Occupants illegally used driveway and yard of residential property for automobile repair, salvage, and dead storage. Between 2009 and 2011 the Department of Buildings sent inspectors six times to 610 Mead Street in the Van Nest section of the Bronx. The R5-zoned property contained a two-story, two-family building with a one-car garage on the first floor. The inspectors observed over the course of their visits automobiles in various states of repair in the driveway, including a damaged vehicle with its front end removed, and two cars under repair with one elevated on a jack and one without a license plate. The inspectors also observed in the property’s rear yard automobile parts, garbage, additional unlicensed vehicles, tires, junk storage, and automobile parts. Buildings sought an order to seal the premises under the padlock law to halt an alleged public nuisance.
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360 West 43rd Street in Manhattan. Image credit: Google Maps.
The Appellate Division affirmed fines for illegal conversion of residential units as hotel rooms. 360 West 43rd Street is a 28-story, 264 rent-stabilized unit building in Midtown, Manhattan. On June 5, 2015, the owner sent three tenants a letter advising them that their leases would be terminated and they would be evicted if they continued illegally renting out the apartments for hotel use. (more…)
94-36 114 Street in Queens. Image Credit: CityLand.
Owner converted cellar into additional living space for his family. Mana Masih owns a two story residence with a cellar at 94-36 114 Street in Queens. The owner converted the cellar level into an additional dwelling unit with three beds in the hall, a three- piece bathroom, a kitchen with a residential sink and gas stove. On November 17, 2015 an inspector from the Department of Buildings served a notice of violation charging that the building’s certificate of occupancy authorized only a two-family residence with dwelling units on the first and second floors. An additional violation charged that the conversation of the cellar was done without a Buildings permit. The hearing officer found the owner offered insufficient evidence to refute the violations and imposed fines for each violation totaling $2,800. (more…)
Rear yard addition did not meet standard of appropriateness. Following a contentious hearing in April over a one-story addition constructed without Landmarks approval at 12- 14 West 68th Street in the Upper West Side/Central Park West Historic District, Landmarks reconvened to discuss the matter on June 9, 2009. The owners built the addition on top of a 1925 studio building, located at the rear of an 1895 Queen Anne-style mansion, and also installed an illegal, antique, wrought-iron fence at the front of the property.
At the April hearing, architect Lester Evan Tour testified that Buildings’ database failed to flag the building as landmarked, and the plan examiners also missed it. Emphasizing that he never intended to bypass the landmarks law, Tour called the addition appropriate for the historic district. 6 CityLand 59 (May 15, 2009). (more…)
