Brooklyn hotel marquee crashes down in front of subway entrance

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, Brooklyn (WABC) -- A Brooklyn hotel marquee came crashing down sending debris scattering everywhere and closing down the Clark Street 2/3 subway station.

The bigger of the two marquees on Henry Street came crashing down Sunday morning, and there is an investigation to determine what kind of shape the other one is in.

The 10 by 20-foot marquee says the St. George Hotel, which opened more than a hundred years ago. What was the hotel above is now college dorms for several different schools.

No one was hurt. Had it been on a weekday morning, it could have been a different story.

Council Member Lincoln Restler tells Eyewitness News he has been sounding the alarm about the private landlord for not maintaining the building that is part of public transit. It has an agreement with the MTA, and Restler says the head of New York City Transit was just there Friday at the council member's invitation to look at the conditions.

"It's grimy. It's very rarely cleaned and we have a number of small businesses that are based in that space and it's often so hot that that struggle to stay open on the warmest days of the summer. So this is not a landlord that has been investing or caring for or properly maintaining the Clark Street subway station, and clearly they're not maintaining the exterior of the building either, " Restler said.

Neighbors say it makes them feel unsafe and they wonder how this could have been prevented.

"I mean, nobody got hurt. It was at 7:00 in the morning, so not a lot of traffic at that time, but it could have happened at any time," said Claudia Ordonez.

Other neighbors say they were not concerned about the marquee until now.

"Never gave it a thought. This is the entrance to the 2/3 subway line and the first thing I thought of was 'oh no, I need the train tomorrow morning, will it be back?'

2 and 3 trains are skipping Clark Street because there is nowhere to safely enter and exit. The station will not reopen until the investigation is done with the fallen marquee and to make sure the other one is secure.

The buildings department says it found a poorly maintained structural beam and it is easy to see how badly rusted it was.

"I'm just so grateful that we avoided a catastrophe today. If that marquee had fallen on any other day at 7 a.m., we would have lost neighbors," Restler added.

Neighbors are wondering if the marquee collapse had anything to do with the mild earthquake. That seems unlikely, sine it withstood the constant rumble of the subway for more than 100 years. Not only did the incident happen a day after an earthquake, it happened two days after the president of NYC Transit came to take a look at the Clark Street station's poor condition.

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