I know I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: maintain what you have first before adding on.
A while back some tenants in a Clinton Street apartment building were flooded out. Rainwater backed up on the building’s flat roof and after it reached critical mass – BOOM! – the pool flushed down, ruining everything below. One witness said she saw ceiling tiles and other debris rushing out the front door.
Building inspectors perform a vital service. But with new properties being added, such as the housing at the old base, Plattsburgh’s inspectors are overloaded, can’t keep up.
And so we end up with the incident that occurred on Saturday afternoon during the Battle of Plattsburgh festivities. A large concrete panel came crashing down on Bridge Street, shattering all over the sidewalk. Fortunately no one was hurt.
The concrete fell from the building on the corner of Bridge and Margaret Streets. It’s an old structure, one of the oldest in the city. Before a furniture store moved in, the building housed Zachary’s Pizza and Bogart’s Bar.
What’s ironical is that the concrete fell all over the new plaza section that had been installed during the summer. Once again Plattsburgh proves the astuteness of its attention to detail.
Spend money on new stonework and benches, but don’t add another inspector to make sure that the buildings don’t fall apart and ruin all the new stuff.
As you can see from the accompanying picture, it appears another section of the building is getting ready to Humpty Dumpty.
Over the years there’s been talk of rehabilitating downtown. Remember the Seven Points Plan? According to an article in the June 8th, 2005 edition of the Press-Republican (page A1), then-Mayor Dan Stewart talked about repaving and fixing up Protection Avenue (Alley), running from Margaret Street to Oak Street. The mayor stated that the alley floor would be raised to fix the “droopy” feeling.
Maybe the city should start looking at its droopy buildings. Until then, heads up!
2 comments:
Maybe the buildings were inspected prior to building the walkway and all the drilling, jackhammering, etc. during the actual construction phase made the buildings unstable? (Of course, one would hope that a building inspector examining a construction project taking place next to older buildings would have thought to re-examine structural integrity after the project was finished...)I hope City Hall takes note of the panel you circled.
Anon:
As you can see from more recent posts about this issue, City Hall looked at the problem. A building inspector was on the scene the other day.
Luke
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