Since the 1960s, New York City’s Public Health Laboratory building has been on the front lines of the fight against disease. The facility at 455 First Avenue in Manhattan has been home to scores of government scientists who’ve battled everything from COVID-19 to tuberculosis, HIV, and Ebola.
Now, the aging public building is on the verge of being handed over to private developers. And some are questioning whether those developers have too cozy a relationship with City Hall.
According to an announcement in October of 2022, a company called Taconic Partners is one of two developers selected by the Adams Administration to “transform the former Public Health Laboratory, which is being rebuilt at Harlem Hospital, into a state-of-the-art life sciences hub.” The announcement, which dubbed the project “Innovation East,” said the new 500,000 square-foot building “has the potential to create more than 1,000 jobs.”
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But just nine months before the deal with Taconic Partners was announced, one of Taconic’s former Vice Presidents, Nathan Bliss, accepted a high-level role in City Hall.
According to a financial disclosure amended just last week, Bliss, a Chief of Staff in charge of Mayor Adams’ economic development initiatives, reported earning between $100,000 and $250,000 in income from Taconic in the first three weeks of 2022. Bliss then took his job with the Adams Administration on January 24th 2022. He also reported an arrangement to receive future payments from a real estate investment fund while serving in city government. That fund, called the NYC Property Fund II, has the same name as a fund managed by Taconic.
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Bliss’s financial disclosure was amended three days after the NBC New York I-Team sent Bliss – and City Hall - a list of questions about his relationship with Taconic. The prior version of the form, which is standardized to include only ranges of income, listed Bliss’s Taconic income for those three weeks in 2022 as between $250,000 and $500,000.
Nathan Bliss did not respond to an I-Team request for comment.
Investigations
Liz Garcia, a spokesperson for Mayor Adams, said it is not unusual for city employees to amend their financial disclosures and defended Bliss’s relationship with his former employer.
“Nate Bliss is a longtime public servant who has served in three mayoral administrations,” Garcia wrote in a statement to the I-Team. “As the mayor has made clear, we expect every employee to flag any potential conflicts of interest for the independent Conflicts of Interest Board to evaluate, which is exactly what Nate did. Any suggestion otherwise blatantly disregards the facts in an attempt to discredit the hard work of a dedicated public servant."
Carolyn Miller, Executive Director of the NYC Conflicts of Interest Board, did not comment on any specific filings or circumstances related to Nathan Bliss but said city ethics rules do not allow a public official to work on issues related to a company that makes ongoing payments to that municipal employee.
“A public servant is prohibited from working on matters involving a firm in which the public servant has a financial relationship,” Miller wrote to the I-Team.
Though the Adams Administration insists Bliss played no role in selecting Taconic as the developer of Innovation East, City Hall declined to answer questions about Taconic’s lobbying activities – some of which appear to involve Bliss, directly.
According to lobbying disclosures filed with the NYC Clerk, Taconic met with Bliss twice last year to discuss topics including the city’s land use review of 455 First Avenue – the address of the city lab property and the future address of Innovation East.
Susan Lerner, Executive Director of the government ethics watchdog Common Cause NY, said city officials should always recuse themselves from discussing public projects and regulatory matters pertaining to their former employers.
“If your negotiating partner is a former employer, then you shouldn’t be in that negotiation for the public, period,” Lerner said. “It’s a real appearance of a conflict of interest.”
Ben Weinberg, Director of Public Policy for Citizens Union, agreed. He noted the recent wave of corruption investigations involving Mayor Adams and other City Hall staffers have already reduced trust government contracting.
“We should expect city officials to recuse themselves when they are dealing with former clients or former employers,” Weinberg said.
Mayor Adams has denied wrongdoing and pleaded not-guilty to a bribery indictment alleging he traded government favors for travel upgrades and perks.
Last week, after Taconic Partners Senior Vice President Benjamin Baccash made a presentation about Innovation East to City Council lawmakers, the I-Team asked Baccash whether Nathan Bliss had any involvement with his Taconic’s selection for the project.
“I’m sure, no. But I can’t speak for him,” Baccash said.
After the I-Team reached out to several City Council lawmakers to ask about the relationship between Nathan Bliss and Taconic, a spokesperson for the Office of City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams released a statement expressing concern.
"The Council takes potential conflicts of interest seriously and will review these allegations,” the statement read. “Any further investigation that is warranted pertaining to conflicts of interest in the awarding of contracts should be undertaken by the appropriate authorities."
According to Nathan Bliss’s LinkedIn employment history, prior to his time working for Taconic, he spent a lengthy period working for the NYC Economic Development Corporation (EDC), the quasi-governmental agency that initially sought interest from the private sector in re-developing the city’s public health lab.
In November, the I-Team filed a request under New York’s Freedom of Information Law to see the initial EDC bid documents for the city lab project.
So far, EDC has declined to share the bid documents.
According to a timeline shared by the EDC, a “robust” number of private developers responded to the Innovation East request for expressions of interest (RFEI) after it was released in 2018. Negotiations with Taconic began in 2021 and the deal was announced in April of 2022.
Jeff Holmes, a spokesperson for EDC, said moving the city laboratory into a modern building in Harlem and privatizing the “obsolete” building on First Avenue would help keep New York City a leader in the health sciences sector. And he stressed Nathan Bliss did not help select Taconic as the developer.
“Nate Bliss was not a part of this selection committee nor was he employed at the New York City Economic Development Corporation when the project entered into negotiations,” Holmes said.
If the city laboratory project is approved by City Council, the EDC says the city would retain ownership of the land underneath the new building and would lease the site to Taconic for 99 years. The developer would not pay traditional property taxes and would instead have an agreement for a payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT).
The EDC also noted approval of the project would require involvement of an obscure city agency called the NYC Land Development Corporation (NYCLDC), which functions to dispose of municipal-owned property.
In 2022, Mayor Adams designated Nathan Bliss as the Chairperson of the NYLDC.