Emergency Repair at 100 Clark While Court Fight Continues
Yesterday blogger McBrooklyn posted a progress report on the $25,000 emergency repair job going on at 100 Clark Street in Brooklyn Heights. As you may recall, this is the site that required a dramatic emergency demolition over Memorial Day weekend, despite the fact that it’s been widely known to be a ticking time bomb for…
Yesterday blogger McBrooklyn posted a progress report on the $25,000 emergency repair job going on at 100 Clark Street in Brooklyn Heights. As you may recall, this is the site that required a dramatic emergency demolition over Memorial Day weekend, despite the fact that it’s been widely known to be a ticking time bomb for years. (The current repair work does not require LPC approval because of its emergency nature.) What isn’t discussed in the McBrooklyn post, and what hasn’t been widely noted, is the real reason behind why the owner of the building, Penson Corp. sued to stop DOB from tearing the entire building. The short answer: Money (of course). The long answer: The building in its pre-demolished state was about 8,000 square feet. According to Property Shark, current building codes, which would have to be followed if the building were rebuilt from scratch, would only allow for about 6,700 square feet of space. That 1,300-square-foot difference is worth well over a million bucks in this part of town. If Penson wins the court case, it will get to have its cake and eat it too: The rent-stabilized tenants will be out and it’ll get to restore the building to its overbuilt state.
Emergency Demo at 100 Clark Clears Tenants [Brownstoner] GMAP
‘Dereliction of Duty’ in Brooklyn Heights [Brownstoner]
Rebuilding the Half-Demolished 100 Clark Street [McBrooklyn]
This is a disater on so many levels.
Nohing will be built here for years.
Many lawyers will send their children to college with the money they make on this
god-forsaken piece of real estate.
I feel sorry for the neighbors. Imagine living next to this moldering stack of sticks.
Sad.
How much of the original needs to be retained in order to vest the FAR?
And LPC will have a say in what the new building looks like.
Who disgusts you? The renters who turned down many hundreds of thousands of dollars in buyouts and instead prefered to live in ramshackle squalor?
Or the owners who bought the building a couple of years ago and thought that they could negotiate with the renters and restore the building?
The prior owner who let the building fall into deplorable condition is long gone from the scene.
100 Clark is an unfortunate example of how the rigidity of the NYC renter-protection laws benefits no one except perhaps the attorneys.
You can’t get rid of rent-regulated tenants that easily. They are suing the owner. The property is now under a giant cloud. You can demolish a building but you can’t free yourself from rent-stabilized tenants.
God, these people disgust me.