Thursday, March 26, 2009

Huang House site now treacherous for pedestrians


"As you can see from the pictures, this construction fence is near collapsing. The owners of the property and their subcontractors, piled very heavy construction material on the poorly constructed fence, causing it over time to begin collapsing.


Over the winter, numerous calls made to the D.O.B. through the 311 system have gotten the residents of Mazeau Street nowhere in resolving this issue.


With the high winds and more high winds to come, it is only certain that this fence will fall, and if anyone is anywhere near it, they will be very badly injured, or killed. The weight of the material, plus the force of weight when it falls is sure to be serious.


Many children pass this site, to and from their elementary school every weekday. I personally filed a complaint and from what I can tell from the link, it is sort of active? Are the D.O.B. waiting, as usual, for a fatality?


It isn't bad enough that the owner "Tommy Huang" has felony charges against him for destroying the landmarked "R K O Theater" and is still allowed to build. Now he can - and has for years now - put the residents of Mazeau Street and their children in danger and the city - especially the politicians - allowed this to happen with overdevelopment and not enforcing their own rules at the D.O.B.


And lets not leave out the D.O.T. They will quickly ticket a home owner for a little crack in their sidewalks but the D.O.T. has yet to ticket this land owner, and as you can see from the pictures the side walk is in poor shape.


If the fence falls, one will trip by the sidewalk as they try to avoid it.

As you can see, the 311 system doesn't really work when the D.O.T. and D.O.B. don't do their jobs properly by enforcing their own rules and regulations. If someone can help me I would greatly appreciate it 'cause I am sick and tired of calling 311 and having nothing done. I have to pass this everyday, to and from work, and it sickens me everyday. Someone please help before somebody gets hurt." - anonymous

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Work finally started on a site just like this on 18th street in Astoria. It looked like the fence would cave into the giant hole in the ground inches behind it.

I am so relieved that construction has begun because it will stabilize the site.

Where was DOB for the last two years? According to public records, heavily doctored, a house was removed from this site years before. Actually, the original site had a functional house on it until 2 years ago.

Why were those records changed? Could it be that permits are not in order?

Anonymous said...

Claire Shulman
on Huang and the RKO Keith's:

"What can we do...he pays his taxes"?

How little has changed over the years regarding Tommy "the terrible".

Huang (& Sons) must be surely hooked up good with city government.

This kind of chicanery wouldn't be going on if he wasn't!

Anonymous said...

Try and get as many neighbors as you can to persistently call 311 to complain, like everyday. Stress the safety issue A LOT.
After many complaints, the city can rip out that crappy fence and replace it with a chainlink fence charging the owner for EVERYTHING.

Anonymous said...

What will it take for everybody to understand?

DOB is far, far tooooo busy to protect taxpaying citizens from any danger generated by a benefactor of the Commissar.

And anyway, DOB is concentrating with all its brains on fixing that beam that tried to escape from the vicinity of the Commissar.

Anonymous said...

Call Parks, too ... street tree is in trouble with what they have done to it.

I think Parks will give a violation, too. Also calls for graffiti, fence falling, gate in fence opens outward ... site open to access by the public...

clear violations ...

Anonymous said...

We were just tipped off by a police captain (who shall remain nameless) that if a 311 call goes in on the same complaint from 3 different complainants it gets bumped up to a high priority level.

But he indicated that just one call
gets low priority.

Thanks "Capt. ???"!

I tried your system and it works!

Anonymous said...

The similar-looking site on 18th Street in Astoria was recently left with the gate wide open and no workers around to safeguard it.

Isn't it nice that curious children are free to fall into the foundation of a building. At least the school bus no longer stops on that side of the street to pick up children.

A more knowledgeable neighbor or the bus driver himself took care of that.

Anonymous said...

A gallon of gas and match can fix it all...

Anonymous said...

The permit was in order in December.

A new rectangular fence was made around the construction site.

DOB officials: pedestrian problem was fixed several days before. New concrete was laid around the four-acre site.

Anonymous said...

Drive down their homes you'd see the marble cut into a stone - their newly built homes in Forest Hills. The Huang family is very wealthy.

Government officials collapsed the rundown building on 18th street in Astoria. When you factor the sqft of their lots and the building properties they rival many of the city's building sites. Huang bought the $5 million property. DOB officials said the new building site has 2,000 sqft of garage with 1,000 sqft rentals on a 30,000 sqft lot.

Anonymous said...

§27-292.0
(a)The owner renders the subdivisions. Such shall be filed with the city and shall be available for inspection.
(b) The commissioner requirements this subdivision (d) of 27-317 of this code for the alteration of buildings, and for
buildings required was filed with
the owner.
*Law 65-1980.