At IPN Building, Danger from Above

 by Carl Glassman

Jessie MacDonald of 80 North Moore St. in Independence Plaza North had just taken her two Jack Russels for a walk one Sunday afternoon last month.

She was almost to the door of her building when a glass crashed onto the sidewalk in front of her, not more than a foot away. The thick bottom of the glass hit with such force, she said, that it cracked the sidewalk.

Looking up at 39-story 80 North Moore St. Photo: Carl Glassman

“I’m still not over it,” MacDonald, 73, said a few days later. “I can’t tell you how shaken I am. I’m terrified to go out.”

Nanci Christopher, who lives in the same building, sometimes finds herself darting across the street after she exits the front door. On a Sunday morning in July she was leaving with her dog when a pitcher of ice missed her by inches. It was almost at the very spot where MacDonald was nearly hit.

“I was so shaken I was crying,” said Christopher, who, like MacDonald, reported the incident to the police. The next day, near the same spot, a bottle fell to the ground, barely missing her next-door neighbor, Nellie Milazzo, who also was walking her dog.

“It’s got to be the same someone because it’s always at the entrance,” said Gloria Orlando, 73, who was with her dog when she was nearly hit by a water-filled plastic bottle early this year, and last year by a glass bottle, also filled with water.

These are just some of the near-tragic incidents involving falling objects in front of 80 North Moore Street. Residents said they have been occuring intermittently for more than two years, most to women walking dogs and most on the weekend. No suspects have been identified.

Ofer Shaul, chief operating officer of Stellar Management, which owns and operates the complex, said the problem was more frequent last year, in the first months after Stellar took ownership, but then the number of incidents declined.

“They are much more rarely happening today,” he said. “We’re trying to identify from which apartment [the objects] came out of but that’s very hard to do.”

Joe Bellomo, crime prevention officer at the 1st Precinct, said one of the recommendations he made to Independence Plaza’s management was to install surveillance cameras. “That’s really the only way you can catch them,” Bellomo said. “Otherwise, we’d have to put a cop on the street to watch the building terraces 24 hours a day.”

The best vantage point for a camera is thought to be the Citigroup office tower at 388 Greenwich St., across North Moore Street. More than two years ago IPN’s management was denied permission to put cameras on the building, according to Bill Wallace, IPN’s current head of security.

The remains of a glass that last month fell within a foot of a resident of the building. Photo: Carl Glassman

Following the most recent incident and inquiries from the Trib, IPN requested a meeting with Citigroup and 1st Precint representatives. A Citigroup spokeswoman, Christina Pretto, said the company hopes to meet with the representatives soon “to figure out how we can best help the situation.” But she could not say whether surveillance cameras would be an option.

Shaul, from Stellar Management, noted that the company is in the “last stage” of upgrading its security system, which includes mounting more cameras on the buildings, though not necessarily ones that would be in a position to see where the objects are coming from.