Emily Lloyd, commissioner of the city's Department of Environmental Preservation, is headed to the real estate industry, as she resigned her government position to take a job as chief operating officer of Trinity Real Estate.

Ms. Lloyd assumed the DEP commissioner job in 2005, after the departure of Chris Ward, who is now executive director of the Port Authority. Trinity, the real estate arm of Trinity Church, is a giant in the business, and is in the process of transforming the Hudson Square neighborhood west of Soho from a former printing district into an office space hub. Trinity, the major landowner in Hudson Square, is also spearheading the creation of a new, well-funded business improvement district for the neighborhood.

The real estate firm is run by Carl Weisbrod, who worked for the city in the Dinkins administration.

Also in today's city staffing changes: The mayor officially crowned Robert LiMandri as commissioner of the Department of Buildings, after he served for more than five months in an "acting" capacity in that role. The mayor pushed through a legislative change to allow his promotion to happen, despite objections from architecture and engineering groups. The legislation removed a requirement that the commissioner be an architect or engineer.  read more »

At a hearing this morning, the City Council discussed seven legislative reforms regarding construction site safety, including three bills that would further regulate crane operations.

If passed, the legislation would force crane operators to undergo a 30-hour certified training course and to attend refreshers every three years. (Currently certification is not compulsory for crews that “jump” cranes.) It would also require a licensed individual to monitor concrete operations, which Robert LiMandri, the acting commissioner of the Department of Buildings, called a "high risk endeavor" responsible for 59 percent of material falling from building sites.

"We can't have a city where people feel unsafe to walk down the sidewalk because there's a crane working on that block," said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.  read more »

The criticism and the proposed reforms following the city’s recent fatal construction accidents have tended to focus on crane safety and the Department of Buildings, an agency derided by elected officials as inefficient and prone to corruption.

But a broader challenge to the sector and to citywide safety comes from the rising demand for construction labor across the city, experts and construction industry professionals say, as a growing amount of work overextends contractors and managers as well as equipment.  read more »

With construction safety serving as the favorite punching bag for legislators of late, the City Council is putting together a torrent of new proposed regulations of the construction industry, with a hearing scheduled tomorrow for 12 bills.

Numerous members of the City Council have called for new steps to ensure safety at construction sites amid the building boom, citing the rising number of construction-related fatalities (13 so far this year, compared with 12 in all of last year), as evidence of need of reforms.  read more »

In the search for a new commissioner for the Department of Buildings, the Bloomberg administration wants to drop a requirement that the position go to a certified architect or engineer, a move that is being resisted by the city’s architectural advocacy organization.

“We feel very, very strongly that it should be withdrawn, that it’s ill considered—that I would even go so far to say hypocritical,” said Fredric Bell, director of the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects. “It has to be a licensed design professional—not someone who just has good management skills … they really have to know buildings as their business.”

The City Council will hold a hearing on Wednesday on the new legislation, which was brought forward by the mayor’s office.  read more »

The city’s commissioner of the Department of Buildings, Patricia Lancaster, today resigned from her post, more than five weeks after a major Upper East Side crane collapse killed seven people.

Ms. Lancaster, credited with overhauling and cleaning up a department noted for corruption, led numerous efforts to modernize the regulatory agency and increase penalties for developers as the amount of construction in the city soared.

But in the end, the building boom proved to be her undoing, as a number of high-profile deaths at construction sites in recent months brought on piles of public attention and numerous calls by lawmakers for her resignation.

Garnering the most attention was the crane collapse on East 51st Street, and last week, Ms. Lancaster acknowledged that the building of that size should never have been approved in the first place for that site.  read more »

Last year was one of the busiest years for residential development in New York’s recent history, with permits issued for 31,918 privately owned housing units, according to data from the U.S. Census. The city’s departments of Housing Preservation and Development and of Buildings announced the numbers today, saying 2007 saw the second highest number of housing-unit permits issued since 1965, when modern permit records began.

According to HPD, 2006 saw permits issued for 30,927 units, while 31,599 permits were issued in 2005.  read more »

It looks as though the Department of Buildings is stepping up oversight following the recent construction-related deaths in the city.

Today, DOB Commissioner Patricia J. Lancaster announced that the city is looking to hire 67 new employees for “special operations teams” with an eye on improving construction safety standards in the city. The move is part of the DOB’s Special Enforcement Plan that the Mayor unveiled with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Commissioner Lancaster in July.

In an interview with The Observer back in May, Ms. Lancaster spoke at length about bringing the city up to code.

The release after the jump.  read more »