In November, when the Trump Organization put in a bid to take over Central Park’s Wollman Rink, CEO and idiot son Eric told the New York Times: “Nearly 38 years ago my father saved Wollman Rink. We truly hope we can save it once again.”
Actually, that’s not what happened. During its tenure as the ice rink’s owner, the company did no maintenance, made no capital improvements, and let the property fall to ruin. By the time its lease was up, only three of more than 50 doors to the clubhouse worked, and some of the bathrooms had no plumbing. After Trump incited the January 6 riots, then-Mayor Bill De Blasio kicked the company out of the running for another lease. The last straw was the judgement that it had cheated on its state taxes for years, and was liable for more than $363 million. During Trump’s first term, New York had managed to remove the family’s name from nearly every marquee it was defacing and exile the don to deepest Florida. Now, it looked like Central Park was rid of the Trumps too.
But we are never rid of the Trumps, are we? When de Blasio left office, they saw an opportunity to get the rink they’d trashed back—maybe just to troll New Yorkers—and, for who knows how long, pressured the city to cede it to them. In the meantime, however, the nonprofit Central Central Park Conservancy raised $120 million to take over the rink, refurbish it, and also fix up the entire southeast section of the park; the current managers, the private-public operation Wollman Rink NYC, seemed content to relinquish it. It was an offer no city could refuse.
But refuse it Mayor Eric Adams did. When the conservancy tried to get a firm answer in October, Adams’ parks commissioner “ghosted” it, as The City put it. Adding injury to insult, on November 13, the city put out a request for proposals to develop the rink. The Trumps announced their intention to bid hours later.
Hmm. November 13. What happened between the conservancy’s generous offer and the precipitous opening of this public amenity to private bidders?
On September 26, 2024, Adams was indicted in federal court on charges of bribery and campaign finance offenses involving the Turkish government and lots foreign travel, among other goodies.
On November 5, Donald Trump was elected president. Now, he had a federal-court-district-size quid to trade for Adams’ quo. A few days before the inauguration, Adams flew to Florida to kiss the ring. Shortly after Trump took office, the mayor assured the president that New York would cooperate with ICE’s deportation raids, breaking the city’s sanctuary laws.
In February, the Justice Department moved to drop the charges against Adams. Two days later, as I wrote about here, Trump snatched $80 million allocated for migrant services from New York’s coffers.
On April 2, Federal District Court Judge Dale Ho ended the case, not happily. “Everything here smacks of a bargain: Dismissal of the indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions,” he wrote in a 78-page decision.
On May 9, hours before thousands of pages of damning evidence against Adams were released, the mayor stopped in for a visit at the White House. The two men discussed “critical infrastructure projects,” Adams said. Not to lose a humiliation opportunity, Trump corrected the mayor’s description of the 20-minute meeting: “I think he came in to thank me, frankly.”
As Adams heads into the mayoral race as an Independent, his approval, which was already floating about two feet above sea level, is deep, deep underwater. And now, 19 Manhattan elected officials, including state reps and senators, City Council members, and Borough President Mark Levine, are calling on the parks department to withdraw the RFP and accept the park conservancy’s gift. Their message: We will let the Trumps slither back into our beloved park over our dead bodies.
“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,” wrote Levine 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.”
Hats off to The City, a feisty little NYC publication that punches way above its weight, for its reporting on this fiasco.
P.S. Monday evening, after this post was published, Trump gave a speech to the Kennedy Center board of trustees, the gaggle of white Republican philistine sycophants of which he is now chair. Among the subjects he nattered on about—wallpaper, acoustics, Tom Brady, “lesbian-only Shakespeare”—was Wollman Rink, which has apparently risen to the level of Trumpian obsession. “They went for twelve years without getting it built, and I got it built in three months,” he claimed. He recounted the cement pour in that way he has of marveling at high technology. Then an unwitting confession: “And when they put water in it, it all leaked. Surprisingly.” He added: “But it was fun.”