Inside Third & Bond: Week 130

More bureaucratic hell for the Third & Bond bloggers this week…

We hope you all enjoyed time with your mothers last Sunday, or at least took the time to think fondly of all the advice they’ve given you. Stand up straight. It’s nice to be nice. Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.
Like in February when we bit into a delicious looking newsletter from the Department of Buildings to find our least favorite filling: a new permit requirement. On February 11th, the Department of Buildings issued a bulletin announcing that sales offices and model apartments in buildings without Temporary or Permanent Certificates of Occupancy must get TCOs for the offices/apartments. While the bulletin doesn’t elaborate on the reasons for the TCO requirement we imagine it is DOB’s way of making certain that the naïve public will be protected by all of the safety mechanisms they can expect from a typical habitable building. Construction workers know what they’re getting into but that pregnant lady with the stroller… Without a TCO, a sales office could be on the 20th floor of an unfinished building accessible only by hoist. Unlikely, but possible.

Still, we were surprised to read this announcement…

…in the February Department of Buildings newsletter. Man, oh man. Another requirement. Dial up the expeditor and find out what her fee will be, try to estimate what the City will charge us in fees and try to deduce what paperwork we’ll need to file. Get a fresh coffee so we are fueled for our griping about unnecessary regulations created to get more fee revenue.

What did we need to get a sales office TCO? There are some basic egress and load requirements. Not a problem. The building with the sales office is pretty much finished and was designed, approved and built to have stuff like, oh, an exit and floors that support the weight of furniture and people. Since our paving work wasn’t done (and still isn’t) we built a ramp with handrails leading up to the building entrance. And then we painted it bright green to make sure only the very hardest of sight could be confused about the location of the sales office vis-à-vis the other seven buildings.

There is also a sprinkler requirement for the sales office. It can be met by a main sprinkler system in operation or by operating the sprinkler system for the sales office off the domestic water service. Our plumber, Ernie from Starlite, is truly a star in our eyes. With barely the questions off our lips, he jumped into action, speaking with his contacts at DOB to find out what he needed to provide to convince DOB the main sprinkler system was on (of course the bulletin doesn’t say) and then provided a two-line letter, signed and sealed. So simple! Could it be this easy?

Not so fast. We were the first application that our DOB reviewer had seen for the new sales office TCO so we were along for the ride as the reviewers and windows clerks figured out how to enact the Bulletin. For example, once we had submitted all of the paperwork and were in theory approved we waited to find out if DOB would send a warm body to verify the paperwork against the built reality. It took well over a week but they decided, yes, that was the plan. We got an appointment pretty quickly and thankfully, the DOB inspector came on the intended day. (There’s nothing more frustrating than a string of inspection appointment cancellations.) He was pleasant, professional, and thorough. He was also prompt. Within a few hours we had confirmation that we passed and within a week we had a letter fully approving our 30-day TCO. Not as bad as we expected, based on our previous experience.
Third + Bond has seen more than its fair share of regulation changes from the Department of Buildings, and as many procedural changes. There was the time DOB insisted we get a permit for test pits, although no one ever gets permits for test pits and it took days to figure out (with them) what permit to apply for. There were the underpinning audits and long slog through the new underpinning/shoring division. There was the stop work order for having taken out the sprinklers although the reason the sprinklers were out was that we had demolished most of the building including the ceilings (with a demo permit), so the sprinklers would have been held up by what magic? And protected what bricks and concrete block? There have also been a number of long discussions with inspectors and plan reviewers who have their new Code hats on although we are permitted under old Code. For a medium-sized project built as-of-right, we’ve spent a lot of time expediting this project.
Why all the new interventions? Many can be traced back to safety tragedies like the Deutsche Bank fire and the Midtown East crane collapse. After those terrible accidents we’ve seen not only more scrutiny from inspectors but also new regulations. Some of this extra attention has served no useful purpose and has been poorly managed, though we don’t begrudge those who are actually looking after our safety.
Better to be safe than sorry, our moms always say.

Inside Third & Bond: Weeks 1-129 [Brownstoner]

Our legal fine print: The complete offering terms are in an Offering Plan available from Sponsor. File No. CD080490. Sponsor: Hudson Third LLC, 826 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.