The Moda: Epilogue

Well, the weather is cold and the news is slow, so I'm going to revisit one of my favorite stories from the last few months. I've written about it here and here as it developed, but now it's worth a mention that the situation has finally come to a resolution.

It involves the brand-new Moda Apartments on 3rd Ave., between Bell & Battery. About a month and a half ago, I got a tip that a gang of subcontractors (from an outfit called Brace Point Railing showed up unannounced with ladders, promptly disassembled about a half dozen balconies, threw the components into their truck and drove away. The workmen cited the Moda's lack of payment as the reason for their action, claiming that their company had been owed something like $20,000 for months. The story went as far as the local news, but quickly faded away. Meanwhile, those half dozen balconies were being replaced by parts cannibalized from other areas of the building. For me, that was the most bizarre aspect of the story. Instead of having six balconies that were unsafe, the Moda management made other sectors or its own building unsafe just to effect partial repairs on the balconies. It was madness.

Well, a month after the situation presented itself, it seems that the Moda has had its day in court against Brace Point Railing and it has emerged victorious. The terms of the settlement are unclear, but Brace Point Railing has returned all the parts that they repossessed. It's unknown whether they got the money that was owed to them, but as you can see from the photo above, they have their balconies back. They had to hire another company to reinstall them, but now Moda residents previously deprived of the opportunity to survey their domain can now stroll their eight square feet of balcony in relative safety.

Moda Update: The Saga Continues!

Last week, I detailed the strange predicament of the Moda Apartments on 3rd Ave. You remember that, don't you? It's the building that had some of its balconies repossessed by a subcontractor due to lack of payment. Well, the story spread to a few online outlets and eventually ended up on the KOMO News site. Thus far, it's garnered around 110 comments. If you thought the exposure and embarrassment of the story's unfavorable depictions of both parties would have caused one to cave or, at the very least, spurred some kind of compromise, you'd be wrong.

According to my tipster, the Moda has begun legal proceedings against the subcontractor, Brace Point Railing, but for the time being, their maintenance crew is trying to replace the missing balconies with parts gathered elsewhere. This was the scene on Friday:

Here you have three or four guys hard at work, replacing the missing parts. When I walked by on Sunday, I expected to see all the balconies back in usable condition. Wrong! Here's what I saw:


They seem to have fixed two of the balconies. Three remain in their partially-dismantled states. Why did they stop? Well, perhaps they ran out of parts. I was led to believe that the Moda staff was actually going out to purchase identical materials to replace the missing parts. Instead, it appears that they're in the midst of cannibalizing their own building to make the repairs:

This is the south end of the building, right next to the grand old Adams. These missing sections weren't there last week; they're new. They weren't repossessed by Brace Point Railing. The fact that there are missing sections of railing and limited balcony repair doesn't appear to be a coincidence. It seems that they're robbing Peter to pay Paul.

So many commenters over the last week have been asking the same question: Hey, is it legal for guys to just pull up and take back their balconies? That's for the courts to decide. On the one hand, you have a company owed $20,000 by an apartment building for whom they've performed work in good faith. On the other, Brace Point Railing created a hazardous situation by repossessing the balconies. On still another hand, the Moda isn't helping matters by dismantling one section of their own building to repair another. No matter who wins the lawsuit, in the short term, the tenants are the ones who lose out.

Thanks once again to my prime tipster.