Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Notes from Meeting with Clarett Group


Clarett has secured Roger's Marvel Architects, the same group who designed the townhouses on State Street. Clarett plans to build a five-story building with a 15 ft. setback leading to an additional two stories on Court St., which will wrap around to Union. There will be a few units on Union with separate entrances. In total, there will be 32 3-bedroom apartments, with an average square footage of 1,900 ft., plus 10 homes with 3,000+ square feet.

The townhouses will be lined-up at the lot line to fit in with the existing houses on Sackett and Union. The houses will be 20-feet wide and 50-feet deep, with 40 yards in total.
In addition, there will be one level of underground parking.


Rendition of Rogers Marvel's State St. Property


The first level of the building is reserved for retail space. It is unclear how Clarett will lease this space, but suggestions were clearly a food market.

Clarett says that they will begin demolition in January, construction in March and will finish in an estimated fifteen months.

In the meeting Clarett responded to construction concerns by assuring that they only work between 7 AM and 6 PM.



The New York Department of Building’s website is very useful to keep track of violations and complaints issued about construction sites. Since an address of the location is required for the search, you can use the Clarett Group's site to view the addresses of their past and current projects.

The most common complaints concerned noisy and after-hours work, shaking in the neighboring residences, and falling debris, sometimes causing damage to cars, sometimes injuring pedestrians. I suggest checking out the 230 Ashland Place property (the Forte in Fort Greene) as it's their only BK property. There were 15 complaints issued so far and 7 violations. A Clarett building on 29th st. in Manhattan has received 30 complaints and 24 violations and currently a stop work order exists.


Even if these violations and complaints are typical for any construction site, it's still a concern if debris is falling on the block, work is being done at 5 AM (despite Clarett’s commitment to 7 AM – 6 PM work), and shaking from construction is damaging neighboring buildings.

As you can see from the site, your 311 calls are recorded by the Department of Building and are a part of public record. Use it!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Correction: While most of the 32 condo units will be 3-bedroom units, there will also be 2-bedroom and 4-bedroom units. Also, the stop work order on our 29th street project has been lifted.

David Lowin

gtrotta said...

I have posted full notes of the 12/21 meeting at http://cgunion.wik.is.

All best for 2008,
Gian Trotta