Saturday, December 27, 2008

Look out below!

A local City Council member is calling for tighter scrutiny of construction projects after a piece of limestone from the under-construction Laurel condominium damaged the roof of an adjacent school.

Last Thursday, the limestone tile fell from the construction site onto the roof of the school next door, said the developer of the Laurel, Izak Senbahar of the Alexico Group. The Laurel, a 30-story tower at 400 East 67th Street at First Avenue, was also the site of a construction worker's death in April.

"I'd like to see greater scrutiny on sites where children are at risk and people are dying," said City Council member Jessica Lappin, whose district includes the Laurel as well as 303 East 51st Street, the site of a May crane collapse that killed seven people.

The building adjacent to the Laurel, owned by the Church of St. John Nepomucene, is rented by an English/Italian bilingual school, Guglielmo Marconi, La Scuola d'Italia. The school, which serves students from kindergarten through 12th grade, has its main campus at 12 East 96th Street but holds some of its classes at an annex on 67th Street, school staff said.

There was some damage to the roof of the building, a church spokesperson said, adding that students were attending classes during the incident but no one was hurt.


Laurel accident prompts more calls for construction oversight

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This happens so often that the talking heads on the TV news are almost as numb as bloomie.There was glass falling from 43rd st a month or so ago at least once from construction.

Anonymous said...

If the city wasnt handing out stop work orders like candy the contractors would not be rushing to get the job finished thus making mistakes.
Dont let the city fool you, 80% of the violations the city hands out are to fill coffers not to make sites safer.

Anonymous said...

On so many levels this activity intrudes on our lives. Yet story after story after story and all we get is the mainline preservation community runing seminars on how to live with development.

What gives?