One of President Trump’s oft-told success stories is his 1980s turnaround of a storied ice-skating rink in Manhattan’s Central Park that he no longer controls.
Last winter, just before Mr. Trump took office, his company — which features the rink’s resurrection on its website — submitted a bid to regain control of the property, known as Wollman Rink.
New York City officials, however, do not seem inclined to award the contract to Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization.
The city is now preparing to allow the existing rink operator, a firm affiliated with Related Companies, to retain control of the site, according to two officials in Mayor Eric Adams’s administration. One of the officials said that the firm’s bid offered more revenue for the city than the Trump Organization’s offer.
The concession award, which still requires additional bureaucratic scrutiny as part of the city’s complicated concession-review process, is not yet finalized. But the outcome is not expected to change.
A spokeswoman for the Trump Organization had no immediate comment.
Kayla Parker, a spokeswoman for Related Companies, said, “Wollman Rink is an iconic New York City landmark and, alongside our new partner, CityPickle, we submitted a comprehensive bid to be able to continue the work we’ve done to welcome thousands of New Yorkers and visitors from around the world for years to come. We look forward to a decision from the city.”
A City Hall spokeswoman would not confirm or deny that Related was about to win the contract.
“While we are continuing to work through this process for Wollman Rink, as we do with all of our concession contracts, the Adams administration has been clear that we will always prioritize the needs of New Yorkers and make the best use of taxpayers dollars,” said Sophia Askari, a spokeswoman for Mr. Adams. “That is the case with the Wollman Rink award. We will share our selection officially once it has been finalized.”
The fate of the concession has been the subject of intense speculation in recent months, thanks to competition between the Trump Organization and Related Companies, two politically active real estate firms with other overlapping interests.
Mr. Trump’s advisers have in recent days taken steps to try to find a job for Mr. Adams, whose administration controls the rink-bidding process, in an effort to get him to suspend his re-election campaign and help clear the field for former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. Mr. Cuomo is currently polling in second place in the November election, far behind Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee.
The chief executive of Related Companies, the developer of Hudson Yards on Manhattan’s West Side, also this week beseeched his peers to back Mr. Cuomo’s third-party candidacy.
The mayor has taken steps to benefit another Trump-related project, a casino bid that could ultimately net the president’s company $115 million.
And there was some reason to expect the fate of this project to follow a similar path, given the president’s own actions on behalf of Mr. Adams.
Earlier this year, following the mayor’s monthslong courtship of the president, the Justice Department abandoned federal corruption charges against Mr. Adams, in what both the prosecutor who brought the charges and the judge who ultimately dismissed them described as an apparent quid pro quo: abandonment of the charges in exchange for the mayor’s help with the president’s deportation agenda.
“I helped him out,” Mr. Trump said during a radio appearance this week, referring to Mr. Adams.
For the Trump Organization, losing out on the contract would throw a wrench in the company’s plans to reclaim once-prized assets that it had shed in the aftermath of Mr. Trump’s 2020 election loss. The company has also had discussions about regaining control over its former hotel in Washington, which was a hub of MAGA activity during his first presidential term.
Wollman is a city-owned property that Mr. Trump helped refurbish and reopen in 1986. His company operated it for more than three decades.
But the city moved to cut ties with the Trump Organization after the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. The company’s contract eventually expired, and a group of investors, including Related, took over later that year.
The current contract expires in 2027, so the city last year solicited bids on a new 20-year deal to operate the rink.