LOCAL LAW 48: THE CREEPING HORROR, P.2

"Oh, you're a smart guy, aren't you?" the clerk replied.

It is ironic that a Lovecraftian horror tale should suddenly turn Kafkaesque, yet that is what happened. Although zero fine had been imposed, and the incident had occurred six months before Local Law 48 came into being, the clerk vowed to keep the building stamped with a scarlet letter since the co-op had not paid a $5,000 fine — one that had neither been imposed nor even on the law books at the time. Yes, and more irony: Local Law 48 involves the violation of a stop-work order — yet there was no violation! Work had stopped when the stop-work order was given!

The co-op remains at the Gates of Hell. Trying to make sense of this, I spoke with attorneys and an architect. I tried for over three days to speak with DOB Press Secretary Kate Lindquist, importuning her through both telephone and e-mail, and receiving neither respect nor response from a troubled department where, as one veteran real-estate attorney told me not-for-attribution: "A lot of envelopes [of money] change hands."

None of these professionals knew about this law in any detail; not all had even heard of it. When told more, however, they agreed with it in principle.

"Even a small building with a serious violation can cause public harm to an adjoining building," said one attorney, a former city planning director for whom the creeping unknown causes such trepidation that he would speak only with anonymity. "An enormous building will have more impact because it touches more properties, but a small building can also have potential for large problems." Agreed attorney C. Jaye Berger, "A small building may cause just as much irritation as a big building. On a block with a couple of thousand people being awakened on a Saturday morning, they may feel [a] $10,000 [fine] is more appropriate."

The Haunter of the Dark

Perhaps it is not, in fact, the creeping unknown that is so dangerous, but its minions — those clerks and bureaucrats who are not lawyers and misinterpret the law, who let stubborn pride and obstinacy keep them from reason and understanding, and who refuse to accept even the word of their own online and paper documentation. How can a man save himself from such?

"Let's say the BIS says a violation has been removed, and you still get a default notice," said Stephen Varone, a principal of Rand Engineering & Architecture. "You go to a hearing and say, 'The BIS showed it was clear.' Judges listen to reason."

And when two years have passed without notice from the city, and a violation stamped as cured is suddenly, inexplicably, horribly not so?

"Sometimes," Varone advised me, "it's a matter of, 'Keep asking until you get the answer you want.' As soon as you get a dead end, you should speak to another clerk. Instead of speaking to a supervisor, you find someone else in management and ask them to clear it up." In the clerks' defense, he said, "it's like parsing the constitution at a certain point, and the clerk doesn't necessarily know."

Nor, it grieves me to say, will he admit that which he does not know. All we may have left is the wisdom of experience — and the sanity of madness.

"Be aware," said Varone, "that the fines have increased, and [that fact is] not on the industry radar for some reason." Indeed, if reason at the DOB exists.

Adapted from Habitat June 2008. For the complete article and more, join our Archive >>

Illustration by Dave Bamundo