The Trump Organization’s bid to again operate Central Park’s iconic Wollman Rink after its removal in the wake of the 2021 Capitol riots will, if selected, have to skate past the company’s criminal record to win a city board’s approval.
Getting clearance will require a city committee to overlook the company’s 2022 conviction on criminal tax fraud charges and a 2024 civil court ruling and finding the organization had engaged in years of fraudulent activity.
That board, the Franchise and Concession Review Committee, is controlled by Mayor Eric Adams and will have to sign off on whichever concessionaire the city Department of Parks and Recreation ultimately selects for the 20-year Wollman Rink deal.
A vote on a renewed Wollman deal would be a chance for Adams to aid President Donald Trump, whose family runs the company under restrictions imposed by the civil judgment last year. It was Trump who first suggested during his campaign he might pardon the mayor over his pending corruption case, and whose Department of Justice has since moved aggressively to dismiss the mayor’s corruption indictment.
The committee’s six members — with Mayor Eric Adams as chair — must consider a bidder’s history when deciding whether to give their support, and all bidders for city concessions must demonstrate a “satisfactory record of business integrity” to win approval.
Already two of the six franchise committee members slated to weigh in on the Wollman concession award, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine and the mayor himself, have weighed in on the possibility of the Trump company again operating a facility that’s a major tourist attraction.
Levine has stated flatly he opposes the Trump Organization getting the concession — while Adams attacked Levine, after THE CITY revealed this week that the Parks Department spurned a $120 million gift from the Central Park Conservancy to revive and run the rink.
Without naming Levine or the chair of the City Council’s Parks Committee, Shekhar Krishnan, who have both warned against Trump’s return, Adams accused them of playing politics by demanding that the city not award the rink concession to the Trump firm — and defended the Trump Organization’s right to bid, without addressing the elected officials’ stated concerns about the company’s history.
“Anyone can put in for it. When you have two elected officials that are saying, ‘Don’t give someone an RFP because they are not part of our whatever terminology they use,’ think about that,” he said in response to a question posed by THE CITY. “That is just not how this is done. Politics should not determine policies and what’s best for our City, for New York.”
Mayor Eric Adams holds his weekly press conference at City Hall, March 17, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Levine shot back in a statement to THE CITY: “The Mayor may not be willing to say this, so I will: Donald Trump is diametrically opposed to everything New York City Parks stand for and is waging a lawless assault on our city and our values,” said Levine. “I’ll do everything I can to keep his name, policies, and presence out of the city and off Wollman Rink.”
Besides the mayor and Manhattan borough president, the vote will go to the mayor’s budget director, corporation counsel and another appointee of his choice. The only other member independent of the mayor is Comptroller Brad Lander. Lander declined to comment.
The Trump Organization did not respond to THE CITY’s multiple requests for comment on whether the criminal conviction and the civil fraud court finding could play into the company’s pursuit of the concession.
‘No Action Was Needed’
Trump has a long history with Wollman, dating back to his intervention in the 1980s to quickly repair and reopen the dilapidated rink. The saga became part of his mythology as a brilliant businessman even as he continued to trade on the public park facility.
The New Yorker described how TV producer Mark Burnett, spotting Trump’s name emblazoned around the rink, wooed the developer to develop a new reality show with him: “The Apprentice,” the show that would vault him to national prominence and ultimately his first presidential campaign.
The Trump Organization operated the rink for decades until early 2021, when then-Mayor de Blasio — citing the Jan. 6th riot by Trump supporters at the Capitol — terminated that agreement and another the city had with the company to operate a city-owned golf course at Ferry Point in Throggs Neck, The Bronx.
President Donald Trump exits the White House to board Marine One, Jan. 31, 2025. Credit: Joshua Sukoff/Shutterstock
Trump sued, and while the lawsuit was pending de Blasio awarded the Wollman concession to a joint venture that included The Related Companies, one of the city’s biggest developers. The company continued to operate the city-owned Ferry Point golf course while the lawsuit played out.
Then the Trump Organization’s troubles with the law began.
On Dec. 6, 2022, the company was convicted on all counts in a case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg alleging a 13-year pattern of tax fraud. A jury found the company regularly secretly compensated some of its executives hundreds of thousands of dollars “off the books,” including paying the rent on one executive’s luxury Manhattan apartment, buying Mercedes-Benz cars for the executive and his wife, and covering private school tuition for the executive’s grandchildren. The company and the executive reported none of this to the IRS, the jury found.
In January 2023, the Trump Corporation and the Trump Payroll Corporation were sentenced to pay a total of $1.6 million in fines.
In the meantime, state Attorney General Letitia James had filed civil fraud charges against the company, alleging in a September 2022 civil lawsuit that Trump and family members running the company and affiliates had for years falsely inflated the companies’ net worth by billions of dollars when seeking more favorable bank loans than they would otherwise be entitled to and to obtain insurance coverage at higher limits and lower premiums on the companies’ properties.
They submitted more than 200 false documents as part of this scheme from 2011 to 2021, the suit — which explicitly targeted the Trump Organization LLC — alleged.
In February 2024, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ruled in favor of James and ordered the companies to pay more than $450 million in foregone profits and interest. A monitor was appointed to oversee the company’s activities for three years, and Trump and his sons, Eric and Don Jr., were barred from serving as officers or directors of any New York company for two years. That prohibition doesn’t expire until next year.
Judge Engoron specifically warned that, based on the company’s history of deception and its “refusal to admit error — indeed to continue it” — requires the court “to conclude that they will engage in it going forward unless judicially restrained.”
Even as a Trump company continued to control the Ferry Point golf course, the Trump Organization never made it onto New York City’s “caution list,” a system for tracking city contractors and concessionaires who have been convicted of misconduct that agencies rely on when awarding contracts.
The Adams administration did not place the Trump Organization on that list after the firm’s Dec. 6, 2022 criminal tax fraud conviction. A spokesperson for the Parks Department said the Trump-owned concessionaire running the Ferry Point golf course was not the Trump Organization, and therefore did not have to be put on the list.
“The only Trump-owned concession was Trump Ferry Point LLC. No action was needed by Parks,” Jeane-Pierre Kelsey wrote in response to THE CITY’s inquiry.
By the time of the criminal conviction, de Blasio’s attempt to terminate Trump Organization’s concession to run the Ferry Point links had been shot down by a Manhattan Supreme Court justice, who in April 2022 ruled City Hall had no legal justification to end the lease.
The Trump company retained its role as concessionaire at the Ferry Point site for nearly a year until September 2023, when it sold off its rights to run the golf course to the casino operator, Bally’s.
In expressing his opposition to Trump, Manhattan Borough President Levine has raised questions about the Parks Department’s decision, first reported by THE CITY, to put the concession out to bid in mid-November after rejecting an offer by the well-funded philanthropic group, the Central Park Conservancy, to provide the city with millions of dollars to build a new rink and fix up the southeastern quadrant of the park.
Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine speaks at a City Hall rally about a series of bills to increase the number of public bathrooms across the five boroughs, Sept. 19, 2024. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
The current agreement with a venture led by The Related Companies to run the rink expires in June 2026, and in early September the department signaled the possibility of seeking proposals to run the facility. On Sept. 18, the Conservancy met at City Hall with top members of the Adams administration, including top staff with then-First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright and then-Deputy Mayor for Operations Meera Joshi, in an effort to discourage putting the concession out to bid.
The group offered to give the city $120 million to replace the rink and fix up the surrounding section of the park. They requested a $30 million commitment from the city to help them “unlock” philanthropic donations for the project, according to two participants in that meeting.
In October the conservancy sent a letter to Joshi and Parks Commissioner Sue Donoghue repeating their offer of a $120 million gift. Joshi and Donoghue then ghosted the group and put up the request for proposals for a Wollman Rink bid on Nov. 17.
The request for proposals closed in early January and the Parks Department has not signaled when it expects to make a decision on who should run the rink — passing its selection on to the Franchise and Concession Review Committee for a final determination.
The Parks request for proposals notes an opportunity for naming rights that would have to be purchased through a separate competitive process.
Additional reporting by Katie Honan
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