The city’s politically charged quest to find a new operator for Central Park’s Wollman Rink may end up pitting President Donald Trump’s family business against one of New York’s biggest real estate developers — helmed by a major Trump campaign donor.
The Trump Organization and the Related Cos. both appear to be in contention to run the ice-skating rink, for which the city is seeking a new operator under a 20-year contract that would start in 2027. Related currently runs the rink in a partnership with Equinox and Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment. However, Related is dropping those firms from its new bid and is linking up instead with the pickleball company CityPickle, Related spokespeople told Crain’s.
At stake are decades of control over the iconic Manhattan facility, which generated an average of $13,757,315 in revenues each season for Related and its partners since they took over in 2021, according to the city Parks Department. Related and its partners have paid the city an escalating annual fee that began at $3 million. (Companies bidding to take over Wollman will propose their own annual fees.)
The Trump Organization famously renovated the decrepit Wollman Rink in the 1980s and operated it from 1987 until 2021, when then-Mayor Bill de Blasio canceled the company’s contracts after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. When the city revealed days after the November presidential election that it was seeking a new operator, the Trump Organization announced hours later, via a story in the New York Post, that it would submit a proposal.
The Parks Department declined to say how many companies submitted bids before the Jan. 10 deadline, nor when it will pick a winner — although the current contract for Related and its partners expires in April 2027. The Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment, but representatives for Related confirmed they submitted a bid.
“Wollman Rink is an iconic New York City landmark and, alongside our new partner — CityPickle, we hope to be able to continue the work we’ve done to welcome thousands of New Yorkers and visitors from around the world for years to come,” Related spokeswoman Kayla Parker said. Related’s bid will involve capital improvements, including upgrades to electrical and plumbing systems, as well as some beautification work, she said. Its new partner, CityPickle, has run pickleball courts at Wollman during warm-weather months since 2023.
Related has its own Trump-world connections: Company founder Stephen Ross is a friend of Donald Trump’s and raised money for his 2020 re-election, although he pulled back on donations more recently and supported some congressional Democrats in last year’s elections.
Mayor Eric Adams’ handling of the skating rink is under intense scrutiny given his increasing closeness to President Trump and his family — a process that has included overtures to Eric Trump, the president’s son who now runs the Trump Organization, the New York Times reported this month. In a March 7 letter to Adams, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine and City Council Parks Committee Chair Shekar Krishnan urged Adams to reject the Trump Organization’s bid, saying accepting it would “send the wrong message about the city’s priorities and values.”
And elected officials raised alarms after The City reported this month that the Adams administration had turned down a separate proposal by the Central Park Conservancy, the nonprofit that manages the rest of the park. In meetings with the Adams administration last fall, the Conservancy had offered to take over Wollman Rink and gift the city $120 million — which would have covered upgrades to the rink, plus other accessibility and stormwater-related improvements to the southeast corner of the park. (The Conservancy asked the city to pay $30 million in taxpayer funds to “unlock” the nonprofit’s donor-funded money.)
“It goes without saying that no for-profit developer would or should have the same interest in investing in city property, or the commitment to serving the public, as we do,” Conservancy President Betsy Smith wrote in an Oct. 18 letter to Parks Commissioner Sue Donoghue and then-Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi, which was obtained by Crain’s. “We are not a corporate entity seeking a shortcut to extract money from the city, but a partner trying to give money to the city.”
The Conservancy has never before run Wollman Rink, but its leaders thought the time was right for them to take it over: The nonprofit is about to start operating a brand-new rink and pool replacing Lasker Rink on the uptown side of the park, which will open in April after a $160 million project funded through a mix of Conservancy and city dollars.
But Smith acknowledged a few reasons why the city was reluctant to sign on with the Conservancy for Wollman. The city stood to lose out on the $3 million in fees it currently gets from the rink operators, since the nonprofit was not proposing to run the rink as a concession — although Smith said the Conservancy would propose a “fee structure that makes sense for the city.”
And the city for decades has preferred to determine control over Wollman Rink through competitive bidding, while the Conservancy was proposing to take over the rink through a so-called “sole-source” contract.
Donoghue, the Parks Commissioner, reiterated that reasoning at a City Council hearing last week where she was questioned about the Conservancy’s rejected offer.
Compared to the Lasker Rink replacement uptown, “Wollman Rink is obviously much more lucrative, high-profile,” Dongohue said. “We felt that it was important to go through a public bidding process because of the difference in nature of those concessions and the revenue from those concessions.”
“Before finalizing any award, the city will consider multiple factors including the vendor’s financial resources [and] their record of business integrity,” she added. Under questioning, she confirmed that the Parks Department was aware of the Trump Organization’s conviction on 17 counts of criminal tax fraud.
The mayor defended the Parks Department’s reasoning at a press conference last week.
“An independent body looks at it and determines what’s the best deal for the city,” he said. “I would be concerned if someone came along and said that, ‘Hey, we did a backroom deal and let Central Park Conservancy give us X number of dollars, and we gave it to them and bypassed the process.’ ”
