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Penthouse
Is a Pain to Tenants Below
by Barry
Owens
When it rains,
it pours at 137 Duane Street.
Since construction began in May on a penthouse addition to the loft building,
upper-floor residents say that "slipshod" workmanship, a shattered
skylight, poor roof drainage, and a stairway vestibule left open to the
elements has spelled near disaster for their homes.
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The water first trickled in, as did the complaints to the building
superintendent, the landlord and Arthur Bonetti, whose company,
ACC Construction, is building the penthouse.
Resident John Knapp would point to the streaks on the hallway walls
and puddles that seeped in beneath the door of his fifth-floor loft.
"Flooding," he said he warned Bonetti more than once.
Not flooding, Knapp was told, but minor leaks, easily solved.
The leaks went unsolved, the complaints "grew more and more
colorful each time," and an angry Knapp was finally forced
to ask the contractor: "Just what does it take for it be a
flood?"
On the morning of Sept. 8, the answer came by the gallon.
Heavy rains, a residual of hurricane Frances, literally poured from
residents' high, tin ceilings and rushed like a mountain stream
down the building's stairs
"It was shocking," recalls fourth floor resident Susanna
Maycomb, who watched "brown water" spill down her walls,
over her paintings and onto her couch. "We're not talking about
a little water-imagine a cascade. We're talking about a waterfall."
Said Knapp, "Clearly a flood, a whole lot of flood." .
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Among the ruins were books, bedding, artwork, clothes and furniture. And
few were harder hit than Knapp, who along with his wife, Meredith Stead,
have long run a dance studio in their loft. Their sprung, wood dance floor,
installed by Knapp just two years ago, is now a ruin of warped wood.
Knapp said a "contrite" Bonetti offered to have his crew replace
the floor, but Knapp declined.
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"I'm not giving them the keys to my apartment," said
Knapp. "I'm afraid they would replace my floor in the same
sub-standard, slip shod way they've done everything else."
An insurance adjustor estimated the damage to Knapp and Stead's
apartment at $28,000, Stead said.
The couple hoped to reach a settlement with the contractor, but
their calls and letters to Bonetti and building owner Paul Khakshouri
were not returned.
Maycomb accepted a $700 check from Bonetti to cover damage to her
property in exchange for agreeing not to seek more.
"It was either that, or go to court," she said.
And a fourth-floor tenant, who did not want to go public with her
complaints, will have her ceiling replaced by the contractor.
Neither Khakshouri, who purchased the building in 2000 and is converting
it to condominiums, nor Bonetti returned phone messages left by
the Trib.
Fifth-floor resident Tracy Gill has filed several complaints with
the city's Department of Buildings (DOB) and Department of Housing
Preservation and Development (HPD) since construction began. The
most serious complaint was prompted by a steel beam that crashed
into her skylight on April 19, sending shards of glass onto her
dining table and daughter's empty high chair.
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A violation issued for that mishap, coupled with the lack of an approved
building plan on site when inspectors arrived, resulted in a stop-work order
from the DOB. When construction resumed, first a tarp and then a sheet of
plywood covered the broken skylight when construction resumed.
"Filthy plywood," said Gill, angered that the work had deprived
her of a skylight for six months after she had been told at the beginning
of the project that it would only be three weeks.
She was further angered that her letters and complaints to Bonetti have
gone unanswered. She refused a settlement check of $1,000 from the contractor
because he insisted that, in return, she make no future claims.
"We have a very young daughter who wants to know why it 'rains coffeet'
from her bedroom ceiling, why she can't take the plastic tarp off her bed...why
the rain makes her room smell bad," Gill wrote to the contractor in
a letter dated Sept. 30 and provided to the Trib.
As a result of a violation issued by HPD, Gill said, the landlord has since
repainted her apartment and agreed to refinish her floor this month. She
was further assured that a new skylight would be complete in two weeks.
And the leaks have stopped. But the damage was done, she said, and she was
still awaiting word from Bonetti on how he will make amends.
Knapp, meanwhile, is not holding his breath. He is resigned to the fact
that the cost and labor for installing another dance floor in his loft will
be left to him and his insurance company.
A former home improvement contractor, Knapp said he was disgusted by the
way the contractor has handled residents' complaints and by what he called
the "cheap build-out" of the Tribeca loft building he has lived
in for 27 years.
"They couldn't get away with this on the Upper East Side," he
said.
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