'Bidder' pill for City Hall
Well-timed chat with deputy mayor
The developer of a 36-story luxury condo in Brooklyn Heights discussed the project with Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen before the winning bid was selected — raising questions about the fairness of the process.
Glen oversees the Economic Development Corporation, which helped pick the winning proposal and typically bars contact between city officials and applicants during the bidding competition.
But e-mails show that David Kramer, CEO of the Hudson Companies, communicated with Glen before the high-rise on the site of the Brooklyn Heights library branch was awarded to his firm by the library’s board and the EDC on Sept. 16, 2014.
“I was just calling to give you a huge thanks for the Brooklyn Public Library [Request for Proposal],” Kramer wrote Glen on Sept. 19, 2014. “Ever since our call in August, it feels like momentum finally started happening . . . I was happy to see that a 15 month long RFP process came to a close, and quite pleased with the outcome (how’s that for understatement).
“As I always tell my colleagues, in our world, there are expeditors and bottlenecks. Thanks for being the expeditor.”
The e-mails, obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request, show other contacts between Glen and Kramer during the bidding process, which launched in June 2013 under the Bloomberg administration.
In March 2014, Kramer emailed Glen’s office to request contact information for an aide that Glen had referred him to for follow-up on the Request for Proposals.
Kramer told The Post his August 2014 conversation with the deputy mayor focused solely on the timeline, under which a winner was initially supposed to be selected in late 2013.
“Eight months into the new administration, we kept on hearing that EDC and [Brook- lyn Public Library] were awaiting direction from City Hall,” he told The Post. “So I reminded the Deputy Mayor about the project and that there were a number of bidders waiting. That reminder is what my e-mail refers to.”
Kramer said his conversation with Glen in March 2014 — which he couldn’t recall specifically — was also likely about the schedule.
City officials gave the same explanation, but wouldn’t say whether conversations between applicants and top officials during the bidding process was appropriate.
“The Deputy Mayor never took a side in who won the RFP,” said City Hall spokeswoman Jane Meyer.
But a source familiar with the procurement process called the contacts “com- pletely inappropriate, and depending on what happens, probably a violation of the procurement rules.”
The Post previously reported that Hudson won the contract even though its $52 million offer was not the highest bid.
Hudson received $10 million in financing from the same Goldman Sachs division that Glen used to oversee.