Adams Makes the Case for New York and for Himself

Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we’ll look at Mayor Eric Adams’s State of the City speech. We’ll also look at why a theater group in Midtown Manhattan decided to put its longtime home on the market.

Mayor Eric Adams spent the first 15 minutes of his State of the City address on shout-outs to commissioners who work for him, unions that support him and even officials who often tangle with him, like the speaker of the City Council, Adrienne Adams.

Then, after dismissing “noise” and “rhetoric” from naysayers, he delivered the tried-and-true line in a state-of speech: “New York City, the state of our city is strong.”

What followed was an upbeat take on a city with problems from a mayor with problems.

It was the first State of the City address in modern history by a mayor who is running for re-election while under federal indictment. Adams’s trial is scheduled to begin in April, nine weeks before the Democratic primary. The field is already crowded, with eight candidates and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo considering joining them.

Adams did not mention the campaign. He appeared to allude to his legal headaches when he referred to what he said had been a “challenging” and “difficult” year.

“There were some who said, ‘Step down,’” he said. “I said, ‘No, I’m going to step up.’ That’s what life presents you.” He had earlier thanked advisers and aides who “leaned into it” when “things got difficult and others would have fled.”

Adams has increasingly focused on public safety and the city’s affordability crisis, and on Thursday his vision for 2025 was detailed on video screens behind him that said, “Making N.Y.C. the best place to raise a family.” My colleague Emma G. Fitzsimmons says the word “families” appeared 99 times in an advance copy of his prepared remarks.

“How can we make sure that the greatest city in the world is also the greatest place to raise a family?” he said.

His answer was to outline a “City of Yes for Families” plan patterned on the “City of Yes” housing plan that was approved last year. He called for city agencies to make neighborhoods more family-friendly and build more family-size housing units. He said that City Hall and the New York Public Library would work together on a mixed-income building on the Upper West Side with a branch library at its base.

Some Democrats took issue with his cheery assessment of his administration’s record. State Senator Zellnor Myrie of Brooklyn, who is running for mayor, said that Adams “must be living in a different New York” and that the mayor “can keep calling mediocrity success — but no one is buying it.” Another candidate challenging Adams, Brad Lander, the city comptroller, said, “New Yorkers know that our city is neither safe nor more affordable.”

Others questioned his focus on families. “If New York City is truly the best place to raise a family,” said Rebecca Bailin, the executive director of New Yorkers United for Child Care, “that would come as a surprise to the thousands of families leaving due to the soaring cost of child care.”

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As the top two officials of the nonprofit theater group New Dramatists talked about venturing back into real estate, there was no mention of “Glengarry Glen Ross,” David Mamet’s blistering play about high-powered wheeling and dealing.

They said that New Dramatists — whose mission is to give playwrights the time, space and resources to work — is putting its building on West 44th Street on the market again, this time for $9.45 million.

New Dramatists first listed the converted neo-Gothic Revival church in September 2023. “There’s been interest,” Christie Brown, the executive director, said. “There has not been any progression to a sales agreement, no.” She said the group had put the listing “on pause” last summer to take another look at “the process of making a decision like this one to sell our building and seek out a new one.”

New Dramatists has owned the building for 55 years. “Unlike many other theatrical workshops,” The New York Times said when New Dramatists moved in, it “has been exclusively devoted to the writer more than his or her works.”

“We do not select plays,” the executive director at the time said. “We select playwrights.”

Several hundred resident playwrights have crossed the threshold since then, among them Lanford Wilson and August Wilson. More than 580 playwrights applied for residencies with New Dramatists last year, submitting two full-length original plays. Seven are chosen annually.

Brown compared New Dramatists and the process of selling a building that holds decades of memories to “a family that’s lived in a house for a long time and been very happy there and found ways to make that home work for them. Over time as your needs change, you realize you may be better served by seeking out a new house.”

She called the group’s longtime home “very charming” and “very homey.”

But it has steps at the front entrance, and the building has other accessibility issues. She said that some playwrights had apparently not applied for residencies “because it would not be easy for them to get into the building.”

She and Emily Morse, the artistic director, also said that ventilation had become a concern during and after the pandemic. The building is not air-conditioned, although some rooms have window units. But the second-floor performance space is a problem: The stained-glass windows there, inherited from the building’s time as a church, are sealed shut, “so there’s no way to increase air circulation,” Brown said

After so long in one place, where will New Dramatists go? “We’re focused on the theater district or theater-adjacent district,” Brown said.

But the group has not found a new home yet. “We’ve looked,” Brown said. “We’ve seen some things that are interesting, definitely.” But they are waiting until they know how much they can get for the former church.

“Ideally that sale price will be what we use to anchor our next steps,” she said. “It is not unlike moving from one house to another.”

METROPOLITAN diary

‘Cupid shuffle’

Dear Diary:

We had gone to a club in Bushwick on a Sunday evening to hear some R&B. Asian-fusion barbecue was being served on the rooftop. We ate our ribs and cornbread, and watched the sun go down over the Manhattan skyline.

The last D.J. of the night came on. At some point, we heard the “Cupid Shuffle” fade in. Groans arose from the crowd. People cringed and asked one another if the D.J. was seriously playing that song.

Yet when we came to the first “down-down-do-ya-dance,” everyone gamely shuffled to the right. And then to the left. And “now-kicked” in unison. And walked it out.

We completed maybe four 360-degree revolutions doing the dance, a roof full of adults who had grown up hearing this song played in their middle-school gymnasiums.

I left shortly after that. The night had peaked when we all tacitly agreed that this song was too old and lame and silly and that we were all going to do the “Cupid Shuffle” anyway.

— Rebecca Kuo

Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.

Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.

P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.