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Seething over their many, ignored complaints about new construction at 808 Columbus Avenue, residents of Park West Village held a rally to demand an investigation. All 280 apartments at one Park West building, 784 Columbus, were evacuated when a retaining wall collapsed at the 808 site on Wednesday night. However, there were a number of calls to the Department of Buildings from 784 residents, complaining that the building was shaking as workers blasted in the 808 site.
Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer asked that all construction projects at the site, which will include 220,000 square feet for retail as well as a 29-floor apartment tower, be stopped. The DOB has issued a stop work order for the site (though it is allowing "remedial work" to make the site safe) and said, "If the inspectors find problems, the construction jobs will be immediately stopped... The Buildings Department has been and will continue to address the community’s concerns regarding the new building project at 808 Columbus Avenue. Previous audits of the permit application have found plans for the new building comply with all building and zoning regulations. At the request of the community, Buildings experts are reviewing the permit application again to confirm it is compliant with all applicable building and zoning regulations."
Lois Hoffman, president of Park West Village Tenants’ Association, issued a statement; the full statement is after the jump, but here is an excerpt:
"This inexplicable construction failure is just a glaring symptom of the diseased real estate development process in New York City. Developers like Lawrence Gluck and Joseph Chetrit can safely ignore the community’s interest in the buildings they are putting up, because Mayor Bloomberg, Dan Doctoroff, Amanda Burden, the Department of Buildings, and other city agencies allow them to. There has been no regard for the community’s interest, and frankly, no regard for the potential tenants of the commercial space, or the eventual residents of the buildings under construction. We want this project to be entirely rethought from the perspective of sustainability, proportion, and place in the neighborhood.The Daily News has an editorial about the collapse. Back in May, the News found that there are many buildings with "cracked walls and shifting foundations" around the city, "thanks to work crews carelessly blasting and digging next door to occupied buildings whose residents have little trust that the city is protecting them." The News says that the DOB's 17 inspectors are not enough, given the amount of city-wide construction there is, and wonders if the DOB needs to rethink how it organizes complaints on its site; for instance, you can see violations by building site, but not by contractors.
Photograph of the site, taken on Thursday, directly across 97th Street at 65 West 96th Street, by Irving Polsky
Statement from Lois Hoffman, president of the Park West Village Tenants' Association:
“We want to thank Scott Stringer for taking a step toward returning sanity to this project today. If this development is completed as envisioned by Gluck and Chetrit, it will cut a well-planned, successful neighborhood in half with the second-longest, unbroken street wall along any avenue in Manhattan, and introduce other problems into the lives of thousands of area residents. Everything is off kilter – the scale of the development, the architecture, the marketing practices to potential commercial tenants, the disruptive manner and shoddy nature of the construction, the threat of exhaust pollution from the new building’s parking garage aimed right at nearby buildings, traffic and safety issues including a planned commercial loading berth putting 60-foot semis on 97th St. These mistakes will also hurt the commercial tenants who have already signed on, like Whole Foods, because they will be the public face of these problems for the local residents who are their potential customers.“The mayor’s PLANYC 2030 for the future of New York says nothing about the relationship between planning, design and sustainability of communities. For the sake of all New York City residents, we call on Mayor Bloomberg, Dan Doctoroff and Amanda Burden to step in now and to start ensuring a meaningful planning process for so-called ‘as-of-right’ construction. Otherwise, this lack of meaningful planning will continue to crop up all over the city and will define our future.”
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Rich idiots suing other rich idiots. Yawn.
that looks like a pre-collapse photo.
Where are the steel mesh for blasting? What does mr. quinn say about this? or is she in bed with developers like her idol bloomberg.
the photo is post-collapse. note the big hole.
This project was a terrible idea from the start and is destroying Park West Village and the surrounding area. The only apparent reason for this to be built is sheer greed, with the buildings practically on top of one another. We don't need more multimillion dollar apartments here, we need more affordable housing. They could just have replaced the existing stores with newer ones, but there was no need for this massive and destructive project. The construction on this site (between 97th and 100th streets on Columbus Avenue) has been horrendous, with blasting shaking the entire area and jackhammering with sometimes ten of Mayrich's machines at a time going nonstop from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. five days a week. This construction project should never have been approved by the Buildings Department, it is way too close to other buildings and was an accident waiting to happen. We had a nice area before they started this, with small stores on one side of the street and tennis courts on the other side — I haven't seen any posts yet about now they are starting to dig up the other side of the street too for more luxury buildings, again way too close to other buildings, which will be for yet more luxury apartments with three towers which will completely block in people living on the western side of Columbus. This project should be stopped and abandoned IMMEDIATELY. It has been torture living near this site, all for buildings nobody wants, in an area which was nice before they started and which they are destroying. The owners should be fined and told that they cannot build here, the massive hole should be filled in with some small stores and a replacement supermarket (one which can serve a diversity of incomes, not just the high-income residents that are the primary customers of Whole Foods), they must abandon any plan to build on the opposite side of the street, and they should be told to take their crazy ideas somewhere else. The proposed buildings will block hundreds of Park West Village residents from seeing any glimpse of the park, create a massive echoing corridor of concrete, with enormous amounts of new truck and car traffic adding to the already heavy traffic on Columbus Avenue. Where is the environmental impact statement for this? Did they consult any of us who live here about this? Did they conduct any community meetings about this project and change their plans based on community input? (No.) Why are they being allowed to build an enormous project so close to other buildings where people live? What about Mayor Bloomberg's promise of more green space in the City, is he already going back on that? This project needs to be abandoned immediately.
Karma will get them. you can't dig a hole that big and not have anyone die.
karma will get "them"? wtf? clearly construction is dangerous, but the construction workers who are most likely to suffer injury or death aren't the ones whose idea it is to put up the building in the first place. those workers are just trying making an honest living.
more buildings = lower rent
karma may touch the workers, it may touch the developers, it may touch a resident, you kan't did a hole that big and not have anyone die.
I don't get the comments about "too many buildings" here.
This whole area has always been a weird moonscape as far as neighborhood feel is concerned. A solid line of buildings that goes right out to the sidewalk is what makes a NYC block vibrant, gives peds a comfortable sense of enclosure, etc. Superblocks that interrupt through streets are bad; through streets are good. Per The Death and Life of Great American Cities and all that.
Looking at plans for the new development, it doesn't help with all the problems (particularly the superblock issue), but certainly helps with buildout to the curb instead of property weirdly set back from the sidewalk, insufficient building height (3-4 stories are good, at least) and empty space.
#4, you said---"Did they consult any of us who live here about this? Did they conduct any community meetings about this project and change their plans based on community input?" You do know that this is America right? If you don't want someone to do something with their PRIVATE PROPERTY, then you are more than welcome to buy that property and not put a building on it. Unless you are willing to do that, kindly shut your filthy pie-hole.
#10, you are totally out of line with your insulting, shortsighted, selfish and childish comments. The so-called "private property" you mention was not for sale, it is owned by the same greedy developers who own Park West Village and forced out the merchants and restaurants who were there before. You don't seem to understand that there is a COMMUNITY of people here and the ones on the west side of Columbus are rental apartments, whereas the others in the complex are condominiums. The towers they are proposing to build will block off the rental units from the rest of the complex. Why do you think we live in a country with laws about how land can be used? I feel sorry for you because you don't seem to understand the simplest concepts about the American system of government or that we have laws to protect us from ignorant people like you.
#9, Let me explain the comment about "too many buildings." The four new towers proposed for this site will make it too dense, with the towers only about ten feet from the other buildings and blocking them in (you can see how the present hole comes right up to the foundation of the existing buildings and how the towers will make the terraces designed into those buildings unusable).
As you can see from some of the public comments already made, the enormous increased truck traffic expected for the underground shopping complex will overwhelm the area, and don't forget there is an elementary school just down the block which all of those trucks will have to pass, the diesel fumes will probably increase asthma rates in the neighborhood.
I agree with you that the stores and restaurants along the avenue needed to be updated, and it's good to have buildings out to the curb. But there's no need for four large towers on this site, and an imaginative architect could figure out how to design some low buildings so that they would be aesthetically pleasing and inviting for pedestrians. Perhaps in some cases so-called "Superblocks that interrupt through streets are bad," but I don't think you would say that building Lincoln Center (a "Superblock") was a mistake. Again, I'm sure a creative architect could figure out how to make these areas inviting.
You say the property is "weirdly set back from the sidewalk" but the stores which were there before did come up to the curb, and replacement stores and restaurants would presumably do so as well. And while stores and restaurants are fine, there is still no need for four massive towers on this site.
#11 - Community? Surely you jest. You're just pissed off that the neighborhood's improving, and more quality residents will come in, which will drive out the low-class current occupants.
reply to #11 - "low class element" you say? You are being rude and offensive to all the professionals (doctors, lawyers, teachers, scholars, etc.) who have lived in these buildings for decades.
"Low class" must be yourself, since only those belonging to that category they have such contempt for use this expression at all.
Personally I am thrilled that there will be a Whole Foods coming in quite literall across the street from my building (382 CPW - Olmsted). It is time for our neighborhood to become truly mixed - north of 100th are the Frederick Douglass houses for low income; middle income folks reside at the condos on 97th and 100th street; and wealthy new residents will be moving in, at the new buildings. For those who are calling for "more affordable housing" - sorry, this is a prime location that's just one block from one of the most beautiful parks in the world, and to demand MORE affordable housing there on top of all the affordable housing which is already there sounds bizarre to me.
I live near here and the neighborhood was a dead-zone, especially at night. When I was alone and walking home late at night, I was very nervous. I do wish they wouldn't build right up to the existing buildings and no one should have to suffer blasting at off times. But as for not wanting construction in our hood--come on--it's New York, not Montana. I also am sctraching my head at how anyone could sing the praises of the former shops there. Yes, Tandoori was great, but it's at a far nicer spot now on 94th and Amsterdam, and C-Town's food was an insult to the residents of our nabe. Styrafoam-wrapped fruit, off brand, bent canned goods, surly help. It was terrible!
The constant noise and pollution (including diesel particulates and toxic gases) from this site are horrendous, it is degrading the health of the thousands of residents around this enormous construction site. Construction stopped for a few weeks but has now started again, with many machines operating at once and the noise echoing around the entire area. The noise is making the entire building shake and machines are now releasing their exhaust fumes right into our home. Help! This is like living in a war zone.