The New York City Department of Buildings (DOB) released its February 2021 enforcement bulletin on Wednesday, March 31, which provides highlights of the agency’s actions to sanction and deter bad actors in the construction industry through the enforcement of safety laws and codes of conduct for construction professionals.

The bulletin includes summaries of DOB-imposed disciplinary actions, including penalties and license suspensions and revocations.

According to DOB, the actions outlined below represent a portion of DOB’s overall work to enforce the City’s building codes and safety laws, in addition to the thousands of inspections conducted and violations issued by the agency each month for illegal building and construction conditions.

The agency took a number of major enforcement actions in February, including the following:

• 59 violations and $1,115,012 in penalties, including daily penalties, issued for illegal building alterations at seven locations.
• 23 violations and $232,000 in penalties, including daily penalties, issued for illegal transient use at six separate locations.
• 39 violations and $450,000 in penalties issued for failure to safeguard construction sites on 37 separate occasions.
• 12 violations and $120,000 in penalties issued to 11 different individuals for failure to carry out duties of construction superintendents.

Below are individual enforcement highlights for The Bronx for the month:

• $105,000 in total penalties issued to Ved Parkash, owner of 750 Grand Concourse, Bronx, for illegally converting more than three dwellings and for adding single room occupancies (SRO) in various apartments.

• $68,500 in total penalties, including daily penalties, issued to Watson France, owner of 828 Faile Street, Bronx, for performing work without a permit in creating three illegal SROs in the cellar as well as two bathrooms and a shared kitchen.

• $10,000 in penalties issued to General Contractor SKF Contractors, for failure to safeguard a construction site at 246 Echo Place, Bronx, after C-joists collapsed and fell from the 7th to the 6th floor while workers were loading cement boards using a boom truck, injuring two workers.

• $5,000 in penalties issued to Tracking Number Holder Urena Construction & Design Inc. for failure to comply with Executive Orders regarding COVID-19 health and safety regulations, including not having the required COVID-19 safety measures signage, no cleaning station logs, nor a contact communication plan at a construction site at 157 West 179th Street, Bronx.

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.