Greenpoint residents suing city and developer

From The Brooklyn Paper:

Angry Greenpointers are planning to sue the city and developers over two planned waterfront luxury apartment complexes that they say are steam-rolling over environmental protections.

The ad hoc group announced the suit at a rally against the Greenpoint Landing and 77 Commercial Street developments on Wednesday night. Council candidate Stephen Pierson was on hand to tell the crowd of 75 protesters that he will spearhead the lawsuit with the goal of stopping the 12 towers from rising.

“This is not right, and [the developer] should not go unchallenged,” said Pierson.

The legal action would be based on the city’s decision that the developments — a 10 tower compound with as many as 5,500 apartments and a two tower neighbor with a total of 720 at the Newtown Creek end of Greenpoint — would have no negative environmental impact. The anti-high-rise group says the findings are based on a study that is eight years old, running afoul of a requirement that the city make decisions based on accurate information.

“[The developers] might claim that they have updated a few things,” said Pierson. “But if they had done anything significant, they would have published it.”

The energetic crowd toted signs bearing messages such as “The roof is too damn high” and “Greenpoint does not equal Midtown.” Protesters said they fear a repeat of the massive condo skyscrapers lining Williamsburg’s waterfront, which activists decried for increasing rents and failing on promises to expand parks, but failed to prevent from rising.

Pierson said that even if the Article 78 lawsuit does not hit its mark, it will buy neighbors time until a new mayor takes office, which could be a crucial factor in the battle against the project.

“Even if we lose, we can tie it up until we get a new mayoral administration that might be more sympathetic,” said Pierson “Bloomberg was setting the bar [for developers] very low.”

Read More

Suit against scamming tenant thrown out on technicality

From Curbed:

Even after her landlord hired a private investigator to out her illegal short term rental activities, a resident of 250 Elizabeth Street has managed to avoid getting evicted. Why? Because of a technicality. Before all the Airbnb drama, landlord Ken Podziba actually filed a separate lawsuit against tenant Amy Parness back in 2011 over unauthorized alterations made to her $1,400/month rent-stabilized apartment. And, in housing court, it's not possible to pursue two cases against the same defendant at the same time.

Read More

City paid to repair and remove Civic Virtue

From the Times Ledger:

Taxpayers shelled out $100,000 to clean the exiled Triumph of Civic Virtue statue and help move it from its perch outside Borough Hall to a private cemetery in Brooklyn late last year, city contracts show.

The Department of Citywide Administrative Services banished the neglected statue to Green-Wood Cemetery in Kings County in December, justifying the move by saying private dollars would be used for upkeep.

But before the relocation, the city inked a $50,000 contract with Pennslyvania-based Kreilick Conservation to provide conservation and preservation treatment to the controversial sculpture, which included cleaning the entire piece and patching cracks with faux stone material.

The department paid another roughly $50,000 to Washington, D.C.-based Surroundart to build a custom steel cage that lifted the 17-ton artwork off its base in December, according to documents provided to TimesLedger Newspapers.

The contracts were given to TimesLedger by Queens activist and filmmaker Robert LoScalzo, who is currently suing to try and obtain communications between the city and the cemetery.

“This asset — that is no longer an asset to Queens — has been essentially privatized in Brooklyn with little to no explanation to the public and against the wishes and protests of everyone,” he said.

An indefinite loan agreement between the city and Green-Wood estimated the cemetery would pay $165,000 for transportation and $27,500 to put a protective coat on the statue. The cemetery will also build a new base for Civic Virtue, since its Borough Hall perch, including the fountain and underground plumbing, was also in need of repair, the city said. Green-Wood could not provide TimesLedger with the actual cost nor how much it would spend on long-term preservation.

LoScalzo has a hunch the taxpayers’ money could have been better spent refurbishing the statue at its former Borough Hall home, and hopes a judge will force the city’s hand to release communications between the department and Green-Wood Cemetery to find out more.

“It’s not lost on me the symbolic significance that a statue representing the triumph of civic virtue over vice and corruption is not welcome in our borough,” he said.

Read More

Couple renting out rent stabilized apartment as hotel

From WPIX:

When something intended to be helpful ends up being overused or abused, it’s called adverse selection in professional parlance. The way in which a couple has used New York City’s rent stabilization program gives adverse selection a whole new meaning, according to their landlord, and that meaning is unbelievably negative. The couple is accused of using their rent stabilized apartment as a hotel room or bed and breakfast, and reaping six-figure, untaxed profits as a result.

“I think this is for her a business,” said Ken Podziba, referring to his tenant, Amy Parness. Podziba, along with his sister, Susan, own 250 Elizabeth Street, an eight-apartment rental building. It’s nestled among designer boutiques where shopping is by appointment only, and very hip cafes and restaurants in one of the city’s hottest neighborhoods. It’s an ideal location for a widely sought-after bed and breakfast.

The problem is, according to Podziba, Parness has been running the b-and-b out of his apartment, which she’s supposed to be renting at a rate intended to promote affordable housing. ”And she’s not paying the IRS,” Podziba told PIX11 News, “so she’s profiting 100 percent.”

For the last 12 years, Podziba said, Parness has rented an apartment on the third floor of his building. For at least the last four years of that period, she has listed the apartment as the NoLita Nest on airbanb and other bed and breakfast listing websites.

Online, the apartment is displayed as a home away from home for tourists, who pay anywhere from $220 to $260 or more per night for the one bedroom, one bath railroad apartment.

The landlords were able to confirm their suspicions about their tenant’s activities when they learned that Parness was having unlicensed contracting work done to the apartment. A climb up the stairs to the floor where she’s renting reveals a notable absence on one of the walls. Where an entry doorway had been for over a century, there is now only a wall, and at the other end of the third floor landing, where there had once been only a wall, there’s now a deep green wooden door. The door contrasts sharply with all of the black, metal fire code-compliant doors in the five-storey walkup.

PIX11 News knocked on the green, wooden door, and a woman answered, without opening. Her description of herself was consistent with that provided by Podziba. Her boyfriend is renting the apartment for the summer, she said.

They’re paying $4000 per month, according to the landlord. Parness is renting from him for $1400 per month. So when the apartment is not being used as a bed and breakfast apartment, Parness is renting it out at a nearly 300 percent profit.

Read More

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.

Read More

Someone is suing to get Fat Boy back

From the Daily News:

A Queens-based filmmaker has sued the city over its hastily-enacted plan to pluck a deteriorating statue off Queens Blvd. and move it to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Robert LoScalzo claims the city has refused to turn over emails and other communications involving the removal of the Triumph of Civic Virtue from its longtime perch outside Queens Borough Hall.

“There are still too many unanswered questions,” said Jon Torodash, a Kew Gardens resident who led a campaign to keep the statue in Queens and is working with LoScalzo on the legal action. “How was a heavy construction project like this done in quick secrecy?”

Plans to move the statue were unveiled during a little-known Design Commission meeting in November, when most civic leaders and lawmakers were focused on recovery efforts after Superstorm Sandy.

One month later, the statue was moved to Green-Wood.

Cemetery officials said all of the conservation work on the statue has been completed and it is awaiting a new granite base.

Great, now you can bring it back to where it belongs.

Read More

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.

Read More

City not required to build required Willets Point ramps

From the Times Ledger:

Developers of the $3 million Willets Point project are not contractually required to build affordable housing in part because the city wants to shield itself from a potential lawsuit.

The Bloomberg administration did not want to risk paying out legal damages to the developers — Related Cos. and Sterling Equities, the real estate arm of the New York Mets — should the city fail to build additional ramps off the Van Wyck Expressway, an essential precursor to constructing the housing component of the project, officials and the companies said at a recent meeting.

“If for some unforeseen reason [the ramps] didn’t get built, they didn’t want us to have a right to sue the city,” Glen Goldstein, president of Related Retail, said at an April 25 meeting with Community Board 7. “It was done so there would be no liability from the city to the joint venture.”

After passing the City Council with much fanfare over the affordable housing component of the project in 2008, the 62-acre project was subsequently split into two phases by the Bloomberg administration.

The first phase was then split into two more phases by the joint venture, which inked a contract with the city in August 2012 to develop 23 acres.

The first phase entails cleaning the historically contaminated soil. Then the Queens Development Group will build a hotel and small retail stores along 126th Street across from Citi Field, a temporary parking lot behind that and a 1.4 million-square-foot mall west of Citi Field in a parking lot leased to the Mets.

The housing component, including affordable units, is slated to be built on the temporary parking lot in the second phase beginning in 2024, but there is no guarantee that will happen. The ramps are required to start, yet the city is not required to build them.

Read More