Atlantic Yards partner alleges towers will have leaky walls, windows

As we all know, we’re supposed to allegedly maybe possibly see actual apartments fit for human life spring up at Atlantic Yards (or Pacific Park, if you have a very short memory) sooner rather than later. That possibility is looking a bit dimmer because Forest City Ratner is engaged in a nasty lawsuit with building partner Skanska USA Building over whose fault it is that the modular building going up next to Barclays isn’t going up anymore. The latest twist in the lawsuit is a fun one though, because according to Atlantic Yards Report, Skanska is alleging that the entire building could wind up leaking after it goes up. Maybe you don’t want any of that affordable housing after all.

Skanksa and Forest City have been locked in dueling lawsuits over cost overruns and construction delays for the first building in the project, known as B2. Atlantic Yards Report found a letter that Skanska fired off to Forest City Ratner that alleges that “no one knows if the building is going to leak.” The charge was also levied a bit more obliquely in another section of the letter, when Skanksa alleged “it is impossible to predict that the curtain wall joints will be and, over time, will remain effective barriers to the passage of air and water.”

That being said, this is a multimillion dollar lawsuit with two gigantic construction firms fighting like kaiju over who’s screwing this whole thing up, so both sides will probably say anything to win. We wouldn’t be surprised to see a counter-claim from Forest City surface soon that alleges Skankska was planning on aligning the windows of the building into a swastika and planting a giant “Heil Hitler” flag on the top of the building.

Of course, for Brokelyn’s plucky readership, that’s probably not a huge deal. Let us live there and we’d figure out some DIY caulking/wall crack projects, no problem. We’re desperate for cheap housing, though. For everyone else, we imagine that “working walls and windows” ranks up there with “flushing toilets” in terms of what you want in an apartment.

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