Construction Resumes After Partial Collapse

A hard-hatted construction crew is back at work building up 112 new apartments in the Hill — four months after a concrete-pouring accident caused the building’s second floor to cave in, injuring eight workers.

That’s the latest with 188 Lafayette St., a Yale University-owned property where developer Randy Salvatore is constructing a seven-story, 112-unit apartment building. The new building will be located in a medical district-adjacent area of the city replete with Salvatore-built rentals constructed atop previously vacant lots.

The 188 Lafayette construction site is now ​“back up and running” after a June 2 partial building collapse, Salvatore told the Independent on Tuesday.

The city building permits database shows that, on Aug. 21, P.J.‘s Construction Co. Inc. pulled a building permit for the demolition of ​“second story slab edge damaged during collapse of slab” at 188 Lafayette.

An Oct. 1 letter posted to that same city database and written by JKF & Associates LLC CEO James Falconer states that a team of structural engineers inspected the 188 Lafayette St. building and approved the ​“shoring of Area 1 on storey 1” and determined that ​“cast of concrete can proceed on Area 1 as of 10.2.2023.”

City Building Official Bob Dillon told the Independent on Tuesday that his office has conducted a handful of inspections at the site over the past two weeks as construction work has picked up again, and will be doing ​“periodical” inspections as the building-up continues.

The resumption of work at 188 Lafayette comes several months after the officially deemed ​“mass casualty incident” on June 2, when a section of the second floor collapsed as workers poured concrete.

Eight workers were injured, two critically. City firefighters rushed to the rescue, including by digging out a man who had fallen 30 feet into wet concrete. The city’s building department issued a stop work order on the day of the collapse.

According to Salvatore, all eight injured workers were discharged from the hospital ​“within a handful of days” after the accident. ​“They’ve been out of the hospital for many months.”

Salvatore said he’s still waiting on a final report from the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to figure out what exactly went wrong that day, and why. 

“I really don’t know,” Salvatore said about the cause of the partial collapse. ​“We’re still waiting for the conclusion of the investigation.” It likely had ​“something to do with the forming of the concrete deck by the concrete subcontractor,” Seven Concrete. He said he doesn’t know if it was a problem with the engineers, or with the execution of the work. He’s ​“still waiting to hear from OSHA.”

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request on Wednesday morning, an OSHA representative said that the agency’s investigation of this incident and of Seven Concrete is ongoing.

At the time of the partial collapse back in June, city Fire Chief John Alston said that the ​“concrete cement pour” on the building’s second above-ground level ​“began to pool in a certain area faster than [the workers could spread it] and it caused it to cave. … It got away from them. It looks like it all pooled on one side.”

In the meantime, Salvatore said on Tuesday, ​“all of the areas were removed that needed to be removed. The forming was reinstalled. The concrete was poured.” Now the construction crew is installing framing and steel and preparing to ​“go vertical” with the new apartment building.

“We’re always conscious of safety,” he pledged. ​“Obviously, it’s just another wake-up call. Everyone just has to be considering every possible outcome.”

Asked about what his firm is doing differently to make sure that something like this doesn’t happen again, Salvatore stressed that he still doesn’t know what exactly caused the partial collapse — and that he had taken necessary safety precautions back in June. He said he had ​“outside safety consultants” and engineers on the job the day of the partial collapse. Dillon, the city’s building official, also said he doesn’t believe his office erred in any way in the runup to the collapse. He said the resumed construction work has been inspected a number of times by his office, and they’ll continue to do that when work is ready for inspection, per usual with developments across town.

At the Lafayette construction site itself on Tuesday afternoon, one of the workers took a quick break to answer a few of this reporter’s questions about what work has already been done, and what’s still to come.

He said the crew on site were doing ​“some framing” and ​“blockwork.”

The new slab of concrete has already been poured, he said. ​“There won’t be any more collapsing going on here.”