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Luxury Building Construction Causing Cherry Street to Cave, Neighbors Say

By Lisha Arino | June 17, 2015 9:10am
 Residents said Cherry Street had caved in a few inches over the past month.
Nearby Construction Causing Cracks on Cherry Street, Neighbors Say
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LOWER EAST SIDE — Neighbors have a sinking feeling that a nearby active construction site is destroying a local road.

Neighbors said parts of Cherry Street, located behind the site of a future luxury development, have sunken a few inches and cracked in the past month, making them wary of the construction happening at 250 South St., where a luxury residential building is expected to rise.

“It just makes people nervous,” said Trever Holland, the president of the tenants association at Two Bridges Tower, a building located right next to the construction site.

“If the land is sinking on Cherry [Street], what is the land doing under [our building]?”

A sign at the construction site said the tower would be 71-stories tall, but Extell Development Company currently has a permit to build a 56-story residential building, according to Department of Buildings records. The developer also has a permit to build a separate 13-story building comprised of affordable housing.

To the developer’s credit, Holland said, it has tried to patch the cracks and eventually re-paved the affected areas Tuesday after residents made 311 calls and pressed Extell to mend the road, which was first written about by Bowery Boogie.

But the bigger issue, Holland said, is the developer’s reluctance to explain why the situation occurred even though he has questioned Extell multiple times via email. The developer referred construction questions to LendLease, the project’s construction manager.

“As is typical with the excavation phase of any construction project, adjacent movement may occur. The project team has controls in place to monitor such conditions and interim repairs are performed as necessary,” the company said in a statement.

“Lendlease and their subcontractors have performed the repairs and have been monitoring such effects and will continue to ensure that they are within the bounds of safety and acceptable standards.”

A Department of Transportation spokesman said the agency, along with the DOB, had inspected the site last week and this week and asked Extell to monitor the situation on a daily basis.

Holland said the roadway was just one of a number of construction issues facing residents of Two Bridges Tower. The sidewalk that provides the building’s access to the street has also buckled, he said, and the pile driving at the construction site — which occurs six days a week — can be heard for blocks for several hours a day.

Residents have also reported cracks in the walls of their apartments and misaligned doors and mailboxes, which the developer has promised to fix, Holland said.

He said he and other neighbors plan to address the issues with the developer at a quarterly construction meeting next month.