City Now Threatening to Demolish Broken Angel

It would appear that the city is ready to compound the despicable forced removal in handcuffs of the owner and creater of Clinton Hill's Broken Angel with its demolition. That is the disturbing news conveyed over the weekend by Gothamist, which got an email from Chris Wood, the son of the owner. It seems that if there are no plans to bring the building up to code, the Department of Buildings is threatening demolition and that, even with plans, they are saying they will do the work themselves and, then, pretty much take the property.

This is a heartbreaking and infuriating story and, even though most of you probably don't need us to tell you about something that was on Gothamist, it just makes us feel better to reproduce the email they posted:

We had a meeting on Friday with the Department of Buildings. We were told that they would begin demolition on the building in 3 weeks from now, if we do not submit plans by an architect/engineer to bring the building to code. The city would do the work and then place a lean on the property. To have the city do the work would zero out the value of the property and leave my parents with nothing. We understand that the Department of Buildings is in a difficult situation, as there are some safety concerns with the building. We are attempting to comply with the Department of Buildings, and would like to submit plans as soon as we can get an architect/ engineer on board. If any qualified individuals are willing to work with us in this short time frame we would very much appreciate it. I can be contacted at chriswood718@yahoo.com.

We truly hope that someone can help frame a compromise, common sense solution.

As an aside, we certainly hope that the Department of Buildings would move with the same deliberation to protect the thousands of Brooklynites whose quality of life is negatively impacted every day by construction practices that routinely violate city regs and that injure people.

[Photo courtesy silk cut/flickr]