by After the deadly collapse of a parking structure in lower Manhattan, New York City building officials swept dozens of parking garages and ordered four of them to close immediately due to structural defects that “deteriorated to the point where now they posed an immediate threat to public safety.”
Two of the parking lots have apartments above them, a 25-story skyscraper in midtown Manhattan and an eight-story building in Chinatown, but authorities said residential areas do not appear to be in danger.
City officials ordered parking facility owners to make immediate repairs to corroded concrete and other damage.
The inspections began shortly after a three-story free-standing parking structure, roughly a century old, imploded into shards of twisted concrete and metal on April 18, crushing its manager to death.
“This work was done in the interest of public safety and out of an abundance of caution,” said Andrew Rudansky, a spokesman for the Department of Buildings.
“During our sweep of 78 parking structures, we found four locations where structural concerns required building areas to be vacated immediately,” he said.
Last year, the city began requiring owners to inspect parking structures at least once every six years. The first wave of garages, located from the southern tip of Manhattan to the lower Central Park area, have until the end of the year to complete initial inspections.
The structure that collapsed earlier this month had not yet completed its required inspection, city officials said.
Why it collapsed is still being investigated, but the building had previously been cited for various structural defects, including signs of corrosion in the concrete called “slides.”
Two decades ago, city inspectors cited the property owner for failing to properly maintain the building, only to discover that there were “cracks and defects” in the concrete. A more recent inspection in the fall of 2013 showed no further structural problems, building officials said.
The garage, a few blocks from City Hall and the Brooklyn Bridge, collapsed just as the first customers were starting to return to the garage after work.
The collapse shook nearby buildings and terrified people who described the sound of the structure falling as a massive explosion and likened the experience to a violent earthquake.
Enterprise Ann Parking, which operated the garage on Ann Street, said it was cooperating with authorities in the investigation.
Since then, inspectors have visited 17 parking lots managed by the same company, as well as 61 additional buildings with parking lots that had open structural citations.
They found four properties with structural damage in parking lots where the damage was so severe that the city issued orders to vacate at least parts of the structures.
Beneath the 25-story building in lower Manhattan, inspectors found concrete slabs “extensively corroded, with chipped concrete at the bottom of the two-story slab roofs.” As a result, more than half of the garage is now off limits and its operators have been mandated to provide protected pathways in those locations.
But the engineers did not find the need to vacate any of the residential areas of the building.
Similarly, building officials said residents could stay in a Chinatown apartment building despite finding “numerous badly deteriorated and rusted steel beams, with excessively cracked and flaking concrete pillars.”
A two-story parking structure in Brooklyn was in such disrepair, the city said, that it ordered the entire structure closed. Another two-story structure in the township was partially closed due to badly corroded beams and deteriorating vehicle ramps.
The four buildings cannot reopen until repairs are made and they pass inspection.
With inspections of parking garages continuing, officials said there could be more enforcement action to come.
Meanwhile, crews continue to clear debris from the fallen structure.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had opened an investigation into the cave-in.
An initial investigation by the building department noted that all three floors of the garage had partially or completely collapsed. The rear wall of the garage partially collapsed and the front façade bulged.
