For months, the MTA has been fighting with Second Ave. landlords and the Department of Buildings over the state of some Second Ave. residences. Earlier this years, two buildings had to be evacuated after structural deficiencies were discovered. Although the MTA states that cracks in the building had been there before construction on the Second Ave. Subway began, the buildings’ owners claimed that vibrations from construction had exacerbated the problem, and the two sides were at an impasse. The MTA has finally decided to pay $500,000 to shore up these buildings.
Because longer construction delays brought about by an inability to secure a blasting permit would lead to higher Second Ave. Subway costs, the agency will fork over the dough to fix the problems. For now, it is cheaper to do, in the words of MTA Capital Construction President Michael Horodniceanu, “just enough so these [buildings] are stable for us to proceed with work” than it is to wait out protracted legal battles and further postponements. When these buildings are secure, the MTA should receive the necessary blasting permits, and the work to build the launch box for the Second Ave. tunnel boring machine will continue.
13 comments
It’s “about time”!
Also, chances are that the landlords were neglecting proper maintenance on those old buildings for years, and now they suddenly have the perfect excuse to say “It’s not my fault”.
Imagine living in one of those buildings? They are going to do “just enough” to secure the buildings before they started “blasting.” Sounds real safe to me.
i thought those two buildings were evacuated? or was that two different buildings?
you could be right. Same buildings. I just read it as the two building were evacuated for a little, and then they let the residents back in. How long can you keep people out of there homes? You could be right though, I’m not sure.
Either way. I would not want to living in the building now, during, or after the “blasting.”
The city should obligate the landlords to pay for the rest of the work to be done on those buildings, AFTER the “just enough” is done at public expense.
This amount of money is peanuts. Even in cities with competent transit contractors, $500,000 builds you at best 2 meters of subway. In New York, it builds 20 centimeters.
I’ve lived in NYC so long that I’ve become cynical. 😉
My hunch is that the landlords involved don’t care if the buildings fall down, or at least that the walls crack and the tenants be permanently evacuated. With or without any help from SAS blasting, the landlords will clear these short, older buildings soon enough and demolish them to make way for new high-rise apartment buildings like the others in the neighboring blocks. That will come as soon as the digging is done and the market recovers, but it will come, no doubt about it.
The MTA probably didn’t like being played with by these real estate speculators, and so they called the lawyers. The MTA should have condemned the damned tenements, demolished them, and used the lots to park trucks or something. Then when the market returns the MTA could have flipped the properties to developers.
I wouldn’t blink at spreading $5 or $10 million around to the tenants here. The poor tenants are less than pawns in this game, they are fleas on the pawns. So let the MTA give them a handsome chunk of relocation money — more than they’ll get when their landlords decide it’s really time for them to go.
If I ran the MTA, I wouldn’t even flip the properties to developers. I’d just develop them as publicly owned apartment buildings, and maybe then sell the apartments as condos. At market rate, the profit margin for that is about 100%.
Of course, the problem is that that would involve condemnation lawsuits, which could cost the MTA more than what it could expect to make from developing the real estate.
I rode by on my bike today. Forget the tenants, the fleas on the pawns, the buildings appear to be empty, even at ground floor retail level. Outside are signs saying the buildings are “owned by NYC P HD.” Hunh?
The two allegedly cracking five-story buildings share the block with a two-story and another five-story building of the same age, and a spanking new 46-floor apartment tower!
Maybe the air rights over the two wrecks were already sold to the high-rise developer. Dunno. But absolutely clear that the whole ruckus is essentially about real estate speculation. Another day in the Big Apple.
You mean NYC HPD? As in New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development?
Yeah that’s, *REAL* sinister man, you should have signed your post QED so we’d know you had proved your point with facts and evidence.
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