The Past Starts Catching Up With Scarano
As the paper of record, it’s about time that The Times took on a topic weightier than house tours and selling prices. This weekend, the paper’s real estate section shone a bright light on the issue of architect self-certification and the potential for abuse. The poster child for the Times’ story was Robert Scarano who’s…
As the paper of record, it’s about time that The Times took on a topic weightier than house tours and selling prices. This weekend, the paper’s real estate section shone a bright light on the issue of architect self-certification and the potential for abuse. The poster child for the Times’ story was Robert Scarano who’s made a big business out of squeezing every last drop of FAR–and sometimes more, the paper argues–on his road to becoming the small-time developers’ best friend. The impetus for the article was the DOB’s recent petition accusing Scarano of knowingly ignoring building codes or zoning rules in self-certifying 25 building projects in Brooklyn (one of which is 78 Ten Eyck Street, above). In 17 of those cases, the DOB contends, Scarano signed off on more FAR than was legally allowed. One of his most common techniques? Widespread use–and failure to include in FAR calculations–of mezzanine levels and basement spaces. On average, The Times, concludes, Scarano makes a third of the usable square footage magically disappear. The result for Scarano is that he may become the first architect to have his self-certification privileges revoked; the result for other architects is that their sign-offs will be under greater scrutiny, helped in part by recent staff additions at the DOB.
How Big Is Too Big? [NY Times]
Scarano Projects Cited [NY Times]
“if they don’t have the manpower to enforce the law then they should not be handing out permits to Architects and Developers who have a slew of complaints and violations against them”…..DOB shouldn’t be handing out so many permits in any one neighborhood in a short period of time at all no matter who the architects are if they haven’t the manpower to enforce the letter of the law!! Too much development at once is part of the problem and the climate of abuse and chaos.
As usual the fix will only hurt the innocent.
Just like all the other laws in our “free country”
When the bureaucracies that are supposed to protect the tax payers fail to do their job the answer is always the same : Make more laws and hire more people to enforce them.
While not condoning the Scarrano’s, and Katan’s of the world, the real answer is much simpler than the power’s that be would have us believe.
Just enforce the laws that are in effect. and stop making excuses for your unwillingness to do your job.
As an example just look at the very sad case of Nixmary Brown: if just one person would have used some common sense and done their job then that poor girl would still be alive.
How about Gun Control: while not advocating gun use the fact of the matter is that NY has more Gun control laws on the books than just about any state. And yet we are constantly being told by our elected officials that we need more Gun control laws.
In the case of DOB: if they don’t have the man power to enforce the law then they should not be handing out permits to Architects and Developers who have a slew of complaints and violations against them.
The bottom line is ” Laws are made for honest people” and if they are not enforced in the true spirit that they were written, which is to protect not hurt the vast majority of us tax payer’s, then they are useless.
Common Sense!
Registered Architects and Professional Engineers are liable for life on their designs, there’s no statute of limitations, if they break the law or design substandard structures, that collapse, they can be prosecuted at any time in their lifetime, and as an architect it always surprises me and angers me, when professionals will put their licenses (livelihood) on the line for a few miserable dollars for developers who couldn’t care less about them or their reputation, or the people that will live in and around these buildings which make up the fabric of our cities and a large portion of our quality of life.
The concept of self-certification has bothered me since its inception, so this isn’t surprising except that it took so long to uncover the abuses. Self-certification an open invitation to finagling and misrepresentation on the part of the unscrupulous. The next thing the NYT should do is expose the problems at the DOB, an agency that is way underfunded, understaffed, and unable to carry out its myriad mandated duties.
The city does impose limits in bulk (FAR), height in both feet and/or # of stories, use of a property, etc. The problem is not necessarily the system (which is far from perfect), but with the people who abuse it, and the lack of enforcement from DOB (who by the way don’t make the rules, that’s done by City Planning, and approved by the City Council, DOB is suppose to enforce the Zoning and Code, and keep public records). DOB and NYC will not just punish the few bad apples, as it should when some one breaks the law, but will punish everyone, by changing the rules to and preventing law obeying citizens to use their property to its potential.
Dear S.M.
If you don’t know it already let me be the first to tell you that many of these Illegally built “things” are layden with law suits. Many who have bought into them would love to get out and get something worth living in.
Why not take all of Katan et. al.’s money and pay reputable Architects and Developers to build some real Livable Housing for half the price that was stolen from these people.
quoting previous poster: “But first the authorities should confiscate all there(sic) ill gotten gains, to compensate for all the harm that they have brought to others and then stop and/or tear down all of there Illegally built “Small Developments”.
If these “small developments” are torn down, how would the displaced people already living there, who were misled by developers, be compensated ? Not sure that would be enough.
There should be no issue about scaling back construction that’s already started, and revoking self-certification rights from Scarano is a step in the right direction, but tearing down what’s already been built and occupied would be a mistake, imho.
What I can’t understand is, why can’t the city impose height limits in meters/feet, rather than in something so subjective as number of stories or, worse yet, internal square footage.
Scarano’s choice of lawyers is appropriate. The lawyer quoted in the NYT article is with Zetlin & DeChiara. Don’t ask me why I know this, but based on prior experience, this attorney appears to be an expert at representing hack architects.
Katan, Hornstien, Boylmegreen! Interesting.
Could it be that Scarrano is being put out to dry by his, obviously, well connected associates?