Crane Installation Rankles Upper East Side School's Neighbors

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — The founder of a group of neighbors to the Chapin School — an elite, all-girls private school on the Upper East Side — claimed that recent construction work to install a crane on East 84th Street was done unsafely and at times the school is not permitted to conduct work.

Chapin installed a crane on the north side of East 84th Street between York and East End Avenues during the weekend of Oct. 21 and 22, Lisa Paule, the co-founder of watchdog group Serene 84, told Patch. The crane work was done at distances unsafe to occupied residential buildings and workers allegedly violated a 7 a.m. construction start time, Paule claimed.

A spokesman from the Department of Buildings told Patch that no complaints about unsafe crane work on the Chapin site were made with the department during the weekend the crane was installed. A spokesperson for the school also told Patch that the crane installation was performed successfully and without incident.

"Last weekend’s successful erection of a crane onsite was managed by engineering experts and construction professionals, and overseen by the NYC Department of Buildings," a spokesman for the school said in a statement. "Chapin understands and is sympathetic to the disruptions to quality-of-life that construction can bring. Since summer 2015, the school has convened regular public meetings with our neighbors every 4-6 weeks to discuss the details of our project and to solicit feedback, and we will continue to do and to provide advance notice of worksite activity as we move forward to completion."

The crane installation is part of an expansion project by Chapin to construction regulation-sized gymnasium, new classrooms for the arts and STEM classes and a cafeteria for its younger students, a Chapin spokesman told Patch.

Serene 84 also complained of "intense noise" resembling an air raid siren as crane parts were lifted above East 84th Street. A spokesperson for the Chapin School told Patch that the air horn sounds heard coming from the construction site are a required safety regulation put in place by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Paule told Patch that the city bears responsibility for the unsafe work by permitting crane construction on East 84th Street instead of East End Avenue, which would have meant less work near residential buildings.

"This expansion is unconscionable and sets a terrible example for impressionable young minds the school is supposed to be educating. It shows children that it is reasonable to selfishly pursue actions without consideration of their effects on others and that if one has the funds to do it, any objective can be achieved - regardless of the harm it may cause," Paule told Patch in a statement.

"This is reprehensible, and certainly contrary to what our future generation should be taught: That community is important and that we need to be decent, kind and respectful to one another. Chapin is a colossal fail."

The Chapin site was given an after hours variance for work the weekend of the crane installation, so work was permitted between the hours of 6 a.m. and 9 p.m., the spokesman said. The only complaint stemming from the Chapin site this year in regards to after hours work was made on July 22 and was unfounded, a Department of Buildings spokesman told Patch.

One unscheduled delivery was made around 3:30 a.m. during the weekend of the crane installation, a Chapin spokesman told Patch. The delivery lasted about 20 minutes and consisted of work tools being dropped off at the site, the spokesman said. The school is investigating as to why the delivery was made despite school officials telling contractors not to make any deliveries before 6 a.m., the spokesman told Patch.

The work being done at Chapin is part of a seven-year expansion project at the private school. The site was identified as the noisiest construction site in New York City in an August 2017 audit conducted by Sate Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

The state comptroller's audit found that the Chapin site had a total of 112 noise complaints — all stemming from after-hours construction — between Jan. 1, 2014 and June 30, 2016. Despite the after-hours noise complaints, an after hours variance for the site was approved 24 times during the audit period, according to the state comptroller's office.

"There was no indication that DOB staff assessed the continuing need, particularly for public safety concerns, for the [after hours variance] renewals," the audit reads.

A Chapin spokesman told Patch that the comptroller's audit occurred during the project's excavation phase, which was completed by the summer of 2016. Since the noisy excavation work has concluded, noise complaints at the site have tapered off, a Chapin spokesman told Patch.

Photos courtesy Serene 84