New jersey

Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll look at the building-within-a-building that is giving new life to an old sugar refinery. We’ll also find out about the chorus of Democrats in the Senate calling for Robert Menendez to resign.

On a map of Brooklyn, you can find waterways like Mill Basin and the Gowanus Canal.

You won’t find the Sea of Molasses.

That was a nickname for the gooey mess left behind on the floor of what was once the world’s largest sugar refinery.

Today that structure begins a new chapter with the opening of a building-within-a-building — a 15-story office tower that has been built within the Domino refinery’s old brick walls. There has already been a much-photographed event in the penthouse, where the luxury brand Hermes held a men’s wear runway show during New York Fashion Week last month. Vogue reported that Matt Damon was in the front row.

How different that was from what used to go on there. The refinery once produced more than one million pounds of sugar every day. The company that operated the refinery came to control 98 percent of sugar processing in the United States, and by the end of World War I, 4,500 workers were on the payroll. That number dwindled after World War II as sweeteners like corn syrup captured market share. By the 1990s, only liquid sugar was being refined there.

There was also labor turbulence: A bitter strike from 1999 to 2001 ended in what even union leaders said was a loss. The 284 strikers began crossing the picket line after nine months, when their unemployment insurance ran out and they said the walkout was not making a difference. Domino was allowed to cut 110 jobs under the new contract. It closed the refinery in 2004.

To go from industrial relic to office building and event space in the now-popular Williamsburg neighborhood, the developers first had to deal with the gooey floor.

“Everything was sticky,” said Jed Walentas, the chief executive of Two Trees Management, which was instrumental in redeveloping the industrial neighborhood that became Dumbo. “It was funny to walk around and get it on your shoes.”

“Everything smelled like sugar,” he said, but the aroma was not all sweetness. “You could imagine a mixture of sugar molasses and urban decay all in one.”

There were also “some of the biggest raccoons you’ve ever seen, who were probably diabetic” but, he said, no rats. “The raccoons kept the rats away.”

Once the floor had been cleaned and the old machinery had been taken apart and hauled away, there was the matter of how to adapt the building. Two Trees, working with Practice for Architecture and Urbanism , kept the old outer brick shell — the “brick wrapper,” Walentas called it — and put a building-within-the-building inside.

In the 12-foot-gap between the old brick wall and the new office-building wall is a garden with 17 trees that had to be placed by a crane . And the old gas-burning manufacturing plant was turned into an all-electric site that Two Trees says will have net-zero carbon emissions. All of the wastewater from the office building will be treated and reused there as well.

Walentas said Two Trees would now begin leasing the office space. I asked if the project had benefited from timing — if the pandemic had made office space away from Midtown Manhattan more appealing.

“It’s not that Midtown is going out of business,” he said, “but that huge amounts of human capital have moved to Brooklyn and Queens. People want to live and work in the same communities, go home at lunch and see their young children.”

He also said that the adjacent 10 Grand Street building , completed shortly before the pandemic, had been fully leased in 2021. “If you wanted space in that building,” he said, “there is zero square feet.”

Weather

Enjoy a mostly sunny day and a break from the rain, with temps rising into the mid-60s. At night, it will be partly cloudy, with a low in the mid-50s.

ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING

In effect until Saturday (Sukkot).

The latest Metro news

Local news

• Migrant court : A judge on Staten Island temporarily blocked the city from using a former school as an emergency shelter for migrants. The decision could have broader implications for the city’s long-established obligation to offer shelter to anyone who asks for it .

• Trump fraud ruling : A New York judge ruled that Donald Trump persistently committed fraud by inflating the value of his assets, and stripped the former president of control over some of his signature New York properties .

• The city’s sprawling private universities : As New York City’s budget tightens, its wealthiest universities, N.Y.U. and Columbia, are bigger and richer than ever. Some officials think it’s time for the two schools to pay more in taxes.

• Big bank settles : JPMorgan Chase has agreed to pay $75 million to the U.S. Virgin Islands to settle claims that it facilitated Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation .

• Gallery exhibitions : Our list of 15 New York City gallery exhibitions that changed the city’s history and the culture at large begins with a show 80 years ago. Read more from The New York Times Style Magazine here.

• Lived lives : Phil Sellers, a brash, high-scoring forward who helped transform Rutgers University into a national basketball power in the 1970s, died on Sept. 19 at a hospital in Livingston, N.J. He was 69.

Booker joins Senate Democrats in calling for Menendez to resign

After Senator Robert Menendez was indicted last week, other New Jersey Democrats — notably Gov. Philip Murphy — said he should resign. Menendez’s colleagues in the Senate were largely silent.

That changed on Tuesday.

Senator Cory Booker, the junior senator from New Jersey, issued a statement that said that the indictment contained “shocking allegations of corruption and specific, disturbing details of wrongdoing.” He called Menendez’s defiant refusal to step down “a mistake” after noting that he and Menendez had “a working relationship and a friendship that I value.” Booker testified as a character witness during Menendez’s corruption trial in 2017.

The chorus of Democrats calling for Menendez to leave the Senate included endangered incumbents like Senator Jon Tester of Montana, a state that Donald Trump won by more than 16 points in 2020. Tester said that Menendez needed to go “for the sake of the public’s faith in the U.S. Senate.” Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada, who opened her re-election bid by predicting that her race would decide control of the Senate, said that the charges against Menendez were a “distraction that undermines the bipartisan work we need to do.”

Menendez is expected to appear in federal court in Manhattan today, along with his wife and two of the businessmen who were indicted with them. The fifth defendant in the case, Wael Hana, an American Egyptian businessman who prosecutors say was the linchpin of the scheme to bribe Menendez, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday and was granted release on a $5 million personal recognizance bond.

My colleague Annie Karni writes that Democrats consider the fact that they were able to get all of their vulnerable senators to run for re-election in 2024 their biggest source of strength in their push to hold onto their slim majority. And it was those vulnerable Democrats who helped open the floodgates, with more than a dozen Democratic senators rushing to release statements calling for Mr. Menendez’s resignation ahead of their weekly lunch in the Capitol on Tuesday.

“No one is entitled to serve in the U.S. Senate, and he should step aside,” declared Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado.

“That’s a breach of that trust and a burden I believe will prevent him from fully serving,” said Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. “He should resign.”

The bond between Booker and Menendez has been strong since Booker arrived in the Senate a decade ago. Booker was one of the first co-sponsor s of a bill introduced by Menendez that called for tougher sanctions on Iran as punishment for its nuclear weapons program.

METROPOLITAN diary

Wandering

Dear Diary:

I was wandering through Greenwich Village on a spring day, admiring the brownstones as well as the daffodils that were beginning to emerge from the earth.

I noticed a man and a woman walking toward each other in opposite directions. As they got closer, I could tell from their glances that they were checking each other out.

They passed and continued on in their respective directions. Moments later, I saw the man look back over his shoulder for one more glimpse of the woman. Shortly after, the woman did the same.

They missed each other’s second glances by a matter of seconds, and to this day, I wonder what might have happened if they had looked back at the same time. I like to imagine that they now stroll through that neighborhood hand in hand, walking in the same direction.

— Amie Hammond

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 .

Bernard Mokam and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].

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Wael Hana, an Egyptian American businessman who prosecutors say was the linchpin of a corrupt scheme that funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, was arrested at Kennedy International Airport Tuesday morning after he voluntarily flew to the United States from Egypt to face federal charges in Manhattan, his lawyer said.

Mr. Hana pleaded not guilty late Tuesday afternoon before a federal magistrate judge, who ordered him released on a $5 million personal recognizance bond and strict conditions, including the surrender of his passport and the wearing of a GPS monitoring device.

Mr. Hana, according to a federal indictment released on Friday , helped facilitate meetings and dinners between Mr. Menendez; his wife, Nadine Menendez; and Egyptian military and intelligence officials in a secret effort to use the senator’s power to increase U.S. aid to Egypt .

Mr. Menendez, a Democrat who until Friday was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, held sway over military sales, financing and other aid. In one text message to an Egyptian general, Mr. Hana referred to the senator as “our man.”

The senator, Ms. Menendez, Mr. Hana and two other businessmen were each charged with conspiracy to commit bribery and conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud. Mr. Menendez and his wife were also charged with conspiracy to commit extortion under the color of official right, meaning that they used the senator’s official position to force someone to give them something of value.

Mr. Menendez has maintained his innocence, saying Friday that prosecutors “wrote these charges as they wanted; the facts are not as presented.” At a news conference on Monday, he said he had no intention of bowing to calls for his resignation.

Mr. Menendez, his wife and the two other businessmen — Fred Daibes, a New Jersey real estate developer and fund-raiser for Mr. Menendez; and Jose Uribe, who works in trucking and insurance — are expected to be arraigned in Federal District Court on Wednesday morning.

Mr. Hana, a longtime friend of Ms. Menendez, had founded a business, IS EG Halal, that was the sole certifier of halal meat imported to Egypt, and prosecutors said it became the conduit for a stream of money to the senator.

Mr. Hana was led into the courtroom wearing a light blue button-down shirt, navy blue slacks and black slip-on shoes with a design on top. He sat down next to his lawyer, Lawrence J. Lustberg, and the rest of his legal team. Three prosecutors sat at a table across the aisle.

Mr. Hana flipped through a copy of the indictment on the table before him until the judge, Ona T. Wang, entered the courtroom.

As the judge read through the charges against him, Mr. Hana sat motionless, staring straight ahead, his shoulders heaving as he took rhythmic breaths. His lawyer, Mr. Lustberg, said his client was entering pleas of not guilty.

After the hearing, Mr. Lustberg said Mr. Hana had “voluntarily returned from Egypt to face the charges against him” and was “confident he will be acquitted after a full and fair trial.”

Mr. Hana left the courthouse without comment.

Michael D. Regan

Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to bribery charges, standing before a magistrate judge in Manhattan federal court, his voice steady and his wife, Nadine, seated nearby.

About three hours earlier, the Menendezes held hands as they pushed through a crowd of journalists and entered the courthouse without answering questions. A lone protester shouted “Resign!”

Ms. Menendez, 56, also entered a not-guilty plea for her role in the bribery conspiracy, which prosecutors said involved weapons sales and aid to the government of Egypt. In a 39-page indictment unsealed last week, they also described efforts by Mr. Menendez, a powerful Democrat , to strong arm prosecutors in New Jersey in an attempt to influence criminal investigations.

In exchange, prosecutors said, the couple accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars, bars of gold bullion and a Mercedes-Benz convertible — bribes given by three New Jersey businessmen who were also charged in the yearslong corruption scheme.

Mr. Menendez was released on a $100,000 personal recognizance bond by the judge, Ona T. Wang. Ms. Menendez was released on a $250,000 bond, secured by their residence in Englewood Cliffs, N.J.

The judge said foreign travel by Mr. Menendez would be allowed, but only for official business and with prior notification to the court.

One of the businessmen charged in the scheme, Wael Hana, an American citizen born in Egypt, was arrested Tuesday morning at Kennedy International Airport after he voluntarily flew to the United States from Egypt to face the charges, his lawyer said. He pleaded not guilty hours later, surrendered his passport and was granted release on a $5 million personal recognizance bond.

The two other businessmen charged with bribery, Fred Daibes, a New Jersey real estate developer, and Jose Uribe, who works in the trucking industry, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday along with the Menendezes.

The conspiracy as alleged by prosecutors was far-reaching and depicted a web of corruption that even one of the senator’s closest allies, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, called shocking and disturbing .

Mr. Menendez, 69, has said in recent days that he was confident he would be exonerated once the facts were fully presented, and he has cautioned against a rush to judgment. He has rejected calls from a growing number of top Democrats, including Gov. Philip D. Murphy and Mr. Booker, to step down.

The scheme involved payments by Mr. Hana, Mr. Daibes and Mr. Uribe to Mr. Menendez and his wife in exchange for the senator’s efforts to direct federal aid and weapons sales to Egypt, according to the indictment.

The plot also benefited Mr. Hana’s halal meat business , prosecutors said, which eventually won a contract to be the sole entity worldwide permitted by Egypt to certify that imported food products had been prepared according to Islamic law. Mr. Hana used his company, according to the indictment, to funnel bribes to the Menendezes.

The New Jersey-based company, IS EG Halal, reported little to no income until April 2019, when the Egyptian government gave it exclusive rights to certify meat coming from the United States, even though Mr. Hana had no experience in the industry, state and federal records show. Until then, four companies had divided the work.

“Seems like halal went through,” Ms. Menendez said in a text to the senator, the indictment said. “It might be a fantastic 2019 all the way around.”

When a high-level U.S. Department of Agriculture official publicly objected to the monopoly, concerned that it could increase the cost of food in Egypt and disrupt U.S. markets, Mr. Menendez tried to silence the official, the indictment said.

Mr. Menendez is also accused of intervening in criminal investigations involving people tied to the Egyptian scheme.

Investigators found $550,000 in cash, 13 bars of gold bullion and the Mercedes during a June 2022 search of a safe deposit box in Ms. Menendez’s name and the couple’s home.

The charges came after a lengthy investigation led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. Much of the alleged activity occurred in New Jersey. But prosecutors noted that parts of the conspiracy, including a dinner meeting and sales of gold in Manhattan, and the use of a bank account first opened in the Bronx, took place within the Southern District’s jurisdiction.

“My office is firmly committed to rooting out corruption, without fear or favor, and without any regard to partisan politics,” Damian Williams , the U.S. attorney for the Southern District, said in a statement. “We will continue to do so.”

Mr. Daibes and Mr. Uribe were also released Wednesday with restrictions. All five defendants are expected to return Monday for a hearing before Judge Sidney H. Stein. It will be held in the Lower Manhattan courthouse named for Daniel Patrick Moynihan , a Democratic titan who was New York’s senior senator when Mr. Menendez first arrived in Congress in 1993.

Mr. Menendez was charged in 2015 with similar, but unrelated, corrupt acts by federal prosecutors in New Jersey. His trial in Newark lasted nine weeks, but the jury could not reach a unanimous decision . In January 2018, the Justice Department declined to retry him after a judge dismissed the most serious charges.

Prosecutors say the corruption scheme laid out in the new indictment began the following month.

Michael D. Regan