Month: February 2008
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DOB Takes Action
Obviously in hasty response to my recent posts, DOB has a series of reforms aimed at improving construction safety in New York City. Actually, the second half of that sentence is true – there’s even a press release. A lot of the press release covers initiatives that have been in place for some time, but…
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Toll Brothers Reports Big Loss
Where they think there’s no demand, they’ve basically stopped building.
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What glut?
Newsflash! There are a shitload of condos in Brooklyn, and we might not be able to sell them all. There has been massive overbuilding in the entire borough of Brooklyn. It is like the Wild West, and if you don’t control growth, then at some point it’s going to get out of hand. At some…
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421-a
According to the Sun, the real estate industry is gearing up to have another go at 421-a tax abatements when the topic comes before the City Council in December. Their argument is that the changes in the law (which don’t take effect until July 1) combined with the declining real estate market, will slow development.…
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Mike’s Out
I’m glad he’s not running, but I think Mike would have made a fine president. I’m sure I wouldn’t have agreed with everything he did (as I haven’t agreed with everything he’s done). Particularly as we try to untangle the fiasco of the last eight years, we will need competent, level-headed leadership. Maybe he’s available…
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Fixing DOB
Sure, its an ambitious title. But, as Reverb says in the comments to Monday’s post, its great to define the problem, but how do you fix it? First, let’s recap the magnitude of the problem: if you call in a complaint to 311 for illegal after-hours/weekend work, there’s about a one in four chance that…
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Falling Down on the Job
A couple of weeks ago, I posted a link to the new nyc.gov Citywide Performance Reporting (CPR) system. In that post, I summarized the rather spotty performance of the Department of Buildings, at least as measured by the criteria of CPR. One number that jumped out at me was the 6% rate of violations issued…