Dallas officials say the city-owned building was closed in April not because employee safety was at risk, but because the small number of people who worked in the building were in areas that were being renovated and off-limits. He said this was because he was “wandering”. For occupancy.
Assistant City Manager Majid Al Ghafri told councilors at Thursday's committee meeting that workers would be suspended after four months due to concerns that the presence of workers on unauthorized floors would impede the continuity of the facility. officials said they decided to evacuate the building at 4700 N. Stemmons Freeway. repair work.
The city of Dallas purchased the building in 2022 for $14.2 million and has since spent nearly $7 million renovating it. Al-Ghafrey and other officials said Thursday that it could cost an additional $7.8 million in renovations to make the entire building available for workers. The required work includes installing a new fire alarm system and repairing two malfunctioning elevators. The city hopes to have employees back in the building by the fall. The committee is seeking an audit of the building's purchase and ongoing issues.
This building only has a temporary certificate for the 5th floor.
“I can say with complete transparency and confidence that there was no issue of life and safety that caused me to do something like this,” Al-Ghafri said of the Extraordinary General Investigation and Ethics Committee. stated at the meeting. He said the building had a valid temporary certificate of occupancy.
“I didn't want some of my staff to be going back and forth on small things and going to different floors and creating all sorts of stories that they perceived as problems. So I wanted to stop it,” he said.
He then told City Council members that it was “one or two employees” who would not stick to the fifth floor and asked them to move more than 50 employees back to the Department of Permits' former headquarters at Oak Cliff Municipal Center. Told.
Thursday was the first time since the building was closed that Dallas officials who oversee the city's Department of Permits and Buildings publicly raised the issue of the Stemmons building with City Council members.
Employees began moving into the building in December. In January, an employee's spouse filed a complaint with the State Fire Marshal's Office alleging a series of safety issues at the facility. Fire code violations were found during city fire inspections in February and April, and employees began vacating the building on April 9 after it was determined that fire alarms were not sounding on all floors, Al-Ghafree said. It is said that The building was completely closed by April 10th.
Al Ghafley did not mention the employees loitering in the Stemmons building when he sent his initial reasons for closing the Stemmons building to the mayor and city council.
“This relocation is a result of additional facility improvements recently identified at the current location and will require existing staff in the building to return to OCMC for the foreseeable future,” Al Ghafri said in a statement to City Council. He said in an email on March 9th. “Remaining improvements include work on fire suppression systems, IT equipment, connections, lift works and other key tenant improvements.”
Al-Ghafrey said Thursday that the workers were not allowed above the first and fifth floors and had been warned, but City Development Services Director Andrew Espinoza said that since January He said he worked on the second and third floors until March. .
“We had applied for temporary certificates of occupancy for the second and third (floors), but with all the excitement and momentum to get in, it was difficult to finalize those temporary certificates. There wasn’t,” Espinoza said. The Development Services Department oversees city permitting. Espinoza is also the city's chief building official who oversees building inspections. He said no employees were disciplined for being on other floors in the building.
Al-Ghafri and other officials blamed the building's problems on a lack of communication between city officials, saying a thorough inspection of each floor had not been carried out until last month. This was despite a recommendation from the fire department to check the building's fire alarms, as they had not been inspected since April 2022, said Dallas Fire Rescue Deputy Chief Chris Martinez. said at Thursday's meeting. Testing should be done annually, he said. Mr. Martinez also serves as the city's fire marshal.
Jennifer Neiswander, director of the city's Department of Bond and Construction Management, said the fire alarms were tested early because no issues were reported during the review before the City Council approved the purchase of the building in August 2022. said that it was not.
“I think at that time we were still relying on the fact that the previous test had said it was working,” Nicewander said. “Everything we had seen up to that point indicated it was working, so there was nothing that would trigger us to test it.”
Councilman Gay Donnell Willis responded, “If you're spending $14 million on it, that's what you should have done.”
City Council members expressed frustration that there wasn't more urgency for city officials to ensure the building was safe.
“It appears we just ticked the boxes and didn't do what we needed to do to ensure the safety of our employees' lives,” City Councilman Paul Ridley said.
The commission approved asking the city auditor's office to investigate the circumstances surrounding the purchase of the building, why employees continue to work in the building, and complaints by employees at the facility.
Espinoza said she has heard only minor complaints from employees who work in the building. Complaints included the lack of a mirror in the women's bathroom, that the entire bathroom needed repainting, and that there were long lines for elevators in the morning because there were only two people working in the building. etc. were mentioned.
But those concerns were in stark contrast to a January letter submitted to the state fire marshal about working conditions inside the building. The employee's spouse claimed that the building was overflowing with toilets and urinals, the elevators were not working, and the fire alarms were not alerting the entire building. He also noted that the building lacked a final certificate of occupancy. The State Fire Marshal's Office said it had forwarded the complaint to the city.
Al-Ghafree told City Council members Wednesday that the city's fire inspection of Stemmons Building in February was the result of a complaint, but he didn't know any details about it.
Fire Department inspectors found more than 30 fire code violations in the building, including a lack of a certificate of occupancy for the entire facility, even though the city had allowed tenants to occupy the cafe on the first floor and the seventh floor. . Other violations included problems with the fire alarm system, fire extinguishers, fire sprinkler system, building exit signs and a faded firebreak in the parking lot, according to the Feb. 8 report. Al-Ghafri said on Thursday that the building's seventh floor is occupied by a construction company whose lease ends in 2026.
The report said problems with the fire alarms and that the building was not properly monitored despite the fire alarms being fully operational were discovered during inspections on April 3 and April 4. It is said that it was discovered in An April 3 inspection found that fire alarms could not be heard in most of the building at the time of testing.
Al-Ghafri said Thursday that the city is not bending rules to keep the towers open.
“We did exactly the same thing we would do for a private organization. [temporary certificate of occupancy],” he said. “We didn't cut corners just to occupy the building.”
Councilwoman Carla Mendelsohn, who chairs the committee, said she felt it was important for the city to fully understand what happened and how it happened.
“This purchase and subsequent activity is important to taxpayers and the business community, and the tragic irony that the permit office could not open because it failed inspection and could not secure a certificate of occupancy will be lost on everyone. No,” she said.
