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Underground Rumbling Rattles Hell's Kitchen Residents

By DNAinfo Staff on March 9, 2011 3:32pm  | Updated on March 10, 2011 6:13am

The W. 44 St. home where shaking was so violent that resident Chuck Spence started to flee.
The W. 44 St. home where shaking was so violent that resident Chuck Spence started to flee.
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DNAinfo/Tara Kyle

By Tara Kyle

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

HELL'S KITCHEN — Chuck Spence was in his West 44th Street home one recent Thursday evening when he felt a blast from below. He fled, fearing the building would collapse on top of him.

"My whole brownstone jumped off the ground and came down hard," Spence, who is retiring after six years on Community Board 4, wrote in an e-mail. "I've got cracks in tile floors that weren't there before."

Over the past couple of months, daily blasts — some occurring as late as 9:30 or 10 p.m. — have rocked nearby blocks, neighbors between 40th and 44th Street said Tuesday. Complaints have also funneled into CB4 from as far north as West 47th and West 48th Street, according to District Manager Bob Benfatto.

Frequent rumblings are rocking W. 44th Street, residents say.
Frequent rumblings are rocking W. 44th Street, residents say.
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DNAinfo/Tara Kyle

Many residents and workers in the area said they believed the culprit was the MTA's underground extension of the No. 7 subway line — a new station is under construction at 41st St. and Dyer Avenue.

Blasting for that project occurred between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, with occasional work on Saturdays, according to MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan.

But the MTA's professional engineers did not believe rumbling from their work should be felt as far north as 44th Street, according to Donovan. He admitted he could not say for certain whether that project was the cause, but noted that there were other ongoing construction projects near 42nd Street that could be the culprit.

Another city project underway in the area is Port Authority's rehabilitation of ramps leading from Lincoln Tunnel into the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

But right now, that work was limited to sidewalk repairs on one bus ramp, according to Port Authority spokeswoman Jennifer Friedberg, who described it as "routine maintenance work being done during business hours."

Closer to 44th Street, however, no major construction was currently underway, according to CB4 Hell's Kitchen land use committee co-chair Joe Restuccia, who said he could "almost set a watch" to window-quivering blasts between 8-9:30 p.m. at his own office on West 40th Street.

The blasts are purportedly felt also in some high-rise developments. Inside the 46-story Manhattan Plaza tower on Tenth Avenue, former Tenants Association president Marisa Redanty said she frequently felt her floors rumble.

"First you hear the sound, then the building shudders," said Linda Ashley, 60, who said the wine glasses she hangs from a rack routinely clatter against each other. "You feel shockwaves go through your body. I think they're just using too darn much dynamite."

For now, residents can do little but lodge their complaints with 311, CB4 and their block associations.

The 44th Street Block Association's vice president, Suzanne Harvey, said she had received a "frenzy of e-mails," from members all along the street, and said the influx had spiked in the past few weeks.

What Harvey and other residents wanted, she said, was a notification system informing them what blocks would be affected by construction and during what hours. They also want a contact person for those times when the shaking gets to be too much.

"There has to be some dialogue," Harvey said. "It's literally like rolling thunder under the ground."

The 44th Street Block Association will take up this issue at a meeting on March 22 at 7:30 p.m. at 424 W. 44th Street.