One of Assemblyman Richard Brodsky’s favorite targets for cross-examination (maybe the favorite), is Charles Gargano, whom he is hauling before an Assembly hearing on Monday afternoon, less than two weeks before the Empire State Development Corporation chairman is supposed to step down.
Gargano in Brodsky’s sights again.
The topic: the sale of the New York State office condominium at 633 Third Avenue, which Brodsky calls in a press release “at best puzzling and at worst illegal insofar as our understanding of the fact that the required appraisal of the property was not conducted.”
Mark Weinberg, a spokesman for Gargano, told The Real Estate that the transaction returned $11 million to taxpayers because new digs for ESDC in lower Manhattan will be cheaper. (The Governor’s office and Comptroller’s office on Third Avenue have been re-leased from the new owner until the end of 2008.) An appraisal was not required, he said, because the Third Avenue space was generic office space.
Brodsky, in response, said that,considering a new Governor is about to be sworn in, the move was “at best bizarre and at worst, it’s illegal and bizarre.”
Nothing mentioned in the announcement about Monday’s hearing regarding Atlantic Yards, folks, but Javits, Moynihan and the Empire Zone program are on the table.
– Matthew Schuerman
CORRECTION: An earlier post incorrectly said that the Governor’s office would move downtown. Only ESDC is currently scheduled to move.