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.

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.