Even as the Mamdani Administration Touts Faster Government, It’s Time to Hit Pause on Bergen Green
With the mayor’s office now producing and running ads for “faster government” and backing the ballot measures that “speed up” review of city projects, it seems unlikely that Mamdani administration will do the right thing when it comes to Bergen Green: slow down, take a second look at how the Adams administration handled the award process, and address any problems or irregularities. Instead, it seems, the city will move ahead at 516 Bergen Street with a developer recently found in federal court to have put workers and residents at risk at multiple affordable housing sites across the city, in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn.
In an email dated September 30, a representative from City Council member Crystal Hudson’s office tells concerned neighbors that her office:
will flag this for HPD, but to level expectations I do not expect this information to trigger the city to select a new bidder as the RFP bidding process has already been finalized. That said, we certainly understand the concerns raised from the consent decree [issued in US v. Apex Building Company] and will ask HPD to ensure there is testing done and measures implemented to mitigate construction dust and relevant training/notification is conducted.
This response skirts the issue; and it promises only that HPD will be asked “to ensure” that the Bergen Green developer follows the law. That would be the bare minimum requirement. The problem that the city still needs to address is that the Bergen Green bidding process appears to have been “finalized” without taking into account – or while actively and deliberately ignoring – the 2023 judgment and consent decree against Apex Building Company, and without fully and publicly disclosing this company’s track record on other affordable housing projects in New York City.
Local residents were asked to weigh in on the project but given an incomplete picture. The award process was conducted without complete candor and without fully informing the public.
The FOIL requests that I filed last month may help fill in some gaps. Documents released by the Department of Investigation in response to one request suggest that the paperwork on which the city relied when making this award does not square with the facts in the public record. A Vendor Disclosure Form on file with the Department of Investigation omits any mention of the judgment in United States v. Apex Building Company and whitewashes the developer’s record. Subsequent responses to FOIL should help determine whether the company’s adjudicated misconduct was taken into account at all when assessing its bid.
What more can be ascertained about Apex’s business conduct from the public record, in the meantime? Apex Building Company, Apex Building Group, and the principals of those companies are named as parties in a number of New York State Court cases. These fall into different categories.
There are, not surprisingly, a few commercial contract disputes over non-payment. These sorts of disputes may come with the territory for New York City developers, but they can also cause serious project delays and add to financial risk. For people living near the project, a developer’s legal and financial problems can translate to prolonged disruptions and degradation of local living conditions.
Many other cases brought against Apex in New York State Courts are for torts and negligence. Someone was injured on the job; another person tripped at a job site; yet another person crashed his scooter into a bin. Again, builders and developers typically get taken to court over this kind of thing, so it’s not all that surprising to come across these complaints. But they suggest the kind of hazards that demolition and construction at 516 Bergen Street will bring to the neighborhood.
Bergen Street is already a hazardous place for pedestrians and cyclists, due in part to the heavy automobile traffic heading toward Flatbush and double parking in the bike lane, and due also to the fact that the north-side sidewalks from the Bergen Street playground to Flatbush are obstructed by police parking. The vehicles and heavy machinery at the site during demolition and construction (which is scheduled to last four years) will exacerbate these problems, make the snarl of traffic at the intersection of Bergen Street and 6th Avenue even worse than it currently is, and introduce new hazards. What’s the plan? At a September 2025 meeting with the developer, neighbors were told that it was “unclear” where workers will park their vehicles when arriving at the site; and though I have asked on a number of occasions about coordination with DOT, I have not gotten a clear answer and to the best of my knowledge there has been no coordination and no plan keep the Bergen Street bike lane and sidewalks clear.
Perhaps the most striking case of all in the New York State Court docket is one brought just last year: Department of Housing Preservation and Development of the City of New York v. HP Plaza LLC. In this case, Robert Horsford, President and Chairman of Apex Building Group, is among the defendants sued by HPD for violations of the New York City Housing Maintenance Code, specifically for “failure to provide heat and hot water, as required by law.” The very city agency that awarded Horsford’s company the contract for affordable housing at Bergen Green in 2024 had found, just one year earlier, in 2023, that another Horsford Company, HP Plaza LLC, failed to maintain basic living conditions at an affordable housing development. And HPD prevailed against Horsford and his co-defendants in court, with the judge imposing a penalty and ordering them to provide heat and hot water and boiler maintenance for residents of 310 West 148th Street – part of the West 148th affordable and low-income housing initiative.
Do any internal HPD records related to the Bergen Green award even acknowledge this misconduct? Was any of the history I’ve reviewed in this post and in my first post on Bergen Green taken into account? Why should local residents expect the Bergen Green project to be handled more responsibly than other Apex projects?
Business conduct can get easily overlooked or set aside when government moves faster and refuses to address public concerns. And a record of misconduct, and of putting the public at risk, can easily get buried when government contracts are awarded to cronies. What’s come to light about the Bergen Green project so far suggests that it would be appropriate for the current administration to hit pause on the project, look at how the Adams administration handled the Bergen Green award, and at least offer neighbors some assurances and a more candid assessment of the developer’s record.
Beyond that, everyone should take a second look at the initiatives for “faster government” currently being touted by the Mamdani administration, and acknowledge the risks and costs to ordinary New Yorkers that speeding up review and shutting out the public can entail.
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