The corner building at 136-02 35th Avenue, Queens. Credit: Google Maps
Owner maintained unlawful apartments in the garage, cellar and upper floors of Queens three-story building. In March 2019, the Department of Buildings received a complaint about people sleeping in the cellar of 136-02 35th Avenue in Queens. Buildings’ inspectors obtained access to the three-story apartment building and observed illegal apartments, a cellar did not match plans filed in 1997, and a garage that had been converted illegally into an apartment. Buildings charged the owner with multiple violations and posted a vacate order on the building. (read more…)
540 West 53rd Street, Manhattan. Image Credit: Google Maps
General contractor fined $25,000 for its failure to safeguard job site for construction workers. An employee of a sheet metal subcontractor was injured when he fell approximately 16 feet through a gap between the edge of a sidewalk shed and the face of a building located at 540 West 53rd Street in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen. Buildings cited GC Mega Contracting Group for its failure to safeguard “all persons and property” by not closing the gap with wood planks or equivalent material. Buildings produced photographs showing a cloth-like material covering the gap with a hole in it. Mega responded that the sidewalk shed did not have to conform to the requirements of the Building Code because, as photographs showed, the sidewalk underneath the sidewalk shed was closed to the public. (read more…)
1610 Sedgwick Avenue, Bronx. Image Credit: Google Maps
City issued summons for hazardous cracked windowsill on sixth floor of building. On March 26, 2019, a Department of Buildings officer observed a cracked exterior windowsill on the sixth floor of a building owned by Aspen Companies on Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx. The officer testified that if water were to enter the crack and freeze, a piece of the windowsill would break off, fall six stories, and injure a pedestrian below. Buildings issued Aspen Companies a Class 1 violation pursuant to §28-302.1 of the Administrative Code for failure to maintain a building’s exterior wall and appurtenances. (read more…)
Homeowner failed to remove snow from the sidewalk within the allotted four-hour time frame. Sanitation on March 15, 2017 at 10:49 p.m. charged Chen Nimchuk Jing with failing to remove snow and ice from the sidewalk in front of her premises. The summons stated that there was no attempt to salt, sand or shovel a path for pedestrians, and the snow storm had officially ended on March 14, 2017 at 8:00 p.m. The Administrative Code requires property owners to remove snow or ice from their adjacent sidewalks within four hours after the snow ceases to fall except when the snow ceases between the hours of 9:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. (read more…)
