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Wall Collapse Report: Bad Castle Village & Its Engineers
By
Jen Chung
Published May 11, 2007
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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By
Jen Chung
Published May 11, 2007
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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Almost exactly two years after a 150-foot part of a 600-foot retaining wall next to the Castle Village apartment buildings collapsed into the Henry Hudson Parkway, the Department of Buildings is ready to release its report. The Post have the exclusive and says DOB investigators "determined that the managers of the apartment complex and an engineering firm brought in to examine the wall knew the structure was at imminent risk of falling." The DOB feels the firm could have warned the city about the wall's instability, since its engineers had seen the "65-foot-high wall move 9 inches away from the hillside in less than a week."
Langan Engineering, the firm contracted by Castle Village apartments, said they disagreed with the findings, "We acted properly by reporting our grave concerns about the wall to Castle Village way back in 2003. We recommended that repairs be made to the wall within a year and that the wall movement be monitored. Castle Village ignored our recommendation."
The wall collapse caused millions of cubic feet of dirt to fall onto the Henry Hudson Parkway, crushing cars and took about a year to clean up. The city stuck Castle Village with the bill last year, and the building, in turn, asked its residents to pay around $23,000 each.
Top photograph of the collapsed wall by jenchung on Flickr; bottom photograph of nearly completed wall (as of February 11, 2007) by jschumacher on Flickr
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Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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