NEW YORK CITY

Last week, we saw how a five-story, 19th-century tenement in Manhattan settled an inch and a half as a result of work on the new nine-story luxury condominium being constructed next door.

Steel "raker" beams were put in place to support the tenement's wall, cosmetic repairs were made to exterior cracks on the street side of the building so that costly sidewalk sheds would not have to be erected, and screw jacks supported the cracked basement joists. Eventually, work resumed, and the underpinning was completed in May without further incident. 

Permanent repairs — to damaged windows, doors, walls, and joists — will be addressed once the major construction work is complete. "This," says Christine Hobson, a structural engineer with RAND Engineering & Architecture, "is the worst scenario I've ever dealt with."

Last week, we brought you the story of a new nine-story luxury condominium building being constructed next to a five-story, 19th-century tenement in Manhattan. It provides a concise case study of what boards need to do and what they need to avoid — as well as the kinds of surprises they should expect — when an adjacent lot becomes a construction site. The board at the tenement decided that, rather than try to fight the inevitable, they would instead establish an amicable working relationship with the developer. But even then they had to prepare for the unknowns ahead. 

Enclosures may need to come down for legal reasons. Many enclosures were installed before there were any regulations in place. And so throughout the city, enclosures went up in a variety of ways: some with both Department of Buildings (DOB) permits and board approval, some with just one or the other, and some with neither. And now each presents boards with a different scenario.

When the cops finally came for Michael Richter, the board members of one Queens co-op knew they had done the right thing. Richter, owner of Charter Management, had acted as managing agent for Forest Hills South Owners, a 605-unit co-op spread across seven buildings. They fired him.

On July 13, 2010, police arrested Richter and charged him with five counts of second-degree grand larceny and five counts of first-degree falsification of business records. Richter was also charged with embezzling almost $1 million in tenant maintenance fees throughout a six-year period from five co-op buildings in Jamaica, Forest Hills, Rego Park, and Elmhurst.

Not necessarily. Herb Kamens is a longtime board member and current secretary-treasurer at the two-building Carlton co-op in Lindenwood Village, Queens. "The last time we redid the balconies [with painting and waterproofing] about eight or nine years ago, we insisted that people take off their enclosures. And it hurt a lot of people because when they took the enclosures off they couldn't put them back properly and [the enclosures] collapsed," he recalls. 

Say your co-op is having some large equipment installed. Who bears the risk on contract? The engineer who designed the specs, or the contractor who is installing the equipment? If something goes wrong, you'd figure that it's the contractor's job to fix it, or that you'd be covered under the manufacturer's warranty. Yet that may not always be the case.

What happens if you're told that neither company assumes the risk if equipment is installed incorrectly or doesn't perform per spec and that you need to pay someone else to try again? It doesn't sound right to Scott Greenspun. A partner at the law firm Braverman Greenspun, he notes: "If the equipment is installed incorrectly, your recourse is against the contractor. If the equipment does not perform to specifications, your recourse is against the manufacturer and possibly against the contractor."

Marathon Energy's power and gas affiliate has been ranked 16th in the 2015 Inc. 500 list of the fastest-growing private companies in the Metro NYC area. The listing of companies is based on annual revenue growth over three years of operation. The affiliate, Marathon Power, recorded a three-year growth rate of 2674%, ranking the company 147th in the United States, and ninth in the energy industry nationwide. Marathon has also launched Marathon Fuels, dedicated to wholesale fuels sales. To view the complete list, click here.

When a balcony is enclosed, the process can be as simple as nailing screens to a wooden frame or as elaborate as knocking down part of the outer wall to extend an extant room. Even the simpler of these two types can present safety issues.

"People do install screen enclosures on their balconies," says engineer Eric Cowley, principal at Cowley Engineering, "and the Department of Buildings (DOB) requires people to get permits for screens and divider walls" so that they're compliant with wind loads. And for good reason. 

Ever seen an enclosed balcony? "A balcony enclosure can be one of two things," says attorney Abbey Goldstein, a partner at Goldstein & Greenlaw. "One is you put up a simple plastic or other covering around it so when you go out you don't have to deal with wind and the elements. It could be screened — some people call that a 'Florida room' or sunroom. And the other is people making them into actual rooms. They'll knock down the walls and enclose [the area, so it becomes] an extension [of] the apartment."

Many co-op and condo owners in high-rises have such enclosed balconies and boards are now facing new questions. Among them: How do they fit in with required façade inspections? What are their legal status? What do they do to your building's floor area ratio (FAR), a measure of your building's maximum allowable use?

Here's the first of a six-part series that breaks down what you need to know:

The construction crane is, once again, the unofficial bird of New York City. As the latest building boom gains steam — with a flurry of new construction on empty lots, demolition of existing buildings to make way for new ones, plus additions to existing buildings — more and more co-op and condo boards are forced to deal with construction projects next door. 

The construction of a new nine-story luxury condominium building next to a five-story, 19th-century tenement in Manhattan provides a concise case study of what boards need to do and what they need to avoid — as well as the kinds of surprises they should expect — when an adjacent lot becomes a construction site.

Burying your head in the sand is not an option.