When news came out that the Rivington House, a Lower East Side nursing home, was sold to luxury condo developers, the de Blasio administration claimed it knew nothing about it, but a report released yesterday revealed that many city officials did know about the deal, and did nothing to stop it.
The Department of Investigation’s probe was launched in response to the controversial sale and found that, in late 2015, the Department of Citywide Administrative Services lifted a deed restriction on 45 Rivington St, which had required the building be a nursing home, Crain's reports. That gave the Allure Group, a private nursing home company, clearance to flip the property to luxury housing developers for $116M, bringing in a tidy $72M profit.
“The city had the opportunity to protect its interests but did not do so,” the report states. It also stated that officials not only knew about the restriction being lifted, but also knew that Allure was going to sell the property to condo developers.
It also found the Law Department was attempting to hinder the probe by denying investigators information, despite the Department of Investigation having unfettered access to documents and computers.
Thus, the report concludes it’s unknown if “Rivington-related information” can still be found on City Hall servers. As the Nixon administration could tell City Hall, "it's not the crime, it's the cover-up." [Crain’s]
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