A 30,000 square foot, three-story health club that was expected to open in June on the corner of 14th Street and Park Avenue has yet to open its doors because of delays by the city’s building inspector and zoning officer, club officials charged this week. Health Concepts, which has signed up almost 800 residents as members of the yet-to-open club, filed a suit in district court last week in the hope that a judge would force city officials to release the permits it needs to undertake final construction. Officials at the club said that final construction will only take five weeks to complete once the permits are released.
Joel Mestre, the city’s zoning officer, and Al Arezzo, the building inspector, said this week that they were confident the court would find that they had merely been doing their jobs and that it was actually the club that was at fault for the delay. Judge Melvin Kracov is expected to hear the case Oct. 10.
Trouble appears to have begun in May when company owners determined that they had to make repairs to the 100-year-old Hostess building where they hoped to build their new state-of-the-art club. Leaks in the roof had gotten so bad that the 100-year-old wooden floor was nearly damaged beyond repair, said Joe Oehme, the director of business development at the club.
As damage to the floor was mounting, the club went in to make repairs to the roof and other parts of the structure even though they had yet to receive the proper permits from the building inspector. “Since mid-December 1999, we have tried to solicit the help of the construction code official, Alfred Arezzo,” explained Oehme last week. “But all our efforts have fallen on deaf ears. Our letters, faxes, phone calls and visits to the construction office in City Hall all went unanswered or ignored.”
“Finally we were forced to save the building from what would have been total destruction,” Oehme said.
Stop work
As a result of the work the health club had done, the city’s building inspector, Al Arezzo, issued a “stop work” order and levied $14,000 in fines against the club.
Club officials do not dispute the fact that they were working without the permits, but they argue they should not have to pay the fines given their efforts to contact Arezzo. In fact, they say, the whole thing could have been avoided if Arezzo had simply worked with them from the start.
Arezzo said last week that he had spoken to the project managers on several occasions and that they must be making up these so-called efforts to reach out to him.
“I don’t even have a fax machine,” Arezzo said. He added that there is one in the building inspector’s office, but that it’s not his personal fax machine.
Arezzo said, “These people have blatantly disregarded the law. I spoke to them several times and explained what they needed, but I am not in the business of hand-holding. That’s not my routine”
Both Arezzo and Oehme say that the other used “vulgar language” and was “abusive” when Arezzo came to issue the stop work order in May.
Since May, the stop work order has remained in effect, causing further damage to the floors and the structure itself which could have been avoided, Health Concepts employees say.
While the club has been engaged in a tiff with Arezzo, it has also been having trouble getting the zoning certificate it needs from the zoning officer to do the construction necessary to turn a former industrial building into a health club.
“The certificate is really just a formality,” said Oehme. “By law it is supposed to happen within five days of the zoning board action, but it took [Zoning Officer Joel Mestre] months to do anything about it.” And then when Mestre did take action, he ruled against the club, Oehme said.
Mestre said that he actually is prohibited from taking action on the certificate for several weeks so that the city can give any neighbors who wish to protest time to appeal. “This was a different situation because the board passed a resolution,” he explained. “If it was an as-of-right project then the timeframe would have been shorter.” Ultimately Mestre said that he was unable to issue the certificate because the club had outstanding issues with the building inspector’s department. “Page eight, article eight clearly states that if an entity is in violation with any agency, a zoning certificate cannot be granted,” Mestre said.
Mestre also pointed out that the club had violated zoning laws by hanging signs on the club announcing that it would become a health club prior to the receipt of the certificate. The club has taken the signs down at Mestre’s request.
In their suit, club officials allege that “the construction code official and the zoning officer have acted in concert and have conspired and continue to act in concert and continue to conspire to prevent us from conducting business and opening the doors to the health club.”
In a press release announcing the suit, they state that “the actions of these two public officials are an abuse of power. No citizen or businessperson should be subject to this type of unprofessional, vulgar and unethical behavior. It is our hope that this lawsuit will encourage other citizens and business owners of Hoboken to come forward to explain their experiences with these two individuals … the truth will come out!”
Arezzo said that the release could be considered slanderous. He said that he was talking to his attorney about a counter suit.
“As far as his job goes,” he said, “he needs to get permits just like anybody else.”