Chicken Little v. DoB

This weekend more bad news for the Armory Plaza gang. It seems the heavy rain on Saturday excellerated the settling of the ground surrounding the tube pilings set last week, causing new sink holes to appear in the Memorial Baptist Church's garden. It's always like this. The ground sinks a few hours later leaving a sizeable crator. Worse still is the sinking happening along the fence line near the rear corner of the four story apartment building 1504 8th Ave. Three large cracks have formed in the side facade, one extending some thirty feet from the foundation. There also seems to be a shift happening in the front facade around the windows as cracks are visible and the brick facing has started popping off the surface where the window gates have been mounted. Looks like another expensive underpinning job will need to be scheduled a.s.a.p. The minister called 311 on Saturday a.m. to make a complaint. On Sunday morning DOB inspectors arrived to inspect and make an evaluation of the damage. It seems the DoB perfers to show up after the damage has been done rather that heed our warnings about the unsafe methods of those doing the foundation work. It has come to our attention that the DoB never received our letter of objection about the lack of soil tests and failure to protect property. I'm interested in whom the engineering firm is on this job. It seems that Friday is the day when the bricks hit the fan. On more than one occassion the workers have quit for the weekend only to have the sink holes appear as soon as they leave. There is also a new report that Bricolage Designs has filed another new set of plans on July 18th. Are these changes in response to a DoB audit or is this just a way to keep everyone guessing as to what is really planned for the site.

Seems they are hard at work preparing for their future hardship case before the Board of Standards and Appeals when this underground parking facility gets poo pooed by the DoB. Damaging your neighbors property and "unexpected" soil or water conditions are two proven "carrots" the BSA will follow.