He should have designed a better ending for himself.
The president of the city’s Public Design Commission abruptly quit late yesterday as The Post was preparing to reveal he had been ousted from his day job at NYU because of accusations he had sexually harassed women at the university.
James Stuckey, 57, an appointee of Mayor Bloomberg, held the unpaid post as president of the design commission since 2007, after three years as a member of the commission.
Bloomberg spokeswoman Julie Wood declined to elaborate on Stuckey’s one-sentence resignation letter, but insisted his decision to step down was “voluntary.”
Stuckey’s resignation from the city panel came two weeks after he abruptly quit his job as dean of NYU’s Schack Institute of Real Estate. University spokeswoman Paola Curcio-Kleinman said Stuckey quit for “health” reasons.
Sources briefed on the situation said NYU officials forced Stuckey out after confronting him with the harassment accusations.
Stuckey, outside his home on Staten Island yesterday, told The Post, “All I can say is I left [NYU] for health reasons and there’s really nothing to say.”
He did not respond to requests for additional comment after his resignation from the city post was confirmed.
“This man should not be in a position of public trust and judgment,” said one former ranking city official with deep knowledge of Stuckey’s alleged history of harassing female subordinates. “He’s been doing this a very, very long time. There’s a pattern of this behavior. He’s a very competent guy, technically speaking. But his historical Achilles heel is this stuff.”
The NYU episode echoed Stuckey’s surprise exit four years earlier from mega-development firm Forest City Ratner Cos., where he led the firm’s controversial Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn and its effort to move the New Jersey Nets to the Big Apple.
Stuckey was ousted by the company’s CEO, Bruce Ratner, in early 2007 after a series of complaints had been made against him by female employees, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of what happened.
Ratner, sources told The Post, resisted the idea of getting rid of Stuckey until some of his top lieutenants threatened to quit after an ugly incident at a 2006 Christmas party.
According to company sources, Stuckey took all of his subordinates to a club and then called a number of women employees into a private room, where he had them sit on his lap as though he were Santa Claus.
Fearing that mass resignations — of senior executives as well as people who reported to Stuckey — would cause the company a p.r. nightmare at a sensitive time in the Atlantic Yards project, Bruce Ratner pushed Stuckey out and then helped him land the job at NYU. Ratner is a member of the Schack Institute’s advisory board.
Forest City Ratner refused to comment on Stuckey’s 2007 resignation. A company source said “the reasons for his sudden departure were shared with potential employers, including NYU.”
Additional reporting by David Seifman and Liz Sadler