BY TINA BENITEZ-EVES | A month and a half after three Second Ave. buildings collapsed in a fiery gas explosion, tenants across the street at 128 Second Ave. are still without gas and only just got their hot water turned back on. One tenant in particular, Stage restaurant, has been closed since March 29 — three days after the explosion — and is now locked in a heated legal battle with the building’s landlord, Icon Realty Management.
The Villager previously reported that Icon issued an eviction notice to Stage on April 13, accusing the restaurant, which has been at No. 128 for 35 years, of tampering with the building’s gas line.
Con Ed initially shut off the building’s gas on March 29 after a tenant reported smelling gas a few days after the disastrous explosion across the street.
In a statement, Stage’s owner, Roman Diakun, said that Con Ed told him that because he had a separate gas line going into his restaurant, if he hires a licensed plumber to check the pressure in the pipes, he could possibly restore gas service to the restaurant.
Diakun said the plumbers did realize that there was a leak and started to disconnect pipes in an attempt to find it. As a result, he said, he was fined since there was a stop-work order from the Department of Buildings in effect due to dozens of violations by Icon throughout the building and unrelated to Stage.
Diakun, who also lives in the building, paid the fine and hired a master plumber to obtain the necessary permits to get Stage back open, but was denied a work permit by the landlord and soon thereafter was asked to vacate the property by the end of April.
Stage subsequently sued Icon, while Diakun’s son, Andrew, started a crowdfunding campaign to help raise $10,000 for their legal fees.
Stage is not the only tenant having trouble getting the gas turned back on. The entire building is still without gas. Hot water was turned on last week but is only warm in some apartments, according to some tenants.
It’s just another setback for the residential tenants, many who have their own individual apartment issues, and have been in ongoing legal battles with the landlord, which purchased the building October 2013. Prior to the catastrophic building collapses across the street, tenants at No. 128 filed an “action for repairs and services” with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development against Icon.
Tenants have accused Icon of trying to push out rent-stabilized and rent-controlled tenants by means of inconsistent heat, broken fire escapes, lack of fire alarms and other violations.
The Cooper Square Committee, a neighborhood housing advocacy group, has been heavily involved in helping tenants at No. 128 with their ongoing building issues and legal battles.
“Initially, it was a shot across the bow to get them to the table to discuss the building issues and tenant harassment,” Yonatan Tadele, a tenant counselor at Cooper Square Committee, said of the H.P.D. complaint. “Then the explosion happened.”
On April 14, the tenants and Icon signed a stipulation in court addressing all the issues under the H.P.D. complaint. Icon agreed to resolve all issues — including restoring the building’s gas and addressing other individual repairs — within 45 days; hot water was to be turned on within 24 hours.
Icon is also addressing individual tenant repairs and other issues piecemeal, according to Tadele.
“This case is emblematic of Icon’s strategy of legal cases,” he said. ‘It’s ‘Landlord 101.’ You buy a building, shake the tree, rattle the branches and see what falls out.”
Prior to the collapse of the three tenements across the street, Icon only had 15 to 20 violations at 128 Second Ave., according to Tadele. More issues came to light following the March 26 gas-explosion tragedy. Violations at the time of the tenants’ court hearing numbered 89 and today stand at 107.
“I’ve never seen a case with a building that has had so many violations in so little time,” Tadele said, “from the Second Ave. collapse to now.”
He added that the new violations may be repeats of older violations that have not been resolved within an appropriate time frame, including the hot water, which took longer than 24 hours from the court date to restore.
“A lot of them have to do with the lack of gas in the building,” he said. “H.P.D. just re-registers the violation, and it counts again in their system.”
Icon recently told The Villager that it is working repairing the building and that the gas is the owner’s main concern. However, because of the 1920 building’s age, there’s concern that the gas pipes are old and may need to be replaced. According to the recent stipulation, Icon has until the end of May to get the building’s gas back up and running.
Tadele added that the tenants are meeting this week to discuss other pending legal matters and the recent resolution in court.
Meanwhile, in another issue, Christopher Dobrowolski, a rent-stabilized tenant who has lived at No. 128 since 1987, is being accused by Icon of running an illegal hotel. He admitted that he does travel often and has had friends and family stay at his apartment and stop in to care for his two cats.
But Dobrowolski stated that he has never run an ad for, or rented out, his apartment, and that he’s not planning on going anywhere, despite the costly legal fees to defend his rent-stabilized space.
“I love the East Village,” he said, “and I will not let them [Icon] scare me into moving out. It’s not going to happen. I’m confident that I did nothing wrong, and I have a belief in the justice system, and that it will find that I haven’t done anything.”
