BY KEVIN DUGGAN
The Carroll Gardens gym
building that collapsed on the
afternoon of July 1 had previously
received thousands of
dollars worth of fi nes from 15
years of complaints about the
building’s instability, according
to public records.
The Department of Buildings
has fi ned the owner of the
former three-story building
which housed Body Elite Gym
on Court and Union streets at
least fi ve times, totaling $15,685
in penalties over the past two
years, according to records by
the Offi ce of Administrative
Trials and Hearings, the agency
which handles the fi nes. Four
of the fi ve fi nes, which range
from $1,280 to $5000 each, were
for failing to keep the building
up to code.
DOB has also received several
complaints since 2005 about
a wall on the building’s ground
fl oor that allegedly bulged
dangerously. The bulge on the
Union Street side of the building
COURIER L 6 IFE, JULY 10-16, 2020
is even visible on Google
Street View images ranging as
far back as 2009.
One longtime resident of a
row house adjacent to the building,
who was forced to evacuate
her home Wednesday night
and was still waiting to be let
back in as of Thursday, said the
gym’s side looked unstable for
years and she routinely crossed
the street to the bank on the
other side.
“I just knew not to walk on
that street, I crossed to TD Bank
to walk down Union Street,
just so I wouldn’t be next to
this,” said the woman, who
only gave her name as Mary. “It
didn’t look right to me.”
On June 10, DOB inspectors
found construction workers
removing bricks from the
ground fl oor of the building
and issued a partial stop work
order, demanding they install a
sidewalk shed and hire an engineer
to study the stability of the
entire building, according to
spokesman Andrew Rudansky.
Workers installed the shed
a few days later, but the agency
never received an engineer’s report,
said the spokesman.
The inspector at the time did
not issue a Full Vacate Order for
the building, which would have
required the offi cial deem it unsafe
to be inside at the time, according
to Rudansky.
The DOB also didn’t issue
a so-called Immediate Emergency
Declaration for Demolition
of the structure, a more
extreme measure usually reserved
for buildings that are
visibly about to collapse, such
as burned-out houses after a
fi re or leaning structures, according
to the agency representative.
First responders search through the ruble of the building at the corner
of Court and Union streets after the collapse. Photo by Todd Maisel
DOB and other city agencies
are still on the scene investigating
the cause of the tumble, according
to Rudansky.
The owner of the building,
Union and Court Realty Corp.
— which also owns the adjacent
building that houses a health
food store and wraps around
the rear of the destroyed structure
— lists Ki Hyo Park as its
chief executive offi cer. Park
could not be reached for comment
by press time.
The landlord reportedly told
the head of the gym, Robert
Alimena, that he had recently
started repairs on the building
to fi x the cracks and the bulge,
which Alimena was told was a
“cosmetic issue” that did not
need serious mending, according
to the New York Times.
Mary — the building’s neighbor
— mused that all the heavy
exercise equipment might have
caused the building’s crumbling
structure to give way.
“Obviously the structure
was not sound. Then you add
in heavy gym equipment — bad
idea,” she said.
BULKING UP
Collapsed Carroll Gardens gym building had more
than a decade of complaints of instability
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