The city finally cracked down on the most reckless construction business in the city.
The Department of Buildings yanked the registration and permits of a Sheepshead Bay contractor that racked up a whopping $600,000 worth of building violations — and that was after working out a deal with the city to payback more than $800,000 that it already owed for violations related to workplace hazards.
The unprecedented action came as a last resort after repeated fines failed to deter the contractor’s lax safety practices, according to the city’s buildings honcho.
“The department will not tolerate any abuse of the construction codes at the expense of work site or public safety,” said buildings commissioner Rick Chandler.
The building’s department took the unusually harsh step of revoking MRMD NY Corporation’s registration and active work permits at no less than 433 work sites across the city, after singling out the devil-may-care Avenue U construction business for accumulating more violations than any general contractor registered in the city.
Last November, the construction company’s boss Michelle San Miguel struck an agreement with the city Law Department to fork over the $868,325 it owed for outstanding violations, and promised to clean up her act and keep her workers safe, according to the buildings department.
But it took San Miguel’s company less than a year to rack up more than $600,000 in additional fines, leaving the city to conclude that she had no intention of reforming how she operated, so the buildings department took the radical step of halting her operation by revoking its registration and work permits.
Now, 433 work sites will remain inactive until developers can find new contractors to step in.
It’s unclear how or whether the city expects to collect the $1.47 million owed by San Miguel, and a spokesperson for the buildings department confirmed that the registration revocation was permanent, so the contractor could not resume operations even the fines were paid.
