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Questions About Legality of Billboards Following Collapse
Last Friday’s collapse of a billboard onto the BQE in Greenpoint prompts the Times to examine the legal gray area many of the structures occupy. Even though billboards have been illegal within 200 feet of highways since 1940 and the city started cracking down on many of the ones that do exist next to highways a couple years ago, they’re still legal if they advertise a business that’s at their base or a “noncommercial” nonprofit/charity. The billboard that fell was advertising the lottery on one side—but Dunkin’ Donuts on the other—and its owner says it was legal since the lottery is a noncommercial entity. A spokesman for the DOB says the billboard’s owner is getting citations for not properly maintaining the structure and for having the Dunkin’ ad on one side. The DOB also says it’s going to inspect other billboards near highways to try to make sure that they’re structurally sound. Meanwhile, Councilman Stephen Levin, who lives near the collapsed billboard, is quoted as saying that the city should be looking to get some billboards taken down “if some of these signs are getting in under permits that may be fraudulent.” The most interesting tidbit in the story, though, is how much money the billboards bring in for their owners: The lottery was paying $12,923 a month for the ad on the one that collapsed.
Collapse Casts Light on the Murky World of Billboards [NY Times]
Photo by Aviator Rob
01/20/2012 9:00 AM
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Bloomberg Gifts Free FAR to Rooftop Gardeners
This is great news for urban farmers (and their landlords). From yesterday’s New York Times article about the Bloomberg administration’s effort to encourage city agencies to buy locally grown food…
The mayor also signed a bill to exempt rooftop greenhouses from being counted toward buildings’ height and floor area measurements. The greenhouses will join structures like roof tanks, air-conditioning equipment and chimneys as apparatus that are not factored into buildings’ official totals, easing limitations on the construction of such structures.
Great news! Bloomberg has been really forward-looking on this stuff, trying to be proactive on helping small businesses (particularly food-related ones) grow. Two thumbs up from us.
Photo from Amber Sandoval-Griffin via the Vertical Farm Blog
08/18/2011 11:12 AM
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Is This the Scaffolding of the Future? Hopefully!
Yesterday the city announced that it had selected that very cool looking scaffolding rendered above—which is called “Urban Umbrella”—as the winner of a competition for new sidewalk shed designs. So is this what we’re going to be seeing at construction sites around town going forward? According to NY1, the new design won’t be mandated but the costs for installing it are similar to those for the current scaffolding that’s used. A prototype is going to be installed at a site in Lower Manhattan. The city was looking for a design that would improve scaffolding aesthetics and let more light onto the sidewalk.
Winning Scaffold Design Provides Lift Above, Movement Below [NY1]
07/27/2011 9:30 AM
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Troubled Cobble Hill Property Getting Some TLC?
The townhouse at 364 Henry Street and the carriage house the gutted building shares a lot with have long been in a state of disrepair, but we recently spotted contractors renovating the historic properties. Cement tycoon and owner John Quadrozzi agreed to repair the Cobble Hill building after the city put pressure on him last year, but the renovations have been slow to come; a few months ago the DOB scheduled a hearing with Quadrozzi over a “failure to maintain” the historic structure. At present, the building has $10,000 in outstanding DOB fines. The most recent work permit came through in April, with an approval to remove and reconstruct the rear wall.
364 Henry Still Rotting? [Brownstoner]
364 Henry To Get Fixed [Brownstoner] GMAP
LPC Targets Henry Street Homeowner [Brownstoner]
07/07/2011 10:00 AM
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Evacuation and Demolition This Weekend at 345 Eldert
Last Friday there was plenty of coverage of the Bushwick loft building 345 Eldert Street, where the fire department ordered a partial vacate order due to illegal and poorly built mezzanines, illegal plumbing, blocked sprinklers, and blocked egress. Residents were ordered to leave their homes by 9 p.m. on Friday and demolition crews began tearing down loft walls. Yesterday a resident filled us in on what’s happened since then:
Looks like many of the residents have chosen to move their items into storage and will allow the management company to demolish any offending structures to bring individual units up to code. Six apartments yesterday [Saturday] decided to demolish their mezzanine structures as per instruction from the DOB and then this morning 4 more had vacate orders lifted. There were more during the day, but I have not received a total count yet.
Most are relying on the management company to enter tomorrow and begin demolition. A handful of units have decided to move out, wherein the management company has verbally agreed to void the leases.
Click through to read the rest….
Photo by Beth Hommel, via the original post at Bushwick BK
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06/20/2011 9:00 AM
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70 Lefferts Hostel Gets Partial Vacate Order
Earlier this year a tipster told us the big yellow house at 70 Lefferts was operating as a hostel; they’ve followed up to tell us it has been since vacated. DOB shows a partial vacate order and full stop work order for “illegally converted rooms into transient hostel without providing required means of egress, fire alarm.” The hostel’s website is still up but you can’t book a date. If you recall, this home was landmarked after the threat of demolition and just hung out on the market after that. Who knows what’s next….
70 Lefferts Place Operating as a Hostel [Brownstoner] GMAP DOB
03/03/2011 10:01 AM
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LiMandri’s DOB
Hey, remember back when Patricia Lancaster was in charge of the DOB? We’ve tried to forget those days too, but they’re the unmentioned backdrop looming behind the Times’ quickie interview of Robert LiMandri, who took over at the DOB after Lancaster went the way in April ’08. Some key bits of info and quotes: In 2010 the DOB had slightly fewer inspectors because of budget cuts but “We put G.P.S. tracking on our 337 inspectors, so we know where our people are,” and “Permits for new buildings and major alterations fell around 19 percent last year, to 13,000 from 16,000. But permits for small-scale alterations — like moving a wall — rose 6 percent, to nearly 103,000. People are still doing smaller work, and that drives the economy as well. We’re starting to see pockets of demolitions. We just had seven or eight sites in the last couple of weeks. When you see demolitions come back, it’s a leading indicator that development is coming.” So the question is whether LiMandri’s leaner, meaner DOB is now really equipped for an upswing in construction, should one actually occur.
The 30-Minute Interview: Robert D. LiMandri [NY Times]
01/31/2011 9:00 AM
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DOB Shuts Down Another W’burg Loft Building
Another Williamsburg loft building bites the dust. According to The Brooklyn Paper, the six-story structure at 571 Metropolitan Avenue (at Lorimer) was ordered vacated by the Department of Buildings on Thursday, leaving some 40-odd residents without a place to live. (The DOB file for the building lists both a Partial Stop Work Order and a Full Vacate Order in effect.) “We’re young, we don’t have savings,” said one of the displaced residents. “We had no idea about the problems here. The tenants are suing the owner of the building, which has over 150 violations on it–64 from the DOB for structural issues and another 94 from the ECB.
Williamsburg Artists Evicted in Crackdown [Brooklyn Paper]
Photo from Property Shark
10/18/2010 9:00 AM
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Using Facebook to Clean Up Bay Ridge ‘Dump’
Talk about networking! A Bay Ridge resident emailed us to let us know about the Facebook page they started for 237 79th Street, a property that they say has been neglected for two decades. “There you’ll see photos of standing water, holes in the roof, a second floor that has collapsed into the ground, raccoons that inhabit this house, and bulging walls that show this house is ready fall at any moment.” Apparently Facebook has been more useful that the DOB: After residents spent years contacting various city agencies without getting anywhere, the Facebook page has sparked the attention of the Brooklyn Paper and News 12 Brooklyn. Hopefully that leads to some real action to take care of this place.
10/06/2010 10:31 AM
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364 Henry To Get Fixed
After getting tag-teamed by the Department of Buildings and the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the owner of 364 Henry Street will finally be forced to make repairs that address both the safety and aesthetics of the dilapidated townhouse. A lawsuit brought by the two groups led to an agreement in Brooklyn Supreme Court last Friday, reports the Daily News. Under the agreement, the house’s owner, concrete kingpin John Quadrozzi, has ten weeks to repair the cracked walls of the house, and another six months for more cosmetic repairs; if he misses his deadlines, he faces fines up $1,000 a day. “[Buildings Department] engineers found that the owner’s repeated failure to maintain these buildings created a hazard to the public and an eyesore for the neighborhood,” said Buildings Commissioner Robert LiMandri in a statement.
Henry Street Homeowner Finally Agrees to Fix-Up [NY Daily News]
LPC Targets Henry Street Homeowner [Brownstoner] GMAP
05/26/2010 9:28 AM
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DOB Receives Sincerest Form of Flattery
And here we thought the great of era of misleading real estate offers was behind us! We were a little taken aback when we received this official-looking letter from someone interested in paying “top dollar” for our house last week. Why does this letterhead look so familiar, we wondered? (You can click on either image to see a larger version.) Then we made the connection. We wonder how the Department of Buildings, which has recently updated its logo, is going to feel about the similarity. The folks at Plan NYC might not be too thrilled about the name either. Any IP lawyers out there?
04/29/2010 11:01 AM
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LPC Targets Henry Street Homeowner
The Landmarks Preservation Commission has slapped the owner of a Cobble Hill townhouse and carriage house with a lawsuit for failure to maintain the historic structures that could amount to more than a million dollars in fines. The LPC suit charges that the owner of 364 Henry Street, cement tycoon John Quadrozzi “failed to maintain these historically significant buildings in a state of good repair despite repeated requests.” Beyond the preservation issues, the buildings also pose a serious safety risk. “There is an ongoing risk of progressive collapse that may endanger the public,” a DOB inspector wrote to Quadrozzi in January. The head of the Cobble Hill Association summed up how most residents probably feel about it: “It’s certainly been an eyesore. The longer he lets it sit there, the more of a danger it becomes.”
City Sues Homeowner Over Crumbling Historic Buildings [NY Daily News]GMAP
04/22/2010 10:14 AM
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329 MacDonough’s Long Road to Salvation
The plight of 329 MacDonough Street (shown above last month) received a lot of ink here and elsewhere in the aftermath of a construction incident that threatened the structural integrity of the brownstone and its neighbor. When contractors dug a trench in the cellar that destabilized the party wall, the DOB was quick to call for the two buildings’ demolition. Our concern was public safety. said Tim Lynch, the Buildings inspector who made the initial call. You cannot endanger workers. As a NY Times article this morning explores, Mr. Lynch is not a cold-hearted philistine–he had spent fourteen years of his career working for an engineering company that specializes in preservation. In the wake of his initial call, though. Mr. Lynch received praise for keeping an open mind as the owner and other preservationists worked with other engineers to come up with a proposal to save the buildings. The plan was a long shot, thought Lynch, but he decided to give it a try. It was one of the most complicated engineering plans I’ve worked on, said Mr. Lynch. The stabilization effort ended up taking 42 days, using 36 tons of concrete and more than half a mile of lumber in the process. And the homeowner, who is also likely to receive fines along with the contractor for the illegal work that caused the initial problems, is out an extra several hundred thousand dollars.
After Fight, a Brooklyn Brownstone’s Costly Rescue [NY Times]
Learning from the MacDonough Street Crisis [Brownstoner]
MacDonough St. Houses Report [Brownstoner]
Update on MacDonough Street [Brownstoner]
Salvation on MacDonough Street? [Brownstoner]
Stay of Execution on MacDonough Street [Brownstoner]
MacDonough Street Update 1/25/10 [Brownstoner]
Wall Collapse, Vacate Order, Maybe Demo on MacDonough [Brownstoner]
04/01/2010 9:28 AM
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DOB’s Most Violated?
Which building has the most DOB violations in Brooklyn? Beehive Hairdresser thinks he’s found it: 2300 Cropsey Avenue. According to the blog, the stalled Bath Beach development has 38 active violations and $69,000 of outstanding penalties. “The DOB appears to be powerless with regard to having the ability to enforce anything and the owners appear to think that DOB summons as well as other official notes need to fade out in the sun,” says the blog. GMAP
03/16/2010 10:15 AM
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Scarano Barred by DOB
Architect Robert Scarano received a major rebuke and professional set-back yesterday when the Department of Buildings banned him from filing construction plans after an administrative law judge found that he made purposefully misleading statements in the past. The judge’s findings focused on just three of the hundreds of buildings the controversial architect designed over the past decade; 2006 charges brought by the city accused Mr. Scarano of violations at more than two dozen buildings. As The Times reports, the judge charged Mr. Scarano with deliberately overbuilding, calling some of his filings so deceptive that they call to mind out-and-out fraud. One of the properties in question is 145 Snediker Street in East New York, where the judge says he tried to ‘put one over’ on the DOB; another of the properties in question was an L-shaped building at the corner of Manhattan Avenue and Freeman Street, above. Mr. Scarano repeatedly submitted false documents in an attempt to circumvent the law and have illegal buildings approved, said DOB Commissioner Robert D. LiMandri. Licensed professionals must understand they have an obligation to follow the law so the safety and quality of life of our neighborhoods are not compromised.
Controversial Architect Is Barred by City [NY Times]
03/04/2010 9:00 AM
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D.O.B. Releases Postmortem on 493 Myrtle Collapse
The Dept. of Buildings issued a report on the factors that led to the collapse of 493 Myrtle Avenue in June, according to The Local. The D.O.B. is pinning the blame on four things: The haphazard way the basement level of a vacant lot east of the site was filled several years ago; the fact that 493 Myrtle’s owner didn’t fix a crack in the building; contractors doing crappy work and weakening the building; and heavy rain making “the dirt in the vacant lot next to 493 much heavier, further increasing the lateral load on the basement wall of 493.” Meanwhile, the DOB is saying that it didn’t do anything wrong by not ordering the evacuation of the building: “Many readers have questioned why the D.O.B. did not order the building evacuated in May after noticing the crack. Ms. Sullivan said that there was no sign of imminent collapse in May and that the inspectors saw no need to evacuate. The Buildings Department, she said, correctly followed its own procedures throughout and did not do anything wrong.”
D.O.B. Says Rain, Work Undermined 493 Myrtle [The Local]
493 Myrtle Demolition Update 6/25 [Brownstoner] GMAP
No Hard Answers Yet on Myrtle Building Collapse [Brownstoner]
Four-Story Building on Myrtle Collapses [Brownstoner]
493 Myrtle, Before the Fall [Brownstoner]
01/11/2010 10:29 AM
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New Demolition Rules Going Into Effect Next Week
IMBY put a post up yesterday that, in addition to providing classic footage of some nocturnal demolition in the South Slope, details the new rules governing demolition that are about to go into effect. Starting December 2, contractors will face stricter notification requirements before starting both full and partial demolition. For full demo, contractors will have to call (212) 227-4416 and get a confirmation number; in addition to following the same procedure for partial demolition, contractors must also notify owners of adjacent properties in advance if they are going to be using non-hand-held machinery. Contractors must submit a copy of their notification to DOB.
New Demolition Notification Requirements to Start December 2 [IMBY]
11/24/2009 9:01 AM
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City Planning Targeting Curb Cuts
Better late than never! The Department of City Planning announced the start of the 60-day public comment period on the proposed Residential Streetscape Preservation text amendment. The effort addresses long-standing concerns by many people about the inconsistent standards and application of rules governing curb cuts in residential neighborhoods. (The recent dust-up over a proposed cut at 97 St. Marks Avenue leaps to mind.) We’ve cut-and-pasted the press release with all the details about curb cut restrictions below; the language also includes rules governing front-yard planting. “Many neighborhoods have been blemished as front yards have been turned into parking spaces, interrupting the pedestrian experience, said Commissioner Burden. This proposal will require planting in front yards, move parking to where it belongs and prohibit inappropriate curb cuts.” Bravo. (more…)
11/17/2009 9:31 AM
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Site of Drummer’s Fall Lousy with Violations
Here’s a photo, courtesy of Property Shark, of 338 Berry Street, where the widely-loved drummer Jerry Fuchs fell to his death early Sunday morning after a malfunction with the manual elevator. As Gothamist point out, DOB records for the South Williamsburg building show numerous code and safety violations in the loft building over the years. This one in particular for “Failure to Maintain Elevator” looks especially tragic in retrospect.
W’burg Drummer Dies in Elevator Shaft Fall [NY Times] GMAP
More Details On Death Of Drummer Jerry Fuchs [Gothamist]
11/09/2009 9:58 AM
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DOB: A Challenge for All Times (and Mayors)
An article in The Times this weekend looks at the mayor’s record at cleaning up corruption and incompetence at the Buildings Department and largely finds it wanting; but the paper also notes that no other mayor has had much luck in that department either. The problem, as the article frames it, is an inherent one when you have low-paid bureaucrats with quite a bit of power and discretion charged with policing an industry that’s making money hand-over-fist. When you pay people who have the responsibility as inspectors so little, they’re prone to having their hand out, said Daniel J. Castleman, a former chief assistant in the Manhattan district attorney’s office and current managing director at FTI Consulting. That’s not endemic to one mayor or a dozen mayors, that’s just the way it is. There’s so much money to be made in construction and development that people are going to offer you things and people who are paid less are going to think, ‘Who’s this going to hurt?’ The answer, as the numerous crane and building collapses in recent years show, is a lot of people.
Buildings Dept. Woes Have Persisted Despite Bloomberg’s Overhaul [NY Times]
Photo by Jon Meyer
11/02/2009 9:00 AM
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southelliottseer
Feb 09, 2012 | 11:02 AM