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thecityny_feed) wrote2026-05-14 09:01 am
Pile Driving Draws Ire of Inspectors as Neighbors Watch Walls Crumble and Crack
On a recent spring day, Prospect Lefferts Gardens shook with such force that some neighbors believed there was an earthquake, they said. The bricks of a co-op building in the Brooklyn neighborhood broke off and crashed into the courtyard, and new cracks wormed their way into some residents’ homes.
“It’s as if a train were running through the house,” said Dean Foster, 75, who lives on Rutland Road and Bedford Avenue.
It was not an earthquake but vibrations from a pile driver digging steel beams into the soil at 1935 Bedford Ave. without proper safety monitors in place to protect the surrounding homes, according to city records and a Department of Buildings spokesperson.
Pile driving involves using a heavy-duty machine to force beams into the earth to create a stable foundation for a future structure, causing intense vibrations to travel from the source of the driving.
“If we opened the cabinet door in the kitchen, the glassware would have fallen out,” Foster said in his home, located two blocks from the construction site.
Nestled between historic houses and two 90-year-old co-op buildings, the lot has become the site of a bitter battle between its newest owners and neighbors, whose homes have been damaged and lives disrupted during heavy construction, according to photos and videos reviewed by THE CITY.
Bobby McCullough, 42, began contacting 311 with complaints of cracks in their apartment building when construction ramped up in the first week of May, service requests show.
“That was the first time I was fearful for my immediate safety,” McCullough said. “The building was shaking at a level that I was concerned about something falling, not off the shelf, but like a part of the ceiling.”
Suzanne Cooke, who has lived in the co-op building for 13 years, said her daughter works late nights and has been disturbed by the construction while she sleeps during the day.
“It’s startled her and woke her out of her sleep,” Cooke said. “There’s items in our space that fell off shelves.”
McCullough said they were standing in the courtyard of the co-op as bricks from the adjacent building broke off and crashed to the ground. They were on the phone with a city building employee when it happened, who instructed them to call 911 immediately.
Firefighters responded to the scene for bricks falling from the co-op building, according to a fire department spokesperson. Firefighters told the contractors to stop pile driving, but they did not listen, McCullough and other residents said.
“Ten minutes after they left, work continued,” McCullough told THE CITY.
History of Violations
The entity Bedford 1935 Daf LLC, owned by Yonit Tzadok, purchased the lot on Feb. 28, 2025, according to property records, becoming the site’s third owner in nine years. A partner to the owner, Izchak Naftalin, filed permits to build a 10-story building on the lot in July 2025, according to records and media reports. Neither Tzadok nor Naftalin responded to inquiries from THE CITY.
The current owners have paid $16,000 to the city in fines since January for various infractions, including failure to maintain a safe job site, failing to obtain proper permits and violating a stop work order, according to building department records.
On May 5 the city issued Lead It Builders LLC, another contractor on site, a violation with a $5,000 fine for pile driving without safety monitoring devices, which is pending.
Past development attempts on the lot have failed in recent years, and it has a history of unauthorized demolition work from a prior developer, as previously reported by THE CITY. In 2021, the Department of Environmental Protection issued $68,000 in fines for multiple violations of asbestos-removal safety rules.
In the last two years through early January, another owner of the lot, — 1935 Bedford Ave LLC, which sold the lot to the current LLC owner — ran up $27,321 in fines for a variety of code violations, including unsafe job site and inadequate site fencing. As of this week, they’d paid off $19,196 with $8,125 unresolved, records show.
Residents told THE CITY they have struggled to keep up with whether stop work orders are in effect, as they go back and forth with lodging complaints against the contractors, who eventually get the stop work orders rescinded, or violate the orders and write a check to the city for the fines.
“The stop work orders come and go very quick,” McCullough said.
Between February and May 2026, the city issued and rescinded two stop work orders for driving piles without monitoring protocols in place. Another stop work order issued on April 30 with no explanation was rescinded the next day.
On Wednesday the city ordered all work to stop again, after an inspector responding to yet another complaint and found no designated superintendent while construction was ongoing, which creates a “hazard,” according to the order.
Gary Vinbaytel, who is named as an associate of the project’s owner according to city records, denied the city’s and neighbor’s claims that he is pile driving without the proper monitors.
“They fabricate everything,” he said in an email to THE CITY, referring to the lot’s neighbors. “All our construction is in accordance with all DOB regulations, monitoring and regiments. We follow each step very carefully and have sophisticated monitoring in place.”
He added, “These neighbors have prevented any construction from proceeding for a decade with multiple prior owners.”
Shaking and Cracking
Residents began complaining to the building agency of their homes shaking and cracking in February 2026.
Anya Glowa-Kollisch, 42, board president of the Hawthorne Street co-op adjacent to the lot, said they have tried for nearly a year to get the project owners to sign an agreement for providing proper safety equipment, calling the work “exhausting.”
“We have no idea how much damage has already been done to our building,” Glowa-Kollisch said. “It’s not that we don’t want development. This isn’t a NIMBY situation. We understand that things change and that there’s a need for housing.”
“What we want is for it to be done safely,” they added.
An engineering report Vinbaytel had prepared and submitted to the city as a requirement for the project recommended contractors micropile — drilling small-diameter columns into the ground that creates low vibrations but typically takes longer to install — instead of pile driving, stating it could cause vibrations that would affect adjacent buildings.
Cal Hadley’s family has owned his home on Fenimore Street since 1974. The house, built in 1935, is about 20 feet away from the construction.
He said the pile driving “would work if we were on a deserted island someplace, and no other building was around for miles.”
“But this is Brooklyn,” Hadley said. “Everything is in such close proximity to each other.”
“No one’s saying that, ‘Well, we don’t want any buildings,’ but when you do this — and that’s what we’re focused on — why are you causing damage to other homes?”
‘Incredibly Stressful’
The residents THE CITY spoke to described their neighborhood as tight-knit and multicultural with historic homes. Now known as Little Caribbean, the area has been rapidly gentrifying, desired for its good transit options, historically designated homes and proximity to Prospect Park.
Nicole DeCicco, 42, has used the nearby park as a refuge from her shaking building.
“I typically partially work from home, and I haven’t been able to sit here and do work,” she said. “We’re getting woken up. They’re doing drilling at like 7 o’clock in the morning.”
McCullough has lived in the co-op beside the lot for a little over a decade, which they said they cherish for its “building elders,” who have lived there for over 40 years.
“It’s incredibly stressful to feel like the well-being of the building as a structure hinges on our awareness as just ordinary residents,” McCullough said.
They are unsure what they will do about the cracks in their walls.
“I can’t even get there,” they said. “I’m simply, I am trying to stop more from happening.”
Additional reporting by Greg B. Smith.
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