Nearly two-dozen associates of an upper Manhattan nursing home donated to a City Council member’s re-election campaign after she got the facility a unique exemption from local construction rules.
A total of 17 trustees, four staff members, an associate and a lobbyist for Jewish Home and Hospital — many of whom don’t live in the city, let alone uptown — contributed to Melissa Mark-Viverito’s 2009 council campaign, online records show.
Their combined $7,825 in donations made up 10 percent of the total that Mark-Viverito — currently the front-runner for council speaker — raised for the race.
Many of their grants were matched with public funding at a rate of 6 to 1, making them worth much more.
While there’s no evidence Mark-Viverito’s campaign solicited the contributions, the donations all came after she got the nursing home the right to construct a building at 120 W. 106th St. that would exceed the height limit under a rezoning plan.
It was the only facility to get a carve-out after the center, now known as Jewish Home Lifecare, spent $100,000 on lobbying directed at council and community-board members.
“My office worked diligently to facilitate an ongoing dialogue between a valued community facility and its Manhattan Valley neighbors to address a request made late in the process that they be excluded from the rezoning,” Mark-Viverito said when both the plan and exemption were approved by the council in September 2007.
The donations came in a 14-month span in 2008 and 2009.
Mark-Viverito did not respond to e-mails seeking comment for this article.