How many years, how many stop work orders and how many violations will it take before the planned two-story building at 232-240 Smith Street will be completed?
For almost twelve years now, a wooden fence has surrounded the empty lot at the corner of Smith and Douglass Street. The long saga of this construction site started with the demolition of several one story buildings that housed a few stores and a then-popular Argentinian restaurant named Sur that helped spark Smith Street's revival. During a decade, nothing happened on the lot except for violations handed out by the NYC Department Of Buildings for 'failure to maintain construction fence."
Finally, in 2015, Commercial Observer reported that "Madison Realty Capital provided Brooklyn-based Second Development Services with a short-term $9 million loan for the acquisition and development of 232 Smith Street." Louis Greco of SDS told the Observer that he is planning a 15,000-square-foot retail building on the site.
D.o.B. permits were filed by OCV Architects shortly afterwards and by the fall of 2016 work finally began and... stopped. Within weeks, the D.o.B. issued a stop work order for "failure to notify DOB within 24-48 hours of the start of excavation" and for 'failure to safeguard all persons and property" as well as " doing damage to the adjacent building."
Since then, the site has been an open dirt pit that regularly fills with water. It appeared lately that the contractor was ready to begin work again, and the site was promptly hit with yet another complete stop work order on February 21. This newest one seems to be related to the sewer line and sewer water that needs to be pumped out of the site.
To this date, 232-240 Smith Street has amassed an impressive 97 complaints, 48 D.O.B. violations and 72 Environmental Control Board (ECB) violations, of which four are still currently open. Most of these were issued since 2006, when the property changed hands.
It had been announced to the community that a Crunch Fitness would be the tenant in this new building. At the rate construction is going, it will be a while before the gym opens.
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7 comments:
makes you wonder if the new owners ever intended to actually build on that site. perhaps it's simply a convenient way to launder money - like the M.O. of a certain owner of a notorious property on union street?
In all this time, they haven't bothered to hire a decent architect. The building in that rendering looks awful.
Thanks for filling us in! I live catty-corner from that site and we’ve wondered what the hell is going on, year after year. All those violations! Wouldn’t you think that people sinking (no pun) all that money into a project would follow the rules rather than have the equipment sit idle?
What’s especially annoying is they blocked off several parking spaces on BOTH Smith and
Douglass for years! These blocked-off spaces sit unused as does the little hut they own sitting on Smith. How do people get these permits to own parking spaces when no work is going on?
Always appreciate your filling us in!
Such a pain! I've live on Douglass for five years now, and that fence is such a pain. When it snows, it's incredibly slippery, since there's only a TINY sliver of sidewalk, otherwise you're just walking on the grates!
What a site! I am disgusted to have to look at this, and other construction on Douglass that doesn't move forward. The site forces walking on the grates because the sidewalk was cutoff due to the wood fence that isn't very sturdy; makes for a difficult walk for animals and people. In addition, the trailer (on Smith and Douglass) that never seems to be used only takes away parking in an area with limited parking not to mention the dirt that accumulates . Oh, and let's not forget the corner area of Douglass where we find orange barricades just because - clearly, no one is working there so why take away parking and again prevents street cleaning, it invites garbage to be thrown there. Also, the construction workers use the closest hydrant, leave a mess and never replace the cap.
It is very frustrating!
Amazing how, in their construction sign, they try to make that ugly design look appealing by placing a tree and blue sky in the image --unfortunately the ugly building design is just screaming to loudly.
We all blame sky high rents for Smith Street's fall from grace, but I feel like this stalled construction site, as well as the prolonged renovation to the buildings on the next block south from this site, really helped to destroy the flow of foot traffic down Smith. It's simply not a pleasant block to walk down anymore, especially compared to Court which still has a warm, neighborhood-y feel.
Also, 12 years ago the neighborhood probably could have used another gym, but in the time it's taken these folks to get their act together, both Blink and Planet Fitness opened near Atlantic. Between those, Body Elite and NYSC, I'm not sure there's a market left for Crunch.
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