Mascot Towers is a Sydney building gaining a reputation for notoriaty because of the damage it is inflicting on all who depend on it. Last June, cracks were detected in its walls and foundations and an evacuation order sent its residents into the streets as the cause was investigated and solutions sought.
It is a typicasl modern tower in a shopping district and comprises luxury apartments on the higher floors with the ground floor comprising retail shops which were highly sought after because of their prominence in an important shopping centre.
The apartment owners are stuck with a multi million repair bill to make the building safe and now the investigators have found the building is crumbling and have ordered the ground floor shops to close at this peak sales period of the approach to Christmas. The ground floor is deemed unsafe for staff and customers because of falling bricks and other masonry.
That closure order was sudden - and immediate. It said "You should assume that as and from the 18'th of December, 2020 your lot will no longer be accessable.'" Safe Work's improvement notice required the owner's corporation to erect hoardings and exclude access to all commercial and retail lots.
The people leasing those shops are devastated. This closure is being imposed on the peak trading period of the year and consequently they have the maximum amount of stock on hand to service those sales. It will be almost impossible at such short notice to locate and hire storage space for both stock and fittings, all of which have been secured by finance based on expected sales.
We now learn from the NSW Minister for Better Regulation that the Owner's Corporation has been given the option to request an extension to complete the work. This will extend the compliance period by at least four to six weeks and ensure no retailers have to close over the Christmas period while safety measures are put in place.
At best, this allows those shop owners to hold over closure until the early new year and assumes that the public will continued to enter those shops now the danger of injury from falling masonry has been identified. Then there is the issue of staff retention. This closure means staff will become redundent in January and many may choose to relocate to available work while demand remains high over the Chriustmas period.
In many cases, traders have mortgaged their homes to secure the capital needed to outfit and stock what promised to be a lucrative business undertaking. Like the apartment owners on the floors above, that investment has become a disaster through no fault of their own and any form of compensation will be years into the future as the case wends its way through the court system.
The building configuration used by Mascot Towers is duplicated where new buildings are constructed in shopping centres to take advantage of nearby transport hubs. There have now been several instances where the building construction methodology has later failed and delivered a financial hazard disaster to those who have bought into the building.
Its about time that the building code was sufficiently supervised that building failure was not a hazard to be encountered when making a buying decision. That will only happen when the supervising authority is legally required to meet the rectification costs when construction fails to meet industry standards.
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