Queens Gazette cries a river for troubled medical building

From the Queens Gazette:

Recently a police report was filed with the 114th Police Precinct by Pali Realty for extensive graffiti damage done to the multimillion dollar medical facility under construction at 23-25 31st St. in Astoria. Graffiti vandals damaged the façade and exterior glass windows. Damage to the building is estimated to cost more than $150,000, causing an unnecessary expense and delays.

“It is a real travesty that damage by graffiti vandals continues to plague our neighborhood. We deserve a neighborhood free from graffiti and vandalism,” said Yianni Konstantinides of Pali Realty, the developer of the property. “Every bit of damage done places burdensome costs for this project and negatively impacts this building and other hard-working small business owners in New York City.”

Pali Realty has invested millions of dollars into the Astoria Medical Facility on 31st Street. Upon completion, it will serve as a full-time medical facility featuring 134 underground parking spaces and offices for 26 physicians with a support staff of approximately 80 people, bringing jobs and medical care to a largely underserved community. The medical office building will be occupied by various medical groups and hospitals. These local medical services and new jobs will be a major benefit to the Astoria Community.

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Little Bay Park construction stalled

Dear Community,

Many of you have noticed that work on the Little Bay Park Comfort Station and parking lot expansion have come to a grinding halt. That's not completely true because in actuality construction never began.

Initial inquiries to the Department of Parks & Recreation were met with the sounds of silence. When the Parks Department did respond they would deny the existence of a problem. They even went so far as to make the ludicrous claim that work was taking place but it just happened to be at times when no one was nearby to view the progress.

As is so often the case, the story has once again taken a new turn. A spokesperson for the Parks Department now reports that work was delayed because the contractor needed to obtain the proper construction permits. What this means, if it's accurate, is that a contractor hired by the Parks Department fenced off a large area of parkland and moved dirt and large pieces of construction equipment onto the worksite without have all the permits in place. Would anyone reading this email allow a contractor they had hired to perform in such a reckless and irresponsible manner? I don't think so.

Individuals employed by the Parks Department are dedicated and hard working. However, incidents like the Little Bay Park fiasco emphasize the need for greater oversight. Hopefully a new mayor will bring about much needed change.

Sincerely
Warren Schreiber

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Who builds a house like this?

Now here's a real architectural abortion: 32-15 60th Street, Woodside. Permits were filed in 2006 to build a 2-family house, but things went awry and those permits were revoked in 2007. The house has sat basically abandoned with a stop work order since 2010 and had a complaint filed in 2011 that it was open and unguarded with people (squatters?) entering and exiting. Lord knows if they ever resolved the little electrical problem they had. And what's with that open foundation? The house looks like it's on stilts.

This was previously a driveway/side yard.

The same owner apparently owns the house next door which currently has a yet-to-be-answered complaint of illegal conversion. The previous owner was tagged in 2006 for the same violation.

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You can enter 311 DOB complaints online once again

Back in the 1990s, one was able to enter DOB complaints online. When Bloomberg took over, that capability disappeared, although you could still enter complaints for many other agencies online. When you would have a DOB inquiry, the website would direct you to call 311.

Now that Bloomberg is on his way out the door, the ability to enter DOB complaints online has been restored.

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Major League protest

Hmmm. What's going on here?

Okay, I get it. Scab labor.

But what does Major League Baseball have to do with it? I can't decipher that after reading the colorful flier.

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When developers request street tree removal

From Crain's:

Since a 2010 law was passed requiring builders to pay the city for chopping down healthy trees planted on the public sidewalk, Staten Island homebuilders have claimed examples like Mr. Molino's — where the contractor is charged tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands of dollars by the city for tree removal — are becoming more frequent and detrimental to their business.

"I'm a second-generation builder, and this has never been an issue until the past four years," said Frank Naso, president of the Naso Organization, which specializes in commercial and residential land development. "What's really happening is the Parks Department is devaluing [the future homes] on vacant land. The builder is eating the cost."

It seems counterintuitive that trees would have a negative effect on property values. But Mr. Naso sees little incentive in planting trees on vacant lots if a developer later must pay big sums to remove them to build on the land.

He is currently building two houses on Staten Island's North Shore that he hopes to sell for about $300,000 each. The city is asking him to pay $15,000 in restitution for trees that he says he needs to cut down to build. "If you pass that onto the homebuyer," Mr. Naso said, "you'd price them out."

But the flip side of debilitating costs carried by builders is that the Parks Department is attempting to put a monetary value on something as invaluable as a big, old tree. Mr. Molino's stately pin oak on Rudyard Street measured in with a diameter of 42 inches at "breast height," according to the city, which suggests an age of between 80 and 100 years. That made it rare: Less than 1% of the city's 592,130 street trees were that size or larger, according to a 2006 municipal tree census.

"Our No. 1 goal is to preserve and protect the urban forest of New York City," said Jeremy Barrick, deputy chief of forestry, horticulture and natural resources for the Parks Department. "Trees provide a benefit to the entire community. The way we protect those trees is by putting a replacement value on them that ultimately deters or makes it difficult to justify the removal of a tree. One three-inch [diameter] tree does not provide the same benefits in the here and now as a 42-inch tree."

Once a healthy tree has been deemed by Parks Department inspectors as an "unavoidable obstruction with construction," the city employs something called the trunk-formula method for calculating the value of the tree that must be removed and how to replace it. Factors scored on a scale include the tree's species and the condition of its trunk and foliage. Location is also a part of the math.

"We come up with a number of three-inch trees that are necessary to make up for that loss," Mr. Barrick said.

The city averages between 30 to 40 healthy-tree removals a year, Mr. Barrick said, and a handful of those cases have been challenged in court.

And this is why the developers just cut the trees down without permission. If Parks doesn't know ahead of time and can't measure the trees, there's no way they can adequately estimate the cost or the number of trees to replace them with. It probably costs less to pay a fine after the fact than to go through the permit process.

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Plumbers sue Ratner over prefab construction

From the Daily News:

Developer Bruce Ratner's plan to build pre-fab apartment buildings at his Atlantic Yards complex dangerously ignores key building safety rules, union workers charge in a bombshell lawsuit.

The Plumbing Foundation claims in its suit that the Building Department is wrongly allowing Ratner to build the first phase of the $4.9 billion, 15-building residential and commercial project without using licensed plumbers and fire suppression contractors.

Because Ratner is using pre-fabricated — or modular — units, more than 60% of the construction of the project surrounding the Barclays Center is expected to be completed off-site.

The modules currently being built at the Brooklyn Naval Yard includes plumbing, gas and sprinkler piping for the world's tallest modular building, a 32-story residential structure named B2, slated to rise at Dean St. and Flatbush Ave.

But that construction is not being done by licensed workers, a violation of the city's strict building Administrative Code, according to the lawsuit.

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Worker falls into basement of demo project

From NY1:

Fire crews on Thursday responded to a construction site in Queens after a worker fell into the basement of a home that's being demolished.

It happened around 8:30 a.m. at a property located at 181-14 Kildare Road in Jamaica Estates.

Officials say the worker, who is said to be in his 30's, suffered a head injury during the fall.

He was transported to Queens Hospital Center.

The Department of Buildings ordered the work stopped until the fall can be investigated.

Here's what it used to look like:



What's coming?

"ONE FAMILY DWELLING. THE THREE FIXTURE BATHROOM LOCATED IN THE CELLAR SHALL BE USED SOLELY IN CONNECTION WITH THE DWELLING UNIT ABOVE."

Uh huh.

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Worker trapped where he shouldn't have been working

From NY1:

The worker was pinned under the pressure of hundreds of pounds of mud. Every time rescuers thought they'd be able to pull him out, he kept sliding deeper in.

"He was facing forward, but his legs were going back under him," said Chief Richard Portello of the FDNY Rescue Battalion.

Firefighters got the call that the man was trapped in the 25-foot hole at about 5 p.m. Tuesday.

The victim's brother said he was working and tried to release a chain but was buried in dirt up to his chest.

The Department of Buildings said the crew was doing excavation work for a home that does not have a permit.

A stop-work order was issued when inspectors found workers had failed to install proper shoring that likely contributed to the collapse.

Address is: 119-21 83rd Avenue

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Construction safety responsibility hanging in the balance

From the Daily News:

The Scaffold Law is the last of its kind in the nation. The thrust of it is this: If a construction worker using scaffolding or a ladder is injured, the burden is on the contractor to prove the job site was safe.

But now a furious battle is unfolding in Albany to remake the law, pitting some of the most powerful political interests in New York against each other, with hundreds of millions of dollars in insurance premiums and payouts — and, some argue, the safety of workers — hanging in the balance.

The law simply states that contractors and owners must protect workers from falls by using equipment that is “constructed, placed and operated as to give proper protection.” It is silent on the issue of a worker’s liability in an accident.

Legislation sponsored by Sen. Patrick Gallivan (R-Erie) and Assemblyman Joe Morelle, a Rochester Democrat, would for the first time add language that requires juries to consider the actions of workers in weighing injury lawsuits.

A coalition of developers and contractors organized by the pro-business Lawsuit Reform Alliance is aggressively pushing lawmakers to pass it by June 20, when the legislature is set to adjourn.

A flurry of bills is expected to pass at the last minute, and both sides believe the Scaffold Law amendment is in play.

In years past, contractors and the powerful Real Estate Board of New York have tried to kill the law outright. They failed, due in part to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan), who is of counsel to a law firm that specializes in personal injury cases.

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