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Construction Truck Crashes Into Scaffolding at SoHo Luxury Development

 A truck backing up to deliver materials to the XOCO luxury development at 325 Broadway in SoHo crashed into scaffolding Tuesday afternoon, according to an eyewitness.
A truck backing up to deliver materials to the XOCO luxury development at 325 Broadway in SoHo crashed into scaffolding Tuesday afternoon, according to an eyewitness.
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via Pete Davies

SOHO — A truck making a delivery to a construction site at 325 West Broadway crashed into sidewalk scaffolding Tuesday afternoon, according to eyewitness reports and officials.

SoHo resident Pete Davies said the truck was backing up at the West Broadway site to deliver supplies about 4:30 p.m. when the rear corner of the truck got caught on the edge of some plywood on top of the scaffolding and pulled it apart.

Davies said he didn't see anyone get hit or hurt when the scaffolding came crashing down.

"The slow crumble of planking and plywood allowed folks beneath and nearby to scatter clear of the wreckage," said Davies, who saw the damage from across Grand Street.

A spokesman for the city's Department of Buildings, which is responsible for enforcing safe conditions at construction sites, confirmed that a concrete truck struck a 20-foot extension of the scaffolding's sidewalk shed.

The impact caused a couple of sections of overhanging plywood to fall into a "secured work zone," according to spokesman Alex Schnell.

"The remaining sections were removed by the workers, and the area made safe," Schnell said.

The agency issued a violation for "failure to maintain" a safe work environment. Schnell said the company that put up the sidewalk shed was notified and sent workers to the site Wednesday morning to repair the shed.

The 10-story building in the works is called XOCO325 and is offering condos ranging in size from one to four bedrooms. XOCO, pronounced sho-ko, is the Catalan word for "chocolate," and is a reference to the site's former life as a Tootsie Roll factory.

A spokeswoman for the developers behind the project, DDG Partners, acknowledged the incident in an emailed statement.

"Yesterday a minor accident affected some scaffolding at the project site," the spokeswoman wrote. "There were no injuries. Construction crews are currently working to repair the scaffolding.”

DDG also recently developed luxury condos at 345 West 14th St. in the Meatpacking District and the greenery-covered 41 Bond St. in NoHo.

In early September, Corcoran realtors working on XOCO325 said they expect to have people moving into the building in early 2016.

XOCO325 will eventually be connected by a courtyard to a not-yet-built DDG condo building on Wooster Street, reported Curbed in an article DDG shared on their website, though they edited out the words "Weirdly Named" from the headline and a parenthetical "ugh" after the pronounciation of the building's name.