It’s the grandaddy of all sweetheart deals.
First the city gave away land to a senior-citizens group linked to Assemblyman and Brooklyn Democratic boss Vito Lopez. Now the city pays sky-high rent to the Lopez-founded group for the same property.
“It’s kooky — the city is paying for something it doesn’t have to,” said a city official who looked into the matter.
The official said the rental agreement is part of mounting evidence that the city favors the politically connected Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council, which is run by Lopez’s campaign treasurer and his girlfriend.
For years, the city paid between $112,150 and $157,000 in rent — on top of operating expenses — to the Ridgewood group to run the Diana Jones Senior Center on Flushing Avenue.
But last year, Ridgewood reopened the senior center at the group’s housing development on the old Rheingold Brewery site — which the city had turned over to Ridgewood to develop with taxpayer money.
Since the move, the rent has more than doubled: Ridgewood started billing the city $408,000 a year in rent, according to data from the Department for the Aging.
The city negotiated the rent down to $360,000, still more than twice the rent the city paid for the old location, which was in a building the Ridgewood group didn’t own and had to pay for.
The increased budget for the senior center comes as the city cuts off funding to other centers. In July, the city closed 46 senior centers, although many of them were far less utilized than the Diana Jones center, which has a contract to serve more than 57,000 meals this year.
City officials defended the arrangement with Ridgewood Bushwick, saying the Diana Jones center is one of the city’s best-performing senior centers and has innovative programming like art exhibitions featuring neighborhood artists.
“The Diana Jones Senior Center is a state-of-the-art facility that seniors love and its rent per square footage is well within norm,” Aging Department spokesman Christopher Miller said.
The new location’s rent per square foot is more than 50 percent higher than at the old location.
Ridgewood Bushwick spokesman Tom Becker pointed out that the rent “includes utilities” and claimed that it “is well below market rates.”
The old location had its problems — it wasn’t on the ground floor of the building, requiring seniors to wait for an elevator. But it was closer to a subway station and the Woodhull Medical Center, where patrons had frequent appointments.
The Ridgewood group is facing scrutiny from both federal and city investigators, who are examining the organization’s finances, including unusually high salaries for its two top officers.