Friday, August 7, 2015

Report: Ben Shaoul takes condo neighbor to court to build his new development on East Houston


[EVG photo from July]

Demolition continues along East Houston and Orchard, future home of Ben Shaoul's 10-story retail-residential complex with an Equinox gym.

Apparently there's a snag of sorts in moving forward.

To the Commercial Observer:

Mr. Shaoul wants the Supreme Court of the State of New York to grant him a limited license to get into the six-story condo at 179 Ludlow Street, which abuts the southeast corner of his project on Orchard Street between Houston and Stanton Streets and to be known as 194 Orchard Street.

“The access consists of a non-invasive pre-construction survey, installation of monitoring devices and access to maintain and then remove those devices, and any other code-required protections that serve to protect [179 Ludlow Street] occupants and property,” legal papers indicate.

Apparently the board at 179 Ludlow hasn't responded to any calls or emails made by Shaoul's reps in recent weeks, per the the Commercial Observer.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's bizarre behavior from the board. I'm a board member in the neighborhood and we would probably allow third-party contractors to monitor the effects of the construction. It'd be in our building's and residents' best interest to ensure the safety of our property and investments!

Anonymous said...

And people, this is what we call, "there's more to the story"

blue glass said...

i hope our building would say no if it were ben shaoul
what a piece of work he is
he's already destroying the neighborhood, why help him

Anonymous said...

The developer is legally required to do the monitoring. It's part of the building code. The board is also legally required to give him access to do the monitoring. If they weren't, then neighboring properties could hamstring any development under the very laws the development needs to follow.
In this case, the board can be a thorn in the side and delay things, but the law is not on their side.

I'm not 179 Ludlow but maybe when I grow up I will be .. said...

Maybe 179 Ludlow wants a list of exactly what devices are to be installed, where, what their purpose is. And if I were 179 Ludlow I would also insist on having read access to those devices so that I could also monitor what's going on in the event that Mr Shaoul decides that any given alarm is "nothing to worry about" and fails to take action on it. While I could sue after the fact if a catastrophic event occurred due to failure to take action on an event notification, I'd much prefer to avoid the catastrophe.