Friday, September 5, 2008

Developer delivers driveway debacle

A Kingsbridge couple is fuming after they say workers constructing a 12-story apartment building next door to their home tore up their driveway without permission.

Hannah McAllister said the workers initially approached her on Aug. 26 and asked if they could use just a small section of her driveway, which abuts the construction site at 3050 Corlear Ave., to do work. She refused.


Developer damages neighbor's driveway

But, she claims, workers went ahead and used it anyway. When she returned home from work in the early afternoon, Ms. McAllister said, she found large cracks in the concrete and later discovered there was a 15-foot-deep hole where workers had installed steel tubes.

She immediately called the city’s hotline to complain, she said, and the city Department of Buildings dispatched an inspector to investigate that same day. But the Kingsbridge resident could never anticipate what she found taped to her door when she returned: a violation lodged against her address for having “many cracks in various areas throughout driveway and curb …”

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lady should simply take that summons right over to her councilman's office with her complaint and leave it.
BUT buildings is 100% wrong as they should have briefly "interviewed" her and understood the problem.
Can you imagine the damage that happens when they're gutting and changing a 100 year old/ SINGLE family ATTATCHED row house into an extended,enlarged ,3 ?
unreal.Vibrations,dust,uncovered dumpsters,garbage,nonenglish speaking labourers shaping up daily outfront--Happening all over asTOrIa and now some seem to be abandoned either due to money problems or massive violations--
and we're supposed to be grateful that these developers haven't YET done a 5family as our zoning was changed from R2 to R5--
thank you community bd 1,peter vallone,etc.
nobody knows WHEN THEY voted this either.

Anonymous said...

Typical reponse by improperly trained (if at all) inspectors. I thought the new Commissioner was going to make things better and safer for the public....not a good start is it??!

Anonymous said...

My landlord, fondly known as "Devil Lord" did exactly the same thing to one of my neighbors in Astoria.

I can assure you that the inspector is in the developer's pocket and this was intimidation, not an accident. The Inspector General, Queens District Attorney and State Attorney General should be notified.