Via Gothamist, yet another creative use of the attic rule (and the dormer rule).

In gentrification bingo – NYSHitty’s latest innovation – “Thai restaurants” get a square alongside pile drivers and $2 cups of coffee. Thing is, Thai restaurants have been a north Brooklyn staple for ages. Once upon a time (and it was not too long ago), Williamsburg had about two bars and three restaurants. And one of the restaurants was Planet Thai (when it was on Bedford and worth eating at – in fact, people came from Manhattan to eat there. For the food. Really.). Up in Greenpoint, Thai Cafe (probably the mother ship of North Brooklyn Thai food) was serving food twice as good as they do today (in half the space). For a Southsider, Amarin was one of the few restaurants anywhere that would deliver south of Grand Street. I have no idea why Williamsburg and Greenpoint became the Thai food capital of the world, but its not a recent phenomenon.

All of this was years before what for many was the watershed moment for Williamsburg – getting called out by Utne Reader as the third hippest neighborhood in America (that was in December, 1997). From there, it was a quick ride downhill to gentrification.

So enjoy gentrification bingo, but just remember that the Thai restaurants were probably here before you were.

Elsewhere in the country, the housing crisis is starting to take down small and medium developers. We haven’t been hit with the full brunt of the shitpile (yet?), but its worth remembering that Toll Brothers and the like are the exception – most of the development in Williamsburg and Greenpoint is being done by smaller developers.

Synchronicity.

Within 24 hours or so, the inventor of Thorazine and the inventor of the anti-anxiety drug Miltown (precursor to Valium and Prozac) both passed away. Frank Berger developed the first mass-marketed anti-anxiety drug in the 1950s, and its success ushered in the era of “big-time psychopharmacology”. Frank Ayd also “helped give birth to and nurture the field of psychopharmacology” through his invention of the antipsychotic Thorazine.

Remember that crane inspector who swore up and down that he didn’t inspect the East 51st Street crane following a complaint on 4 March? Turns out he was right – unfortunately, it also turns out that he told DOB that he had inspected the crane. Rather than actually show up and do his job, he simply signed off on the complaint, noting “crane is erected according to approved CN. #39/08, CD#3774”.

This certainly inspires great confidence in the integrity of the inspection process. If an inspector can’t be bothered to look at a crane that is allegedly not braced to a building, a bona fide life safety issue, what can we expect from DOB inspectors when it comes to the more mundane quality of life complaints that are lodged with great regularity? Exactly how many “unsubstantiated” complaints were really just plain uninspected?

Fubar indeed.

[Just to be clear, at this point the inspectors actions (or lack thereof) do not appear to have played a role in the tragedy that befell Turtle Bay. The accident last Saturday occurred when the crane operators were extending the superstructure of the crane itself, and there was at least one actual inspection after the 4 March uninspection.]

Via Gothamist, a report about a woman attacked by a livery cab driver. The driver apparently followed the woman into her building, where he then molested her. Luckily, the victim was not hurt, and though shaken up, is fine.

The woman in question had called Metroline for a car, but it appears that the car she got into was not Metroline’s (the Metroline driver who went to pick her up found her not there, and he has been cleared by the police).

The community finally prevailed in Albany – the TransGas plant proposed for Bushwick Inlet has been killed.

No doubt Adam Victor will file an appeal, and we will have to live with this fight for a few more years. But it is a significant victory nonetheless.

On Gowanus Lounge this morning, Robert has a list of remedies for DOB failings. Here’s a quick rundown, with my handicapping:

1) […] The number of inspectors should be at least doubled, if not tripled. Until the numbers are increased, there should be a cap on the number of permits for major projects that can be issued.

The mayor has already announced that it has added 88 new staff lines and is creating 7 new special enforcement teams. Don’t know if that doubles the number of inspectors, but clearly there is a recognition that the number of existing inspectors is inadequate.

As for a cap on permits, no way. It would be wrong, and probably illegal to boot.

2) The Department of Buildings should be permanently removed from the purview of any of the city’s economic development officials… Encouraging development and regulating it are not compatible tasks. Its work should be subject to regular audits by the City Comptroller.

Interesting idea – clearly the tension between facilitating construction and regulating it is a problem. As it is, though, cumbersome regulations make development in the City way too expensive. Perhaps the switch over to the international building code will change this, and in the process, hopefully eliminate the high priesthood of expedition. But clearly, there needs to be a fundamental shift in the basic philosophy of the agency towards regulation and accountability.

On the Comptroller, I would assume that DOB is already subject to audits. I wonder if any have been done?

3) Each Community Board should have an independent ombudsman to supervise the Department’s work.

This is something NAG and members of CB1 have been advocating for for ages. The intricacies of the DOB system defy the ability of lay people to understand the system or their rights within it. But any ombudsoperson would probably have to be funded through private grant money.

4) Dramatically increased monetary penalties for violations… building permits should also be suspended for the most serious violations starting with 30 days and escalating to 60 and 90 days.

Likewise, an automatic 5-day suspension of work should be instituted for illegal after-hours work. Stop work orders in general are probably more effective than fines, particularly in a bullish market. (The issue of meaningful penalties is also something that DOB has already said it will address.)

5) There should be criminal penalties for both developers and contractors whose actions or negligence result in loss of life.

I believe there are, though they are probably very hard and very costly to prove.

6) Persistent offenders–contractors and developers–should be put on a special list for highly targeted enforcement and be subject to even higher fines. Firms with a pattern of violations… should have their ability to work in the city revoked for a period of time.

Again, much of this already on DOB’s list. The big problem with developers and contractors, though, is that they tend to operate behind corporate veils, not as individuals. It is very difficult to penetrate the web of development LLCs involved in projects and to find the common denominators. Contractors who lost their licenses (or get into financial trouble) quickly reincorporate under new names.

7) Create target enforcement neighborhoods in each borough based on the level of development. In Brooklyn, for instance, Williamsburg and Greenpoint should be a No. 1 priority. These target neighborhoods should be assigned significant numbers of inspectors to increase response times to complaints and to patrol construction sites.

Very similar to the “hot zone” concept proposed by Evan Thies.

8) The city should make necessary repairs to sites that are shut down if developers don’t fix problem quickly, so that abandoned sites don’t become hazards to the community. The city should charge back costs to developers and property owners and seize property for unpaid bills.

Having finally gotten out of the business of acquiring delinquent properties, I’m not sure the city wants to go there again.

9) There should be a zero-tolerance approach to violations. Non-enforcement on small violations leads to bigger violations in a sort of Broken Windows Construction Phenomenon. There should also be 24-hour follow up and immediate dispatch of inspectors on some calls, clearly including life safety issues, but also involving quality of life complaints such as illegal and after-hours construction.

On the first point, this also seems to fit within what DOB has already said it plans to do. On the second, this is a point I have made repeatedly, particularly with regard to the quality-of-life complaints.

10) Permit fees should increased to fund the entire program of more rigorous inspection and the workforce necessary to do so.

Yes.

11) Firms with a pattern of violations should be barred from bidding on city contracts or doing city work.

This can only work for architects and large construction firms. Its too easy for developers and contractors to reorganize under new corporate entities to make this enforceable for them.

12) The city should issue a monthly “scorecard” in a simple format, grading developers and contractors on their violations or lack of them in each borough.

I’d rather see BIS get revamped so the average citizen could go there and see how a project is doing. As it is, the system in nearly impenetrable. Better still is DOB’s own proposal to institute a Comp-Stat program for tracking complaints and violations.

One final thing from DOB’s press release last month – Commissioner Lancaster promised that “in the next month [she] will outline an aggressive legislative agenda that will call for increased enforcement tools for the Department.” The month is almost over.

In today’s Sun, Council Member Jessica Lappin says of the 51st Street construction site:

This is a site that was not under the radar screen, this was a site where the community had contacted the DOB, officials had contacted the DOB. To me it seems there should have been heightened scrutiny on the part of the DOB.

In response to which, DOB Commissioner Patricia Lancaster had this to say:

There were 38 complaints, many of which resulted in no action, and when that happens we look at whether the community wanted the building in the first place. Sometimes people call in complaints not based on safety concerns but based on concerns about the project, which they don’t want in their neighborhood.

So Lancaster is basically saying here that the community was crying wolf, trying to thwart a legitimate construction project. A look at those 38 complaints does indicate that Ms. Lancaster has a point, but a slim one at best. At the same time, the fact that “many” of the complaints resulted in no action only goes to further show how ridiculous the DOB complaint tracking and resolution system is. Yes, there were a lot of complaints by (I presume) neighbors over a short period of time, but (largely due to failings in DOB’s own inspection system) the agency would be hard pressed to point to a pattern of abuse or unsubstantiated complaints. In fact, the vast majority of the complaints that resulted in “no action” did so because of DOB inaction.

First, the part of the system that did work. Over the course of the past year, there have a number of rather significant site safety violations that resulted in stop work orders. Its not clear from the DOB system if these violations were discovered as a result of complaints that were lodged, or by the diligence of inspectors making their appointed rounds. But either way, there were at least seven stop work orders issued for this project in the past 13 months (that includes the partial stop work order issued on Saturday about an hour before the crane collapse). The earliest was in February 2007 for failure to have a “designated site safety manager”. Another complaint, in August, 2007, said that the work “does not conform to plans”. In that case, the inspector discovered that the “plans do not match the footprint of the existing foundation”. In both instances, stop work orders were issued. Likewise, on 5 October 2007, a complaint was lodged for failure to have adequate fencing/netting at the site, and a stop work order was issued later that day. In the case of Saturday’s partial stop work order, the violations concerned unsafe storage and protection, and had nothing to do with the operation of the crane.

As for the part of the system that does not work, over the course of the past six months, there were also 14 complaints regarding after hours work (which may be the crying wolf part Ms. Lancaster alluded to). But while these complaints may be part of a pattern of harassment by neighbors, they also point up many of the fundamental problems with the DOB complaint system that we have identified before. The complaints themselves are pretty consistent, noting construction activity before 7 a.m. and after 6 p.m. (if DOB had a CompStat-like system, they might have seen this pattern). Typical of how DOB handles after-hours complaints, 11 of the 14 complaints were investigated days later; in two cases, inspectors were able to clear three complaints in one visit, with each of the cleared complaints being at least a day old. One complaint (lodged 1 March) remains uninspected. The last two complaints were inspected the day of the complaint, but as the complaints were lodged shortly before 7 a.m., the inspections probably came well after to alleged violation had ceased to be a violation.

There were also five crane related complaints over the past two months. The most recent of these has already been discussed, and the manner in which it was cleared is apparently in question (the inspector listed as clearing it swears he wasn’t there on the day in question). There were also two complaints lodged on 8 February (both unsubstantiated based on a review of DOB records). On 19 January (a Saturday), a complaint was recorded alleging that the crane was being assembled 18 stories above ground without any safety measures in place for the workers. Five days later, on 24 January, an inspector went to the site and observed that the crane was not working at the time of inspection. Similarly, a complaint about unsafe crane operation on 10 January resulted in an inspection on 11 January, at which point it was noted that “everything checks out fine”.

In all, it would appear that there were a lot of neighbors complaining about the site (or one very disgruntled neighbor). Does that amount to a pattern of people calling in “complaints not based on safety concerns but based on [not wanting the project] in their neighborhood”? Its not clear – the pattern of after-hours complaints is pretty consistent, and there were no inspections conducted that could have debunked them. Likewise, the pattern of crane complaints might have been harassment, but in hindsight they appear to have been mighty prescient. And the project itself did have a spotty safety record – not the worst by any stretch, but 6 SWOs in just over a year is nothing to sneeze at.

In all, of 36 valid complaints prior to this Saturday only 14 were inspected on the day of the complaint. And of those 14, six resulted in stop work orders. In this context, 43% seems to me to be a pretty high rate of SWOs to inspections. (Of the 21 inspections that were carried out after the fact, none resulted in SWOs, and only two resulted in violations.)

Do people use 311 to harass projects and enforce NIMBYism? Without a doubt, and it is a practice that is not only counter-productive but dangerous. But again, in the case of 303 East 51st Street, there is scant evidence that people were doing this. And because many of the complaints were not investigated in a timely manner, DOB has no way of making this case. It is disingenuous at best to say that a high proportion of the complaints resulted in no action, when the lack of action was a result of DOB inaction.

As I have said before, rather than waste resources inspecting “stale” complaints, DOB should write these off as uninspected, and put the property on a 30-day or 60-day watch list. During that time, inspectors would make spot inspections during off hours. If violations were found, immediate SWOs would be issued, shutting down the site for 5 days for a first offense, 10 for a second offense, and so on.