By Jon Schuppe
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — After months of watching their walls crack and crumble, low-income tenants of an East Harlem apartment building will soon get the repairs they’ve been demanding from the developers of a Fifth Avenue museum.
The Department of Buildings just issued a permit for the work, which is expected to start this week.
Tenants of the East 110th Street building blame construction of the Museum for African Art next door for the deteriorating conditions. In the apartment building’s hallways, walls have split open, revealing plaster and cinder blocks, and floor tiles have broken away, making walking hazardous. Outside, the façade is shedding bricks.
The museum will be the first addition to New York’s Museum Mile in a half-century. The project also includes a 115-unit condominium tower overlooking Central Park. Construction is supposed to be completed by the end of the year.
The developer, Brickman, denies any connection to the apartment building’s structural problems. But it has agreed to cover about $60,000 in repairs. The general contractor, Bovis Lend Lease, will do the work.
The repairs will begin with crews shoring up the building’s foundation. That will take about four weeks, according to the building’s nonprofit management company, Hope Community Inc. Then the focus will shift to the interior problems.
Tenants said they were glad to hear the news, but will feel more optimistic once the work starts.
They are still smarting from the destruction of a community garden that once occupied the construction site. They’ve yet to find a replacement garden space.
