Crack Is Wack
“Shoring has been put up, presumably after the fact, to prevent further damage but it looks to me like that corner is about to take a swim in the mud pit next door,” writes Tyler King over on the Miller Cicero blog about a building in Williamsburg who’s only crime was being adjacent to a…
“Shoring has been put up, presumably after the fact, to prevent further damage but it looks to me like that corner is about to take a swim in the mud pit next door,” writes Tyler King over on the Miller Cicero blog about a building in Williamsburg who’s only crime was being adjacent to a big development site where adequate safety precautions were not taken upfront. More details on the link.
Does anyone else see those little white tabs running across the cracks near the top of the window? If those are those little crack-measuring scales, perhaps this owner was lucky and did some documentation of existing conditions before this shit went down.
Is there insurance one can buy against stuff like this, or is it ostensibly covered by regular homeowner’s?
Yeah, in that case I think the guy next door went broke.
True, we don’t know whether there were problems here before work began, etc.
However, proving negligence should not be that hard. The development site has dug a huge hole next to this building, which probably has a foundation that goes down about 10′ or so below grade (a few foot below cellar level). The development site is responsible for underpinning if they dig below the foundation of a neighboring building. The extent and quality of the underpinning is pretty easy to judge.
BTW – the vacate order goes back to last July. This type of stuff is very common in Williamsburg and just about everywhere else that has boomed over the past few years. Like Williamsburg, place like Greenwood Heights, the South Slope, etc., etc. include a lot of old housing stock that is easily compromised by careless or negligent work going on next door.
In this case, a few families (I assume) have been forced out of their home for more than half a year, and the owner isn’t earning any rent. Even if the developer next door (or his contractors) are found liable, it will take many months or years to resolve. The building Heather mentioned has been vacated for YEARS.
“That’s only about the… twentieth time that has happened in the Burg?”
Add a zero to that number and you’d be more correct. Add two zeros and you’ll be good for the Boro, perhaps a bit low.
Bob Guskind’s last article was on this very subject. The woman he interviewed, Phyllis, is on Bedford Avenue every day. She can tell you a great deal about how often this has happened. Her own house, (one of the few large brick federal-style houses on Havemeyer street), was completely destroyed by her neighbor’s construction. True, the land is now worth more than these houses, but the entire fabric of the neighborhood is unraveled with their absence.
this is a case of developer eminent domain; skip the legal process, ruin the neighbor and then take the ppty.
brilliant.
Horrible. And however well prepared a property owner might be (updated insurance policy, letters ahead of time to developer/contractor) these situations always end up penalizing the neighbor who happened to be in the “wrong place at the wrong time”. Lawsuits cost time and money. Insurers try to avoid their responsibilities. No fair!
I assume it will be very difficult for the owner of that property to prove the developer of the adjacent property liable for the damage, no?
Didnt read the link, but I can only assume a major lawsuit is in the works…