Adams' new campaign HQ opens in SL Green building as real estate giant offers key support
Marc Holliday, SL Green's CEO, is a longtime supporter of Adams and offers him a crucial toehold into New York's influential — and wealthy — real estate sector. During the Democratic mayoral primary campaign, Adams' rival, Andrew Cuomo, courted most sections of the real estate world for financial support, including Holliday.
But with Cuomo's Democratic mayoral primary loss in the rearview, Holliday appears to be lining up squarely behind Adams.
Last week, Holliday hosted a fundraiser for Adams at One Madison, SL Green's flagship Flatiron District skyscraper, where hundreds of supporters donated nearly $1 million to the mayor, a massive haul. It comes as he's scrambling to mount an independent run against socialist Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic mayoral nominee who's the favorite to win November's general election, and Cuomo, who said Monday he is staying in the race.
Eighteen blocks north from One Madison, Adams has struck up another connection to SL Green, opening his campaign's new headquarters last week at the Graybar Building on Lexington Avenue, one of a number of commercial properties the company owns in New York.
A source familiar with the matter told the Daily News that Adams' campaign is paying SL Green $55 per square in monthly rent for the space at the Graybar. SL Green markets space in the building typically between $58 and $72 per square foot, according to real estate listings.
It wasn't immediately clear how much space the campaign is renting. Frank Carone, Adams' campaign chairman who's also a consultant working on SL Green's bid to build a casino in Manhattan, would only say the mayor's team is paying 'market rate' for the space.
SL Green, which holds extensive business interests before Adams' administration, didn't comment.
After Adams' September 2024 indictment on corruption charges, Holliday turned to Cuomo, pumping $100,000 into a super PAC that boosted the ex-governor's primary run. Cuomo is planning to run in the November election on an independent ballot line and is likely to try to seek support from the real estate and finance sectors that supported him during the primary.
But the new campaign headquarters and last week's large fundraiser indicate Adams has been able to tap at least portions of the deep-pocketed real estate industry for support, even as polling shows the mayor is facing an uphill climb amid continued fallout from his corruption indictment.
In turning to Holliday and SL Green for support, Adams is treading familiar ground.
Holliday is a longtime donor to Adams going back to his days as Brooklyn borough president. He and other SL Green executives have given nearly $30,000 to Adams' 2025 campaign, records show.
In addition to Wednesday's confab, Holliday hosted a fundraiser for Adams' reelection campaign at One Madison in July 2024 — two months before the mayor was indicted on bribery and campaign finance fraud charges — that raked in more than $100,000, per records obtained by The News via a Freedom of Information Law request.
Holliday and other SL Green execs are in the city's Doing Business database because of the various financial interests they have before city government.
One of SL Green's biggest current projects is its proposal to build a casino in Times Square. The state is expected later this year to select which developer will get to build a casino in the city, a highly coveted, lucrative business venture that the mayor is expected to have some input in.
Carone, Adams' ex-chief of staff and political confidant, has been helping SL Green with 'community engagement' on the casino bid since leaving City Hall in late 2022.
Citing the various overlapping political and business interests between the two sides, John Kaehny, a veteran government watchdog who runs the Reinvent Albany organization, called the Adams campaign's lease for its new headquarters 'sleazy,' arguing it opens the door to potential ethics issues, given Adams' campaign is effectively benefiting a big donor in renting the space.
Adams' campaign first revealed it would be using space in the Graybar Building last week when it also announced the mayor's new campaign team.
'We are ready to out-organize, out-message, and outwork anyone standing in our way,' Carone said in a press release.
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