Blind Brook School District files lawsuit seeking justice in construction fiasco
January 25, 2024 at 12:48 a.m.
The Blind Brook School District is going to court, seeking retribution from those officials allege are responsible for putting the community through what was arguably the most strife-filled few years it’s faced.
While the community has been enjoying the innovative renovations that turned Ridge Street Elementary School into a state-of-the-art facility since Fall 2022, it’s hard to forget the dramatic saga that unfolded in the process of getting there.
The burden of the construction project was both financial and emotional and proved to put severe tests on the public’s trust of the school district.
Initially funded through a $44.7 million capital project bond that Blind Brook voters overwhelmingly supported at the polls in October 2017, the project was meant to revitalize the elementary school with an essential redesign bringing a new wing of classrooms and a cafetorium into the structure. The money also supported the building of the new Fabrication Lab at the Middle/High School campus, a smaller project that didn’t see complications.
The project broke ground in June 2019, and the administration anticipated seeing it finished by September 2020—yet students weren’t walking into the elementary school worry free until two years after that point.
The project started going awry early on, as roadblocks occurred quickly due to consistent change orders and construction disputes between the district and its architect, contractors and construction managers. Within the first few months of work, crews had walked off the site in protest, and tension would continue to escalate.
Delays and change orders, coupled with financial factors and supply-chain issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic, eventually ran the district dry. In December 2021, the Board of Education was forced to go to the community again to attain an additional $6 million bond, realizing there would not be enough funding to complete the project without it.
Emotionally, tensions peaked in September 2021 through community outrage—after the State Education Department forcibly shut down Ridge Street Elementary School days into the school year, claiming students had been inside the classrooms despite unsafe conditions within the building.
The ire led to the resignation of then-Superintendent Dr. Patrick Brimstein in October of that year, and then-Assistant Superintendent of Business Mary O’Neill was gone shortly thereafter.
While Blind Brook’s administration and Board of Education have remained relatively vague on the details of the disputes and delays, within time they started to hint at a “perfect storm” of “bad actors”—blaming their three key hired firms responsible for the project for “ineffectiveness” and failing to work together, with the district and with the state.
In a long-awaited move, as foreshadowing suggestions of coming litigation had been looming for years, the Blind Brook School District filed a lawsuit against those firms on Friday, Jan. 19, and publicly announced their intentions the same day.
“Sadly, today’s filing was many years in the making, as past boards shouldered the weight of the harm to our community caused by the countless misdeeds of the defendant professionals,” board member Scott Jaffee, who was the president of the governing body during the most dramatic years of the project, said in a statement. “But the board, working alongside our accomplished legal team at Guercio & Guercio, LLP, have carefully preserved a thorough record of these misdeeds, and we’re confident that we will ultimately prevail once all of the facts are made public.”
The lawsuit, filed in the New York Supreme Court in Westchester, accuses Kliment Halsband Architects (KHA), Savin Engineers, P.C., and Niram, Inc.—the district’s initially hired architects, construction managers and contractors—of breach of contract and negligence that resulted in tangible harm to the district and community.
“As this project suffered unacceptable delays and cost overruns, our community rightfully demanded to our board that those responsible be held accountable,” Board of Education president Jeffrey Mensch said in a statement. “This litigation will ensure that the construction professionals who wronged this school district by failing to meet their contractual obligations and legal duties of care will finally be held liable for their actions.”
While Savin Engineers was ultimately fired and replaced by School Construction Consultants, the other two firms stayed on until the end, though the district had expressed discontent with the situation. Additionally, the schools brought in a second architectural firm, BBS Architects, in Fall 2021, and the project had a relatively smooth ride from that point forward.
The Westmore News obtained the 88-page complaint filed in court on our deadline on Wednesday, Jan. 24. Next week’s Feb. 2 edition will include a comprehensive report looking at its contents and accusations.
“While we remained focused on our vision of creating modern, state-of-the-art school facilities for our students, staff, and families to enjoy, it was unfortunate that achieving that goal created so much undue stress for our community,” stated Superintendent Dr. Colin Byrne. “We don’t undertake this litigation lightly, but we do feel it necessary to address the improper conduct that made the last few years so difficult for all of us.”
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