The Puerto Rican eatery, located in a remote industrial section of Westchester Square, is owned by Richard Caban, the brother of NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban. The establishment has for the past few years gained a reputation as a hangout for Adams, who celebrated his birthday there last year, other high-profile elected leaders, including State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, as well as top NYPD brass, including Commissioner Caban and Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey.

But Con Sofrito has since 2022 faced a bevy of open building and fire safety violations over a sprawling “party room” it erected in its parking lot during the pandemic without proper permits. The restaurant’s landlord, a corporate entity named 1315 Commerce LLC, sued Richard Caban in Bronx Civil Court over the party room in October after it refused to dismantle the illegal structure, a development first reported last month by the news outlet The City.

In a previously unreported development, Jamie Schreck, an attorney for the landlord, filed court papers in that case last week saying Richard Caban had finally agreed to break down the party room by March 1 — and close Con Sofrito for good by Aug. 31.

In addition, Caban agreed as part of a settlement to cough up $14,000 to cover Schreck’s attorney fees and continue to pay rent through the final date of Con Sofrito’s occupancy, the court papers show. The presiding judge, Betty Lugo, approved the settlement in a decision released on the court docket Friday.

Speaking to the Daily News on Friday afternoon, Schreck said his client is pleased with the settlement and looking to find a new tenant who’s not in the hospitality industry.

“What he told me is that he’s done with restaurants after this,” Schreck said, referring to Joseph Dedona III, the manager of the corporate landlord entity. “He’s fed up with the restaurant industry.”

The settlement might not spell the absolute end of Con Sofrito, though.

“They want to find a new location and a new liquor license,” Schreck said of Caban and his Con Sofrito partners.

An attorney for Richard Caban did not immediately return a request for comment, nor did a spokesman for the mayor.

The illegal party room that sparked the court feud has been featured prominently in photos and videos posted to Instagram by Jimmy Rodriguez, an infamous Bronx restaurateur who lists himself online as the “manager” and “creator” of Con Sofrito.

Rodriguez posted videos and photos in September from the mayor’s 63rd birthday party — which was held in the party room.

Rodriguez used to run Jimmy’s Bronx Cafe, a popular club shuttered in 2004 after coming under suspicion of being a hotbed for gang and drug activity. In the 1990s, Major League Baseball officials warned Yankees players to stay away from Jimmy’s after two shootings took place in front of the club.

Rodriguez did not return a request for comment Friday.

The project is one of 18 in-progress Gowanus developments that have been made possible by executive actions issued by Hochul in July, her office said. One of the actions effectively revived a lapsed statewide tax benefit for developers in Gowanus.

The New York City Council rezoned 82 blocks in Gowanus in 2021. Today, the neighborhood’s skyline is dotted by cranes and half-completed towers rising from the earth.

“You hear the jackhammers and the excavators? It’s just a symphony,” Hochul said at the groundbreaking, speaking over the buzzing and clanging of construction workers in adjacent lots.

The site of Friday’s event, at 320 and 340 Nevins St., is expected to be transformed into a two-building brick-and-glass housing complex with shopping space at ground level. The 2.3-acre plot abuts the Gowanus Canal and sits two blocks from an R train stop. Charney Companies and Tavros Holdings are developing the lot.

Overall, the 18 Gowanus developments underway are slated to produce 5,300 housing units, including 1,400 affordable homes, Hochul said. The Democratic governor, who failed to get suburban state lawmakers to support an ambitious home creation program last year, has faced intense criticism for sluggish housing development rates in New York under her watch.

She is attempting to reverse the narrative through executive orders and a $650 million program that directs funds to communities that are committed to housing growth. She has also aimed in her next state budget to use $500 million to convert state facilities into 15,000 homes, and to replace the 421a exemption, a tax break for developers that expired in 2022.

The Gowanus executive actions were issued as a workaround to replace 421a for the neighborhood’s developers. Some have criticized 421a as a handout that cost New York City $1.8 billion a year in lost tax revenue. But Mayor Adams, Hochul and industry leaders have said a replacement is critical to spur the construction of much-needed housing.

The stakes of the housing crisis are high. City data released Thursday indicates the city’s rental vacancy rate has slipped to 1.4%, the lowest rate since 1968.

“We don’t have a housing shortage at all — we have a housing crisis on steroids,” Hochul acknowledged Friday. “It’s one of the top drivers of why people are leaving our state.”

If the state can build more housing, she said, “We’re back in the game.”

“Inaction is not an option,” declared the governor.

“I can confirm that Mr. Greenberg is cooperating in a congressional investigation,” Greenberg’s attorney Fritz Scheller told the Daily News on Friday. “The nature of the investigation, as well as the subjects of the inquiry, are questions better left for congressional investigators to answer.”

Scheller clarified to The New York Times the investigation involved the House Ethics Committee.

Greenberg — Gaetz’s one-time friend and former wingman — is said to have provided documents to lawmakers supporting his claim that he witnessed the MAGA firebrand engaging in a sexual act with a teenager. Greenberg is also said to have cooperated in an earlier Department of Justice investigation of Gaetz that produced no charges.

Federal prosecutors have reportedly been looking into whether Gaetz paid for sex with the alleged victim and where the rendezvous occurred.

According to the Daily Beast, the congressman used Venmo to send Greenberg $900 late one night in May 2018. Greenberg allegedly divided that amount among three young women the following morning. One of those recipients was a minor.

The congressman’s old pal pleaded guilty to sex trafficking in 2021 and was sent to prison for 11 years.

Following Greenberg’s sentencing in 2022, Scheller said he was “disappointed” the Justice Department didn’t criminally charge anyone else, but did not give any names, according to CNN.

A spokesman for Gaetz told the Times that the Ethics Committee was looking at the same “unreliable” evidence that was seemingly dismissed by the Justice Department, and warned news outlets against “laundering smears from people in prison.”

Gaetz’s office hasn’t returned a request for comment. The congressman previously denied wrongdoing.

The Hollywood, Fla. native was elected to the House of Representatives in 2016. He’s the son of former Florida State Senator Don Gaetz. Among his most notable achievements as a U.S. congressman was spearheading the ousting of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in October.

“His sharp insights perfectly meet this remarkable time of divided politics,” White House Correspondents’ Association President Kelly O’Donnell said on Friday while announcing the upcoming gig.

“His smart brand of comedy and keen observation will turn up the heat on the national news media and across the political spectrum,” she continued. “A night of laughs and reflections as our dinner honors freedom of the press as a cornerstone of American democracy. I am beyond excited to welcome one of NBC’s brightest stars to one of Washington’s greatest traditions.”

Along with fellow funnyman Michael Che, Jost has spent the past decade anchoring the venerable sketch comedy show’s fake-news segment, “Weekend Update.”

Jost began his career as an actual journalist with his local newspaper, the Staten Island Advance. He has penned articles for The New York Times and The New Yorker. His resume includes his New York Times bestselling memoir, “A Very Punchable Face.”

The 41-year-old comedian is no stranger to making fun of political figures, thanks to his weekly gig on late-night TV. That included a 2020 impersonation of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who once lived in the same dorm as Jost at Harvard.

Last year’s dinner was hosted by comedian Roy WoodJr., while former “Daily Show” host Trevor Noah did the honors in 2022. The 103-year-old event was cancelled the two previous years on account of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Every U.S. president except Donald Trump has attended the annual skewering of political and media figures. The 45th president has repeatedly stated “Saturday Night Live” should be investigated for mocking him while he was in office.

President Biden spoke at last year’s gathering, where he expressed support for Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who’s currently held captive by the Russian government on charges of espionage. Biden is expected to attend this year’s event as well.

Wood Jr. last year described the president as “an 80-year-old man begging us for four more years of work.” Biden and Trump appear headed for rematch in November.

Adams said at a news conference the new city and state partnership allowed them “to really reclaim the narrative of what we always focused on: public space, public safety and making this city livable for everyone.”

“Open space means open business. It brings tourists, it brings visitors and it brings dollar bills,” the mayor said. “We want people to spend money in this community.”

The plan, which will draw from $44.3 million in city funding and $11.5 million is state cash, is aimed at redesigning Chatham-Kimlau Square to ease vehicular traffic at the busy five-point intersection, possibly reopening Park Row to private car traffic and erecting a traditional Chinatown arch in the historic neighborhood.

That arch will be paid for through $2.5 million of the $11.5 million in state funding as well as through a private fundraising effort, according to city officials, who noted that the completion date for the arch will depend on private fundraising.

Creating the gateway for the neighborhood could be fraught for the mayor, though, given his past forays into such efforts.

An archway that Adams pushed for in Sunset Park during his days as Brooklyn borough president still hasn’t gotten off the ground, and Winnie Greco, the woman who led that effort and now heads up the mayor’s Asian affairs operation, is the target of an ongoing probe by the city’s Department of Investigation, a development first reported in The City news outlet. That investigation came on the heels of The City reporting that two people alleged Greco used her Adams’ administration post for personal gain.

The effort to fund a 40-foot arch in Sunset Park’s Chinatown depended, in part, on private donations — in that case to the Sino America New York Brooklyn Archway Association, a non-profit launched by Greco in 2012. From 2013 to 2018, the group raised $221,000, but most of that money has been spent — and there’s still no arch in Sunset Park.

That arch itself was initially supposed to come to the city as a gift from Beijing, and Greco said the money she was helping raise would go toward maintaining it.

Jennifer Sun, vice president of planning with the city’s Economic Development Corporation, appeared with the mayor Friday and said what makes the arch in Manhattan’s Chinatown different than other Chinatown arches is that it originated from a state-led process and that EDC will work closely with the Chinatown Business Improvement District to ensure donors understand what they’re contributing to.

“We are putting systems and protections in place to make sure that when individuals or organizations are donating to the gateway, they understand what they are donating for — for the design, construction and maintenance of the gateway — and that they understand that when they are making that donation, it is for that use only,” she said.

Aside from the arch, the new plans for Manhattan’s Chinatown will also include short-term improvements to “enhance the pedestrian and bicyclist experience” such as “art interventions,” new plants and additional signs. That part of the project will begin this year with a community engagement period, with the ultimate goal of making permanent improvements to Park Row.

The plan will also begin with a traffic study of Chatham-Kimlau Square with the goal of transforming it into a four-way intersection with shorter pedestrian crossings. That part of the plan is expected to be complete in 2029, city officials said.

“Curtis said that the man was a migrant and that he was shoplifting. Fox News has since spoken to the NYPD. Apparently the statement made by Curtis that the man is a migrant is not true and the man was given a summons for disorderly conduct,” Hannity said Thursday night.

In the middle of a Tuesday interview with Hannity, Sliwa stunningly directed the camera to a takedown of a man in the middle of Times Square, saying the target was a “migrant” and a “shoplifter” — claims the NYPD later refuted, explaining that the man was a 22-year-old Bronxite who had done no shoplifting. He still received a summons for disorderly conduct.

“On this show, we always want to set the record straight,” Hannity said Thursday night.

Sliwa admitted to the Daily News earlier Thursday that he’d been wrong about details of his initial accusations, but newly claimed the 22-year-old had punched a female member of his vigilante group in the breast.

That member filed a harassment complaint against the 22-year-old at the NYPD’s Midtown South Precinct on Thursday night, records showed.

Prior to that, a cop source told The News that Sliwa had been completely off the mark during Hannity’s Tuesday show.

Surveillance and bodycam footage show the 22-year-old was simply trying to make his way through Times Square at the time of the confrontation, the source said, adding that Sliwa was “just babbling” when he made the initial allegations.

Video contradicts Curtis Sliwa account of Guardian Angels ‘migrant’ beating of Bronx man on Fox News: NYPD source

Sliwa did not immediately answer a News request for comment on the Hannity correction late Thursday.

Pilip, the Republican nominee and a Nassau County legislator, sought to tie Suozzi, the Democrat, to his party’s far left and to blame him for New York City’s migrant crisis. Suozzi, a centrist, responded by portraying himself as eager to work across the aisle to fix problems, and by describing his rival as inexperienced and evasive. At one point, he forced her into a baffling exchange on her position on abortion.

The debate, taped on Thursday afternoon in Bethpage and aired by News12 in the evening, arrived five days ahead of Election Day, as early voting grinds on and public polling shows a tight race.

Gov. Hochul called the special election after the district’s former Republican representative, George Santos, was expelled from Congress, felled by his serial lies and a 23-count indictment accusing him of fraud. Santos has pleaded not guilty.

The Thusday meetup between the candidates is the only debate scheduled in the race. The tilt was animated. At times, the rivals talked over each other, and the moderator.

“If you want safe communities, if you want secure communities, I am your first choice,” Pilip declared. She said Suozzi may be the smoother talker in the race, but that she would be the stronger advocate for the district.

And she charged that Suozzi’s policies paved the way to New York City’s migrant crisis.

Suozzi, who represented the district for three terms but gave up the seat to run for governor, said Pilip was falsely portraying him as a far-left progressive.

“George Santos got elected by lying about his record,” Suozzi said. “Ms. Pilip wants to get elected by lying about me.”

When the topic turned to abortion, Suozzi went on the attack, asking Pilip if she is pro-choice and if she supports the federal right to abortion enshrined in Roe v. Wade.

“It is a personal decision,” she said. “Every woman should have that choice.”

Suozzi repeatedly pressed, “So, you’re pro-choice?”

Pilip, a registered Democrat with a limited record, responded angrily, repeatedly accusing him of misrepresenting her positions before ultimately conceding, “I am pro-life.”

She never articulated a clear position on Roe v. Wade.

The issue of abortion plays to Suozzi’s advantage, according to polling of the race, but Pilip has hung tough with the experienced politician, apparently benefiting from her pitch on immigration and her support for tax relief.

Emerson College Polling released a survey on Thursday showing Suozzi leading Pilip by 3 points. The Siena College Research Institute, earlier in the day, published a poll finding Suozzi up 4 points. Emerson’s pollster predicted the outcome would hinge on turnout.

The race for New York’s 3rd Congressional District — which includes a sliver of eastern Queens and swaths of Long Island’s tony North Shore — carries significant symbolic and practical weight. In the short term, a win by Suozzi would limit Republicans’ paper-thin majority in the House to a two-vote margin.

And it would offer Democrats a much-craved moral victory in New York after the GOP flipped four seats in the state in the midterm elections, a disaster for the New York Democratic Party that has often been blamed on Hochul’s relatively narrow victory atop the ticket.

Hochul, who overcame Suozzi in a bitter Democratic primary for governor in 2022 that left their relationship in an arctic freeze, has firmly backed her former rival in the House race and called his success her “top priority.” 

A win by Pilip would modestly solidify the Republicans’ fragile advantage in Congress, and would signal that the GOP continues to own Long Island, territory that swings between the parties and can at times serve as a bellwether for the rest of the nation. 

Pilip has pinned much of her campaign to immigration. Her campaign has branded her opponent “Sanctuary Suozzi,” and released intense ads warning that Democratic immigration policies are driving a “record invasion” at the border and “violence right here” in New York.

She has presented his record as Nassau County executive and as a three-term congressman as woefully lacking on immigration.

“Tom Suozzi opened the border,” Pilip said in Thursday’s debate. “Tom Suozzi kicked ICE from Nassau County.”

The migrant crisis has led to internal Democratic finger-pointing and strife for months, and has been seen as a potentially key weak spot for the party going into November’s nationwide general election.

But Suozzi, who has chastised Pilip for not supporting a bipartisan plan to secure the border, may be neutralizing some of his rival’s attacks.

Both polls published Thursday showed only about half of district voters viewing Pilip as the better choice on immigration — she led Suozzi on the issue by 6 points in the Emerson survey and 9 points in the Siena poll.

“On immigration, I’ll support the bipartisan solution,” Suozzi said in Thursday’s debate. “My opponent opposes that.”

“I am pro-choice,” Suozzi added. “I’m not sure what she is after today’s debate, quite frankly.”

In a quirk of the pretaped debate Thursday, both campaigns issued statements before the tilt aired. The teams traded claims that the debate had been a disaster for their opponent.

“Mazi Pilip exposed Tom Suozzi for being Joe Biden’s accomplice in creating the migrant crisis,” Pilip’s campaign declared.

Suozzi’s campaign said in its statement that Pilip had “simply repeated tired talking points” on immigration, and that she broadly appeared “defensive, flustered and unprepared.”

Thursday’s procedural step came in the form of a resolution authorizing the speaker to pursue legal action on behalf of the full Council to compel the mayor to implement the laws, which are designed to expand access to CityFHEPS, a voucher program subsidizing rent for low-income New Yorkers. The measure breezed through the Council in a voice vote with overwhelming support.

With the resolution adopted, the speaker wouldn’t say what form any legal action against the mayor will take, though, or when it might be initiated.

“There has been no final decision yet on any legal action,” she told reporters. “But this maintains our ability to keep our options open, that’s what the resolution does.”

Among other provisions, the laws in dispute would expand access to CityFHEPS by eliminating a rule requiring that otherwise income-eligible individuals must enter a homeless shelter before they can apply for a voucher. By scrapping that rule, Council Democrats have argued the city can prevent more New Yorkers from becoming homeless.

The Council enacted the laws last summer by overriding the mayor’s vetoes of them. Nonetheless, the mayor didn’t implement the laws by a legally mandated Jan. 9 deadline, arguing the city can’t shoulder the added cost that would come with them.

After Thursday’s resolution vote, Adams spokeswoman Kayla Mamelak reiterated that argument, saying “this legislation will add $17 billion onto the backs of our taxpayers” — a figure Council Democrats argue is exaggerated.

The speaker’s reluctance to talk about what exactly her next step will be on the legal front comes as others are also mulling court action over the CityFHEPS matter.

The Legal Aid Society, which by law represents the city’s homeless population, said last month it would file a lawsuit against the mayor to force him to implement the CityFHEPS laws. At the time, a Council spokesman said the speaker was eyeing legal action, too, and that it wasn’t clear whether she would bring her own lawsuit or join Legal Aid’s filing.

A spokesman for the Legal Aid Society declined to comment after Thursday’s vote.

The independent prosecutor closed his investigation with a report that harshly criticized Biden’s handling of highly classified documents but said Biden could not have been found guilty of any crime.

“We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter,” the report states. “We would reach the same conclusion even if the Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president.”

Hur, a former Republican federal prosecutor, said a jury would likely have found significant reasonable doubt about whether Biden intended to do anything wrong.

In a controversial passage, Hur described Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Biden’s lawyers called that pot shot “inappropriate.”

“I’m well meaning, and I’m an elderly man, and I know what the hell I’m doing,” Biden told reporters in a feisty news conference at the White House on Thursday evening. “My memory is fine.”

Biden said he was glad the matter was closed.

The Hur report underlines the stark contrasts between the Biden case, in which he cooperated fully and said he never intentionally retained any secret documents, and the criminal case against former President Trump.

Trump is accused of intentionally taking hundreds of classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago estate and resisted government efforts to get them back.

He is charged with mishandling documents and obstructing justice for trying to thwart the investigation. A trial is scheduled to start in May although it is likely to be pushed back.

The Biden report came after a yearlong investigation into the improper retention of classified documents by Biden, from his time as a senator and as vice president, that were found at his Delaware home, as well as at a Philadelphia office.

After Biden’s lawyers uncovered classified documents at his former office, Biden’s representatives promptly contacted the National Archives to arrange their return to the government. The National Archives notified the FBI, which opened an investigation.

Unlike Trump, Biden voluntarily made his homes available to agents to conduct thorough searches, and that is how the most sensitive documents came to the attention of the Justice Department.

Part of the report centers on Biden’s handling of classified documents about Afghanistan that he retained after he left office as vice president in his Delaware home.

Biden preserved materials documenting his opposition to a troop surge, including a 2009 classified handwritten memo to then-President Obama.

“These materials were proof of the stand Mr. Biden took in what he regarded as among the most important decisions of his vice presidency,” the report said.

The documents have classification markings up to the Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information Level and were found in a box in Biden’s Delaware garage “that contained other materials of great significance to him and that he appears to have personally used and accessed.”

Photographs included in the report showed some of the classified Afghanistan documents stored in a worn cardboard box stored in Biden’s garage, apparently in a loose collection with other household items, including a ladder and a wicker basket, the report said.

Sliwa, who erroneously identified the Bronxite as a Venezuelan migrant during a live interview Tuesday night on national TV, admitted to the Daily News Thursday he could have been “milder and calmer” during the episode caught live on FOX News cameras.

But his group’s actions during the attack and Sliwa’s on-camera comments sparked anger and outrage across NYC Thursday.

“Washed-up comic book villain instructed his herd of wannabe vigilantes to beat up a guy they decided ‘looked like’ a migrant. A hate crime,” Brooklyn Councilman Justin Brannan wrote on X. “Live on TV. Violence of any kind, whether against cops or innocent people in Times Sq, must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

“The wheels of justice must move at an appropriate pace. We don’t have the luxury to do what we saw Curtis Sliwa did,” Mayor Adams, Sliwa’s opponent in the 2021 mayoral election, said at an unrelated press briefing with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. “To see someone on the corner and, based on their ethnicity, automatically identify them as a migrant or asylum seeker, and not a long-time Bronx resident — that is not what we can do. We have to get it right.”

Adams and Brannan were far from the only ones to tag Sliwa.

On CNN Thursday morning, Gov. Hochul said no one should take the law into their own hands.

“This is not the Wild West. This is New York State,” Hochul said.

Scott Stringer, a former city comptroller and possible Democratic mayoral candidate in 2025, described Sliwa’s antics as “racism” and said he looked forward to meeting him on the debate stage.

“This kind of racism has no place in our city. Unfortunately, Curtis Sliwa went to his usual worst instincts,” Stringer said. “I look forward as a potential Democratic nominee to debating this warmed-over MAGA Republican in 2025.”

While some politicos claimed the attack was motivated by hate and racism, Bragg was not ready to call it a hate crime but did call the incident “disturbing.”

“We’re going to do what we do on all of our matters, right?” Bragg said at the briefing with Adams. “So I think there are people speculating and using a legal phrase in [using] ‘hate crime.’ We don’t make assumptions, we investigate and look at the evidence, so we’ll do what we do in all the other matters — follow the facts.”

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards chalked the incident up to Sliwa’s typical fear mongering.

“This is classic Curtis Sliwa: in the mud, stoking division in New York City. And it’s shameful that he would believe that because someone speaks Spanish, they’re a migrant,” Richards said. “I’m hoping people like Curtis realize our diversity is our strength.”

In an afternoon press conference at City Hall, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said the “actions by Mr. Sliwa and his group” amounted to “fear-mongering” against migrants.

“Seeing incidents and occurrences like that certainly does not help the climate of the city right now. It actually does a lot of harm, creates a lot of confusion, a lot of anger,” she said.

Everyday New Yorkers also slammed Sliwa, who founded the Guardian Angels in the 1970s when crime was raging in the Big Apple and has been one of the more vocal critics chiding the city over its handling of the migrant crisis.

Desiree Joy Frias, a mutual aid volunteer, said she wasn’t surprised by the fracas or that Sliwa was wrong about the man’s background.

“This is not new behavior. They used to take down Black and brown people all the time in the 70s and 80s,” she said. “That people feel that they can handle things extra judiciously — that’s terrifying.”

Sliwa, who spoke to The News before going to a dermatologist appointment, didn’t seemed too fazed about all the controversy.

“All of these folks, I understand, they’re looking to dance on my grave. I take enough shots at them all the time, so it’s fair. But let’s get real here, guys” he said. “Let my haters know it’s not going to stop us from doing what we’ve done for 45 years — although on this one — my mistake. The rhetoric I used, I should not have used in that moment.”