DoB admits it approves buildings that don’t meet zoning requirements

An absolute stunner in today’s New York Times:

The high-rise building under construction on the East Side where a crane collapse last month killed seven people did not conform with zoning regulations and was approved in error, the city’s buildings commissioner said on Thursday at a City Council hearing.

Later, in a clarification, the commissioner, Patricia J. Lancaster, told reporters that the Buildings Department should not have approved the building as proposed. But she left open the possibility that it might have been properly approved in a different configuration.

The commissioner would not say whether the high-rise, set for 43 stories at 303 East 51st Street and Second Avenue, should have been built at a different height or interior square footage.

. . . .

The approval error was discovered before the crane collapse when the developer, James P. Kennelly, asked that his plans be reviewed for compliance, Kate Lindquist, a department spokeswoman, said after the hearing.

“The zoning issues have to do with the configuration of the building and the way the tax lots are combined,” Ms. Lindquist said. A tax lot is a tract of land used by the city to determine real estate taxes.

The department did not seek to stop the project as soon as the error was discovered because buildings officials were talking to Mr. Kennelly to resolve the matter, Ms. Lindquist said. Neither she nor Ms. Lancaster would give a specific date for the discovery of the error. Calls to Mr. Kennelly were not returned.

. . . .

Under direct and often withering questioning by council members at the hearing of the Housing and Buildings Committee, called to review crane safety and inspection, Ms. Lancaster said the building under construction had been approved “not in accordance with the zoning regulation.”

“Wow,” said Councilwoman Jessica S. Lappin, whose district includes the site of the crane collapse. “You’re telling me this building should never have been approved in the first place?”

“That is correct,” Ms. Lancaster replied.

After her testimony, Ms. Lancaster sought to clarify her remarks with reporters.

In response to a question about what specifically was wrong with the Buildings Department’s clearance of the project, Ms. Lancaster replied: “It has to do with the zoning regulations, where setbacks and the height and width and the combination of zoning laws, and when you can combine them and when you can’t. It’s complex.”

Does this mean that the building should never have been approved at all? the reporter continued.

“I think the community doesn’t want the building at all,” the commissioner replied. “In fact, that property owner has property rights like anybody else who owns property and can build a building there. The question is the configuration. It’s a small adjustment in the configuration.”

Asked to elaborate on the adjustment, Ms. Lancaster said officials were “still in conversation” with the developer about that.

During the hearing, the buildings commissioner said she could not quantify the pace of building construction in New York City. Several council members said it was “out of control” and “astronomical.”

Another stunner: Pat “splat” Lancaster still has her job.

As has been reported earlier, the Trump SoHo is also being built in violation of its area’s zoning restrictions. But, as Lancaster has now admitted, the Department of Buildings doesn’t let a silly thing like the law get in the way of a developer’s rush toward astronomical profits.

n.y.c. f.u.b.a.r.

(Updated below - updated again)

The giant crane that fell Saturday in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Manhattan killed at least four, with three still missing. One of the missing is an employee of the bar called Fubar, which occupied the ground floor of the townhouse on 50th street that was reduced to rubble by the toppled crane.

Fubar, of course, comes from what is most commonly believed to be the WWII-era acronym for Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition—and FUBAR is what New York is becoming under the building boom ushered in by the administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

These four (and possibly seven) deaths come on top of five other construction-related deaths this year (which, I remind you, is only 11 weeks old). Assuming that those lost are not found alive—as NYC Fire Commish Nick Scoppetta has pretty much already signaled—that would mean 2008 has already equaled last year’s construction death total. And we are well on our way toward surpassing the higher total of 18 from 2006. (Though if you measure from 9/30/05 to 9/30/06, as a city study did, the total is 29 dead—an increase of 61% over the previous 12 months.) And as I noted after another of these recent deaths—at the Trump SoHo—the number of construction injuries has skyrocketed under Mayor Mike.

And Bloomberg’s reaction to this most recent tragedy?

Sadly, construction is a dangerous thing. We don't know why this happened. We will do an investigation.

Will there be fines? Will anyone go to jail? Will licenses be revoked? Or building permits? Will development be slowed or stopped citywide until we get a handle on why construction sites have turned so deadly?

There might be a fine or two (though hikes in fines were proposed last year, I believe the maximum is still $2,500—a figure that must really scare an industry that expects to build $45 billion worth of properties in the next ten years), but as for the rest of the above list, don’t hold your breath.

But, more important than any of the above, perhaps: Will anyone in Mayor Bloomberg’s administration take responsibility for what they have wrought?

Again, my suggestion is to breathe.

Over the past six years, as Bloomberg and his cadre of developer-friendly deputies have rushed headlong to remake the city in Mayor Mike’s corporatist image, luxury high-rises and soul-crushing office towers have shot up like deadly amanitas after a summer rain, landmark-quality buildings (as well as a couple of designated NYC landmarks) have been razed, and neighborhoods have been damaged or destroyed. The under-funded infrastructure bridles under the strain.

And during this building boom, the number of homeless families has skyrocketed.

And, of course, there are the construction injuries and deaths. As Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer complained soon after the crane collapse, “This is becoming standard in my borough; I think we have a real issue here.”

We certainly do.

There are clearly not enough building inspectors, and the ones we have are sadly in need of re-training. The Department of Buildings is underfunded, and the sanctions for construction violations are pathetically light. People must be held responsible in real and certain ways—and I would start at the top.

Presiding over this building boom, the destruction, the injuries, the deaths, has been Patricia Lancaster, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Buildings. Her lack of accountability to date is a citywide running joke (local blog Gowanus Lounge has named an award after her in recognition of construction sites that show callous disregard for the rules); her coziness with high-powered developers is well documented. Her Department of Buildings issues the permits for construction, manages the inspection process, and theoretically responds to buildings violations. In an accountability-based society, Lancaster would resign. If there is to be any message of accountability sent, Patricia Lancaster should be fired—and fired posthaste.

(Commissioner Lancaster did, just two weeks ago, propose a series of reforms and laws designed to improve workplace safety and oversight, but after six years of decreasing safety and poor oversight, it seems too little, too late.)

Of course, her ultimate boss, Michael Bloomberg, is ultimately responsible. It is his technocratic “to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs” management style and his “the business of New York is business” vision that have created this wild west of the east coast. But he won’t fire himself, and the city has no recall process.

For now, Mike Bloomberg should attend the funerals of each and every construction worker that he has helped kill—starting with the four (that we know of) from Saturday—and he should get down on his knees and beg their families’ forgiveness. Then he should declare a citywide moratorium on new private construction permits that are not required to provide sub-market rate housing or repair unsafe structures until he can figure out just why he has failed so miserably to protect the workers and the neighborhoods. The city needs to better fund the DoB, retrain the existing inspectors, and likely hire more. Then the Mayor and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn need to make buildings violations criminal infractions punishable by much larger fines and jail time.

Alas, all of that might only slow the bleeding. There is simply too much developer money in New York City’s electoral process to expect a responsible approach to growth, development, and construction safety. Developers’ relationships with the Mayor and many who want to succeed him are far too close to expect any of the electeds to actively and truthfully represent the needs of the longtime residents of New York’s neighborhoods.

Without some sort of comprehensive campaign finance reform, I can’t see how that changes. For, while the city might still be in transition to something unrecognizable, the electoral system is already FUBAR.


Update: The three missing in the crane disaster have now been confirmed dead. Lost City has a partial list of this year’s NYC construction disasters, and also calls for the end of the Patricia Lancaster era at the Department of Buildings—as does NY City Council Member Tony Avella. Gowanus Lounge proposes a smart list of reforms for DoB.

Update 2: The Fubar employee, Juan Perez, was rescued from the rubble of the collapsed 50th Street building. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital Center, where, as of Sunday, he was listed in serious condition.



(cross-posted on capitoilette, Daily Kos, and The Seminal)

Trump kills. . . with an assist from the city

As many have probably heard by now, an accident Monday at the Trump SoHo construction site killed one man—a married father from the Ukraine who fell some 42 stories—and injured several others. Though I live only about three minutes from the scene, I can add little to the facts reported by Jen Chung at Gothamist and Sewell Chan at the NYT’s CityRoom. Both stories are also illustrated with evocative and disturbing photos.

And I think that Andrew Berman of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation pretty much sums up my feelings about the accident (though he is probably more polite than I would have been):

First and foremost, our thoughts are with the victims of this tragedy and their families and loved ones. But this is a tragedy that never should have happened. This building was illegal and never should have been approved by the City. But the City bent over backwards to push it through, and then the developers worked at lightning speed to get the building up while the legal challenge has been making its way through the system. This building was already a monument to greed and hubris; now, sadly, it will be a monument to tragedy as well.

What Berman alludes to and the news stories gloss over is that the developers of this massive tower (at 45 stories, it will be the tallest building between the financial district and midtown) created the sham designation of a “Condo Hotel” to get around the area’s zoning—which would have prohibited a residential building anywhere near this size. But at every juncture, the city, its institutions, and its leadership looked the other way, or, in many cases, helped push through this shameful project.

Further—while it should never have been approved, the project certainly should have been stopped once excavation began. It turns out, Trump and his backers, Bayrock and Sapir, are building on a burial ground.

Until the early 1960’s, a large portion of this site was home to a Presbyterian Church and its graveyard—one of the very first racially integrated graveyards in the country. When bones were unearthed early in the construction, the project should have been shut down, and the site should have been excavated by archeologists and preserved as a sacred and historical site.

But little is sacred in Michael Bloomberg’s New York. Little except, of course, the almighty dollar. The unprecedented and largely unchecked construction boom of this century has been welcomed and shepherded by Bloomberg under the oft-repeated excuse that he means to “revitalize” the city.

I, for one, think that NYC is pretty effin’ vital, and would be a lot more so if not for the rampant mall-ing initiated by former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and perpetuated by the current mayor.

Indeed, it is Bloomberg and his appointees at the Department of Buildings and the Board of Standards and Appeals (among others) that have bent over for mega-developers like Trump, unleashing shoddy, ugly, illegal, unnecessary, and un-contextual developments on some of the city’s most treasured neighborhoods.

And things don’t look like they are going to get better anytime soon.

Christine Quinn, who is the Speaker of the New York City Council and the councilmember representing the district that includes Trump’s murderous building, has been basically AWOL on this issue. Though the community has appealed repeatedly to Quinn’s office for help in defending the quality of the neighborhood and integrity of our laws, the Speaker has stonewalled, foot-dragged, and triangulated her way through the confrontation—selling out her constituency so as not to offend real estate interests that will no doubt play a large part in financing Quinn’s all-but-declared run for mayor when Bloomberg moves on.

Take a look at Quinn’s statement on Monday’s tragedy:

I want to express my deepest condolences to the family of the worker who was killed in today’s accident at the Trump Soho construction site, and my thoughts and prayers remain with the two others who remain injured at St. Vincent’s Hospital. I continue to monitor the situation closely, and we will remain in close contact with the Office of Emergency Management, the Department of Buildings, and all other relevant agencies as we work to determine the cause of this terrible accident, and to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future.

Do you see even an ounce of leadership in that statement? It is an army of words in search of a purpose. It is fence-sitting claptrap that might even make our junior senator blush.

Contrast Quinn’s statement, if you will, with that of Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer:

The accident at the new hotel at 246 Spring Street is another example of the dangerous conditions created by rushed construction in Manhattan. My office did an initial investigation of violations at the site and discovered that there were two Class A violations issued on Oct. 26, 2007. These violations are considered high risk. However, the construction was allowed to continue unchecked and the Environmental Control Board hearing to review the violations was not scheduled until Jan. 24, 2008.

This is unacceptable. The death and injury of construction workers and the compromised safety of emergency responders and surrounding community should not be considered the cost of doing business in Manhattan. Any type of high risk violation should necessitate a halt of unsafe work until the violation is cured. I will continue to investigate this matter and look to see rapid response from all relevant city agencies. I applaud the fire, police and other emergency responders for their bravery and for putting themselves at risk to ensure the safety of all New Yorkers.

The Times reports that the Trump project has actually accrued 11 construction-related citations since construction began last May. And yet, in every case, construction was allowed to continue. After all, there are a couple of very viable lawsuits against this project (that have themselves been repeatedly stalled by the city) awaiting their day in court, and Mayor Mike, his commissioners, and his wannabe successor can’t have the law getting in the way of another monument to their greed and hubris.


(cross-posted on capitoilette)