TBN in chimney dispute with NYC Co-op

…..not. Seriously, it strikes me that if TBN hadn’t known about this for decades, there are much bigger issues than tuckpointing to deal with. Does it need to be swept? Is it lined properly? Is the boiler even halfway efficient? Would it be better to replace the brick chimney with a more modern steel flue?

And they totally blew the chance to handle all of this. Ouch.

You deduced all of this how? Have you heard or read anything but this piece?

You likely have rushed to judgment my friend…you likely know nothing about the situation if all you know is this news piece.

[Mark_Smith]

You deduced all of this how? Have you heard or read anything but this piece?

You likely have rushed to judgment my friend…you likely know nothing about the situation if all you know is this news piece.

It stems from growing up around Chicago and understanding brickwork and boilers. Old industrial boilers, while not terribly efficient, easily last a century or more, so the boiler in TBN’s building is probably at least that old—might have even been installed with the building, really, and almost certainly burned coal until the EPA came around in the 1970s. The brickwork’s decay suggests it is at least half a century overdue for repairs, and the chimney is probably about a century old, too—the hotel that is now the coop installed it so their guests did not get coal smoke in their rooms when it was built.

Moreover, the building manager’s comment about how it would be “unreasonable” to close the chimney indicates they’re still using it.

OK, as a competent facilities administrator, who understands that both sets of building management have just discovered where one building’s boiler is venting, what do you do? Force legal action, or do you thank God that nobody got hurt by falling brick or carbon monoxide from a chimney that hadn’t been maintained for decades—and work with the management of the other building to make sure that it is dealt with responsibly?

including your knowledge about TBN’s position, you criticized TBN because you know what they said and did. Right?

Oops.

[Mark_Smith]

including your knowledge about TBN’s position, you criticized TBN because you know what they said and did. Right?

Oops.

It called a reasonable inference. There are two ways to handle a sensitive situation like this. One involves the facilities/engineering team, and the other involves lawyers. If you have lawyers actively ticking off your neighbors by refusing to pay for repairs to your chimney, one can reasonably infer that the facilities guys are not trying to arrange an amicable agreement that will keep the chimney in place and in good condition.

The property owner is simply lying. How did you rule that out?

Or maybe not.

Actually, not much opportunity for the co-op to lie to me in this matter. I’m going mostly from the picture of the chimney prior to repairs and the comments of TBN’s counsel and property manager.

Honestly, it’s pretty scary how TBN is handling this. They’ve got a property that’s 40-50k square feet and probably worth $10-30 million (or more, this is good property in lower Manhattan), a very real risk that their boiler manager’s oversight could have resulted in property damage, CO poisoning, or even the death of someone, and they’re quibbling over this. It just boggles the mind, really.

[Bert Perry]

I’m going mostly from the picture of the chimney prior to repairs and the comments of TBN’s counsel and property manager.

Uhh… the story has no comment by TBN. You don’t know their position. All they say is through their counsel that there was a shared chimney that TBN did not authorize work for. The property manager got it repaired, then tried to bill TBN. That’s not how it works.

Bert, if your neighbor said you needed to mow your grass, hired a guy to do it, then sent you the bill, would you pay it?

[Mark_Smith]

Bert Perry wrote:

I’m going mostly from the picture of the chimney prior to repairs and the comments of TBN’s counsel and property manager.

Uhh… the story has no comment by TBN. You don’t know their position. All they say is through their counsel that there was a shared chimney that TBN did not authorize work for. The property manager got it repaired, then tried to bill TBN. That’s not how it works.

Bert, if your neighbor said you needed to mow your grass, hired a guy to do it, then sent you the bill, would you pay it?

Mark, here are the quotes from the article. It makes very clear that TBN is doing things through a lawyer, and that they are doing exactly what I say they are doing. It brings reproach on the cause of Christ to be this stupid.

Trinity’s station manager, Chris Elia Luppo, referred all questions to a lawyer in Washington, who did not return repeated requests for comment. But in correspondence with the board, the broadcaster said it had never agreed to contribute to the cost of the repairs.

“We are at a loss to understand the basis for your demand that Trinity pay for chimney repairs,” the network’s general counsel, J. B. Casoria, wrote in a letter to Mr. Barkoff on April 14. “The mere fact that Trinity shares the chimney with you” is irrelevant, Mr. Casoria wrote, adding that “Trinity never agreed to be liable for these repairs.”

Or, as Ms. Luppo, put it in an email to the co-op in September, “If you authorize work, you pay for it.”

In an email to the co-op’s managing agent, Ms. Luppo, the station manager, bridled at that suggestion, saying, “You are completely unreasonable.”

New York law works. All I know is in California, my neighboring (I have four) property owners and I share 50-50 in replacing our mutual fences. If need be, I assume I can go to small claims court if a fence falls into such disrepair that it needs to be replaced and I can not reach an agreement with the neighbor. So, far, we’ve replace three out of the four fences.

Exactly. TBN’s response to the story writer was “no comment”…so you know nothing from their side. That is the WHOLE POINT. Got it? You know nothing other than what one person in a 2-sided disagreement said.

Now, apparently you have let your theological disagreement with TBN confuse you here and ASSUME the worst for TBN.

I don’t know how NY law works, either; but it seems to me that the Co-op is likely to be completely responsible for the chimney repairs. From what I can tell from the article, TBN’s building was built first and then the Co-op building. All this happened over 100 yrs ago so there is no telling what agreements may have been reached between the two parties at the time but it seems reasonable to me that that the newer and taller building had to take on the cost to extend the chimney of the other building as a stipulation for building a taller structure next door. That is why the chimney is attached to the Co-op, even though it services the TBN building. If that is the case, then going forward the newer Co-op building is going to have to take on the on-going repairs of that chimney as well. I suspect, therefore, that TBN is in the right here and that the Co-op doesn’t understand their historical requirements concerning the chimney.

I work in real estate title, so this story interested me.

Without reading the whole story, I thought perhaps the TBN building enjoyed an easement for a chimney attached to the neighboring building, which would likely mean that TBN would have to maintain it (e.g., if you have an ingress/egress easement across your neighbor’s land, you’re responsible for any plowing/shoveling costs).

But if the current building code reflects anything about what was the case 100+ years ago, then the later, taller building places a burden on the earlier, shorter building, to have a higher chimney for safety reasons. In that case, it would be the owner of the taller building’s responsibility to fund and maintain any mitigating mechanisms. (For instance, with zoning cases, a noisy restaurant or recreation establishment may need to construct a visual/sound barrier for the sake of the neighbors.)

The difficulty is that there are a lot of different factors that will need to be considered to decide this case (and really any particular case):

1. NY statute.
2. NY common law (probably more important than anything statutory).
3. NYC regulations (zoning, environmental, building code).
4. The specifics of these two properties (should be recorded in the land records…unfortunately ACRIS, the online real estate records, don’t go back 100+ years! Nor do the online building records.). If there are formal easement agreements, those should be recorded for public record. But even then, a lot of easements don’t make it to public record for one reason or another. But there may be some records sitting somewhere that would help.

All that to say, the obvious facts about who uses the chimney and where it’s located don’t in and of themselves decide how the maintenance costs fall out.

[Mark_Smith]

Exactly. TBN’s response to the story writer was “no comment”…so you know nothing from their side. That is the WHOLE POINT. Got it? You know nothing other than what one person in a 2-sided disagreement said.

Now, apparently you have let your theological disagreement with TBN confuse you here and ASSUME the worst for TBN.

No, Mark, the article states clearly that questions by journalists were sent to TBN’s lawyers, who are refusing to talk. That backs my contentions. If you are talking through lawyers, you are not trying to resolve the issues of that chimney through those who know how chimneys ought to operate. Huge missed opportunity for TBN to witness to their neighbors here by taking a decrepit chimney they appear to have been using seriously.

Regarding who ought to pay, in a facility the size of TBN’s, I think there is a strong implicit argument that TBN is on the hook here. The reason is simple; a facility that size needs a licensed boilerman to operate their boiler (heat & hot water), and the boilerman will lose his license if the boiler is not properly vented. So to have heat in the winter, you’ve got to do what it takes to maintain that chimney, or else any ethical boilerman (the only kind you want) is going to resign and report your chimney to code enforcement, and you’re going to freeze your pipes in the winter.

Or else you get a boilerman who doesn’t give a rip, and you get a few dozen people in your building or theirs with CO poisoning, or killed by bricks, and then you REALLY watch the billable hours fly. So I can see TBN arguing that they would like to split the difference—“the height of the chimney derives from the code requiring us to keep the CO out of your facility, can we split the cost for that reason?”, but I can’t see why they’re doing everything through lawyers. They are going to end up spending far more on billable hours than they would have simply to get their flue cared for.

What are you talking about Bert? You are over in left field talking about unethical boilermen! What does that have to do with this article that includes no direct quote from a TBN representative. Bert, admit it. You have one side of a story and have jumped to conclusions based off of your bias and experience. you know nothing about what happened between TBN and this co-op owner because you only have one side of the story. You say TBN is hiding…well, why should they talk to the media about it? It is quite frankly none of our business.