Dive Brief:
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The New York City Law Department has filed criminal charges against a building owner who it said paid no heed to warnings about the condition of a crumbling facade that killed two-year-old Greta Greene last year, Crain's New York reported.
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New York City officials said that Esplanade Venture Partnership and its principal, Alexander Scharf, disregarded city maintenance laws, which mandate that the exterior of buildings taller than six stories be regularly inspected by a licensed professional. If found guilty, Scharf could face a fine of up to $25,000, a year in jail, or both.
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Also facing disciplinary action is engineer Maqsood Faruqi, who the city alleges signed off on the building's safety without actually inspecting the structure.
Dive Insight:
City officials said that despite receiving a recommendation to repair cracks, Esplanade and Scharf made only the most basic repairs and ignored the rest of the building's disintegrating exterior. Officials hope the charges remind other building owners of their legal responsibility to maintain their buildings.
A New York City Department of Investigation report found that the city's Department of Buildings missed opportunities to take action regarding the building's crumbling facade. According to the DOI, a private consultant reported a "scary" crack in the building's exterior as he was inspecting another building, and an architect asked the DOB for permission to inspect the building himself. The DOB allegedly ignored both of those individuals. The DOI also determined that there were 1,000 city buildings past due on inspections and 1,500 tagged as unsafe but still left unrepaired.
Since the DOI issued its report, the DOB said it has established a new system to track facade inspection reports. It also gives building owners a 180-day grace period to file a late report, after which the city will inspect the property and install any necessary safety measures at the owner's expense.