SERVICE AREA · BROOKLYN
Local Law 11 and façade repairs for Brooklyn's new towers and older brick
Brooklyn's tall buildings split into two camps: towers built since 2000, and older brick and post-war co-ops lining corridors like Ocean Avenue and Ocean Parkway. In the last FISP cycle, about 3 in 10 initial Brooklyn reports were filed Unsafe, the highest rate of the four largest boroughs. Banu works on both kinds, and on the parapets of the thousands of buildings that sit just under the FISP threshold.
Brooklyn by the numbers
- FISP buildings, Cycle 9
- 2,578
- Initial reports filed Unsafe
- 29.5%, highest of the four largest boroughs
- Buildings reporting concrete
- 19%
- Buildings reporting stucco or EIFS
- 20%
- Buildings with an active shed permit (Oct 1, 2026)
- 1,703
Source: NYC Open Data, as of October 2, 2026. Method and full data →
Two Brooklyns
The first Brooklyn is new. About 69% of Brooklyn tax lots with buildings of seven or more floors were built in 2000 or later, many along the Williamsburg and Greenpoint waterfront and in Downtown Brooklyn after the 2004 and 2005 rezonings. They're concrete, EIFS, panel and glass buildings, and they're turning up in FISP reports with problems their owners didn't expect this early.
The second Brooklyn is older and built differently: pre-war and post-war apartment houses lining Ocean Avenue and Ocean Parkway, the mid-century co-op towers of Coney Island and Brighton Beach, and big complexes like Spring Creek Towers in East New York.
Where each one breaks down
On newer towers
- Sealant joints at windows and panels, often never replaced
- EIFS and stucco that cracks and delaminates
- Balcony slab edges and railing anchors
- Flashing at setbacks and roof edges
On older masonry
- Open mortar joints and cracked brick
- Rusting lintels and shelf angles
- Parapets and coping
- Balconies on post-war co-ops
The corridors we know
- Ocean Avenue, Flatbush and Midwood: About 79 FISP buildings on a single avenue, more than on any other Brooklyn street. Pre-war apartment houses share it with buildings from the 2000s.
- Ocean Parkway: About 67 FISP buildings, among them a run of high-rises built from 1956 to 1965.
- Coney Island and Brighton Beach: The borough's biggest group of post-war towers, many of them large co-ops on the water.
- Downtown Brooklyn and Brooklyn Heights: The borough's oldest tall buildings standing next to its newest, plus the Borough Hall Skyscraper Historic District.
- Williamsburg and Greenpoint waterfront: About 315 buildings of seven or more floors built since 2000 in Community District 1, more than any other part of Brooklyn.
- Bay Ridge (Shore Road): Pre-war and post-war apartment buildings facing the Narrows.
Six stories and under: the parapet rule
FISP covers buildings greater than six stories, and Brooklyn has about 2,100 tax lots with buildings that tall. It has more than 3,000 with buildings of exactly six floors, plus tens of thousands of rowhouses. Local Law 126 doesn't care about height. If a parapet faces the street, it needs an annual observation, and that observation is where much of the borough's façade work starts. Parapet repairs →
Landmarks in Brooklyn
Brooklyn Heights became New York's first historic district in 1965. Brooklyn now has dozens of districts but few tall buildings inside them: about 94 tax lots with buildings of seven or more floors, mostly in Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO and the Borough Hall Skyscraper district. Most of the landmark work here is on brownstone and brick rowhouses, where the weather sets the patching calendar. Landmark restoration →
Brooklyn questions
Our building is six stories. Do we need anything?
Probably not for FISP, which applies to buildings greater than six stories (check the sloped-site rule if your building sits on a grade). The parapet rule is broader. If it faces the street, Local Law 126 requires an annual parapet observation at any height. Brooklyn has more than 3,000 tax lots with six-story buildings, and the rule catches a lot of those owners off guard.
Our building went up in 2012. Why is the façade already in a FISP report?
Newer buildings have weak points of their own: sealant joints nobody has maintained, EIFS and stucco with damaged base coats, balcony slab edges, and flashing that was poorly detailed to begin with. Brooklyn's FISP buildings report the highest shares of concrete and stucco/EIFS of the four largest boroughs, and those materials fail differently from brick.
When can brownstone be patched?
When the weather holds. LPC permits typically require patching and repointing to be done when the temperature stays at 45°F or above for 72 hours from the start of work. We put brownstone and stone patching in the spring-to-fall window and sequence the rest of the job around it.
Our neighbor's rowhouse roof is in the way of our scaffold. What are our options?
You have three: a license agreement with the neighbor for roof protection, a different way up such as a cantilevered rig, or, if the neighbor refuses, a court-granted license under RPAPL §881. Once we've seen your block, we'll tell you which one is realistic.
Our services in Brooklyn
Let's talk about your building
Tell us about your Brooklyn building
New tower or old brick, send us the report. We'll walk the building and tell you what it needs.
