A crumbling, violation-riddled TriBeCa landmark destined to be a luxury hotel partially collapsed yesterday, burying cars and sending shock waves through the tony area.
“We heard cracking, and then there was a giant dust ball,” said Angel La Puerta, 50, of the 19th-century Italianate building at 71 Reade St. near Broadway, which toppled at around 6 a.m.
PHOTOS: BUILDING COLLAPSES IN TRIBECA
“It made my hair stand up.”
Five stories of brick, steel and glass rained on the sidewalk, forming a pile that was 3 feet deep in places.
Miraculously, there were only three minor injuries.
The immense loft building, which stretches across the block to Chambers Street and dates to 1856, was slated to become a 100-room boutique hotel, complete with a spa, restaurant and basement gym.
Buildings Department inspectors had visited the site just two days earlier and slapped the owner with violations on top of the eight he had already racked up.
The agency ordered the owner, Aharon Vaknin — who reportedly bought the space for $23 million in 2007 — to shore up a crumbling wall.
“The bricks were all coming out, and the top corners were cracked,” said Paul Macmillan, 59, a custodian working across the street who lodged a complaint Tuesday.
Crews had begun making the repairs but were not at the site when the bricks gave way.
A partial stop-work order was issued earlier this month for a construction site next door, where workers were excavating without protecting the ill-fated building’s foundation. It was not clear whether this was the cause of the collapse. The damaged building’s owner, who accumulated more than $10,000 in unpaid fines, was ordered to preserve both facades of the former dry-goods facility because of its landmark status.
Last year, Vaknin was cited for falsely claiming that repair work on a bulging exterior wall had been completed, officials said.
Nearby office workers said it was only a matter of time before the structure fell.
“We suspected this building was going to go down,” said La Puerta, 50, of The Bronx.
“The building had shifted and there were cracks in the bricks.”