"No Action Necessary Upon Physical Inspection"

"No Action Necessary Based Upon Physical Inspection" will be a regular feature of this blog for 2008.
The quote is a reference to New York City Buildings Department's inability to monitor all the active building sites around town. In order to help monitor, local residents are encouraged to report unsafe working conditions by calling 311, the official gripe line. But rarely are the calls followed up by Buildings Department inspectors in a timely fashion. A report of after-hour construction cannot be acted on if the inspector shows up at 9 Am two days later. So the complaint will be dismissed with a casual notation that the inspector :

"OBSERVED NO DANGEROUS OR HAZARDOUS CONDITION AT TIME OF INSPECTION.
NO ACTION NECESSARY"

What a racket. No wonder contractors and builders think they are invincible.
A case in point is the site at 114 4th Place here in Carroll Gardens. According to a very professional sign posted on the barely secured wooden fence surrounding the lot, the project is called 4P and is being brought to us by 4th Place Developers, LLC. It is slated to be completed by October 2008. There is some mention of 6 stories.

Five complaints have been posted on the D.O.B. site for this address in the last few months. So clearly, someone is doing just what the DOB wants neighbors to do and is dutifully reporting any unsafe building practices. But all of the complaints have been dismissed because, you guessed it, nothing was observed after the fact.
There are however two work-without-a-permit violations filed. I guess that's better than nothing...
It will be interesting to see how this project takes shape in the next few months.



For Home Page, click Pardon Me For Asking