Scarano Settles; Can't Grade His Own Papers

Friday, August 4, 2006, by Joey

Here's a quickie, but one that's noteworthy to many Curbed readers. Controversial architect Robert Scarano has settled his case with the Department of Buildings, the Times' William Neuman reports. Scarano—who had been accused of dozens of building code and zoning violations, as well as unsafe construction site conditions that led to the death of a worker—will drop out of the whole "architects can approve their own plans" program, instead having to run his designs by city examiners. There was no admission of guilt or liability on Scarano's part.
· Brooklyn: Architect Settles Charges [NYT]
· It Happened One Weekend: Scarano Scrutiny, Cipriani Cuties [Curbed]
· Tower of Bowery Update: Now with Added Pencil! [Curbed]

BONUS: Blog Brooklyn Ramblings has its first Scarano experience, coming across plans for a weird-lookin' building on Fourth Avenue and 12th Street.

Filed under Architecture, Brooklyn,

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Comments (6 extant)

A slap on the wrist for Mr. Scarano...this just goes to prove that DOB officials were complicit in his "Creative Zoning," and he had it in writing.

By Anonymous at August 4, 2006 9:50 AM

I guess the message here is that you can completely ignore city zoning ordinances and get away with it. It used to be that city agencies protected citizens from this kind of chicanery. The reason we even have a building code in New York is thanks in large part to landlords and builders whose reckless building practices led to some pretty terrible tenaments.

I wonder who in Scarano's office will file the self cert applications now?

By Dan at August 4, 2006 9:50 AM

There is one set of rules for 98% of the people and a different set of rules for those people who have enough power or political connections to do whatever they want and get away with it. (Can you say Robert Moses?) Welcome to corruption in NYC!

By anon at August 4, 2006 3:12 PM

Re: #3

This has nothing to do with different sets of rules. It's not corruption, but rather incompetence. I have seen how little DOB examiners actually do to enforce the zoning rules for applicants big or small when reading plans or approving re-consideration requests OR to police self-certification by architects. Every once in a while a random audit turns up something, but very rarely.

By anonymous at August 4, 2006 4:36 PM

I would say that what is going on is a mixture of incompetence and corruption. A small number of sleazy architects and developers are blatantly cheating on the zoning rules knowing that if they can get their buildings to a certain level of completion the DOB is not going to make them downsize their buildings. For instance if they can get buyers into the buildings all the better because then the DOB has shown it can't stomach taking on all the poor victimized buyers as well as the offending architects and developers. At this point the developers are allowed to buy up air rights with laxer rules applied to this process than ordinarily would apply. So the developer gets to keep his building (with its high profit)in its gargantuan state even though it would not have been approved if subject to a normal zoning analysis at the beginning of the process.

By anon at August 4, 2006 5:33 PM

the Brooklyn DOB is a joke, incompetent morons.

By Anonymous at December 28, 2006 8:20 PM