StreetEasy, the go-to sales and listings database for the buyers, renters and the real estate obsessed has just made it easier to snoop on the buildings that you love and the apartments that you covet.
Also, you can now figure out if any of your neighbor are planning a massive renovation or if your co-op board is actually following through on repairs. Read More
The hearing room was full and the overflow room was overflowing at the New York City Council’s offices at 250 Broadway this afternoon. Maybe it was the fact that this was the first elevator safety hearing since two New Yorkers lost their lives in elevators in the past year. Maybe it was the fact that this was the first oversight hearing on elevator safety since 2003.
This in a city where most people live and work in high-rise, all serviced by some 60,000 elevators.
The main issue of the afternoon was two new elevator safety bills proposed by the council: one that would require existing elevators to be furnished with more safety devices and another that would require elevator workers to be licensed.
“We require licensing of our plumbers. We require licensing of our electricians. And the lack of elevator licensing is a major loophole,” said councilmember James Vacca, a sponsor of the licensing bill. “It is also a threat to the safety of millions of New Yorkers.” Read More
Following today’s warehouse collapse in Manhattanville that killed a construction worker, Columbia University released a statement expressing its sympathies for the family.
“First and foremost, our hearts go out to the family, friends and co-workers of the construction worker who was killed in this tragic incident, and our thoughts remain with the two other workers who were injured this morning and their loved ones,” the university said in a brief statement.
The building was being taken down to make way for a public plaza that is part of the university’s second phase, which remains years away. The scheduling of the construction work was not immediately clear—why demolish now to leave vacant for later. Read More
The former head of the Department of Building’s cranes and derricks division said that crane owner James Lomma should have been arrested for poorly maintaining two tower cranes in 2007.
During her testimony at Mr. Lomma’s manslaughter trial in a Manhattan courtroom yesterday, former DOB official Bethany Klein said that the head of New York Crane & Equipment Corp. had failed to make two crucial repairs to the two cranes, one of which eventually collapse and kill two men at the E. 91st street accident in 2008. Read More
The city Department of Buildings issued residential permits for 8,936 units in 997 buildings in 2011 – a 33 percent increase from the year before, according to a new report released today by the New York Building Congress. Read More
The city Department of Buildings and the Department of Investigation announced the findings today from their investigation into the deadly 2011 elevator accident at 285 Madison Avenue that killed Young & Rubicam executive Suzanne Hart in rather horrific fashion, and both agencies confirmed that maintenance workers failed to repair the elevator up to city safety standards days prior to the incident. Read More
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office yesterday opened up its manslaughter trial against the owner of a construction crane involved in a 2008 accident that killed two workers, and prosecutors said it was that man’s greed that lead to the fatal crane collapse, according to the Associated Press.
Prosecutors painted James Lomma, the head of New York Crane & Equipment Corp., as a man who passed on a crucial repair job on the faulty crane in favor of the bottom line. Read More
The main focus of the Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s State of the City speech today may have been on taking another crack at fixing the city’s schools and streamlining its government, but this is still Mike Bloomberg, remaker of skylines and rebuilder of waterfronts, so there was bound to be a lot of development goodies studding the speech.
Aside from the Kingsbridge Armory announcement, which was previewed yesterday, the proposal that most jumped out was one for the heart of Midtown. “In the area around Grand Central, we’ll work with the City Council on a package of regulatory changes and incentives that will attract new investment, new companies and new jobs,” the mayor said. Read More
You thought your apartment was bad.
It is pretty well-known that New Yorkers will do almost anything to live in the city, and there are plenty of landlords more than eager to take advantage of them. One trick is to rent out places–attics, basements, factories, garages… you name it–that are not legally inhabitable. The city Read More
Five months after the Department of Buildings approved a proposal for renovation at 135 Bowery, building owner Ricky Wong received an unwelcome letter from the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission.
The LPC wanted to designate his small, three-story building, a specimen of the early 19th-century Federal style, as a city landmark. Such a ruling would likely Read More
