Major Adams Backer Wins Bid To Redevelop City-Owned Building

By Greg B. Smith and Samantha Maldonado, The City

Dec. 9, 2025

A major donor to a political committee backing Mayor Eric Adams’ quixotic re-election bid has been named by the mayor’s team to redevelop a city-owned office building in Lower Manhattan into 3,700 units of mixed-income housing — at a price that is not public.

On Monday, Adams announced that GFP Real Estate, a major developer owned by the Gural family, has signed on to convert the 656,000-square-foot office building at 100 Gold Street into apartments, at least 25% of which will be designated as affordable. The Brutalist-style office building currently houses several city agencies, including the Department of Housing Preservation and Development.

The firm’s CEO, Jeffrey Gural, and his relatives contributed a significant sum to support Adams’ long-shot independent reelection run. They gave a total of $45,000 to Empower NYC, a political action committee backing Adams, while his firm was bidding on 100 Gold St.

Because Gural is on a list of people who do business with the city, he was only able to give $400 to Adams’ 2025 campaign.

Weeks before the Gurals wrote their checks to Empower, GFP had submitted a bid to the city’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC) to acquire 100 Gold St. and turn it into housing.

At the time, Adams was floundering in the polls, running at the bottom of the pack below even Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee. In fact, Empower stopped spending three weeks after the Gurals started giving, and Adams dropped out of the race six weeks after the Gural’s donations arrived at Empower NYC.

When THE CITY reported on these donations in September, Jeffrey Gural said that he and his relatives gave to Empower because, in August, they still felt Adams had a shot, particularly if ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo got out of the race. Cuomo stayed in and lost to Zohran Mamdani in November. Gural had given $25,000 to a political committee backing Cuomo in April months before Cuomo lost the primary.

In response to THE CITY’s inquiry Monday about GFP’s winning the 100 Gold St. competition, Gural wrote, “I had nothing to do with this. My nephew handled the whole thing.”

The Economic Development Corporation selected the developer through a competitive process. EDC declined to reveal the terms under which GFP would acquire development rights for the building, making it impossible to know whether the deal favors the developer or the taxpayers.

City Hall spokesperson Daniel Marans said the donations had nothing to do with the selection of Gural’s firm, stating, “As with all competitive bidding processes, the city selected GFP Real Estate to develop the 100 Gold St. property based on the firm’s experience and commitment to building affordable housing, creating jobs, and investing in the community. Any suggestion to the contrary is ridiculous.”

“With GFP Real Estate on board, we are creating thousands of homes, expanding affordability, and delivering new community amenities,” Adolfo Carrión, Jr, the deputy mayor for housing, economic development, and workforce, said in a statement.

In a statement, GFP Real Estate co-CEO and principal Brian Steinwurtzel said the firm was “honored to have been selected” and looked forward to “a collaborative process with the community, local leaders, and our partners in government.”

The building housing the Department of Housing Preservation and Development at 100 Gold Street was slated to be converted into residential units, Dec. 8, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

The city-owned, Brutalist building located near the Brooklyn Bridge currently houses HPD, as well as other agencies and a senior center. The EDC said the building, which was constructed in the sixties, would need significant, costly repairs.

As part of the redevelopment plan, the agencies and organizations at 100 Gold will be relocated, which could happen in 2029, according to a February EDC presentation. The proceeds from the sale of 100 Gold will pay for the new space the entities will move into.

Of all the anticipated apartments, about 900 of those apartments are slated to be affordable, without taxpayer-funded subsidies from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development.

The redevelopment will also include a newly built senior center, a fitness center and nearly one acre of public open space. Previously, EDC said the developer could include retail on the new development’s ground floor and would enhance the streetscape with improvements like better lighting or wider sidewalks.

The project will need to go through the city’s lengthy environmental review process before construction can begin.

The housing for 100 Gold was part of the Adams administration’s rationale for killing the proposed affordable senior apartments at Elizabeth Street Garden. The administration had previously supported the long-planned project at the Lower Manhattan space, but did an about-face. Led by Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro, the city said it would build housing not at the city-owned lot where the garden was but on 100 Gold and two other sites instead.

Oksana Mironova, a housing policy analyst with the Community Service Society, said the trade-off of affordability would likely not be comparable.

“If there’s 900 units without subsidy, no way they’re going to be as affordable as the ones that would’ve been built on the Elizabeth Street Garden site,” Mironova said.
Mironova had long held that the city should leverage its ownership of 100 Gold to develop permanent affordable housing for residents with very low incomes.

This press release was produced by The City. The views expressed here are the author’s own.