Hours before a Lower Manhattan parking garage collapsed in 2023, killing an employee and injuring seven other people, workers had inadvertently destroyed part of a load-bearing pier on its second floor, a report released Monday concluded.
The garage, at 57 Ann Street, near City Hall, had long been plagued by faulty construction and engineering missteps, the report found. Neither the engineering firm renovating the building nor garage workers had reported the unsafe conditions, and they never obtained the permits necessary to fix them, the report said.
The report was prepared by a structural engineering firm in collaboration with the city’s Department of Buildings, Department of Investigation and the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which found no evidence of criminality.
In a statement accompanying the report’s release, Jimmy Oddo, New York City’s buildings commissioner, said the “reckless” repair work was partially to blame for the collapse of the garage.
“The extensive multiagency investigation into this catastrophic collapse makes one point abundantly clear: This tragedy in the heart of Lower Manhattan was entirely preventable,” Mr. Oddo said.
On April 18, 2023, a bit before 9 a.m., workers began removing bricks from the load-bearing column, leaving behind a gaping hole near the ceiling of the garage’s second floor, the report said. A few minutes after 4 p.m., a garage employee drove a car across the roof, directly above the column.