#13279 Hackensack officials should also cast a wary eye on prospective neighbors. The LTACH's application boasts 5 levels of underground parking requiring the removal of 5 garage levels worth of soil in addition to possible blasting to get down that low. Can a neighborhood ever have too much impervious surface? Hope the state comes over to Hackensack to have a look.
http://www.northjersey.com/bergen/071710_Towers_collapse_leads_officials_to_cast_a_wary_eye_on_its_neighbors.htmlNorthjersey.com
Tower's collapse leads officials to cast a wary eye on its neighbors
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Last updated: Sunday July 18, 2010, 9:41 AM
BY LINDY WASHBURN
The Record
STAFF WRITER
The luxury apartment tower at 300 Prospect Ave. is one of a dozen tall residential complexes that transformed a leafy boulevard of stately homes in Hackensack into a high-rise haven for retirees and young professionals in the 1980s and ’90s. As crews worked to shore up the building Saturday, concern focused on whether the others might also be vulnerable to collapse.
City Construction Official Joseph Mellone said the state Department of Community Affairs will help guide the follow-up investigation, and determine whether inspections are needed in other high-rises along the densely populated strip of Prospect Avenue between Passaic and Essex streets.
“My immediate concern [Friday] was the remaining buildings around the area, that have similar construction, built around the same years, built the same way,” Mellone said. “We are going to look into all of that.”
It wasn’t clear on Saturday whether the cause of the collapse was specific to the building, such as a water leak, or if it was due to a more general problem.
A consultant engineer’s report to building management on March 30 said that a significant amount of water began pouring through a ceiling gap into the first floor of the parking garage and was noticed on March 25. The water carried soil and sand with it, the report said. Residents said they drove through a curtain of water to enter the parking garage.
“If we can identify exactly what happened here, then we can see if there is any other similar situation that can create the same kind of problem,” Hackensack City Manager Stephen Lo Iacono said. “If there is, we will take a look.”
No list of planned inspections had been prepared, he added. “There may be no concerns.”
The state bureau of housing inspection, within the Department of Community Affairs, conducts building inspections of multifamily dwellings every five years, with additional inspections when a complaint is received. No one at the department could be reached on Saturday.
But an attorney for a half-dozen residents of 300 Prospect Ave. said state inspectors should check in neighboring buildings.
“If there are soil conditions that are similar in the adjacent buildings, then I think the state had better step in right away,” said Sam Davis, of Davis, Sapirstein & Salomon in Teaneck. The state should “do an inspection of the footings of all the high-rises there, and make sure they’re sound. For whatever reason — a change in drainage patterns, because there is so much impervious surface in that area — perhaps soil conditions have changed in the last decade.”
A resident of another Prospect Avenue apartment building said that in light of the collapse, an inspection would be a good idea. “I think the majority of these buildings are safe,” said Sandy Butler of Bristol House, “but it does give you the willies a little bit.”
The city touched off the building binge on Hackensack’s hill with a change to the zoning code in 1969 that permitted construction of buildings up to 30 stories tall along a multiblock swatch of Prospect. The first, called the Stratford, was built in 1970.
Others followed with names like Camelot, Whitehall and Excelsior. In the peak years of 1986 and 1987, the city issued building permits for more than 1,000 residential units each year.
In its effort to prevent parking problems from arising, the zoning code required that each project have 1½ on-site parking spaces per unit, plus an extra 10 percent additional spaces for visitors.
Staff Writers Andrea Alexander and Monsey Alvarado contributed to this article. E-mail: washburn@northjersey.com