Sunday, April 17, 2011

Walled off

From the Times Ledger:

An Ozone Park woman is furious after a neighboring car dealership erected a cinder block wall topped with coils of barbed wire next to her backyard without permission from the city.

“It looks terrible and it makes the neighborhood look terrible,” said Mary Jane Maggio, whose garage and yard share a border with Nissan of Queens, at 93-19 Rockaway Blvd. “I don’t want to have to look at that all the time.”

But the approximately 10-foot tall wall and 4 feet of barbed wire are hard to miss.

“It looks like a prison,” she said.

The dealership did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

According to Maggio, the wall went up last summer, and aside from its looks, she said the barbed wire endangers wildlife.

“The birds are flying through and getting cut, and a cat went through, got caught and then died,” she said just as a cat leapt through one of the coils and latched itself onto a nearby telephone pole before scaling down and scampering away.

According to the city, the construction of the wall was not legal since the dealership never had it inspected.

Any brick wall more than 8 feet must be inspected by the city to ensure it meets safety requirements, according to the city Department of Buildings, and the dealership did not get it inspected.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

A throwback to the cold war days of the old Soviet Union; What an utterly appropriate symbol for Bloomburg's new NYC!

Ronald Raygun said...

Tear down that wall!

Anonymous said...

No problem...with the right amount of $$, Board of Standards and Appeal will grant him a variance.

Anonymous said...

When,not if,it falls,i hope itcomes down on his cars.

Anonymous said...

Consider yourself lucky. In Astoria there would be a 10 story wall behind it: Dutch Kills 15 story.

Anonymous said...

i think the barbed wire might be a d.o.b.violation, as well as the height of the wall.

i think the walls can be

4' in front yard and 5 ' or 6' on the sides and rear yard.

call your c.p.b. office.

Anonymous said...

Who's your councilperson? C'mon Mike, tear down that wall!