The Federal Express Corporation, which opened a new local shipping center at 20 Pine Street in mid-2015, recently constructed a ramp on the Nassau Street side of the building that is more than 70 feet long and blocks almost half of the narrow sidewalk. Condominium board members and residents of the building are fuming about what they see as the company going behind their backs and resorting to a bad-faith reading of the law to get the ramp approved.
FedEx originally requested permission last summer from the City’s Department of Buildings (DOB) to install the ramp as a means for its foot couriers to access the new facility, which is used to store packages awaiting local delivery. When DOB declined to approve this application, FedEx subsequently changed its rationale for the ramp from business convenience to compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Invoking the issue of handicapped access caused the DOB to reconsider its previous decision, and expedite approval, even though the FedEx facility at 20 Pine is not open to the public and another ramp within the building provides access to the FedEx space.
A spokesman explained, “FedEx leased this space to operate a ‘foot courier’ location. Foot courier locations serve as a home base for couriers who deliver to a small number of buildings, and do so on foot. Because of the vertical nature of New York City, the lack of on-street parking, and as a means of limiting vehicle emissions, FedEx tries to minimize the number of pickup and delivery vans it runs.”
This approval (and the stratagem behind it) incensed residents of 20 Pine Street. Stacey Haefele, a member of the condo board, alleges that FedEx went behind the backs of residents to put up the ramp. “As soon as we figured out what was going, on we started going to the Department of Buildings and Department of Transportation saying, ‘Wait a minute. That’s an industrial facility; they don’t need an ADA ramp,'” Mrs. Haefele recalls. “You can’t show up in a wheelchair with a parcel to post for Federal Express, go up that ramp and post it. It’s not a [public] facility.”
In spite of these objections, FedEx used DOB’s approval to move ahead with construction of the ramp, which leads to a newly constructed door (formerly a window) 15 feet above Nassau Street. It was completed in December.
But DOB approval came with strings attached, in the form of stipulations requiring signage, “adjacent to the lower entrance to the wheelchair-accessible ramp above the public right-of-way showing the International Symbol of Accessibility,” and “indicating the route to the nearest accessible public entrance.” Other provisions require that “no portion of the wheelchair-accessible ramp is allowed to project beyond the street line for a distance in excess of 44 inches,” and “the wheelchair-accessible ramp is constructed per the standards” required by the ADA.
In short, these conditions require that FedEx label the new exterior ramp at 20 Pine as a accommodation for the disabled, but then also direct disabled people to the interior ramp that they can actually use.
At the February 3 meeting of the Financial District Committee of Community Board 1 (CB1), DOB representatives said they plan to inspect the ramp before allowing it to open, because it appears not to meet these requirements. Additionally, the ramp must provide emergency access to a transformer room in the basement of 20 Pine, which is currently blocked.
As matters now stand, the ramp has yet to open, Fed Ex is withholding rent from their landlord because they cannot use the structure, and CB1 chair Catherine McVay Hughes has called it “a disgrace.”