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4 COURIER LIFE, JULY 2-8, 2021
A DANGEROUS LACK
Despite years of neglect, city fi nds no criminality
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
While New Yorkers wonder
if last week’s deadly condominium
collapse in Florida
might have been preventable,
they count their blessings that
a building failure in Brooklyn
last year didn’t result in similarly
tragic consequences.
But they might also be a
little surprised to learn that
city investigators have yet to
fi nd anything to substantiate
criminal charges against the
property owner or building inspectors
— even though there
had been more than a decade
of complaints about the Carroll
Gardens row house’s instability.
“The investigation is in
its fi nal stages and has not
substantiated any criminal
charges,” Department of Investigation
spokesperson Diane
Struzzi told Brooklyn Paper’s
sister publication amNewYork
Metro.
DOI launched a probe last
year into the owner of the
building at 348 Court St., at
the corner of Union Street,
which came crashing down on
the afternoon of July 1, 2020,
luckily only causing minor injuries
to one person as the fi tness
studio was empty amid
the COVID-19 pandemic.
The agency’s inquiry also
examined the Department of
Buildings’s role, which had
received complaints about
the building’s instability dating
back 15 years, and owner
Ki Hyo Park had shelled out
$15,685 in fi nes for failing to
keep the building up to code
in two years leading up to the
implosion. Park could not be
reached for comment.
Struzzi did not say when
the report would be released
but advised this reporter to fi le
a Freedom of Information request
in order to get the document.
A complaint from 2005
warned of the building’s side
wall on Union Street bulging
out onto the sidewalk and
a caller warned the authorities
the following year that
the building looked as if it was
about to fall or collapse, according
to DOB records.
DOB repeatedly issued
violations to Park over the
years, but the landlord simply
paid the fi nes without addressing
the issues, according
to a group of local politicians,
who urged DOI in a letter to investigate
the owner and DOB
to see whether the city should
have been more “aggressive”
in keeping the building sound.
‘We got incredibly lucky
last year’
One of the authors of the
missive, Brooklyn Councilman
Brad Lander, urged DOI to soon
release the fi nal report of the
investigation so that offi cials
can learn from the collapse.
“I’m not happy that here we
are a year later and we don’t
have the report on what happened
and what we should learn
from it,” Lander told amNewYork
Metro in an interview. “If
we know that there was a lot of
Body Elite Gym at 348 Court St. collapsed on July 1, 2020.
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