Handouts from NY State for Preservation
Walking down Washington Avenue recently, we were interested to see the sign in front of the Brown Memorial Baptist Church trumpeting the role played by the New York State Environmental Protection Fund in restoring the church’s roof and facade. The congregation purchased the 40,000-square-foot church at 484 Washington (aka 52 Gates) in 1974 for a…
Walking down Washington Avenue recently, we were interested to see the sign in front of the Brown Memorial Baptist Church trumpeting the role played by the New York State Environmental Protection Fund in restoring the church’s roof and facade. The congregation purchased the 40,000-square-foot church at 484 Washington (aka 52 Gates) in 1974 for a whopping $2 a square foot. Built in 1930, the exterior church appears to still need a great deal of work. Haven’t seen the inside.
Applications for EPA Grants [NY State News] GMAP
Without getting into details about the spesific project I’d like to comment about the “working without a permit”.
The fact theat the developer worked without a permit doesn’t necessary menas that the job is bad. The DOB is one of the most corrupted and archaic branch of this city and therfore if I’m a devloper that loses money because of delays in permits so f… the permits and I’d rather get a fine that lose money because of delays. Delays can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,sometimes in the Millions, while fines are miniscules.
Do you know that expeditiors bought “time blocks” at the DOB without having any specific projects in hand and than sold this “time blocks” to architects for speculations?.That created an artificial backlog at the DOB and cost all developers tons of money. I salute developers who do not gives a damn about DOB permits. Of course at the end you need the permits and approvals to make sure everything is “kosher” but this could come later.
Nobody will give a C/O to a building witohut proper inspection that everone knows, so the work is being done with intent to get the C/O. otherwise no mortgages will be issued to the buyer. No builder wants to get stuck with unsold condos .
I am sure that the building will get the approval of the DOB at the end.
Again , I do not know of this project’s architecture, my comments are general regarding working without permits.
The linkage between the project’s bad tast and the non permit issue trying
to make a point is nikeling and diming the project. If you have a specific inside info. about bad things regarding this project that’s another story.