Wanted: A commercial broker with experience and who is upfront about any ties to city officials.
This sounds like a rudimentary request from a city agency seeking brokerages to represent it on office deals. But language in a new RFP echoes concerns raised about Cushman & Wakefield’s Diana Boutross, who led a team of brokers representing the Department of Citywide Administrative Services on city office leases since 2023.
DCAS issued a request for proposals on Thursday seeking as many as five new brokerages to represent it on leasing and buying office properties. These are lucrative but complicated deals, feeding into the agency’s 22.9 million-square-foot portfolio.
The city last hired Cushman and CBRE in 2017 to represent it on office deals. Cushman’s work has gotten a lot of attention because of Boutross, whose phone was seized by investigators from the Manhattan district attorney’s office in September as she returned from a trip to Japan with Ingrid Lewis-Martin, a former top Adams adviser, and Jesse Hamilton, deputy commissioner of real estate services at DCAS. Lewis-Martin was indicted in December on charges that she accepted tens of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for helping hoteliers speed up their projects.
During a hearing in October, Council member Lincoln Restler questioned Boutross’ qualifications to lead the Cushman team, given her experience as a retail, rather than office, broker. He also asked about Hamilton’s potential role in securing Boutross the job, which was also described in a lawsuit brought against Cushman last year.
The RFP seems to nod at these issues. DCAS requires that the “principal-in-charge” of managing a brokerage’s account with DCAS must have at least two years of experience as a commercial broker, including “supervising staff that negotiates office and industrial transactions, (2) acting as the lead negotiator on several transactions, (3) managing architectural and engineering firms, and (4) coordinating multiple disciplines (such as architects/engineers and attorneys) towards the successful closing of a transaction.”
The RFP also requires applicants to disclose if any of the main brokers working on the DCAS account “have or have had any personal relationships with DCAS staff, Client Agencies, or the City of New York and describe the extent of each relationship.”
Representatives for DCAS and Cushman did not return requests for comment.
Cushman’s contract was supposed to expire in 2020, but the city kept extending it. In March, DCAS Commissioner Louis Molina said the RFP was taking longer than anticipated because the solicitation was incorporating changes to reflect issues that arose with the city’s lease at 14 Wall Street.
In November, City Hall paused plans to move the Department of Aging to 14 Wall Street, following reports that Hamilton pushed for the building, owned by a donor to Mayor Eric Adams, to be selected.
The RFP calls for both the city and brokerages to each have their own independent conflicts compliance officers to “monitor and safeguard against conflicts of interest.”
The new contract is expected to run from November 1, 2025, through October 31, 2028.
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