Lobbyist Tied to Shady Hospice Sale Made $250K Pushing Other Deed Changes
(DNAINFO) James Fanelli, Jeff Mays and Irene Plagianos | June 30, 2016 — James Capalino was hired in the past two years to lobby for deed changes at three other properties.
The powerful lobbyist involved in a controversial deed switch that turned an AIDS hospice facility into a future luxury condo developmentmade more than $250,000 in the past two years pushing for deed changes at three other properties in the city, records show.
The lobbyist, James Capalino, pushed city agencies to either lift or modify deed restrictions at a landmarked skyscraper in Lower Manhattan, an industrial site in College Point and a transitional shelter in the East Village.
Capalino is also a top fundraiser for Mayor Bill de Blasio. But despite his clout in City Hall, his firm earned mixed results for the three clients.
For example, Capalino + Company struck out getting a deed restriction lifted at the East 10th Street shelter in 2014.
And his efforts to modify the deed for the landmarked skyscraper were stalled after federal and state investigators opened probes into the lifting of a deed at the AIDS hospice Rivington House, which allowed the facility to be sold to luxury apartment developers and evoked negative headlines.
In fact Fosun International, the owners of the skyscraper at 28 Liberty St., stopped using Capalino’s firm on the deed modification because of its connections to the Rivington House drama.
Fosun had paid $120,000 to Capalino’s firm since January 2015 to lobby the city’s Department of Citywide Administrative Services to modify its deed in order to change parts of its public plaza and to build ground-level storefronts.
But Fosun asked Capalino to stop lobbying DCAS in the first week of April, shortly after the Rivington House sale began making news and being scrutinized by the city comptroller’s office and investigators.
“We have managed this deed modification process internally for the past few months and will continue to do so going forward,” Erik Horvat, a managing director at Fosun, said in a statement.
However, Capalino’s lobbying did help Fosun get the Landmarks Preservation Commission to sign off on changes to 28 Liberty St., which was formerly known as One Chase Manhattan Plaza.