Scandal Spreads Over Sale of Rivington House

There’s a new development in the mushrooming scandal over a $72 million profit from the sale of a Lower East Side nursing facility to luxury condo developers.

Allure Group – an operator of for-profit nursing homes who sold the Rivington House building after paying the city $16 million to lift a deed restriction on the property – owes more than $6 million in back taxes on two Brooklyn properties. One is a nursing home that used to be a non-profit; the other is a shuttered nursing home now slated for housing, according to the New York Post.

Allure bought Rivington House from a non-profit care provider for $28 million in 2015, claiming it intended to convert the former AIDS hospice into a geriatric care facility. But after getting a deed restriction lifted by the Department of Citywide Services, the company promptly sold the building to luxury condo developers for $116 million – a flip that netted a tidy $72 million profit.

Last week, the city’s Department of Investigation issued six subpoenas to a variety of parties, including the Department of Citywide Services. City Comptroller Scott Stringer is also investigating the deed change and subsequent sale, which is now reverberating all the way to the office of Mayor Bill de Blasio, who said his administration was “too trusting” of Allure.