Chetrit Group fined $10K over unsecured fence at stalled 250 W 43rd
The department's monthly bulletin put a $10,000 penalty on one of New York's best-known developers for a fence, and the same sheet shows how DOB prices a site that is left open.
The New York City Department of Buildings imposed $10,000 in penalties on The Chetrit Group for violations at 250 W 43rd Street in Manhattan, according to its August 2026 enforcement bulletin. Inspectors cited the developer for failure to safeguard a stalled construction site after observing an unsecured construction fence.
Why it matters
Chetrit is among the city’s most active repeat developers, and a stalled site is the condition DOB polices hardest on a developer’s own watch: no crew on site, no one checking the fence. If you hold a paused job in New York, a gap in the perimeter is a citable event on its own, with no injury required. We covered the group’s wider footprint in our report on the Bossert hotel sale in Brooklyn Heights.
The numbers
The bulletin reports 13 safeguarding violations and $130,000 in penalties across 13 locations in August. That is an average of $10,000 a site, and Chetrit’s penalty lands exactly on it. Several penalties on the same Manhattan page also came in at $10,000, including Pavarini McGovern at 655 5 Avenue, where a six-inch metal shim fell during hoist dismantling and struck a pedestrian, and Pofi Construction Corp. at 1787 Madison Avenue, where a brick fell from a suspended scaffold onto a vehicle windshield. Chetrit’s citation involved no reported injury or falling object, only the open fence.
The Bronx entry shows the same price for a similar lapse: $10,000 on Schimenti Construction Co for 1998 Bruckner Boulevard, where about 100 feet of fence collapsed and left the site open to the public. Higher up the sheet, DOB reports $188,250 in penalties for illegal alterations at 2 locations, which shows where the department’s big numbers sit: occupancy and conversion violations, not fences.
What’s next
The bulletin does not say whether the stalled site has since resumed work or whether Chetrit has contested the penalty, and we have not confirmed either. Watch the DOB NOW record for 250 W 43rd Street for new filings or additional violations. The next monthly bulletin is the place a repeat citation would show up. For more from the city’s largest market, see New York.
On the record
What we checked ourselves, and where you can check it too.
- Public recordDOB's August 2026 bulletin lists $130,000 in penalties across 13 safeguarding locations, an average of $10,000 a site; The Chetrit Group's $10,000 at 250 W 43rd Street sits exactly at that average.View the record on nyc.gov
Sources
- NYC Department of BuildingsDOB Enforcement Actions bulletin, August 2026 (Manhattan section, page 3)