In New York, 8 emergency parking lots were closed: they could collapse at any moment

A parking lot in Times Square was partially closed after conditions were found to be unsafe due to a lack of steel poles. She became the 8th closed parking after the collapse of the building in Manhattan. Writes about it CBS News.

The Department of Buildings (DOB) said the 9-story parking lot on West 40th Street was missing steel supports, corroded, and had non-functioning drainage.

DOB issued an order to close the basement and several floors. Officials said the rest of the building is still functional.

The owner of the building is obliged to carry out emergency rescue work.

This is not the first parking lot to be closed since the collapse of a parking lot in Lower Manhattan.

On the subject: New York plans to introduce paid parking permits for residents of the city

The deadly collapse prompted New York City Mayor Eric Adams to launch an investigation. CBS News.

As a result, the Department of Buildings issued seven executive orders to close parking lots in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

A full closure order has been issued for East 9th Street in the East Village. The parking lot is owned and operated by the same company that hit 57 Ann Street. Buildings officials say the building was in disrepair.

On Madison Street on the Lower East Side, DOB reports that the 11-story building had broken concrete slabs within the structure and had vertical cracks in columns, walls and ceilings.

And in Bedford-Stuyvesant (Brooklyn) in a garage on Fulton Street, steel reinforcement beams were found that showed signs of corrosion.

Parking on Madison Street has only received a partial closure order, so it's still open. But DOB reports that a total of 71 cars were parked there, and the parking lot is only designed for 32.

“Even how different it was 100 years ago, when people didn’t use these parking spaces at all, could make a huge difference,” said Luis Ceferino, professor of civil and urban engineering at New York University.

Of the buildings that have been ordered to close by the DOB, some date back to the 1920s and 30s.

“It can be very difficult for a non-specialist to see some of the problems that might happen or where those problems might be,” Ceferino said. “I would advise people to trust the Building Department and not try to make estimates on their own.”

As ForumDaily New York wrote earlier:

• In the bottom Manhattan parking lot collapsed. As a result of the incident, one person died, six were injured (all of them are employees of the parking lot).
• According to city records, parking lot owners are wealthy New Yorkers from Long Island. They have been buying and selling real estate for decades.