Results tagged “construction”

We happened upon this photo in the LIFE magazine archives. The caption reads: "Construction in NYC: land being cleared for 20 story building in East 60s — still occupied brownstone is soon to go." It was still occupied! The photo was taken in 1959... any guesses as to what block it was on?

Queens has been long ignored by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, but the 160-year-old St. Saviour's in Maspeth has gotten a lot more attention than the likes of Jack Kerouac's old stomping grounds. In fact, Curbed recalls that at one point, "a deal was worked out to save the main church building and relocate it to a nearby cemetery, while the Parks Department works on a potential deal to acquire the land and turn it into a much-needed park." Here's a complete timeline of the saga.

The city has made up its mind. Come December, the Brooklyn Banks will be boarded up and transformed into a construction area for the Brooklyn Bridge rehabilitation project, Scott Gastel, spokesperson for the city Dept. of Transportation told Downtown Express.

The daughter of a 44-year-old construction-safety inspector who was killed in a suspicious Flushing apartment fire earlier this week is vowing to continue her mother’s fight in a sexual harassment lawsuit filed months before her death.

It's not surprising that MyFox News has a four part series (so far) dedicated to broken subway escalators (though perhaps they should also shame the MTA for lack of elevators for the disabled). This time around they report from two locations, including 53rd Street, which sports a lovely escalator behind a glass wall that's been "under repairs" for months. To make matters worse, they even closed off the stairs. Watch to find out how straphangers work that puzzle out:

A 44-year-old mother of two died and three others were critically injured by a fire that tore through a Flushing apartment early Sunday morning. The deceased, Bianca Wisniewski, was due in federal court today for a hearing in her $20 million sexual-harassment lawsuit against Total Safety Consulting and JPMorgan Chase. Four of the 110 firefighters at the scene suffered minor injuries, and the fire was ultimately contained to the single apartment, because the cement and steel walls stopped it from spreading.

Six New York construction companies illegally paid white workers more than minorities who had the same jobs, a state lawsuit alleges. White workers earned an average of $25 per hour, while blacks netted $18 per hour and Latinos took home only $15 per hour, according to the suit filed by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. Since 2002, pay discrepancies at at least ten different construction sites scammed minorities out of $4 million in wages and overtime.

       

Yesterday we looked at the newly renovated lobby of the Empire State Building, and all its Art Deco glory made us nostalgic. LIFE magazine images are often good for curing that; they even have a whole gallery of the building being made by hand. Enough to make you reread The Fountainhead.

Downtown Alliance's Re:Construction initiative has been going on for a couple of years now, and they continue to use construction sites as canvases. Today and tomorrow, two new art projects—Rainbow Conversation and Botanizing on the Asphalt—are being installed in separate Lower Manhattan construction sites (Louise Nevelson Plaza and Hudson River Park along West Street, respectively).

            

If you've been to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade or Brooklyn Landing recently, you've probably noticed lots of work going on at the Brooklyn Bridge Park site. We were curious about what's been happening, and asked the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation to give us a tour of the current site. While things are still very much under construction now, they told us that parts of the park will open as early as the end of this year.

Remember how back in April how the MTA's $133 million project to connect the uptown 6 train at Bleecker Street with the B, D, F and V lines at Broadway-Lafayette had local merchants in a panic? They said their customers were being driven away by the massive construction ripping up Lafayette Street, and it really did look like an inconvenient eyesore down there. Well, the latest fly in the ointment is a three-story brick landmark building on Lafayette and Bleecker; dubbed the "Peace Pentagon," it's owned by the A.J. Muste Memorial Institute, where various progressive groups have their offices. MTA contractors couldn’t proceed with work because the scaffolding outside building is right where they need to dig. And the scaffolding can't be removed because, according to amNY, it's actually propping up the building. Officials now expect the project to be delayed two years because peace activists, not known for their spectacular wealth, need to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix the building. It's bad news for retailers like Jack Wu at the Adore Floral store; he says, "I have customers who call and ask if we are still open. They are trying to modernize the system, but it's killing me."

Back in 2005, Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council rezoned a large swath of Williamsburg and Greenpoint to spark a boom in residential construction, and developers immediately raced in to begin work on luxury high rises. Then the economy curled up into a fetal position, and north Brooklyn is now littered with half-finished development. A team of building inspectors have found 143 stalled construction sites around the city, with the highest concentration in Brooklyn, which boasts a total 63 vacant lots and rusting steel building frames—18 in Williamsburg alone. Residents are increasingly outraged about the degentrication, which is attracting squatters and creating a fin de siècle atmosphere of urban blight. Philip DePaolo, who moved from The Bronx to Williamsburg in 1979, tells the Post his adopted neighborhood now reminds him of his old neighborhood: "It looks like I never left." And it's true—the artisanal cheese, the American Apparel, the burning buildings; life on the mean streets of Williamsburg these days makes the '70s-era Bronx seem like Greenwich, CT.

A welder had a close call yesterday when he fell down a shaft on the 16th floor of an Upper East Side construction site. Luckily, the Daily News reports that George Saguay "was saved by a tangle of duct work" in the E. 77th Street building. Around 2:30 p.m., he slipped—prompting a co-worker to yell, "Yo, a guy just fell down the chute!" The duct work stopped his fall after four stories and his co-workers tried to reassure him. Firefighters were able to cut through and extract him, taking Saguay to New York-Presbyterian hospital to treat his minor injuries. A colleague observed, "He was really quiet and patient. But you could see the pain on his face."

It may be cooler today, but with the heat sure to return and McCarren Park Pool renovations not set to be done until 2011, what's a sweltering Williamsburg hipster to do? Kiddie pools are barely even ironic anymore, but perhaps a dip in the stagnant mud water of a future luxury condo would cool you down. Restless points out two such swimmin' holes, one on the North Side and one on the South, and both likely "chock full of heavy metal mineral bath goodness." And look, barely any flies!

The MTA's $133 million project to (finally) connect the uptown 6 train at Bleecker Street with the B, D, F and V lines at Broadway-Lafayette is angering local business owners who say their customers are being driven away by all the construction. With the sidewalk gone on the east side of Lafayette between Houston and Bleecker, pedestrians must navigate a maze of fencing and heavy machinery if they wish, for instance, to patronize Mexican restaurant Pinche Taqueria, where manager Yasue Yang tells the Daily News, "It's killing us. We're losing one-quarter of our normal business." To help mitigate the damage, the MTA has at least put up signs listing the shops that are still open on the other side of the labyrinth, but Racked reports that some retailers are encouraging customers to access them through the rear doors on Mulberry Street. The work on Lafayette is expected to continue through at least the end of the year, but the director of the NOHO Business Improvement District says it will all be worth it for retailers once the extension is complete... and people no longer have to go above ground?

This morning, a 28-year-old construction worker fell 9 stories from a building at 420 Park Avenue (at 29th Street) and was pronounced dead at Bellevue Hospital. The worker had landed on scaffolding of a neighboring building. CityRoom reports that, according to the Department of Buildings, it didn't appear that worker was wearing a harness and that the DOB would probably issues citations later. The 420 Park Avenue is the future home of the Gansevoort Park, a 19th story hotel run by the same group as the Gansevoort Hotel in the Meatpacking District.

       

Seems like just yesterday that Billy Joel was planning the ultimate farewell to Shea Stadium, and now, less than two months before baseball season starts up again, Shea is gone. Get some Kleenex Mets fans (you should be used to carrying them around) and take one last look at your team's old home as it gets reduced to rubble, like so many Pennant dreams. Time of death (as recorded by the NY Times): Wednesday, February 18th, 11:21 a.m.

Ha! According to the AP, the MTA and developer Related Co. are still talking about the contract to develop the Hudson Yards, better known as the West Side Rail Yards. For years, the city has been trying to develop the area west of Penn Station, but the attempts to find a developer have been the stuff of melodrama, from a bidding process to picking one suitor—Tishman Speyer—who was later spurned. Then, in mid-May, Related stepped into the breach but the contract was put on the burner over...slow paperwork? The MTA said there have been "constructive negotiations" with Related. Should a deal go through, Related, who bid $1 billion for the land and $2 billion to build the platform over the railyards, will need to cough up $50 million at closing.

It's the zombie project! The MTA announced that nearly half a billion in federal stimulus money will be used to help pay for the long awaited, thought-to-be-deceased Fulton Street Transit Center. MTA CEO and Executive Director Elliot Sander told state lawmakers, "People have been worried that we were going to leave a hole in the ground or construct a simple subway entrance instead of the iconic structure that the community was expecting. I am here to tell you that this is not the case."

      

At a NY State Assembly hearing yesterday, Port Authority Executive Director Chris Ward testified, "We are on track to meet the commitment we made in October to open the Memorial Plaza by the 10th Anniversary of September 11th."

                            

Here are our picks for the top stories that affected NYC and our state this year. It's been a eventful year.

     

It's been about six months since the Parks Department and Friends of the High Line unveiled their ambitious renderings for the previously overgrown elevated railway on the west side of Manhattan, and it's nice to see that work is still continuing apace. The Friends' year-end email to subscribers included some photos of the progress; planting began in September, and earlier this month a staircase went in at the southern part of the High Line, at the corner of Gansevoort and Washington Streets.

Updated: The Port Authority tell us that the construction worker was not pinned by a collapsed crane, as previously reported: "A crane maintenance worker fell 3 feet off a crane while doing routine maintenance at 7 a.m. He suffered minor injuries and was taken to St. Vincent's as a precaution." His injury is "not believed to be life-threatening." Last week, it as revealed that the Port Authority had to pay another $64 million in fines to WTC developer Larry Silverstein, for delays in turning over the site.

The bloggers over at the Hotel Chelsea have been keeping an eye on the new management of their ever-changing home, and most recently noted some falsified DOB construction permits obtained "in a move designed to sidestep requirement for certificate of non-harassment."

The New York Building Congress issued a report on NYC's construction outlook 2008-2010: This year, construction spending is "forecast to reach a record $33.8 billion, a 16 percent increase from 2007 when spending reached $29.1 billion. Spending is currently forecast to reach $33.4 billion in 2009 before easing to $26.2 billion in 2010."

The $150 million reconstruction project on the two mile esplanade between East River park and Battery Park was supposed to be done last year, but you know the drill. Two thirds of the promenade still have a long way to go, and last year the state Department of Environmental Conservation fined the city and contractor Pile Foundation Construction Company $200,000 because workers were allowing the shoreline to erode into the water. Now a DEC spokesman says the company hasn't fixed the problem and the agency wants to revoke the work permit. When asked by the Villager when the project is now expected to be completed, the foreman laughed and said he didn’t know: "New York City isn’t exactly the fastest people in the world."

After two fatal crane collapses and other accidents, the city issued new rules to improve crane safety. However, construction industry officials tell the NY Times union laborers would be out of work (temporarily), work will be slower, and the Department of Buildings didn't even consult them! For instance, the new rules requires contractors to have manuals for assembling and dismantling cranes, but many operators "don't have those manuals and own cranes whose manufacturers are out of business." A concrete contractor said, "What used to take a week now takes three to four weeks." DOB commissioner Robert LiMandri said these rules were developed with the industry and were included in the City Council's legislation, "Safety must be everyone's top priority."

You can get to Carnegie Hall with practice, practice, practice, but Lincoln Center has been harder to navigate as it undergoes its massive, multi-million dollar renovation project. One woman told the NY Times that on her way to see "South Pacific" at the Lincoln Center Theater, she got lost after trying to find her mother amidst the construction: "Suddenly I felt like a contestant on ‘Survivor.' I knew what I had to do,” she added. “ ‘Help!’ I screamed, ‘Somebody, help us!’" (And security showed up to help them to the theater.)

Despite the economic tailspin, developers are still moving forward with luxury residential buildings that – assuming anyone can still afford to occupy them – will result in 170,000 new cars on city streets by 2030, thanks to city regulations requiring new developments to contain a minimum number of built-in parking spots. That estimate comes from public transit advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, who held a press conference at City Hall yesterday urging the city to change the policy, which they say will produce 431,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year.

Yesterday, a construction worker died after being thrown from a small crane on Steinway Street in Astoria, Queens. A truck had crashed into it, and witnesses say there were "no warning cones around it, and the boom started swinging back and forth." Two workers who had been wearing safety harnesses survived, the worker who died was reportedly not wearing a hardhat. The truck's driver was not issued a summons, as the police believe the driver "simply lost control," while the Buildings Department issued a stop work order at the site for other violations.