Scenes of Destruction

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The demolition of LES bakery Gertel's, shuttered in June, has been halted by the Department of Buildings. "They tore shit up with reckless abandon until about 10:30 when Buildings Department inspectors came to shut it all down. Turns out they had been issued a stop work order last night and told they could do no more tear-down but only clean up interior debris they had created in demolishing the roof. They obviously availed themselves of a liberal interpretation of 'cleaning out interior debris' and took it to mean 'reduce the entire building to a smoldering pile of junk.' They also had no permit for heavy equipment. The inspectors were irate, yelling at the crew to board up the site, repair the sidewalk they had caved in, and get lost." Looks like people are just going to have to wait a little bit longer to get that luxury, high-rise condo planned for the space. [Curbed]