A Financial District condominium tower is leaning, and the
contractor on the project claims the developer is to blame.
The 670-foot-tall, 58-story apartment building under
construction at 161 Maiden Lane is leaning three inches to the north, according
to a lawsuit filed in New York State Supreme Court by the project’s contractor,
Pizzarotti. An off-kilter foundation is affecting the building’s structural
integrity, facade, waterproofing and elevators, the recent suit argues.
Developer Fortis Property Group, working with a previous
general contractor, opted not to drive piles into the soft ground of the site
by South Street Seaport on the East River before it laid the foundation because
Fortis wanted to save money, the contractor claims in the suit. Instead,
Pizarrotti alleges, Fortis decided to use a cheaper “soil improvement” method,
which involves compacting and draining the damp earth to make it more stable.
The foundation work was done before Fortis hired Pizzarotti
to oversee construction in December 2015. In April of 2018, RC Structures, the
concrete subcontractor on the high-rise, reported that “there are structural
issues, unusual settlement up to three inches, and the building is leaning
three inches to the north,” per the complaint. Pizzarotti actually replaced the
previous concrete company, SSC High Rise Construction, earlier that month, The
Real Deal reported. One of SSC’s employees, Juan Chonillo, fell to his death
from the 29th floor in October 2017, as DNAinfo and other outlets reported at
the time. The concrete company ultimately pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the
case, per TRD. SSC couldn’t be reached for comment.
Then in June of last year, the company handling the facade
work said the curtain wall frame on the 21st floor was leaning two inches
further east than on the 11th floor. Although the building’s superstructure was
finished in September 2018, Pizzarotti hasn’t been able to install the curtain
wall because Fortis hasn’t designed a new facade system that accommodates the
leaning, the suit says. The building will continue to settle and move unless
the problem in the foundation is fixed, the general contractor posits.
Pizzarotti claims to be worried about the facade panels breaking off and
falling, the elevator rails failing to remain vertical, waterproofing,
corrosion and what might happen to the structure if it isn’t stabilized. As a
result, the company says it notified Fortis that it would terminate the
construction contract on March 1. The general contractor hopes to recover the
cost of overruns that it spent on the development—which numbers in the tens of
millions—and get an injunction preventing Fortis from proceeding with work
unless it redesigns the building.
“This lawsuit is patently false from start to finish and
nothing more than simple defamation and a desperate attempt by a failing
general contractor to divert attention from the fact it defaulted on yet
another New York City project,” a Fortis spokesman said in a statement provided
to Commercial Observer. “As a number of prominent New York City developers have
learned the hard way over the past few years, Pizzarotti is simply incapable of
buying out, managing and completing a construction project within contractually
promised timelines.”
Christopher Kinzel, the attorney for Pizzarotti, declined to
comment on the suit, and representatives for the company couldn’t immediately
be reached for comment. Fortis’ attorneys, Neal Eiseman and Michael Fleishman,
didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
The Fortis spokesman acknowledged that the structure “had an
alignment issue,” but said it doesn’t affect the safety of the building, as
Pizzarotti claimed. The general contractor caused the leaning condition by
failing to plan for the settling of the foundation while pouring the concrete
slabs of the building, the spokesman shot back. He claimed that Fortis’
engineers had designed the foundation to account for “differential settlement,”
which is when a foundation settles unevenly because of soil conditions.
Pizzarotti never terminated the contract and continued
working on the development until this week, the Fortis representative said. The
developer charges that by March 2018, Pizzarrotti’s work had caused more than
260 days of stop-work orders from the New York City Department of Buildings. In
fact, the project spent 311 days under partial stop-work orders and 58 days
under full stop-work orders, according to information provided by DOB
spokespeople. As a result, Pizzarotti had already paid for $25 million in cost
overruns, per the spokesman. Fortis has brought on a new general contractor,
Ray Builders, to redesign the facade and resolve the “alignment issue.” The new
firm started work today, and Fortis has officially ended its agreement with
Pizzarotti. Ray has begun in stalling the revamped facade.
“As two of the top engineering firms in the world—Arup and
WSP—have certified, there are no safety issues at the building and construction
can continue immediately,” the Fortis spokesman said in remarks to Commercial
Observer. “The fact that Pizzarotti has had more than 70 of its own employees
and subcontractors working throughout the building over the past several months
(including as recently as last week) substantiates Pizzarotti’s duplicity and
underlying intent to defame the project. This is simply a matter of a slight
redesign of the building’s curtain wall, which is already being worked on by
our new general contractor, Ray Builders.”
Jacob Mermelstein, the CEO of Ray Builders, sided with
Fortis on the leaning building. “[Pizzarotti] didn’t pour the slabs correctly
so we have to accommodate for their poor construction practice in the
installation of the curtain wall,” he said.
It’s not the first time Fortis has been sued by a
contractor. ICS Builders and Fortis sued each other last summer over a contract
dispute involving work at the Polhemus Building, a former Long Island College
Hospital property that was being converted to condominium units, as CO reported
at the time.
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