PATERSON – The owners of two downtown Paterson commercial buildings are engaged in a protracted legal battle over an emergency exit at the city’s HARP Academy, which has about 290 students and 34 staff members.
At issue is whether David Tasci, the owner of the Colt Street building that houses HARP, has gotten approval from Anthony Pilavas, the owner of a vacant structure on nearby Church Street, to use his property as part of the school’s fire evacuation route. Colt and Church streets run parallel to each other on opposite sides of the block where the school is located.
The fire exits were an issue of concern among Paterson planning board members when the school district proposed moving HARP into the six-story Colt Street structure back in 2015.
As a result, Tasci, created emergency exits and walkways for the school’s upper floors. Those exits are now part of evacuation route that takes students and staff through the interior of the city block to the back of Pilavas’ building and through an alley on that property out onto Church Street.
Pilavas said Tasci never got his approval to use the Church Street property as an emergency route. Pilavas said when the school is open students and staff regularly cut through his land during fire drills, which he said has undermined his efforts to sell the building.
“Who wants to buy when they know they’re going to have kids coming through the building on a regular basis?” Pilavas said.
Pilavas’ lawyer, Dennis Cummins Jr., filed a lawsuit over the emergency route in Nov. 2017. The case is still pending.
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Tasci declined to comment about the dispute. Tasci’s lawyer, Glenn Azzinari, said his client disagrees with Pilavas’ assertions. “We’re confident we will prevail,” said Azzinari.
The Paterson school district, which is also named as a defendant in the case, declined to comment on the litigation.
The school district’s lease for the HARP building — at $495,000 per year in rent — expires at the end of December. But district spokesman Paul Brubaker said school officials are involved in lease negotiations that would keep HARP at the Colt Street building.
At one point several years ago, Pilavas installed a metal gate blocking off his property from Church Street. He said vagrants were congregating in the entrance area and he needed to keep them out.
But city fire officials issued a summons because the gate was the blocking the emergency exit that HARP students were supposed to use, officials said. As a result of the fire department’s intervention, Pilavas installed a gate door that remained locked on the outside, but emergency exit mechanism that allowed students to pass through from the inside.
Paterson Fire Chief Brian McDermott said the emergency exit recently was inspected.
“All is up to speed,” McDermott said. “The gate opens from the inside. It is still operational. They just made it more secure from the outside.”
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