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STAMFORD – A tenant of 119 Towne St. said she holds her dog’s leash tighter when they walk by The Lofts, the apartment building next door.
She finds herself peering at the windows of The Lofts, the woman said. Some windows are boarded up, but others are open day and night, even though the last of the tenants moved out two years ago.
At first only a few windows were left open; now there are a lot, the woman said. “Nobody lives there, so what the heck’s going on?” she asked.
Her neighbor, a tenant of 121 Towne St., said she tells her guests not to park in The Lofts spaces because glass may fall on them.
“The building is getting crooked, so maybe the windows pushed open, and maybe they’ll fall out,” the woman said. “I don’t know.”
Another 121 Towne St. tenant recalled what popped into his head when the April 5 earthquake hit.
“I heard the noise and I thought, ‘There goes The Lofts,’” the man said.
The Towne Street residents said they didn’t want their names published because landlords or building managers sometimes retaliate when tenants speak out.
But they figure they’re not the only ones looking askew at The Lofts, a 225-unit, six-story structure more than two football fields long. When it was completed in 2010, it was the signature building of the South End redevelopment called Harbor Point.
“There’s a bench outside The Lofts where smokers used to sit,” said the male tenant. “I don’t see people sitting there like they used to.”
That bench is at the back of The Lofts, which faces the 119 and 121 Towne St. apartment buildings.
At the front of The Lofts, on Henry Street, there’s another bench where homeless people sit or sleep or store their things, especially when the shelter on nearby Pacific Street is closed.
One of the open windows is on the ground floor, and could provide entry into The Lofts.
No warning signs
A chain-link fence, bent in places, blocks part of The Lofts, but not all of it.
There are no signs warning of the condition of the structure. However, the city’s chief building official, Shawn Reed, declared it unsafe a year ago. Reed issued a notice to the owner, Gaia Real Estate of New York, which bought The Lofts from Harbor Point developer Building & Land Technology in 2016.
A Gaia vice president, Mor Regensburger, told the Stamford Historic Preservation Advisory Commission in 2022 that The Lofts “won’t be safe for too much more time.” Gaia architect Jim Sackett described the situation as “a disaster.”
In 2023 Gaia sued BLT, which converted The Lofts from a historic lock factory, as well as BLT’s affiliates and contractors, and the city.
Gaia attorneys state in the lawsuit that The Lofts is shifting and settling “at a dangerous rate,” and “has been rendered unsafe and uninhabitable, and is facing inevitable demolition or destruction.”
Firefighters said they are not allowed to enter the building. But if there were a fire or other emergency involving someone inside, they would go in to rescue the person, firefighters said.
Asked by email whether police officers are in a similar situation, Chief Tim Shaw did not reply. Shaw also did not respond when asked whether the department is monitoring The Lofts, or whether officers have had to remove persons from inside.
Questions go unanswered
Reed, the building official, and his supervisor, Director of Operations Matt Quinones, did not answer questions about why windows are open at The Lofts; whether there is a danger of glass falling; whether people may be living in The Lofts; whether the building department is monitoring it; whether deterioration of the building is accelerated because the elements get in; and whether the site requires a more extensive fence to protect people from possible falling debris.
Director of Legal Affairs Tom Cassone did not respond to an email asking whether the city has any public safety obligation in such cases, and whether The Lofts will remain as it is until the court case is decided. According to the Connecticut Judicial Branch website, the case is not set to go to trial until March 2026.
The questions ended up with Lauren Meyer, special assistant to Mayor Caroline Simmons. Meyer said officials were meeting Wednesday to discuss The Lofts.
Asked Thursday what officials had concluded, Meyer emailed a sentence. “The safety of the building is the responsibility of the building owner. and the city’s Building Department issued an unsafe structure notice on May 2, 2023,” she wrote.
Asked whether the owner is required to provide increased safety measures as a result of Reed’s notice, Meyer said yes.
Gaia Real Estate did not return a request for comment.
A dewatering problem
According to the lawsuit, Gaia began hearing about problems with The Lofts in 2017, a year after purchasing it from BLT. Tenants were reporting cracks in the walls, ceilings and beams; buckling and sinking floors; crooked window and door frames; and more.
The suit charges that the reason for the problems is that BLT installed an impermeable liner to contain contaminated soil at the site, where they were converting the former Yale & Towne lock factory into residential units.
The factory was built on wood pilings a century ago, and BLT used them as the foundation for The Lofts, according to the lawsuit. But the liner stopped rain from soaking into the earth, which lowered the groundwater, exposing the pilings to air and causing the wood to rot.
Now the dry soil is shifting, further destabilizing the rotting pilings, the lawsuit states.
It alleges that BLT and its contractors and affiliates concealed the problems from Gaia, and that the city failed to maintain its underground drainage system and failed to properly inspect the work.
‘Is anybody concerned?’
The lawsuit may be the reason city officials refuse to answer questions about The Lofts, said Sue Halpern, a South End resident who works to preserve the neighborhood’s history.
She began emailing Reed and others about The Lofts last year, said Halpern, who provided copies of the emails.
“I keep writing these officials and not one has gotten back to me,” Halpern said. “More and more windows are wide open. Is somebody intentionally doing that? I’ve seen birds flying out. Does anybody go in there to see what’s going on? Are people living in there? Where does the city stand on this? Is anybody concerned? Someone should at least answer me.”
Architect David Woods chairs the Stamford Historic Preservation Advisory Commission, which heard a request from Gaia to rebuild The Lofts with a larger number of apartments. The company is seeking to recoup losses on the building in part because the damage caused by the dewatering of the foundation pilings is not covered by insurance.
Woods said Gaia made its last presentation to the commission more than a year ago.
“The commission raised a number of concerns and forwarded them to the city,” Woods said. “The biggest one was that we hadn’t seen an engineering report, which is why the city, through the Zoning Board, came up with the idea that the city would do an engineering report and have the owner pay for it. That never happened, as far as I know.”
Without an engineering report, it’s hard to conclude anything about the condition of The Lofts, Wood said.
“I’m assuming it will not be a catastrophic failure, but a failure of smaller pieces over time,” he said. “But I don’t know.”
It’s no wonder neighbors have questions.
“If it’s an unsafe structure, how come the whole thing isn’t fenced off?” asked one of the 121 Towne St. residents. “If it ever collapses, will it affect our building? They’re so close together.”