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By Colin Mixson
Brooklyn Daily
Condo owners paying top dollar for a magnificent view of the sea are about to swap their ocean vista — for a bathroom.
Management and residents at the Oceana Condominiums in Brighton Beach took to the Coney Island Boardwalk in protest on Sunday, blasting the Park Department’s decision to raise the beach-side comfort station between Coney Island Avenue and Brighton 12th Street up on 20-foot stilts to comply with new federal flood standards, saying they paid for a view of the ocean, not a bathroom.
“Yeah, that’s why it’s call its called Oceana,” said Christine Connors, assistant property manager at Oceana Condominiums, “because there’s a good view of the ocean.”
The Oceana Home Owners Association sought a temporary restraining order on April 5 to halt construction of the towering toilets that would replace the comfort station destroyed by Sandy. But work was allowed to continue after the courts denied the condo-owners’ request, according to a spokesman for the Parks Department.
“We are very pleased the court is allowing this vital construction project to proceed. Completing the new comfort stations will allow the City to reopen beaches for local residents and visitors this summer after the destruction of Hurricane Sandy,” said a Parks spokesman.
However, even before condo owners attempted to delay construction, city contractors were working through the night on the project, and residents say the Parks Department has been hustling to lift the loo before the folks at Oceana realized they’d lost their view.
“They’re building at night when everyone’s asleep, so there’s nothing to oppose,” said Connors. “I though it was sneaky, and everyone here is talking about it.”
Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz (D-Sheepshead Bay) says that the nighttime labor has a less dubious motive than the condo owners suspect, citing Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s bathroom-building deadline as the reason.
“The mayor has said that he wants all the bathrooms redone by May 24, and in order to meet that deadline the contractors are working around the clock,” said the Assemblyman.
Cymbrowitz, who fully supports Oceana and hopes there’s still time to find a more appropriate location for the high-rise tinklers, does concede that the city should have done a better job of letting the folks at Oceana know about the bathroom business.
“Yes, there should have been greater notification that not only were they going to be rebuilding the bathrooms, but that they were going to be so much higher than the boardwalk,” said Cymbrowitz.
Sunday’s protest was much smaller than planned, due to what Oceana resident Boris Natkovitch saw as an underhanded ruse by city lawyers. At an April 5 court appearance, city lawyers told representatives of the Oceana Home Owners Association that they would be willing to negotiate on Monday, and would postpone work the comfort station until later this week — as long as board members called off their plans for Sunday’s rally, which they agreed to do.
Word went out the rally was off, but then Oceana residents woke up on Sunday morning to see a cluster of brand new, 20-foot-tall concrete columns sticking out of the construction site, prompting a spontaneous protest.
“They lied to us,” said Natkovitch, whose second floor abode in Condo Two puts him squat in front of the new bathrooms. “When everybody woke up and saw this column 20-feet above the ground, they spilled into the streets and there were some protests.”
But the protest was a drop in the bucket compared to Oceana’s full arsenal of disgruntled residents, and only about 150 passionate protestors hit the boardwalk as opposed to the crowd of 1,000 expected to attend Sunday’s protest before board members were convinced to call it off.
“It looks like they out-maneuvered us and lied to us, and they probably think its past the point of no return,” said Natkovitch. “But, we’ll see.”
The city refuted Natkovitch’s version of events, however, saying their lawyers merely told Oceana’s representatives that they didn’t expect work to progress until later this week.
“That account is incorrect,” said Elizabeth Thomas Deputy Director of Communications at the New York City Law Department. “At Friday’s court appearance, City attorneys informed the petitioners’ attorneys that we did not expect work to begin again until early on Wednesday April 10, according to the then-current schedule for the site. Work progressed more quickly than expected in the area, and the contractor temporarily performed some work early Sunday morning.”
Cymbrowitz has written a letter to borough parks commissioner Kevin Jeffries to protest the city’s current plans, in which he argues that the view-blocking bathrooms stand in violation of a city planning stipulation written before the condo was built that no city structure should impede Oceana’s sterling vista.
“The new facility would affect the quality of life of Oceana residents in a negative and permanent way,” the assemblyman’s letter reads. “It also contradicts the original mandate expressed by the City Planning Commission that the vista be left unimpeded between the Oceana complex and the water.”
FEMA will pick up the tab for this new, high-rise loo, but only on the condition that it meets their hurricane resistant standards, thus mandating its well-above-ground construction.
If the towering comfort station is completed as planned, however, the condo owners will be faced with a choice — stare out their windows at the looming loo, or sell their homes at a much reduced value.
“The values will be destroyed, the living conditions will be destroyed, the safety and sanitary conditions, it’s everything,” said Natkovitch. “It will be a disaster.”
Reach reporter Colin Mixson at cmixson@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260-4514.