Police closed a portion of Fulton Street Thursday night when a postcard-sized chunk of glass fell from the 34th floor of a luxury residential tower onto a usually busy sidewalk near the corner of Rockwell Place.
No one was injured by the glass, but one resident who saw the building surrounded by fire trucks and police cars on her walk home around 9:15 pm said the incident confirmed her fears the new high-rises going up in the area might not be built up to snuff.
“It’s scary, I often think about how I hope these sites are all really safe,” said Kate Maroney, who lives in Fort Greene. “There’s been such a boom of new construction in the past year, I’ve often been marveling at how fast these buildings are going up.”
The 4-inch-by-6-inch piece of glass fell as a result of structural failure of the 42-story building’s glass facade, according to Department of Buildings spokesman Alexander Schnell. He said the tumble isn’t indicative of a larger structural problem at the building known as 66 Rockwell Place, and the issue is confined to the glass wall that now has a piece missing.
But falling glass is a rare occurrence in the city, said Schnell. where plunging brick, concrete, and stone are more likely dangers,
The building’s developer, the Dermot Company, has been ordered to construct a sidewalk shed which is already being constructed, said Schnell.
The Department of Buildings has issued a summons to Dermot, which will then have to make its case in front of a judge at the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings. The judge will make the final call on whether or not it will receive a penalty for the fall, according to Schnell.
The intersection where the glass fell is just blocks away from busy Flatbush Avenue and across the street from Bric and the Brooklyn Academy of Music Harvey Theater, making it a miracle the reflector didn’t hit anyone strolling along the much-used sidewalk, said Maroney.
“It’s almost surprising, people are always walking on Fulton,” she said.
The building has received 26 complaints, including two in which construction workers were hit in the head with falling debris and 27 violations from the city, according to records.
66 Rockwell Place opened in March 2013 rents apartments ranging from $2,750 for a studio to $5,600 a month for a two bedroom. Aside from its flying glass, the building made headlines in 2014 for its inability to fill its below-market-rate units because people in the area were too rich to qualify.
Dermot did not return a request for comment by press time.
