Esplanade Pleads Guilty for Façade Falling and Killing Child
The developer will pay $50,000 for failing to maintain its property at 305 West End Ave. where pieces of the building fell, killing a two-year-old and injuring her grandmother.
NEW YORK CITY—Esplanade Venture Partnership pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors, criminal violations for failing to maintain the building façade at 305 West End Ave. in Manhattan. In 2015, a piece of the exterior wall fell to the sidewalk, striking and killing a two-year-old girl and injuring her grandmother.
The building is on Manhattan’s Upper West Side between W. 74th and W. 75th streets.
The Department of Buildings filed criminal charges against Esplanade in criminal court in 2016, for failing to maintain their building even after being repeatedly warned of the dangerous condition of the façade.
The judge issued the highest fine allowed by law, $25,000 for each of the two charges totaling $50,000. Alexander Scharf, the managing agent of Esplanade was also charged and agreed to pay $5,000 in restitution to the city.
“No one should feel unsafe walking on our city’s sidewalks, least of all a child,” says acting buildings commissioner Thomas Fariello who announced the guilty pleas. He adds the case sends a message to property owners that if they endanger the public by refusing to maintain their buildings, they will be held accountable.
The buildings department reports that Esplanade owned 305 West End Ave. at the time of the fatal incident, but sold it in 2016.
In 2016, Esplanade hired a licensed engineer Maqsood Faruqi, to perform a façade inspection at the property. He was indicted for filing fraudulent inspection reports with the department, which claimed that the façade was in a safe condition prior to the fatality. Faruqi pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charge and agreed to surrender all of his filing privileges with the department.
City laws require that buildings including their walls must be maintained in a safe condition. The city requires that owners of buildings over six stories retain a qualified licensed professional to examine the façades, and report the conditions they find to the DOB. The department alleges that despite recommendations following one of these inspections to repair cracks in the exterior walls, Esplanade failed to repair the building, allowing the façade to further deteriorate.
Following this incident, the DOB changed its procedures to increase façade safety enforcement:
(1) The DOB established a new system to track inspection reports through the department’s online filing portal.
(2) With buildings that fail to file a compliance report by the required deadline, the DOB will conduct an inspection and, if needed, install sidewalk sheds at the location at the owner’s expense and the owner will also accrue civil penalties until an acceptable report is filed.
(3) For any building that files a report indicating there are dangerous conditions, the owner must install public protection immediately and will be given 90 days to correct these conditions. If the landlord fails to do so, the city will conduct an inspection and, if needed, place public protection or sidewalk sheds at the location at the owner’s expense.