construction on bergen st. by classon

breatheeasy

Hey -- this morning I heard a whole bunch of people yelling & a bunch of loud noises, and when I checked it out it was some kind of construction team (it sort of looked like they worked for something, like the city? but probably not) clearing out an allyway (with a woodchipper-truck-or whatever they are) on bergen st, the entrance on bergen but the ally goes back parallel to classon. it's a long but narrow space, any one have any idea what they could be doing? anyone else see/hear them?

also on classon bt bergen & st marks it seems they are doing a lot of work as well, in another ally, but slightly larger. seemed like they were putting concrete down today -- perhaps two new buildings are going up??

apollonia666

The first thing is down towards the Classon end of the block, on the south side, yes? It isn't an alley but a vacant lot where people dump stuff all the time, and the city has come twice to clean it out since I moved to this block in April.

The construction lot (also not an alley -- just a long, skinny lot) is next door to my building. There's going to be an apartment building there.

More info here, although the building itself no longer shows up on the Scarano website:

http://dailyheights.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=107
http://www.brownstoner.com/brownstoner/archives/2005/04/development_sca.html

apollonia666

The Scarano construction has begun in earnest now -- lots of thumping and noise this morning as they started digging for the foundation. I'm going to keep a close eye on the site, as I'd very much like my building to remain standing through all this.

Some stuff also started with those warehouse-y buildings on the southeast end of the block this morning. They were jackhammering the sidewalk in front, and one of the buildings was open and looked like it's been pretty much gutted. Anyone know what's up with that?

stacey

apollonia666 wrote: The Scarano construction has begun in earnest now -- lots of thumping and noise this morning as they started digging for the foundation. I'm going to keep a close eye on the site, as I'd very much like my building to remain standing through all this.

Some stuff also started with those warehouse-y buildings on the southeast end of the block this morning. They were jackhammering the sidewalk in front, and one of the buildings was open and looked like it's been pretty much gutted. Anyone know what's up with that?

Having been through this construction mess not only with my own house but the house next door and the one right behind me a little bit of advice - keep a camera handy, some mouse traps and a big can of Raid.

jaha127

stacey wrote: [quote=apollonia666]The Scarano construction has begun in earnest now -- lots of thumping and noise this morning as they started digging for the foundation. I'm going to keep a close eye on the site, as I'd very much like my building to remain standing through all this.

Some stuff also started with those warehouse-y buildings on the southeast end of the block this morning. They were jackhammering the sidewalk in front, and one of the buildings was open and looked like it's been pretty much gutted. Anyone know what's up with that?

Having been through this construction mess not only with my own house but the house next door and the one right behind me a little bit of advice - keep a camera handy, some mouse traps and a big can of Raid.yeah we already had the invasion of mice from when they first started to clean the vacant lot next door...

they were so loud the other morning... do they seriously have to start working at 8am??!!!??

I remeber the design that they had online... I still can't believe thats going to fit there... .can't remeber co-ops or real apartments??

apollonia666

Ugh. I don't know if anyone on this site other than Miss Jaha lives in my building, but the builders next door at the Scarano site have been rattling the bejeezus out of my apartment since 8 this morning. Goddamn it, it's Saturday, I've worked my ass off all week, and I wanted to sleep in! I didn't think to look up the New York City Noise Control Code until just now, but I discovered that they're supposed to limit construction to 7am to 6pm on WEEKDAYS ONLY, so I just called in a complaint to 311. The guy I spoke with said that since it's a weekend they're going to call the Department of Environmental Protection immediately, and within five minutes a supervisor from DEP called me back and promised to send inspectors over, so here's hoping they show up soon. It's way too late for me to try to get back to sleep today, but I hope maybe this'll keep them from doing this on a weekend again. Fuckers.

If any of you have had your weekend sleepy time similarly disrupted by these people, I urge you to call 311 too; I figure the more people who complain, the more likely it is they'll do something about it.

Edited to add:

Two inspectors came by at 1pm; I caught part of the exchange between them and the construction workers by cracking open my front window. The ungodly noise for the past five hours was a jackhammer, the site doesn't have a special permit for weekend construction, and the inspectors told the workers that they could finish up for today but that they couldn't work on the building again on a weekend. I assume they're going to issue a violation too; they were filling out some sort of form before they drove off.

I'm going to keep a close eye on this situation. Jackhammering on a Saturday morning is annoying, but the prospect of yet another Scarano building collapse or worker death bothers me a hell of a lot more.

apollonia666

An update, in case anyone's interested: There hasn't been any further construction for a while now. I just checked the Department of Buildings website and discovered that there's a stop work order on this site:

http://tinyurl.com/ygjjzb
http://tinyurl.com/yag2my

It's a little difficult to make sense of the stuff on the DOB website, so I don't know whether my complaint on December 9 may have had anything to do with it. The info at the first link above says that the borough commissioner had issued a letter of intent to revoke the work permit on December 6. It's possible that my call about the noisy construction on a Saturday is what tipped the city off to the fact that they were continuing after a stop work order had been issued, as it looks like a DOB inspector came out early the next week after my complaint. I can't figure out, however, why the stop work order was issued in the first place.