MONEY PIT
City wasting millions by leasing a largely vacant building in Queens
Office space: the city’s final frontier.
The de Blasio administration is spending millions of dollars to lease a Queens building that has been 75% vacant for the past two years, the Daily News has learned.
In that time, the city has spent $3.6 million to use the entire three-floor, 77,612square-foot building on 94th St., across from the Jamaica AirTrain terminal.
The city has leased the building for more than 20 years. For years, it was used by the Department of Finance, but the building’s basement and top two floors have sat virtually empty for at least the last 24 months.
According to officials, there’s no plan to use that space for another two years.
“It’s a complete waste of money,” said a city staffer familiar with the setup, who asked to remain anonymous.
City officials say the original idea was to create an archive for city land records. The building was selected because it could afford public access and ample storage.
But the city “expanded the scope of the work” and that’s when the delays ensued, said Department of Finance spokeswoman Sonia Alleyne.
The floors will now have “additional public services and access, including those for seniors and the disabled.”
It is unclear why the initial project left out access for those groups.
The first floor houses the city tax assessor; payment operations staffers and cashiers; city registrar employees and parking-violations judges.
As for the empty space, the city has long struggled to keep track of the 12.5 million square feet it leases, through the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, at a annual cost of about $365 million.
A 2015 audit by the city controller found DCAS doesn’t have “an effective tracking tool to assist it in processing moves and renovations.”
DCAS maintains its system is accurate, but the agency admitted it is paying a contractor to migrate the data to a newer record-keeping system.
“These are conclusory assumptions that are speculative in nature and not substantiated by empirical evidence,” the agency said, responding to the audit.
“It’s unthinkable that agencies continue to waste taxpayer dollars for unused and empty office space when that money could be spent on valuable resources and programs,” Controller Scott Stringer said in a statement when contacted about the Queens space, adding his office was following up with DCAS to find out what is being done to fix the problem.”
A spokesman for Citywide Administrative Services defended the agency’s management of office space.
The building, owned by Web Food Products Inc., was originally leased by the city in 1997, during the Giuliani administration.
The Bloomberg administration renewed the lease in 2013, records show. That 20year deal is for $43.5 million, according to Citywide Administrative Services.