DISORDER ON COURT

DUMBO-based Two Trees Management, owned by father-and-son development
team David and Jed Walentas, is building the 321-unit mixed-income high-rise,
which will also include a YMCA and ground-floor retail, on Court Street
between Atlantic Avenue and State Street. A 700-space, underground parking
garage has been in operation at the site since September.

Around 11 am, on Friday, Jan. 7, construction workers excavating the concrete
sidewalk along Court Street also dug up and removed the 4-foot-tall, green,
metal box that serves as a junction for telephone customers, said Verizon
officials. Verizon called police.

Charles Frattini, 43, the project manager for DUMBO-based 30 Main Construction
Company — which is owned by the Walentases — was arrested on
charges of criminal tampering and criminal mischief after Verizon technicians,
alerted by more than 50 calls from customers who complained their telephone
service was out, arrived at the construction site and discovered the junction
box missing.

“When we got there, there was no box at all,” said Verizon spokesman
John Bonomo. He said the pedestal — 8 feet long and 4 feet tall —
had been sturdily bolted into the concrete.

“The contractor from [30 Main] told us it had been hit by a truck,
and subsequently they took it away for us,” Bonomo said.

“Sometime around the holidays they’d told us that a pedestal
box that we had in front of that location needed to be moved off the sidewalk,”
said Bonomo.

During the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, he said, someone
from the construction company had requested — in “fairly vehement
terms” — that the box be moved.

One week later, said Bonomo, “we had started the physical work of
laying the cables to go to a new connection box,” which he said was
in progress when the lines were abruptly ripped out by 30 Main Construction
workers.

“Based on the prior conversation we had had back at the holiday’s
end, and the fact that the service was technically vandalized … we
take that very seriously,” Bonomo said.

Verizon called police at the 84th Precinct, who arrested Frattini at the
site.

A spokesman in the Brooklyn district attorney’s office said Wednesday
that his office had not filed charges against Frattini, 30 Main Construction
or the Walentases regarding the removal of the Verizon box.

Jed Walentas said the removal of the Verizon pedestal was an accident.

“Charlie [Frattini] was arrested because Verizon was upset about
the accident, and he was released the same day,” said Walentas.

“I feel terrible that people lost their phone service,” he said.
“Somebody made a mistake and I appologize for it. “There’s
a risk that comes with construction and we do our best. On balance I’m
pretty proud of our record in minizing disruptions to the community.”

Councilman David Yassky’s district office, across Court Street from
the construction site, was among those that lost phone service.

“This seems like an accident,” said Yassky spokesman Evan Thies.
“It was a huge, huge mistake, but it seems like the first mistake
that the crew has made.”

Eugene Sparano, a union organizer with the New York branch for the AFL-CIO
in Building and Construction Trades, told The Brooklyn Papers that any
laborer, union or non-union, would know better than to remove a telephone
relay box.

“People don’t just do things like this,” he said. “You
don’t just tear up a Verizon panel carrying God knows how many phone
lines.”

“The developer has no regards for the community,” said Sparano,
who spends his days monitoring construction sites where non-union workers
are employed, often accompanied by a giant inflatable rat.

Two Trees employs both union and non-union labor at the Court House site.

Ironically, according to the city Department of Transportation, the sidewalk
construction shouldn’t have happened at all — a DOT permit authorizing
such work had expired and was not yet renewed.

DOB records show two stop-work orders for expired permits were issued
Dec. 29.

On Monday following the Verizon incident, the DOT issued eight violations
to 30 Main Construction, adding to the eight already recorded and totaling
$6,100 in fines, according to agency spokesman Craig Chin.

Jed Walentas said that all necessary permits were in place prior to their
once-a-year expiration.

“We’re dillegenly pursuing getting the violations removed and
working with the DOB and DOT in getting the permits reinstated,”
he said.

Kenneth Lazar, a Buildings Department community liaison, said that as
of Jan. 3, his department had received a request to re-issue necessary
work permits for the Court House site.

“It is their responsibility to renew their permit in a timely manner,”
he said.

Pat Mazzei, a Bricklayers Local 1 overseer working on the Court House
project, said that shortly after the Verizon incident on Friday he watched
water gush onto Atlantic Avenue from a fire hydrant at the site whose
cap had been opened.

“If a construction site wanted to use a hydrant they would need to
get a permit — maybe a meter, too — and typically somebody from
[the Department of Environmental Protection] would show up to turn the
thing on and turn the thing off,” explained Ian Michaels, a DEP spokesman.

Though he was unable to comment on whether the Court House site had a
permit to use city water, Michaels said that if a site was permitted to
use the water “a hydrant would never run full-blast for an hour,”
as witnesses reported on Friday.

Asked if the incident involving the removal and disappearance of the Verizon
box was common among construction jobs, Bonomo said, “No, definitely
not.”

“Occasionally we get contractors that do dig up cables. It happens,
and you know, accidents happen. I’m not sure this is … the same
beast,” Bonomo said of the box removal.

Jed Walentas said his company helped located the Verizon box and returned
it.