Mayor Eric Adams set up a covert office in a building near City Hall where he spends time with a top administration official, according to a new report.
Adams and deputy mayor for public safety Phil Banks make use of a work space in 375 Pearl St., a 32-floor property commonly known as the Verizon Building, Politico New York revealed Wednesday.
The story cited 15 people who know about the previously undisclosed space.
“It’s hidden away; cars can’t roll through here,” one source who works in City Hall told the outlet.
A source familiar with the situation confirmed it to The Post on Wednesday.
The article says that Adams “occasionally occupies” an office and conference room on the 30th floor that were previously set aside for the city Department of Finance.
Banks — an unindicted co-conspirator in one of the NYPD’s largest bribery scandals — and the mayor opted to convene in the privately owned building, where at least three city agencies rent space, soon after Adams was sworn in in January, according to Politico.
During an unrelated press conference on Wednesday, Adams scoffed at the characterization of the office as secret, when asked about the Politico report published hours earlier.
“How do you have a city location as an undisclosed location? This just doesn’t make any sense,” he told reporters in the Bronx. “I’m just really curious on why it’s an undisclosed location, because it’s not.”
“This is a city location. I move around to different city office spaces.”
Adams cited needing to “do a Zoom” and not being able to “get back to City Hall right away” as reasons for why he frequents a building that’s about a four-minute drive and nine-minute walk from City Hall.
The mayor went on to insist he had been to the 375 Pearl St. office just a handful of times — “it couldn’t have been more than four,” he said — and complain that news outlets write what he regards as unflattering stories about him because they attract high amounts of readers.
“You know what I figured out? I figured out whenever you have Eric Adams’ name in the story, you get a lot of clicks,” he said, citing a months-old story that documented that he eats fish despite claiming to be a plant-based eater and vegan.
The revelation of Adams’ clandestine office space came after a string of news reports documented his unconventional, often secretive financial and residential property arrangements.
Near the end of the June 2021 mayoral Democratic primary, a Politico report raising questions about where the then-Brooklyn borough president lived prompted Adams to take reporters on a tour of the Bedford-Stuyvesant row house.
Meanwhile, he attempted to prove that he no longer owned a Crown Heights residential co-op by giving the news outlet The City a document purporting to show he “assigned” his shares in the unit to a friend. But last month, the yearly Conflict of Interest Board disclosures he released listed 50% ownership of that same one-bedroom apartment.
And earlier this year, Adams repeatedly refused to commit to releasing his tax returns, only to shortly after partially reverse course. He promised to release “tax information” and blamed a reporter’s supposedly “arrogant” questioning style while asking if he will disclose the information for his initial “no” answer to the inquiry.
Additional reporting by Bernadette Hogan
