Dive Brief:
- New York City has assessed penalties on over 400 property owners as a consequence of their missing the year-end deadline to submit mandatory engineering inspection reports for parking structures on their properties, New York City Department of Buildings Commissioner Jimmy Oddo announced last Thursday.
- Of the 1,056 properties that were required to submit their initial reports under the city’s Periodic Inspection for Parking Structures program, or PIPS, before Jan. 1, the DOB has received reports from only 655, reflecting a noncompliance rate of 38%, per a news release issued last Thursday.
- The DOB moved up the deadline for compliance for 3,317 parking structures across Upper Manhattan and the outer boroughs following the collapse of a parking structure in Manhattan last April that resulted in one death and five injuries.
Dive Insight:
Property owners in the Upper West Side, Lower Manhattan and Midtown who did not file the required reports under the PIPS program before Jan. 1 have been fined $1,000. They face additional fines of $1,000 each month, with an extra $5,000 to be levied at year end for persistent noncompliance, totaling up to $17,000 in penalties every year, DOB said in the press release.
The PIPS program originally stipulated that parking structure owners in the Upper East Side, Upper Manhattan and all of Brooklyn must submit their initial engineering reports to the city by Dec. 31, 2025, while those in Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx were required to file their first engineering reports by Dec. 31, 2027. Now owners in those areas need to file a one-time initial report to DOB by Aug. 1 in addition to meeting those deadlines.
“These inspection reports for parking structures are not just more paperwork for property owners, they are a powerful new tool to protect the public against hazardous building conditions,” Commissioner Oddo said in the release. While Oddo expressed satisfaction with the majority of property owners who have complied with the law and taken measures to repair their buildings, he urged those who have not fulfilled their legal responsibilities to promptly submit late reports if they want to avoid accumulating monthly penalties. The penalties, Oddo emphasized, are ongoing until compliance is achieved.
DOB staff are in the process of reviewing the reports they have received so far from the owners of 655 properties and are uploading those they have accepted to the DOB NOW Public Portal website for public accessibility, the release said.
The DOB said it expects compliance for this new inspection program to improve as property owners become more familiar with the new requirement and as additional late reports are submitted.
The penalty enforcement structure is “substantially similar” to the department’s Facade Inspection and Safety Program, or Local Law 11, which has historically had high compliance rates, the DOB said in the release. The FISP requires periodic inspection and repair of building facades on buildings of more than six stories to prevent facade elements from falling on individuals below. That program imposes a monthly $1,000 civil penalty for filing a facade inspection report late and a $5,000 penalty annually for failure to file the report.
Parking structure owners in other areas of New York City will also be required to submit PIPS reports in the coming years, following a “timeline cycle” in which each parking structure undergoes inspection once every six years, the DOB said. It noted that this inspection requirement, initially instituted on Jan. 1, 2022, represents a significant improvement in the city’s supervision of parking structures, which require regular maintenance due to their susceptibility to wear and tear.
Correction: A previous version of this story erred in its description of the timing of the fines. The city has already levied $1,000 fines on over 400 property owners who missed the first deadline. It also erred in its description of PIPS advancing the reporting requirement timelines; it has already done so. We have also clarified which property owners face an Aug. 1 deadline and corrected the description of the Facade Inspection and Safety Program and its penalties.
