339 Greene Avenue has been a mess since the get-go. Joseph Tyrnauer of WT Construction is proceeding with plans to build a 12-story, 125-foot-high tower on the site, an effort that neighbors and politicians tried unsuccessfully to derail last summer at around this time. By that point, with construction not even having begun, the contractors had racked up 51 complaints; now that number is up to 131. Around that time, the demolition contractors (those charmers at MMG) were, in typical fashion, running roughshod over the site. Here’s the eyewitness account we ran at the time:

The demo has been extremely unsafe and unprofessional. MMG’s workers don’t wear hardhats and we’ve watched the backhoe operator drink beer at lunch and then get back behind the wheel. I called and spoke with MMG’s owner Marie Grasso one day when I looked out our back window and they had workmen 20 feet up on the wall above our yard, prying off cinder blocks off directly above the head of my 2-year-old son who was playing in the yard and my wife who was hanging the laundry. This is without any kind of protective fence or netting. When I called MMG, I was told that what I just saw did not happen and that if any damage happens to my house during their demo, it is my fault not theirs. This week they dropped a steel I-beam that made our entire block shake like an earth quake, at which point MMG told us, “that’s how it’s done.”

Based on this conduct, the community was able to stop the wall demolition—for a while. The developer ultimately petitioned to remove a few feet from the top of the wall and was granted permission based upon the observance of certain safety measures like netting. As of Wednesday, according to an eyewitness who emailed us, workers were perched on top of the walls with a jackhammer. And guess what? No netting or other protective measure. Neighbors called 311 but as of the end of the day yesterday, no punitive measures had been taken by DOB.
Development Watch: 339 Greene Avenue [Brownstoner] GMAP P*Shark
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