They dug too deep

From the Daily News:

A seemingly idyllic backyard patio behind a landmark West Village townhouse was hiding a sinister secret before an eagle-eyed neighbor got the owner busted by the city’s Buildings Department, officials said.

Lush grassy carpeting, white patio furniture and landscaping rocks actually masked an illegal excavation that reached as deep as 7 feet in some areas, sources told the Daily News.

Inspectors responding to a complaint at 35 Perry St. on Monday were shocked to find the fake floor suspended canopy-style over the dangerous ditch at the base of the 1852 structure, sources said.

The covert crater not only undermined the underpinning of the four-story building but also compromised the foundation of a wall shared with 37 Perry St., city engineers found. The building owner didn’t have an excavation permit.

Inspectors cited the owner for various safety violations, including lack of guardrails. They also found day laborers hiding in the house and a moving truck rented from Enterprise used to smuggle out debris, sources said.

Ozone Park half house

Here's half of a house that I stumbled across on 103rd Street in Ozone Park, just north of 101st Ave.

Well that excavation looks kind of unstable.

It seems that the DOB & FDNY agree.

This was supposed to be an enlargement.

But it became more of a nightmare.

Wilson Street illegal excavation leads to cave-in

From NBC:

Several workers had to be dug out of the ground by firefighters after ground they were working in outside a Brooklyn rowhouse gave way Monday, burying them up to their waists in dirt, fire officials said.

The workers were digging an extension in the yard of a rowhouse on Wilson Street in Williamsburg that was under renovation at the time of the accident, authorities said. Two of the buried workers had to be dug out by firefighters; a third was able to extricate himself from the dirt.

The men suffered minor injuries.

NBC 4 New York has learned the building owner did not have a permit for the construction work.

The Department of Buildings put stop-work orders on the landlord's building and evacuated several neighboring buildings, including a home and a synagogue, as a precaution. Dismissal at a nearby school was also modified.

A leopard cannot change its spots

Here's an update from one of my favorite John Ciafone properties:

Not only have the signs multiplied, but now there's some new shadiness to report.

First of all, there may be some action soon with regard to the illegal sign complaints.

Then there is an illegal gas hookup that was discovered in 2006, but never followed up on.

But the latest bust comes due to a complaint about illegal excavation of the basement.

So that's why this dumpster full of concrete and dirt was out front!

No permits at collapse site

From the NY Post:

A worker digging at a Harlem construction site was nearly killed yesterday when the ground suddenly collapsed and he was buried up to his neck in dirt and rubble, witnesses and fire officials said.

The worker, employed by Accura Restoration, was inside an 8-foot trench waterproofing a building at 1753 Park Ave. when the ground gave way at around 11 a.m.

Two good Samaritans, Francisco Pichardo and Ricardo Santos, heard the man’s anguished screams and raced to the scene.

The do-gooders were forced to stop when the ground continued crumbling.

FDNY rescue workers shored up the area using a vacuum truck to suck out the dirt, and carefully removed the remaining rubble by hand.

The city’s Buildings Department immediately issued a stop-work order to the site after they found that Accura had no permits.

Shady building in Manhattan

From the NY Post:

Just when construction started gearing up on the long-stalled Harry Macklowe tower on the former Drake Hotel land between East 56th and 57th streets and Park Avenue, the site was slapped with a Partial Stop Work Order.

According to notes by the city’s Building Dept., excavation work began without the agency being notified and without securing a neighboring property, which reported a problem with an elevator pitwall on Tuesday.

The site received two violations and a Partial Stop Work Order was issued Oct. 5.

Last week, visitors and doormen in the lobby of the adjacent 450 Park Ave. were rattled by noisy jackhammers as work started in earnest on the site now owned by CIM Group and being developed in conjunction with Macklowe, who was the previous owner.

The Post’s Steve Cuozzo reported on Oct. 4 that jeweler Bucellati, a tenant in one of the East 57th Street townhouses, was finally moving out. This leaves just the townhouse owned by Jacob the Jeweler as the lone holdout for the development’s front door.

Reps for Macklowe and CIM declined comment.

St. Saviour's site hit with 5 stop work orders

From Times Ledger:

Ongoing construction at the old St. Saviour’s Church site was stopped by the city last Thursday, after activists who want a park built on the site complained about outstanding violations.

The city Departments of Buildings and Sanitation both sent inspectors to the site, according to city officials. Sanitation ordered the contractor at the site to remove dumpsters full of waste by the end of the week, but Buildings brought the construction of several warehouses on the 1.5-acre lot to a halt after activist Christina Wilkinson issued a complaint.

Wilkinson and other residents keep a vigilant watch over the site, and in the preceding weeks appealed to elected officials for help in getting the park project going and make sure the current construction is legal.

“We’re running out of time. We’ve staved off development for awhile,” she said. “It is time to do something.”

In looking at the permits (under the many addresses this parcel has) there seems to be another SWO for the fence that was issued Friday.

Here's the interesting thing...

They had allegedly "cured" the fence violation just days before. I guess DOB doesn't bother to check to see if they are telling the truth unless someone complains.

St. Saviour's saga takes strange turn

A day after the St. Saviour's site was shut down for failing to adhere to a partial stop work order, it was opened up again, but then shut down again for failure to provide excavation plans. So I guess that means the inspector that had showed up Thursday about the retaining wall failed to notice that this activity was also going on. But several neighbors reported that the inspector that was there Friday stayed the entire day, watching the workers, and then at the end of the day slapped the SWO notice on the wall. (You'll note that Friday's SWO was partially rescinded the same day...) Interestingly, the orginal violation said FINES DUE at the end of Thursday, but by Friday that tidbit of information disappeared from the website. Perhaps the fine was paid. Perhaps pigs have learned how to fly... Something told me to screenshot it though:

Now, another reader sent in this photo of the dumpsters on the lot. He informed me that DSNY ordered the dumpsters to be removed from the site this week and that one had already disappeared. But he noted that there appeared to be pipe insulation in one of the dumpsters, which could possibly mean the presence of asbestos. Fun, fun, fun!


During this entire time, the elected officials have been extremely quiet. I thought they said at the rally that the thing to do was pressure the owner? So where are they? Dreaming about the open CD9 position? When the going gets tough, the electeds scram. Way to protect your constituents!

Did the mob undermine a church?

From the Daily News:

AT 2 a.m. on Feb. 2, 2006, a church volunteer was asleep in the sanctuary of the Nakwon Reformed Church when an explosion jolted her awake.

In the morning Hwang discovered a wall had partially collapsed, causing a huge crack in the church's foundation. The city Buildings Department blamed excavation work next door.

Unbeknown to the church, the excavation firm in question was mob-controlled Duramax, hired to dig a foundation for a new condo development next door called The Phoenix.

The city ordered the church, a Dunkin' Donuts, a deli and a restaurant that shared the one-story building to vacate.

Residents of an apartment building around the corner also had to get out.

The Dunkin' Donuts, the deli and apartment residents returned, but the restaurant never did. Repairs cost the church nearly $1 million.

Condos in The Phoenix are being sold even as suits the church filed against Duramax and others years ago grind through the courts.

Duramax has denied all responsibility for the damage.

Supermarket owner owes a lot of fines

From the Times Ledger:

New York Mart, the new owner of the shuttered Key Food supermarket in Flushing, owes the city thousands of dollars in fines after failing for more than a month to comply with a stop-work order, according to city records.

The supermarket chain, which was busy converting the space into the fifth location of the Asian food market, has been fined $15,000 by the city Department of Buildings since July 27 for a series of violations, the department’s records show. The fines had not been paid as of Tuesday afternoon, a DOB spokeswoman said.

On July 27, the department issued a partial stop-work order on the property at 142-41 Roosevelt Ave. for working without a permit and it mandated that all interior work be stopped, the spokeswoman said. On Aug. 18, the property was cited for not having construction plans its owner submitted to the department on hand at the site, and on Aug. 26 a full stop-work order was issued, barring all work on the property until the fines are paid.

The building was cited on Sept. 1 for violating that order, according to DOB records. On that date, the department inspected the site after area resident Mary Ann Boroz said she and a group of neighbors complained to the agency and local officials about what she described as illegal excavation going on in the basement of the property.

She said she believed the work was being done in order to create a basement parking facility, a concern two local community leaders said they also had. William Chen, general manager of New York Mart, could not be reached for comment Tuesday, but indicated in writing in July that he intended to provide parking at the location “if it is approved by the city.” No new parking has been approved for the site.

“Back in July, I took photographs of what was coming out of the back of the building and it was slabs of concrete and dirt and wood,” Boroz said. “Long story short, he claimed it was debris. It wasn’t debris. Where do you have slabs of concrete just hanging around? I turned the pictures over to the Department of Buildings, Community Board 7 and Peter Koo,” the Republican Councilman from Flushing. The location was also cited for failure to obey the original stop-work order Aug. 31, when the DOB inspected the store and found “men performing concrete work at rear of supermarket,” “work contrary to [stop-work order]” and “failure to protect persons and property affected by construction operations,” according to DOB records.

James McClelland, a spokesman for Koo, said he warned Chen that if he wanted to do work at the Key Food site, he needed to hire an architect who is aware of building codes and other laws.

“I told him, ‘If you’re going to operate, you’ve got to operate above the board because the community is watching you.’ So shame on him,” McClelland said Tuesday after hearing about the stop-work order.

McClelland said that when he heard residents’ concerns about possible illegal work at the site, Koo was quick to meet with the DOB, which McClelland said he advised not to “drag their feet” in responding to the complaints.

Koo will continue to monitor the situation and ensure that any work occurring at the site is entirely legal, according to McClelland.

“I may call him in now and ask him what’s going on,” he said.

Just a little collateral damage

Via Brownstoner:

"Shoring has been put up, presumably after the fact, to prevent further damage but it looks to me like that corner is about to take a swim in the mud pit next door," writes Tyler King over on the Miller Cicero blog about a building in Williamsburg who's only crime was being adjacent to a big development site where adequate safety precautions were not taken upfront. More details on the link.

DOB says this is perfectly safe

"These were taken about 10am this morning at the St. Saviour's site. There was a partial stop work order in effect which stated that there could be no excavation within 20 feet of the damaged retaining wall and that they were to repair the shoddy construction fence. So they were replacing the fence manually while excavating the wall with heavy equipment without any protection whatsoever for the public. I can't really describe in words what was going on there - you have to watch these videos to understand. But the arm of the backhoe was swinging out over the sidewalk and they were driving it on top of an unstable mound of dirt. Both 311 and 911 were called but no one came."







More videos here.

When I got home, I received this:

Dear Ms. Wilkinson,

An inspector was sent to the above location this morning. At the time of the inspection, the Inspector observed no work in progress, except to make the site safe. Specifically, workers were observed using a machine to remove dirt from the sidewalk. The Department of Buildings will nonetheless continue to monitor the location to ensure compliance with the Stop Work Order.

Sincerely,

Byron Muñoz, MA
Liaison
Intergovernmental and Community Affairs
NYC Department of Buildings

I replied with a link to the photos and videos and asked them not to insult my intelligence.

Now there is a scramble to try to save what's left of the historic stone wall." - Christina Wilkinson

UPDATE: "I got a call that a 10-foot section of the wall collapsed around 2pm." - Christina

This guy will scare the pants off you!

Thank you to IMBY for calling attention to this video of Timothy Lynch, Forensic Engineer testifying at the NYC DOB's Build Safe New York Conference.

"In the last three years, there have been 13,000 new building permits in the city. Every new building has an excavation component, and for every new building, there are approximately three adjacent buildings impacted by the construction. Most of these buildings are on the lot line. That potentially equates to 40,000 neighbors being impacted by the new building. In response to the rise in excavation related incidents and collateral damage to the neighbor's buildings, the Department recognized the need to focus on excavation." -Timothy Lynch, DoB Special Enforcement Forensic Engineer

Wait 'til you hear him talk about what he found at the construction sites and in self-certified plans!

Stop Work Order issued at St. Saviour's site

The day after I posted about the nonsense that was going on at the St. Saviour's site, the DOB saw fit to issue a partial stop work order. Why a partial and not a full? The full SWO came a couple of days later.

I guess it looks bad when the flagrant violation of building and safety codes is happening during Construction Safety Week and it's called attention to on the internet and then picked up by other real estate blogs.