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Early Addition
A piece in The New York Times today shows that that the residents of 475 Kent are not prepared to go quietly after their recent eviction due to fire safety violations. Even the landlord of the owner of the nearly block-long building near the Navy Yard in Brooklyn wants his tenants back in and is cooperating with them to that end.
The City and the Fire Dept. so far have been unyielding. At issue, they say is the ultimate safety of residents and firefighters in the wake of the Deutsche Bank building fire last year. Following that fire, which killed two firemen, safety inspections were stepped up and numerous violations were found at 475 Kent
Displaced residents have been granted limited access to the building to remedy violations. The standpipe has been fixed, flammable materials have been removed from the basement, and residents have found architectural experts willing to vouch for the building's current safety. But the sprinkler system needs to be replaced and that could take three months. The Fire Dept. is insisting that residents may not return to 475 Kent until the entire system has been replaced.
The problem with that is many of the people who lived in the building also established businesses there, cottage industries that included things like huge molds, sculptures, and printing presses. Artist Eve Sussman sent a letter to Mayor Bloomberg Friday that can be read after the jump.
475 Kent Avenue, by i'mjustsayin at flickr
Dear Mayor Bloomberg, The situation for the 200+ tenants of 475 Kent Avenue has become desperate as our livelihoods and businesses are increasingly threatened. Everyday that our work places are shuttered we miss a deadline, lose a client or a contract and fail to make a sale of the goods and services that support our lives. As the vacate enacted by the FDNY on January 20th drags on, many of us risk bankruptcy and the complete destruction of the businesses and careers we have spent the last decade building at 475 Kent Ave.Whether or not the state of 475 Kent posed immanent threat to human life on the night of January 20th, 2008, it certainly does not today. In fact, our building is safer than most factory buildings in the city. It is of solid fireproof construction, has two means of egress, has working standpipes and Siamese connections, emergency exit lights, fire extinguishers and smoke detectors.
The architectural plans for the building are being filed with the DOB today and the work to rehabilitate the sprinkler system will be underway by next week. We need access to our studios NOW. Upholding the vacate order is unreasonable and is now truly endangering our lives as many of the tenants face financial ruin. What we are headed for now is a real emergency. We have had architectural and fire-safety experts survey our building and they have deemed that it is safe for inhabitants and for fire fighters. Fire Guards are often employed in buildings where sprinkler systems are not in place or are being repaired. We have had Fire-Safety companies report to us that Fire Guards have been used in buildings without working sprinkler systems for up to two years. In case it wasn’t clear, our building is constructed of one-foot thick cast concrete, a non-combustible material.
It is absolutely untenable for us to wait for the completion of work on the sprinkler system to gain access to our studios. Even if this work could be expedited in 3 – 4 weeks (and most estimates put it at 2 – 3 months) we cannot afford to be out of work for a moment longer.
Mayor Bloomberg, we need you to get us back into our studios and back to work NOW. We have architects and fire-safety experts who are willing to file expert opinions regarding the safety of our building. We call on you to do everything in your power to save our businesses and the lives we have built at 475 Kent Avenue.
The Tenants of 475 Kent Avenue.
The clock is ticking. It will be interesting to see if a compromise can be reached or if it will just wind up being the same old story.
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Two niggling corrections.
1) Residents were grudgingly allowed in on a highly restricted basis to retrieve possessions still in their homes and offices. Many of us chose instead to expedite and assist the building's owner in complying with FDNY's and the City's daily growing list of required safety related repairs.
2) The necessity-- from a fire safety viewpoint-- of a working sprinkler system for our sort of building (required ONLY under recently passed provisions of the city's occupancy laws, and which could NOT have been demanded if a proper permit had been filed to remove the pre-war sprinkler system altogether) is therefore highly debateable.
What is not debateable is that banks and hotels routinely use the services of "fire guards" (hired out by specialized companies) if a sprinkler system installation runs behind schedule. According to one such company, one of their major clients was allowed to use fire guards for two full years during the period their building lacked a sprinkler system.
Accordingly, since a number of building residents have been certified by the FDNY as fire guards, AND we are more than willing to fulfill this requirement 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, we feel the city is acting unjustly and unreasonably in refusing to allow us to return during the sprinkler installation.
I'll tell you right now, the residents of 475 Kent would be in their building if not for Bloomberg & Scoppetta. They blamed the deutsche bank toxic wasteland on firemen doing insufficient inspection. This created a non-wavering stance in the FDNY, that any problem, small or big in a building was to lead to an immediate evac of the premises.
Don't blame the FDNY, they're just covering their asses so that bloomberg and scopetta can't use them as scapegoats again.
Our loft building circa 1870 is a wooden firetrap
too but all the LL had to do was put sprinklers
in the hallway so as we choke to death( a possibility for sure) from smoke, the hallway will still stand...Yay!
Airspaces in all the connected lofts "cockloft spaces" amazingly are not required to be sealed which would make these buildings burn in rapid fashion horizontally.
Firefighters dread having to fight fires in old loft buildings , I can't much blame them.
We also have kids in these so called "legal lofts"
which have a C of O at risk.
Merchants in these buildings that rent store space have no self control and their stores are filled top to bottom with combustible clothing and tons of paper boxes.usually near a furnance so creepy
that the Con Edison meter reader refuses to go in
these basements in by Community Bd, 5 NYC.
Some code enforcement!!Wheres the D.O.B.?
What makes this different than the Brooklyn artists loft is the height of our lofts
which are only 5 stories tall.And we make our lofts legal with the NY Loft board in 1985 or so.