Infrastructure
NYC Parking Lot and Garage Collapses, A 2025-2026 Risk Map the City Already Has
NYC inspections flagged 110 of 550 garages as unsafe, roughly 1 in 5, two years after the 57 Ann Street collapse. The risk map City Hall never centralized.
Key Finding
NYC's first Local Law 126 inspection cycle flagged 110 of 550 categorized parking structures as unsafe, roughly one in five. The 1925-built structure at 57 Ann Street had 64 DOB violations on record before it collapsed in April 2023. The Department of Buildings closed one garage outright and fined about 400 owners for missing the Sub-Cycle 1A deadline, where only 62% of garages complied. Brooklyn and the rest of Manhattan are filing now. Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island file by December 31, 2027.
Key Facts
110 of 550 categorized NYC parking structures had unsafe conditions in the first Local Law 126 reporting window, roughly 1 in 5.
The 1925-built garage at 57 Ann Street had 64 DOB violations on record between 1976 and 2023 before its April 2023 collapse killed Willis Moore.
About 400 garage owners were fined for missing the Sub-Cycle 1A filing deadline on December 31, 2023. One garage on West 80th Street was ordered shut down.
Local Law 126’s six-year inspection cycle covers every parking structure in NYC. Brooklyn and upper Manhattan are filing through 2025. The Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island file by 2027.
NYC ’s first round of Local Law 126 parking structure inspections flagged 110 of 550 categorized structures as having unsafe conditions. That’s roughly 1 in 5 under the city’s Periodic Inspection of Parking Structures program. The data sits on the Department of Buildings’ public inspection map, which rates every reporting structure Safe, SREM, or Unsafe at the address level. City Hall hasn’t published it as a borough risk index. We did.
110 of 550
Categorized NYC parking structures with unsafe conditions in the first Local Law 126 reporting window, roughly 1 in 5.
Habitat Magazine, reporting NYC Department of Buildings data, January 2024.
Methodology
Counts come from the NYC Department of Buildings Periodic Inspection of Parking Structures (PIPS) program, which Local Law 126 of 2021 established. The citywide figure is the 550 structures the DOB had categorized by the January 2024 reporting window under Sub-Cycle 1A, of which 110 carried unsafe conditions.
Habitat Magazine reported that January 2024 snapshot, citing the DOB reporting window for the citywide tally of 110 unsafe of 550 categorized, the 62% compliance rate, the roughly 400 fined owners, and the 214 West 80th Street shutdown. Building-level facts on 57 Ann Street come from the DOB’s final investigation report released April 28, 2025, plus ABC7 New York and Tribeca Trib coverage of the official findings.
Classification definitions follow the DOB’s PIPS rules: Safe, SREM (Safe With Repairs and/or Engineering Monitoring), and Unsafe.
Note
Filing snapshots move. The 110-of-550 tally reflects January 2024 reporting on the first cycle. The live map at the DOB updates as structures are reinspected, repairs are filed, and Sub-Cycles 1B and 1C close. The directional finding, that roughly 1 in 5 categorized structures showed unsafe conditions in the first cycle, has held in every published reporting window.
What 57 Ann Street Tells Us
The building at 57 Ann Street went up in 1925. By the time of the April 18, 2023 collapse, the DOB had issued 64 violations on the structure across nearly five decades, including concrete defects and ceiling cracks in 2003, broken stairs and loose concrete in 2009, and exit door issues in 2013. Workers were removing bricks from a load-bearing pier on the day of the collapse. Engineers had assumed a steel column sat encased within the masonry. There was no steel.
When a vehicle drove past the compromised pier on the roof level, the column failed. The second floor came down on the first. Willis Moore, the garage’s longtime manager, died at the scene. Buildings Commissioner Jimmy Oddo called the failures “human errors” that were “preventable.” No criminal charges were filed.
…there was no steel inside the masonry pier. There was very little brick left to support that whole area of the floor.
Yegal Shamash Deputy Commissioner, NYC Department of Buildings
Within days of the collapse, the DOB flagged 61 garages citywide as immediately hazardous. Several Manhattan and Brooklyn structures closed for emergency assessment. The 161 William Street Pace University building, next door to the collapse site, lost its spring semester to evacuation.
The Inspection Cycle Is Now the Map
Local Law 126 of 2021 created the Periodic Inspection of Parking Structures (PIPS) program. Every parking structure in NYC has to be inspected by a Qualified Parking Structure Inspector at least once every six years. The inspector files an iPIPSR form with the DOB classifying the structure. Three categories apply:
- Safe: no unsafe conditions, no repairs required to maintain integrity through the next six years.
- SREM (Safe With Repairs and/or Engineering Monitoring): presently safe, but requires repair or monitoring inside the next one to six years to prevent deterioration.
- Unsafe: hazardous to persons or property, repair required within 90 days of filing (extendable by the DOB), with a $1,000-per-month penalty for an uncured condition.
The rollout splits the city into three sub-cycles inside the first six-year window:
| Sub-Cycle | Geography | Filing window |
|---|---|---|
| 1A | Manhattan Community Districts 1 through 7 | Jan 1, 2022 to Dec 31, 2023 |
| 1B | Manhattan Community Districts 8 through 12, all Brooklyn | Jan 1, 2024 to Dec 31, 2025 |
| 1C | Bronx, Queens, Staten Island | Jan 1, 2026 to Dec 31, 2027 |
After Cycle 1 closes in 2027, the six-year rhythm restarts citywide.
What the First Cycle Actually Found
By the January 2024 reporting window, the DOB had categorized 550 parking structures citywide. It reported 110 of them, about 1 in 5, with unsafe conditions. Sub-Cycle 1A pulled the oldest, densest, highest-use inventory in the city. Lower Manhattan, Midtown, and the Upper East and West Sides hold parking structures built in the 1920s through the 1960s on tight urban lots with continuous load cycling. Newer suburban-style garages in the outer boroughs may move the rate as Sub-Cycles 1B and 1C close.
The compliance rate at the December 31, 2023 deadline was 62%. About 400 garage owners were fined for missing it. One garage at 214 West 80th Street in Manhattan was ordered shut down outright after an inspector found significant concrete damage and questioned the structural capacity of the floor slabs.
The Legal Framework When a Garage Fails
Three statutory frameworks attach to a parking structure failure in NYC.
Premises liability under New York common law. Owners and operators owe a duty of reasonable care to anyone lawfully on the property. A 98-year-old structure with 64 open or prior violations is not a reasonable-care record. CPLR § 214 generally gives three years from the date of injury to file. Wrongful death claims under EPTL § 5-4.1 have a two-year limit from the date of death.
Labor Law § 240(1), the Scaffold Law. When the collapse happens while workers are doing demolition, repair, or alteration inside the structure, gravity-related injuries trigger absolute liability on the owner and general contractor. The Ann Street collapse happened during exactly this kind of work, an attempted pier repair. Labor Law § 240(1) removes the comparative- negligence defense once the safety device failed or was absent.
Labor Law § 241(6) and Industrial Code violations. Specific safety regulation violations on a construction or alteration site, including improper shoring, inadequate temporary support, and failure to inspect critical members, support an Industrial Code negligence claim under Labor Law § 241(6). The PIPS inspection record itself becomes evidence of the owner’s notice of structural condition.
Spoliation risk. After a collapse, the physical evidence is the debris field. Owners, insurers, and contractors have an interest in clearing the scene quickly. Photographing the failure plane, securing the load-bearing members for forensic inspection, and getting a court order against premature demolition are early-day moves that decide whether the case can be proven. A garage with 64 prior violations who clears the site before plaintiff’s engineer arrives loses none of those violations to the case. The DOB record stays. But the failure surface is what tells the jury whether the collapse was foreseeable.
What This Means
Three takeaways:
The risk map already exists. The DOB inspection map publishes Safe, SREM, and Unsafe status at the address level. Anyone with a phone can check a garage before parking in it or working in it. The map updates as Sub-Cycles 1B and 1C close. Brooklyn and upper Manhattan close by the end of 2025. The Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island close by the end of 2027.
The first cycle is the worst cycle. Sub-Cycle 1A pulled the oldest inventory in the densest part of the city. The 1-in-5 unsafe rate across the first 550 categorized structures is a directional ceiling on what we should expect from later sub-cycles. The newer borough inventory will likely show fewer Unsafe ratings, but the same kind of long-tail aging hazards.
The Ann Street collapse was not a freak. It was a 1925 structure with 64 violations whose owners hired a handyman to remove bricks from a load-bearing pier. The first round of Local Law 126 inspections found 110 structures already carrying unsafe conditions before repair work even starts.
The map’s published. The repair clock is running.
Sources
- NYC Department of Buildings. (2025). Parking Structures: Periodic Inspection (PIPS) Program. https://www.nyc.gov/site/buildings/safety/parking-structure.page
- NYC Department of Buildings. (2025). Parking Structure Inspections live status map. https://www.nyc.gov/assets/buildings/html/parking-structure-insp-map.html
- NYC Department of Buildings. (2025). Periodic Inspection of Parking Structures FAQs. https://www.nyc.gov/site/buildings/safety/pips-faqs.page
- Habitat Magazine. (2024). Inspections Reveal Violations in 1 out of 5 Parking Garages. https://www.habitatmag.com/Publication-Content/Building-Operations/2024/2024-January/Inspections-Reveal-Violations-in-1-out-of-5-Parking-Garages
- Tribeca Trib. (2025). Report Reveals Preventable Causes of Deadly Downtown Garage Collapse. https://www.tribecatrib.com/content/report-reveals-preventable-causes-deadly-downtown-garage-collapse
- ABC7 New York. (2025). NYC parking garage collapse: Report reveals cause of 2023 Lower Manhattan deadly incident. https://abc7ny.com/post/nyc-parking-garage-collapse-report-reveals-cause-2023-lower-manhattan-deadly-incident/16270068/
- Wikipedia. (2025). 2023 New York City parking garage collapse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_New_York_City_parking_garage_collapse
- NYC Council. (2021). Local Law 126 of 2021, Periodic Inspection of Parking Structures. https://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=4969487&GUID=84B95EA5-22F0-4764-916B-0C0FB07BAFFA
- NY State Senate. (2025). Labor Law § 240, Scaffolding and Other Devices for Use of Employees. https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/LAB/240
Updated June 14, 2026
Frequently asked questions
- How many NYC parking structures are rated unsafe right now?
As of the January 2024 snapshot of early Local Law 126 filings, the Department of Buildings reported 110 of 550 categorized parking structures had unsafe conditions, roughly one in five. The first deadline, Sub-Cycle 1A for Manhattan Community Districts 1 through 7, fell on December 31, 2023, and only 62% of garages complied. The DOB ordered one garage at 214 West 80th Street in Manhattan to shut down outright. Brooklyn and upper Manhattan are filing through Sub-Cycle 1B, and the live status map is published by DOB at nyc.gov under the parking-structure inspections page, which shows Safe, SREM, and Unsafe status at the address level.
- What happened at 57 Ann Street and who was responsible?
On April 18, 2023, the second floor of the parking garage at 57 Ann Street in Manhattan's Financial District collapsed onto the first floor. Willis Moore, the 59-year-old garage manager, was killed. Between five and seven other workers were injured. The DOB's final investigation report, released April 28, 2025, found that workers had removed bricks from a load-bearing pier under the false assumption that a steel column sat inside the masonry. There was no steel. Buildings Commissioner Jimmy Oddo said, "These were human errors. And these were preventable." Records show 64 DOB violations on the building between 1976 and 2023. The owner, Little Man Parking, operated the 1925-built structure under 57 Ann Street Realty Association.
- What does Local Law 126 require of NYC parking garage owners?
Local Law 126 of 2021 created the Periodic Inspection of Parking Structures (PIPS) program. Every parking structure in NYC has to be inspected by a Qualified Parking Structure Inspector at least once every six years. The inspector files a report with the Department of Buildings classifying the structure as Safe, SREM (Safe With Repairs and/or Engineering Monitoring), or Unsafe. A structure is Unsafe when conditions hazardous to people or property exist, and the owner must repair it within 90 days of filing, with extensions available from the DOB. An uncured Unsafe condition runs a $1,000-per-month penalty. An SREM rating requires repair within the inspector's timeline, generally inside six years. Missing the filing deadline triggers monthly civil penalties. About 400 garages were fined after missing the Sub-Cycle 1A deadline on December 31, 2023.
- When does my borough have to file under Local Law 126?
Sub-Cycle 1A covered Manhattan Community Districts 1 through 7. The filing deadline was December 31, 2023. Sub-Cycle 1B covers Manhattan Community Districts 8 through 12 and all Brooklyn community districts, with a December 31, 2025 filing deadline. Sub-Cycle 1C covers the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island, with a December 31, 2027 filing deadline. After Cycle 1 closes in 2027, the same six-year cycle restarts citywide. DOB publishes the official deadline calendar on its PIPS FAQs page.
- Can I sue if I'm hurt in a NYC parking garage collapse?
Yes, multiple paths. Premises liability under New York common law lets anyone hurt on the property pursue the owner and operator for failure to maintain a reasonably safe structure. If a construction worker is hurt inside a parking garage during demolition, repair, or alteration work, Labor Law § 240(1) and § 241(6) apply to gravity-related and Industrial-Code violations on the job. The general statute of limitations under CPLR § 214 is three years from the date of injury. Wrongful death actions have a two-year limit from the date of death. Spoliation, where physical evidence is altered or destroyed before counsel can examine it, is a recurring issue in collapse cases. Securing the scene early matters.
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Antin, J. S. (2026, May 27). NYC Parking Lot and Garage Collapses, A 2025-2026 Risk Map the City Already Has. AEE Law Insights. https://aeelaw.com/insights/nyc-parking-garage-collapse-risk-map-2025-2026/
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