Building Permit Problems Persist at St. Anne, Two Months after Asch's Resignation

Results from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request obtained this Thursday indicate major problems with the permitting process for St. Anne Lofts persisting two months after Howard Asch, the head of Code Enforcement (the building department) resigned. The "Bureaucratic Collapse" report from the Lansing State Journal, while very informative, appears to have missed the extent of the problems, and also did not document how the problems are continuing since Asch's departure.

City gives contractor go-ahead on fifth floor, in the absence of a building permit:

The most surprising finding is this: It appears that the City is allowing construction to occur on the 5th floor of St. Anne Lofts even though the City has still never issued a general building permit for the 5th floor penthouse. Pressed about this on Thursday, September 22, Planning Director Tim Dempsey could provide no clear explanation. (It wasn't clear he knew this until I pointed out the absence of the permit.)

How the fifth floor has played out:

Becasue the fifth floor was being constructed without proper approvals, on June 26, 2012, the City issued a Notice of Stop Work Order demanding that construction on the 5th floor cease, except insofar as required to weatherproof the building.

Weeks earlier, on June 6, Asch had issued a verbal order to quit it.

Asch recorded in a follow-up letter to the contractor the next day: "I spoke with your site superintendent this morning about how this construction is not permitted and further construction on this area must cease. He assured me no further construction would take place on this floor unless proper approvals from the City of East Lansing have been authorized. I was prepared to issue a stop work order to force construction to stop. However, since you have voluntarily cased work on this unpermitted area I see no necessity to use that formal process."

The written Stop Work Order was finally issued on June 26 because the contractor continued work beyond weatherproofing without a building permit.

In spite of the consistently poor track record of this project, on July 24, by a vote of 3-2, City Council approved the modified site plan and special use permit for the 5th floor penthouse. (Questions about the legality of that approval persist.) Diane Goddeeris, Nathan Triplett, and Kevin Beard voted to approve, while Vic Loomis and Don Power voted against.

Beard voted in favor on July 24 after Planning staff Darcy Schmitt assured Beard that the owner had put in an application within days of the city noticing the fifth floor. In fact, contrary to Schmitt's representation, it appears at least two and a half months existed between the time Planning noted the fifth floor and the time the owner finally submitted an application.

The day after Beard, Triplett, and Goddeeris voted in favor of the 5th floor plans, the city rescinded the Stop Work Order. That was July 25.

But the contractor still has never obtained a building permit for the 5th floor, even though the City knows the contractors are again actively building that floor. The building permit for the first 4 stories, issued on May 11, 2012, had specifically exempted the fifth floor. It was for a "new four story used [sic] building" and contained the special note "does not include penthouse construction."

Nevertheless, Dempsey, who has just been made director of what will be a combined department of Planning and Code Enforcement, has indicated that he is allowing construction to continue on the 5th floor in the absence of a building permit.

The City continues a pattern of issuing subsidary permits for structures that themselves have no permits:

In response to the FOIA request, on Thursday Dempsey did produce two permits related to the 5th floor, both dated August 22, 2012, both for work on the corridor required for fire safety. But these appear to essentially be subsidiary "build out" permits (one for electrical, one for structure) for a 5th floor structure which still has no general permit for building.

This situation mirrors what FOIA shows having happened on floors 1-4. In that case, an electrical permit was issued on April 24 and an HVAC permit was issued on May 8, even though the general building permit for floors 1-4 did not come to be until May 11.

So it would appear that, on this project, the City has been issuing and continues still to issue permits to do electrical work on structures that themselves have no permits.

The mysterious April "stop work" order, on the whole building, that no one talks about:

When I spoke to him on Thursday, Dempsey was also at a loss to explain why Howard Asch prepared but did not issue a general stop work order back in April. On April 9, Asch prepared a Stop Work Order on the entire structure, saying that the reason was "Construction without first obtaining the required building permit." But that building permit didn't happen until May 11. So why did Asch not put the Stop Work Order in force on the whole structure?

Strangely, Asch later explained to City Manager George Lahanas his decision not to go through with that Stop Work Order this way: "structural detail by the engineer was submitted and was sufficient to allow steel construction to continue." But Asch knew there was still no building permit. So why was the new detail from the engineer sufficient to clear a Stop Work Order issued for absence of a permit, when the permit still didn't exist?

It is unclear whether Lahanas and Dempsey knew there was no permit at that point in April, or whether they knew about the Stop Work Order being drafted in April. Asch wrote his explanation (of why he didn't put the Stop Work Order into effect in April) to Lahanas on the day that part of the fourth floor, under the penthouse, collapsed all the way to street level. That was June 18.

A chart showing the building permits and stop work orders, in chronological order, is provided in the PDF link shown at the top of this article.

Triplett says he had to vote for it, and Loomis sharply disagrees:

This week at Council, a sharp exchange occurred between Councilmember Vic Loomis, who has been refusing to vote in favor of moving this project forward when so many safety concerns exist, and Mayor Pro Tem Nathan Triplett. According to Triplett, regulations required councilmembers to vote in favor of the 5th floor's plans on July 24, in spite of safety concerns going unresolved.

Loomis has said this is not true, and objects to Triplett essentially accusing him of dereliction of civic duty. This week, Loomis objected directly to what Triplett had told the Lansing State Journal, when Triplett said: "I can't stomach the hypocrisy of us saying that we're going to be the body charged with ensuring that folks adhere to the code and then have us ignore it when it suits us."

As reported at mLive, Loomis said in his comments at Council this week, "To anyone who believes me to be hypocritical, I simply suggest they stand in front of a mirror and have that conversation first."

The fifth floor and the cross were drawn from the earliest plans the staff reviewed:

At my request, Loomis accompanied me to the FOIA meeting with Dempsey on September 22. I asked him to join me because of his many years of experience with commercial development. In going over the plans submitted for the project, we found that, from the earliest plans submitted to staff, the plans included both the 5th floor penthouse and the cross. To see more on that, go here.