike.

Event 1, Thursday night: Lil and I attended the Queens Jewish Community Council’s 35th Anniversary Terrace-on-the Park Gala in honor of Claire Shulman and Mike Nussbaum.

Event 2, Friday afternoon: We cleared our Tribune office floors to make room for new carpet and in looking into Mike’s office, I noticed various mementos of a peace trip to North and South Korea that Mike had arranged when Congressman Gary Ackerman became the first person since Douglas McArthur to cross the 39th parallel which divides the two nations.

Event 3, Saturday morning: Mike took Senator Chuck Shumer to welcome Taiwan President Chen Shui-Bian to New York and announce Shumer was joining the newly formed Senate Taiwan Caucus to further ties between our two nations.

Yes, Mike brings us Asian clients and friends — but that’s the smallest part. His network includes the very top government officials and business giants in the Far East as well as their counterparts here in our country.

At the Thursday night affair, I met Mike’s old friend Dr. Cecelia Chang, vice president of St. John’s and Dean of the Asian Studies program. In 1980, as president of his own company, Mike helped Cecelia put together the first government and business delegation to visit Taiwan. Queens Chamber Prez, Citibank’s Peg Sweezy, Queens Beep Donald Manes, Congressman Jim Scheuer, Councilmembers Archie Spigner and Ed Sadowsky were a few who went with them. It was that trip which established Queens County and Taipai, the capital of Taiwan, as sister cities.

It also established Mike as a player in the Far East.

From the Daily Mail:

The New York Daily News also reports that detectives investigated Ms Chang in the murder of her husband. From his death bed, Mr Tsai reportedly wrote 'My wife did this!' when questioned by detectives.

He was shot four times in the back while leaving his business in Brooklyn, New York, in 1990. He died later and no one has every been charged in his death.

Tsai's note also suggested that Dr Chang had an affair with Queens Borough President Donald Manes, a neighbor who killed himself in 1986 after being caught in a scandal.

Today's pols are reincarnations of Manes

From a letter to the editor of the Queens Tribune:

In 1895, Frederick Law Olmstead - the genius who created Central and Prospect Parks in this city and other famous parks elsewhere - said: “The survival of our park system requires the exclusion from management of real estate dealers and politicians and that the first duty of our park trustees is to hand down from one generation to the next the treasure of scenery which the city placed in their care.” The huge increase in our urban population and the technological congestion in modern cities makes it clear Mr. Olmstead’s admonition over 100 years ago is even more pertinent today. But when it comes to Flushing Meadows Corona Park, it not only falls on deaf ears, but upon a large group of donkeys who masquerade as public officials, oblivious to the fact that even during the great depression of the 1930s, public parkland was considered sacred and inviolate, not for sale or barter.

Since the administration of the late former Queens Boro President Donald Manes through and up to our current Bloomberg administration, FMCP has been up for grabs by all sorts of fat cat real estate and special interests aided and complicit with so called politicians who have not the vaguest understanding of what urban parks are all about and that once parkland a non renewable resource is given away, it is lost forever.

Residents of Queens and indeed of this city have every right to be concerned and to protest the malfeasance being inflicted on FMCP.(Residents Protest Park Plans- Queens Tribune-Sept. 20-26). It will be recalled Manes, who disgraced the office of Boro President facing criminal charges, wanted to cut down over one hundred trees and build a Grand Prix race track around Meadow Lake, endorsed at the time by our current Queens Boro President Helen Marshall, then a public official, as well as others and wanted to turn the park into a Meadowlands sportsplex to be named after himself. Since then the USTA was given a significant piece of the park upon its promise not to seek more parkland. That promise was as worthless as a dead tennis ball; it sought and was given more land and currently seeks more as well as the right to increase the size of its stadiums, an environmental blight. Bloomberg’s ill-advised Willets Point plan will take some parkland and cause an egregious impact on the park. On the horizon is the prospect of a private for profit soccer stadium without hearing any expressions of opposition from any public official. It should also be noted the Mets stadium when initially constructed, was on parkland. The billboards on its current stadium for which it derives substantial income, is an environmental horror.

Donald Manes’ dream of a sportsplex in lieu of a park may well come to pass, in which case it should be named after him since the demise of the park would be criminal and compliment his abysmal term in office. While the die has been cast, but since not yet solidified, can anything be done to prevent this from happening? The answer is “Yes.” The people of this city and in particular of Queens, must take Frederick Law Olmstead’s admonition seriously. Flushing Meadows Corona Park must be removed from the city’s jurisdiction and turned over to a professionally trained park administrator supported with tax dollars and with the specific obligation to exclude all politicians, real estate and special interests from any say in management of the park.

Residents of Queens wake up if you want to save Flushing Meadows Corona Park for yourself and generations to come, and insist any person seeking public office must support the above or not receive your vote.

Benjamin M. Haber,
Flushing

Truth comes out at Keith's vote

From the Queens Chronicle:

It was deja vu all over again at Community Board 7’s monthly meeting Monday as members OK’d plans for the redevelopment of the derelict RKO Keith’s Theatre exactly five years to the day of the last approval.

In a vote of 24-10, following a hearing at the Union Plaza Care Center, members agreed to a revised plan for the site, which includes a lot more housing units and less parking spaces. The new owner, Patrick Thompson of Manhattan, bought the decaying structure at the intersection of Northern Boulevard and Main Street last May for $20 million and expects the project to cost $160 million.

Jerry Rotondi, acting president of the Committee to Save the RKO Keith’s Theatre of Flushing, noted his group got the building listed on the National Register of Historic Places and supported its full interior designation as a city landmark in 1984. But, Rotondi pointed out, “Claire Shulman, acting for her mentor, corrupt Borough President Donald Manes, lobbied to have the designation abridged to just the ticket lobby and grand foyer,” he said.

The landmarking reduction was later supported by Shulman, when she was borough president. The lobby and foyer are the only significant parts of the theater remaining.

Protecting both is the main focus of Rotondi’s group now. He also recommended that a museum element be incorporated into the final design “that celebrates the important and rich theatrical history that included live performances by some of the greatest show business icons in 20th-century America,” he said.

Who's really to blame for the RKO Keith's?

Here we go again...

To the author of this article:

You do a great disservice in “reporting” on the fight to save the RKO Keith’s Theater by not doing your homework as to A) to the true unfolding of events as to how they occurred and B) disseminating inaccurate information that is then taken at face value because of your position as a “journalist” for the Baruch College Journalism program.

While the spirit of the Facebook group shows great concern and empathy for our ruined treasure, the often-times wrong info that is carried by that site (as well as some of the people that you interviewed) completely confuses the point as to WHY the building is still standing.

To simplify matters:

1) The entire interior of the building was granted New York City Landmark status in 1984. This includes ALL INTERIOR SPACES, including the auditorium, grand foyer, ticket lobby, lounges, mezzanines, promenade and the like. Also, the full interior AND exterior were placed (and remain today) on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

2) Former Borough President Donald Manes abridged the designation at the old Board of Estimate (which could overturn landmark designation, as the City Council can today) shortly thereafter when his successor, Claire Shulman, was his deputy-Borough President and representing him at the meeting. Shulman lobbied other members of the Board of Estimate at the behest of her boss Manes to scrap the full designation in favor of only the ticket lobby and grand foyer being protected. Had the landmark designation not been voted on by midnight of a certain date by the Board of Estimate, the entire interior designation would have remained permanent.

3) After two years, the Committee to Save the RKO Keith’s Theater, Inc. requested the restoration of the full interior landmark designation. Over 3,500 petition signatures were sent to Mayor Koch, then-Borough President Shulman and the Landmarks Preservation Commission. It was subsequently discovered that Tommy Huang had driven a bulldozer up the east staircase of the grand foyer, damaging the landmarked portion of the building.

4) The destruction Huang perpetrated on the rest of building had no rhyme or reason in terms of an actual demolition plan. He damaged as much of the interior ornament and building fabric as possible as to make the re-designation of the full interior of the building as a landmark impossible. It seemed clearly that his intent was to destroy the entire interior of the building, thumbing his nose at the authorities, the community and the government in order to show that he was the boss.

5) When confronted by supporters of the restoration of the theater and creative adaptive re-use into a performing arts / conference center in 1986, BP Claire Shulman refused to support the redesignation. When she was questioned at a later date over the possibility of pursuing punitive damages against Huang, her response was “Hasn’t he suffered enough? He hasn’t been able to build on the site…” for a number of years.

6) Tommy Huang was NOT going to build a movie complex at the RKO Keith’s. In fact, in the original deed when it was conveyed to him by RKO, he was prohibited from showing movies in the English language at the site for 25 years. This was to stop any competition between RKO, which still operated other theaters in the metropolitan area, and any other movie operator who might buy the building. The prohibition is expiring this year.

7) Contrary to your article, Tommy Huang or his shell corporations owned the building until its sale to Boymelgreen. He NEVER filed for bankruptcy and used the shell corporations to remove personal liability for himself. In fact, within a year or so of purchasing the building, he had flipped the property from the Farrington & Northern Development Corp. to Henry & John Associates (Henry and John are his sons). At one point, I believe he even made his own mother the legal owner of the building, which would make her responsible for the debts and violations that he incurred over the years.

These facts – and many, many more not discussed here – tell the true story of what has happened to the “Penn Station” of Queens.

This building, more than any others that were destroyed or compromised, was what galvanized preservationists throughout the borough to make sure something like this would never happen again.

Most importantly, he could not have accomplished the destruction of this theater – and get away with it – without the help of other accomplices, including former Borough Presidents Donald Manes and Claire Shulman. Most importantly, Shulman could have intervened with the building or reversed the landmark designation to include the entire interior (at a time when the Borough President’s power was substantially more than today, as their power was limited after the 1989 Charter Revision). She made a conscious choice not to intervene, but it’s more than that; she truly was implicitly involved in the destruction of the building. Her refusal to listen to her constituents and other elected officials in the race to save the RKO Keith’s – and her actions during the past three decades at other preservation flash points throughout the borough – clearly revealed her agenda for Queens.

Paul Graziano,
Flushing Resident

Ghost of Donald Manes still haunts Queens

From the Daily News:

During the reign of Queens Borough President Donald Manes in the 1970s and 1980s, advocates for historic preservation consistently lost bids to landmark sites - often leading to their demolition.

Wielding his powerful influence on the Board of Estimate, Manes opposed almost every landmark the board considered in his borough. The rejections continued until 1986 - when the scandal-scarred Manes resigned and committed suicide.

A quarter century later, Queens has witnessed significant gains in landmarks. But preservationists fear the landmarks struggles of the Manes era may return after a controversial vote this week.

The City Council is expected on Tuesday to deny the landmark designation of a Tudor Gothic Revival church hall in Jamaica, based on objections raised by the congregation after the vote by the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Some fear the decision would set a precedent for the city to landmark property only after receiving consent from its owner. That could doom future landmarking causes involving absentee landlords and ambivalent residents.

"It definitely will have a chilling effect," said Jim Driscoll of the Queens Historical Society.

Councilman Jim Gennaro (D-Fresh Meadows), who is leading the charge to overturn the designation, said the commission should start practicing "real engagement" with property owners before a landmarks vote.

"This is kind of a teachable moment for how we do landmarks," he said.

Gennaro would not elaborate on what the commission could have done beyond the letters, phone calls and meetings with church leaders.

The commission released a statement defending its "early and ongoing outreach to elected leaders, owners and civic groups."

But preservationists worry the agency, which relies on the Council to approve its designations, may be hesitant to landmark again in Queens without owner consent.

"In the future, unless the Landmarks Commission gets a strong, positive 'yes' in writing, they might not move forward," said Simeon Bankoff, executive director of the Historic Districts Council.

Still, local advocates insisted they are not deflated.

Historian Jeff Gottlieb, who first pitched the church hall as a landmark, vowed to continue fighting for significant sites.

He spearheaded a successful bid in 2008 to landmark an ornate Jamaica bank whose designation had been overturned during Manes' tenure and again by the Council in 1992.

Another Queens activist, Jeffrey Kroessler, also seemed undeterred.

"For someone just entering the arena of historic preservation, this would be a depressing incident," he said. "For those of us with more than one battle scar, we know this is just one battle."

And now for the biggest joke of the day

From last week's Queens Tribune retrospective.