In an explosive new lawsuit, a real estate firm is accusing the brokerage Cushman & Wakefield of conspiring with high-level officials in Mayor Eric Adams’ administration to steer lucrative city leases toward a single broker with ties to the mayor’s inner circle.
JRT Realty made the claims in a complaint filed Monday against Cushman & Wakefield, which since 2012 has handled the city’s 22 million square feet of leases in privately-owned buildings. Starting in 2023, Cushman teamed up with Jesse Hamilton — an Adams protégé who supervises the city’s real estate holdings — to box out JRT, which had been working as Cushman’s subcontractor and was entitled to some of the multimillion-dollar commissions, the suit alleges.
JRT claims it was marginalized at the hands of Diana Boutross, a Cushman & Wakefield vice chair who was put in charge of the firm’s account with the Department of Citywide Administrative Services in August 2023 despite lacking experience with city leases. Boutross, a personal friend of both Hamilton and the mayor’s then-chief advisor Ingrid Lewis-Martin, was installed as account manager “at the behest of Jesse Hamilton,” JRT alleges.
The suit claims that Cushman & Wakefield defamed JRT last year by telling DCAS that JRT had been fired as a subcontractor due to “performance issues.” The defamation campaign locked JRT out of potentially lucrative deals like the city’s planned purchase of a Bronx industrial building for $750 million, in which JRT would have been entitled to its typical 33.75% of the commission paid by the landlord, according to the complaint.
“Hamilton regularly walked through DCAS’s offices and openly announced to DCAS lease negotiators, ‘Remember that the Bronx Logistics Deal is only a C&W deal!’” the lawsuit alleges.
Cushman & Wakefield spokesman Michael Boonshoft said in a statement that “Any change in our work with JRT was driven by the city’s amended requirements for working with MWBE businesses, as well as other legitimate commercial reasons.
“Now that we have a copy of the complaint, we will review and respond accordingly,” he said.
DCAS, which is not named as a defendant, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The suit adds to the growing scrutiny surrounding DCAS, Hamilton and their work with Cushman & Wakefield, which has already forced the department to backtrack on its planned acquisition of the Bronx Logistics Center. Prosecutors from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, which indicted Lewis-Martin on unrelated charges last month, have also seized phones belonging to Boutross and Hamilton.
In October, the DCAS commissioner publicly repudiated Hamilton after a City Council hearing showcased an unusual, grainy promotional video in which Hamilton encouraged city agencies to buy or lease space in the Bronx building.
‘The account would be taken away’
JRT, founded by Jodi Pulice, formed a strategic alliance with Cushman in 2003 in which JRT was certified as a minority-or women-owned company. Starting in 2012, JRT worked as Cushman’s subcontractor on its contract with DCAS, putting the firms in charge of a sizable chunk of the city’s roughly 380 leases with private landlords.
But relations began to sour in December 2022, when Cushman’s Robert Giglio, who had long served as the manager in charge of the DCAS account, announced his retirement, the suit says. Ten senior Cushman & Wakefield brokers applied for the job, according to JRT, which was consulted during the search — but the firm ultimately chose Boutross, a retail broker who lacked experience in government or office leases and had not even submitted her resume, according to the suit.
Her appointment was a result of her connections to Jesse Hamilton, according to the lawsuit.
“Prior to Giglio’s retirement in December 2023, Hamilton told C&W that if Boutross was not appointed as Account Manager on the DCAS account, the account would be taken away from C&W,” the complaint reads.
Cushman quickly began “a premeditated campaign to block JRT from the DCAS account and destroy JRT’s reputation with DCAS, other city agencies, brokers,” according to the suit. The suit suggests that Cushman saw JRT as a potential rival, since its contract with DCAS was coming to an end, and the city was planning to release a new request for proposals in which JRT might be a competitor.
JRT says it was formally marginalized starting in March 2024, when Cushman extended its contract with DCAS until November but eliminated a longstanding participation goal for women-owned businesses — a change that “effectively eliminated JRT from new transactions,” the suit alleges. JRT was also excluded from emails and meetings about pending negotiations, including the Bronx Logistics Center, according to the complaint.
And in April, Boutross sent an email to another DCAS official stating that JRT would not receive any new assignments due to “performance issues,” according to the complaint. Boutross said the step was “being taken at the request of DCAS,” the suit says.
Word quickly spread among fellow brokers that JRT had been “fired” from the DCAS account, the firm says. The move sparked concern from Mayor Adams’ chief business diversity officer, Michael Garner, leading to two City Hall meetings in May and July.
But JRT says that Cushman continues to lock it out of deals it is entitled to work on, and has not retracted the “defamatory email” Boutross sent to DCAS.
JRT’s role in the DCAS saga was briefly spotlighted at the October City Council hearing, when Brooklyn Councilman Lincoln Restler asked DCAS Commissioner Louis Molina to explain why the firm had seemingly been marginalized despite “providing excellent services.”
Restler, in a statement Tuesday, said the lawsuit “further underscores the corruption involving the Adams administration and Diana Boutross and the need for a comprehensive investigation into the city’s shady real estate division.”
