May 23, 2007
The Lowest Point
Through a great deal of effort by our general contractor, Action Construction Corp., and Arthur himself, we have completed the removal of the top portion of Broken Angel. We removed the wooden portion down to the fifth floor sub-floor as per the court order, and kept pretty close to the schedule mandated. If all goes according to plan, the open top that currently can be seen from the street will soon be filled by a new top portion, and the current height will be a distant memory.
A small victory in all of this was had last week as the result of a conference call with the presiding judge on our case. We had asked for a clarification of what exactly needed to be removed to be in compliance with her order since we had already removed everything that wasn't fireproof above the fifth floor. The attorney for the DOB had wanted us to take Arthur's intricate masonry walls down, even though the DOB approved demolition drawings showed those walls intact, and referenced them specifically as "parapet walls". The judge thought this whole exercise was amusing, and stated that she believed the wording of her order was very clear - it was only the wood portion that was an issue. A small victory indeed, but a victory nonetheless.
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May 9, 2007
The Hearing, The Verdict, The Decision
On Wednesday April 25th, Arthur and I attended the Supreme Court hearing for the unsafe building case against Broken Angel. Upon hearing arguments from each side (Arthur representing himself Pro Se, my counsel representing my company and the attorney for the DOB representing the City) the judge decided that there was sufficient evidence that the building had been stabilized to do a walk through herself (her decision to tour the building may also have been partially influenced by photographic evidence of staircases in the building where there once had been wooden ramps for egress - though Arthur had argued that the Guggenheim used ramps rather than stairs and they were perfectly legal). The judge decided that we would all meet the next morning at 11:00 at the building and walk through it.
The next day, an hour and a half past the scheduled meeting time, court transportation arrived with the judge and her entourage. We proceeded to have a full-blown hearing on the sidewalk across the street from the building with a court reporter, court security, counsel for both sides, and various other necessary functionaries. It was bizarre to say the least. One of the head structural engineers for the DOB testified that the top portion of the building was in imminent danger of collapse and that we were not adhering to safety rules because we had allowed a "civilian" (his words, I swear to god) documentary filmmaker on the site. Our structural engineer testified that although unusual, the top portion of the building was structurally sound, and had been made more so by the work we had done since January. Furthermore, he testified that the whole structure could be brought up to code if we were allowed to file plans to do so by the DOB. The DOB engineer replied that the top portion had not been designed by a structural engineer, and was too dangerous to legalize. Arthur countered that he had been an engineer in the Army many years ago, and that he had filed full structural drawings with the DOB in the late 90's and that they had rejected them because they were hand drawn.
We then took the whole menagerie up through the building to the top addition that Arthur built. While we were walking up, one of the workers told me that he had overheard the DOB engineer grumbling when he noticed that we had placed fire extinguishers every few feet in the upper structure, disgustedly saying that we should be forced to remove them before the judge saw them. It was hard to fathom that the vendetta of this mans superiors at the DOB against the building had so clouded his thinking that he was actually annoyed at our attempts to make sure the site was as safe as possible.
When we arrived at the top, the engineer for the DOB reasserted his belief that the top portion was dangerous and could fall down at any time. I asked him how he could possibly allow twenty-some people up into the dangerous part of a building if this were true. He said that it was necessary to show the judge how much of a danger it was in person. Since all of our conversation in the building was off the record and not being recorded by the court reporter, he didn't even both to respond to my next question,"Exactly how many buildings that are in imminent danger of collapse do you allow judges and their support staff to stand on top of?" I also asked him what his definition of "imminent danger" was in light of the fact that the court case against Broken Angel had been filed in October 2006, it was now seven months later, and the building hadn't bothered to fall over yet. He didn't answer either question directly, but insisted that the building was only still standing for legal reasons. I offered to take the judge to the highest point of the building to prove its stability, but she demurred.
We then went back downstairs and had a short coda for the hearing. Before stepping into the van to be whisked back to the courthouse, the judge informed us that a decision would be issued the next day. One day passed, and then two, and then enough days that we wondered how the judge could possibly justify the issuance of an order to demolish if the danger was so scant that she had the luxury of not only the many months since the original order was brought to trial, but also the number of days past the hearing.
On May 3rd the judges order arrived in the mail. The order read "it is ordered that the upper portion of the structure where the fire occurred by removed". This was odd for a number of reasons, the first being that the part of the building where the fire had actually occurred had been removed a few days prior to the hearing. It was also odd because the original DOB case referred to in this order "sought the stabilization or removal of the 2-4 story frame structure". The judge had also stood in this portion of the building with her own two feet, joined by around forty other feet and the building didn't budge. She ignored the testimony from our well regarded structural engineer whose license and reputation were on the line that the building was sound, and only believed the opposing testimony from a DOB engineer so intent on toeing the party line that he had actually suggested that we remove safety measures, while insisting with a straight face that the floor he stood on was a danger to the community.
What was absolutely clear to Arthur and I was that the DOB would interpret the judges order to mean that the entire top portion of the building would have to be removed in ten days, or their cranes would show up and take down whatever portion they wanted to. While we could appeal the judges order on a number of technicalities (the stipulation that was a part of the order could be vacated if the signer was under duress to sign, which Arthur could argue since he was dragged out of his house in handcuffs and faced with perceived financial ruin if he didn't agree to the stip; the stipulation made no reference to what specifically had to be removed, saying only, "The parties will discuss and determine the scope of the partial demolition", etc) we decided to make the difficult decision to take down the entire top of the building. It was our feeling that our ultimatel goal was to build a new Broken Angel rather than spend years fighting the city to preserve the current one. While the whole process has been a little disgusting, we hold out hope that we will be able to get something approved by the Department of Buildings that will be a beautiful addition to the Brooklyn skyline.
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