With the Trump Organization vying to run Wollman Rink in Central Park, 19 elected officials on Tuesday asked Mayor Eric Adams to halt the bidding process and reconsider a proposed $120 million gift by the park’s nonprofit conservancy to refurbish and run the facility that his administration shot down last fall.
In a letter to the mayor, the officials — including members of Congress, state senators and Assembly members, Council members and the Manhattan borough president — asked Adams to revisit the offer by the Central Park Conservancy to fully fund a renovation, run the rink themselves and pay to fix up the surrounding southeast quadrant of the park.
The elected officials seeking a do-over include Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Adriano Espaillat, State Sens. Liz Krueger, Brad Hoylman-Sigal and Jose Serrano, Assemblymembers Alex Bores, Eddie Gibbs, Micah Lasher, Linda Rosenthal, Tony Simone and Jordan Wright, Councilmembers Gale Brewer, Diana Ayala, Shekar Krishnan, Julie Menin, Keith Powers and Yusef Salaam, and Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine. The signers are all Democrats.
They do not mention the Trump Organization, the family business of President Donald Trump that operated the rink for years, but rather focus on the benefits they say the conservancy’s gift would bring.
“As representatives of Central Park and the adjacent neighborhoods, we write to request that you end the ongoing [request of proposals] process with for-profit developers to run Wollman Rink and enter into negotiations with the not-for-profit Central Park Conservancy,” they wrote, noting the conservancy’s role in transforming the park’s other rink “into a magnificent new facility.” The Davis Center pool and rink is slated to open April 26.
A rendering of the Davis Center in winter. Image courtesy of the Central Park Conservancy.
A spokesperson for Adams did not immediately respond to THE CITY regarding the letter.
The rink is currently operated by a joint venture with The Related Companies and brings in about $3 million in revenue to the city annually. As THE CITY reported, conservancy leaders pitched the $120 million offer to staff of Deputy Mayor for Operations Meera Joshi and Parks Commissioner Sue Donoghue last September. The group requested $30 million from the city to help generate donations. The conservancy sent a follow-up letter to Joshi and Donoghue Oct. 18. But the administration stopped responding about the historically large gift offer.
A month later — shortly after Trump was reelected as president — the Parks Department put up a request for proposals seeking a developer to take over management of Wollman. Within hours, a Trump organization executive told the New York Post the company planned to bid on it, noting a key element of Trump’s claim to be a brilliant businessman: his rehabilitation of the deteriorating rink in the 1980s after the city’s fixup attempt ended in failure.
President Donald Trump meets with his cabinet at the White House, March 6, 2025. Credit: Daniel Torok/White House
The firm submitted a bid late last year, and Eric Trump, the company’s CEO, later told the New York Times, “Nearly 38 years ago my father saved Wollman Rink. We truly hope we can save it once again.”
Levine as borough president and Krishnan as the chair of the Council’s parks committee publicly pushed back on the Trump family regaining control of the popular rink after former Mayor Bill de Blasio removed the Trump group in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol that followed a Trump rally. Trump recently pardoned hundreds of participants who had been charged with related felonies.
“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,” Levine wrote in an op-ed. “I’ll do everything I can to keep his name, policies, and presence out of the city and off Wollman Rink.”
Adams lashed back at Levine, declaring that taking the conservancy’s offer could be seen as a “backroom deal” that “bypassed the process,” noting that anyone was welcome to bid on the RFP.
“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.”
The new letter from the elected officials pushes back on Adams’ insistence that he must put the concession out to a bid.
Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine speaks on the Upper West Side about cracking down on unlicensed marijuana sellers, Feb. 7, 2023. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
“The city is under no obligation to select bids received through the RFP process,” they wrote, noting that the new Davis Center is a precedent for having a nonprofit run a Central Park facility: the Parks Department awarded the conservancy a sole-source concession to renovate and run the Lasker Rink in the Harlem Meer at the northeastern end of the park. That agreement included a $100 million gift to the city.
Linking management of the two rinks, and providing public restrooms and a “restaurant open to all,” would be among the benefits of the conservancy proposal, the officials wrote.
They also championed the conservancy’s $120 million offer “to re-imagine the entire southeast quadrant of the park and operate Wollman in a manner that would be better for the public and better for the Park than any private company,” the letter reads. That section of the park is prone to flooding and the conservancy vowed to remedy that persistent problem if the city brought them on board to operate the rink.
“The conservancy has shown its commitment to the Parks Department and the people of New York for decades,” they wrote. “As official stewards of the park for more than 40 years the conservancy is uniquely qualified and equipped to manage Wollman Rink and to undertake the necessary work surrounding the facility in a manner that is holistic and of the highest standards, just as they have at the new Davis Center at the Harlem Meer.”
Any entity that seeks to run the rink ultimately needs the approval of a board the mayor controls, the Franchise and Concession Review Committee. Levine sits on that board, as does the Comptroller Brad Lander along with the mayor, his budget director, the head of his Law Department and a third appointee of his choice.
The board considers a bidder’s “satisfactory record of business integrity” when deciding who gets to operate a concession. Whether the Trump Organization’s conviction on fraud charges becomes a factor in that decision remains to be seen.
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