Oh, sister!
Mayor Adams on Friday defended his administration's decision to water down a community-backed redesign for deadly McGuinness Boulevard, even though his decision to shelve half of the safety improvements came after his former top adviser was allegedly bribed by two safety opponents who happen to be top donors to the mayor.
Hizzoner called the watered-down overhaul a "win," while praising his ex-adviser Ingrid Lewis-Martin and the sibling executives at the Greenpoint soundstages company Broadway Stages who showered the former City Hall powerhouse with money, gifts and even a walk-on cameo on a TV show, according to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
"McGuinness was a win," Adams said in response to a Streetsblog question at a press conference in City Hall. "To sit down and come to a resolution that both sides could agree on. There was a lot of conversations. There were people on both sides of the issue, and you have to come to a middle."
In fact, you do not have to come to the middle when one side is bribing city officials, said one advocate.
"Mayor Adams's top aide corrupted the McGuinness design process," said Kevin LaCherra, an organizer with the pro-redesign group Make McGuinness Safe. "It’s just absurd to claim today that the changes to the community plan were made in good faith.
"The opposition to this plan was produced, bought, and paid for by Broadway Stages," he added, referring to the soundstage company run by the brother-and-sister team of Gina and Tony Argento.
Also on Friday, as multiple scandals were still swirling around City Hall, likely next mayor Zohran Mamdani took a victory lap and reiterated his pledge to complete the portion of the McGuinness Boulevard redesign that Bragg's probe suggested Adams shelved at the behest of the Argentos.
"Those donors knew that if they provided enough catering to a Gracie Mansion event, if they put the mayor's top aide in a cameo speaking role in 'The Godfather of Harlem,' then they could ensure that the road diet would be cut in half," Mamdani said at a press conference in Union Square. "And the whole reason there's advocacy for that street safety improvement is because a local teacher was killed ... at that same site. New Yorkers need a mayor who's thinking about safety first, not about the possibility of enrichment of his closest friends.
"The same tens of thousands of dollars that are alleged to have passed hands from top donors to the Adams administration to the top aide to Eric Adams, are the same kinds of money that keep New Yorkers from living a life of dignity in their own lives," Mamdani added.
The Queens Assembly member, who is leading former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the pols by double-digit percentages, has already pledged to finish McGuinness on Day 1 in office.
"What I would do as the next mayor of this city, is on the first day I would get to work on completing the entire road diet for McGuinness," Mamdani said at a mayoral forum in March. He also signed the Make McGuinness Safe pledge, a commitment that neither Cuomo nor Adams has made.
Mayor Adams's 'sister' act
After the news broke about Bragg's indictment of Lewis-Martin and the Argentos, advocates quickly demanded that the city revert to the original Department of Transportation safety plan for all of McGuinness between the Pulaski Bridge and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, which called for halving the number of through lanes to add a protected bike lane in both directions.
But the mayor doubled down on his support for Lewis-Martin and the Argentos.
"Ingrid is like a sister to me, I love Ingrid," Adams told reporters at the press conference, which he called to address mounting corruption scandals. "I know her, and I know her heart, and she and her attorney will deal with the case that's in front of her."
The mayor called the Argentos "beautiful people" who worked to "give back" to their neighborhood.
"They're great New Yorkers. They contribute in the area of their community, they give back, they're very dedicated to the people of this city," Adams said. "From my interactions with them, they are beautiful people, and they really care about the city of New York."
They definitely care about one version of New York; the two Brooklynites have long fought changes to the streetscape across at least three mayoral administrations, including a DOT plan to install a road diet on the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and add bike lanes on Monitor Street and Kingsland Avenue.
The power brokers allegedly pressured city officials to halt plans on Monitor, because of their plans to privatize a section of that street and converting it into a backlot between their properties, according to Bragg's office.
The Argento siblings have long been an influential force in city politics, donating liberally to Adams's various runs for office and the Brooklyn Democratic Party machine over the past decade alone.
But their playbook of influence needed to be updated for the McGuinness fight after the death of teacher Matthew Jensen and the subsequent groundswell of advocacy from locals and elected officials to improve the highway-like thoroughfare. Weeks after Jensen was killed by a hit-and-run driver, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged $40 million for a redesign.
Soon after DOT revealed its road diet in spring of 2023, the Argentos sprang into action and bankrolled a counter-insurgency, reeled in Brooklyn political leaders and agency heads to fake town halls, and backed failed political candidates to unseat lawmakers supporting the redesign.
Worse, they paid Lewis-Martin $2,500 in a direct cash wire, picked up a nearly $11,000 tab for catering services, and gave her a minor cameo on "Godfather of Harlem," which filmed at Broadway stages, according to Bragg, who called the scheme a case of "classic bribery."
Now they are facing 11 years in prison.
A spokesperson for Andrew Cuomo did not respond for comment. And the Department of Transportation — which has referred calls to City Hall — did not respond to questions on Friday either. It is unclear what top agency officials knew about the alleged corruption inside City Hall that, according to authorities, led the agency to bail on its own safety plan.
