Companies at Center of Brooklyn Building Collapse Have a Record of Safety Violations, Ignoring City Orders

As city officials scramble to figure out who is to blame for the stunning collapse of a Brooklyn apartment building into an adjacent construction site this week, questions are surfacing about the troubled track records of two of the contractors doing work there.

The three-story apartment building at 1321 Flatbush Ave. collapsed Wednesday afternoon into an empty lot next door at 2625 Bedford Ave. that was being dug out to make way for a planned apartment building. The city Department of Buildings said workers were down in the pit doing excavation when the late afternoon collapse occurred.

City officials said Thursday that eight people — including two children aged 9 and 10 — died and 18 more were injured, seven kids among them. Firefighters searched for survivors, braving treacherous conditions made worse by a torrential downpour, but wrapped up their mission late Thursday after concluding the search was complete. The dead included two construction workers, officials said. 

At a press conference near the site, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said the Buildings Department had identified five companies working at the collapse site that are “associated with 100 sites across the city.” The agency launched a sweep of those locations to ensure they’re in compliance with the city’s building code.

“If there is anyone or any entity operating in this city who is responsible for this, we will hold them accountable,” the mayor vowed.

On Thursday evening, the Police Department released the names of the victims: Nicole Daniela Salvada Rodriguez, 9; Kevin Santiago Reyes Gonzalez, 10; Gabriel Siguencia, 22; Barry Mamadou, 23; Jose Luis Caguana Cosquillo, 26; Edgar Sapon, 26; Ndiaye Mamadou, 31; and Juan Daniel Salvada Guzman, 31.

Elite Concrete’s Record

Buildings Commissioner Ahmed Tigani would not name the companies who had been working at or near the site, but records and interviews with workers revealed two: Elite Concrete, which was handling the excavation, and N Tech Design of America, which had performed demolition of the one-story building that existed at the empty lot before construction began.

Records reviewed by The City Reporter show Elite has been cited by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal agency that regulates construction safety, two times in the last four years over serious construction accidents.

In April 2023 an Elite worker fell 12 feet at a site at 32-03 39th Ave. in Long Island City after a steel deck collapsed, records show. OSHA accused Elite of failing to ensure workers had adequate fall protection and did not “determine if the walking/working surfaces in which its employees were to work on had the strength and structure integrity to support employees safely.”

Then, in August 2025, OSHA cited Elite again after a worker at a Jersey City, New Jersey, site was electrocuted using a steel trowel near a power line that wasn’t properly grounded. OSHA issued another violation, charging that workers at the site were exposed to empalement dangers because protruding steel bars known as rebar were not adequately covered.

In the Long Island City case, OSHA hit Elite with $32,000 in penalties which they reduced to $15,000 after the company contested the sanctions. In the New Jersey case, OSHA issued more than $11,000 in fines which Elite is contesting, records show.

Elite’s CEO, Eli Friedman, did not immediately respond to The City Reporter’s request for comment Thursday.

Defied Stop-Work Order

Another firm working the site was N Tech Design of America, which did the demolition of a one-story building there that preceded the excavation work.

Last spring the Buildings Department slapped N Tech with $10,000 in fines after city inspectors discovered they were doing demolition without a permit, and then defied a stop-work order and continued working. The company paid the fine and work resumed in April after DOB granted them a permit.

Two years ago N Tech was sued by the owner of a Fenimore Street building in Brooklyn adjacent to where the firm was performing excavation work. The owner, James Farah, alleged that he found significant water and structural damage at his building that he blamed on N Tech’s excavation work.

Aramis Brown, who is listed as the licensee for N Tech, declined to comment.

On Thursday Crain’s New York reported that they had reviewed a Buildings Department document that said unsafe construction work at 2625 Bedford had caused the three-story building next door at 1321 Flatbush to collapse. After Crain’s inquired about that, however, DOB retracted the finding and said the cause of the collapse remained under investigation.

City Objections to New Building Plan

In addition to the two contractors, the Buildings Department has raised questions about plans by the owner, a limited liability company owned by Robert Fischman called W6 Facility X LLC, to erect a nine-story building at the site.

Buildings Commissioner Tigani said the department had earlier this year approved plans to build a three-story structure there, but last month Fischman amended his plans and sought approval for a nine-story structure that would rise 85 feet above the street.

In city records, the agency noted it has raised “objections” to this plan. But DOB spokesperson Andrew Rudansky said the department could not provide specific details about its concerns until the owner’s registered design professional — the developer’s architect — had a chance to respond.

Property records have also raised questions about the owner of the building that collapsed.

The building was built in 1930 and is owned by Isolag Realty Corp., tied to Brooklyn-based landlord Olufemi Falade. The building had 98 open housing violations as of Thursday, including 21 “immediately hazardous” and 40 “hazardous” violations for various conditions, according to city records.

The property appeared on the city’s tax lien sale list multiple times in the past decade. Falade was jailed for 12 days in 2006 for civil contempt for failing to fix reams of violations at other Brooklyn buildings he owned, the New York Times and New York Post previously reported. Public Advocate Jumaane Williams named him on the city’s “worst landlords” list, based on housing code violations, as recently as 2024. Falade did not immediately respond to a call to a number listed for him.

‘An Excellent Young Man’

A Bushwick-based soccer club told The City Reporter one of its athletes died in the collapse.

José Luis Caguana Cosquillo was a construction worker at the Flatbush Avenue site. He leaves behind a pregnant wife and 4-year-old son, said Club Deportivo La Bahía leader Rodrigo Tubón. Caguana Cosquillo’s wife is due to give birth Friday, Tubón said.

Tubón, 50, hails from the same Ecuadorian village as Caguana Cosquillo and said he’d known his parents and relatives for many years. The young father would often come to games with his own burgeoning family, who lived in Bushwick.

“He was an excellent young man,” an emotional Tubón said in Spanish. “We lost the best guy on the team.”

The soccer club is discussing turning its scheduled championship game on Saturday into a fundraiser for Caguana Cosquillo’s family.

“Anything we can do to help,” Tubón said. “We’re all very shaken up by this. It’s unbelievable.”

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