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Hard Work Pays Off: Remembering Hurricane Sandy, Three Years Later

Today marks three years since hurricane Sandy devastated the Northeast. In those three years, the community has banded together to rebuild. This courageous effort and relentless force is what has restored the shore.
During Sandy, a ‘Major Retailer’ store that had been built atop concrete piers along the shoreline of Gravesend Bay in Brooklyn was severely damaged by the surge of water that flooded the city. The storm was devastating. The concrete slab floors of the store rippled with the waves and were shattered and displaced, with water geysering up through the slab into the store! The damage rendered the retail building un-usable.

Following the storm, the ‘Major Retailer’s management contacted Scott Henson Architect’s trusted team to spearhead the effort of installing a temporary tent in the store’s parking lot. This tent would serve as a sales floor until the brick and mortar store could be repaired. The re-establishment of a sales floor was critical at this time because this ‘Major Retailer’ served as a primary source of goods that were vital to the neighborhood. The goal? To be open and functional by 11/23 (‘Black Friday’).

While Lower Manhattan through Midtown remained without electricity and the SHA office closed, Scott Henson walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to meet with the Brooklyn Borough Commissioner, Ira Gluckman, to discuss the necessity of the tent and map out a course of action through the city agency approval process. He was on a mission to get the tent approved in time for the Black Friday deadline.

During the following two weeks, SHA worked with the project team, including the Owner’s tent manufacturer from Europe and in-house consultant team, SHA’s structural engineering consultant, Gilsanz Murray Steficek, and expeditor Marty Marcus from Property Intervention Consultants to ensure the tent was filed, approved and installed by the Thanksgiving deadline. Scott Henson met personally with the Borough Commissioner on multiple occasions and filed with the NYC Dept. of Buildings, Dept. of Transportation, and the Fire Dept. of New York.

The SHA team worked in coordination with the project team to adapt the tent manufacturer’s European standards to NYC standards, determine proper structural anchoring, interior sales layouts, mechanical heating/cooling layouts, fire protections/evacuation layouts and delivery/stock logistics.

All the hard work and long days paid off. The tent was approved, installed and stocked by the Monday prior to Thanksgiving, providing time for logistics to be ironed-out by Black Friday. Dedication to the cause always wins.

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