I’m often asked how difficult is it to move this wall. There’s no easy way of saying this, but moving this wall, all walls is the same bureaucratic process with the Department of Buildings. And to go through the department of buildings, three things are going to happen.

1) You’re going to have to hire an architect,

2) you’re going to have to get approval from your building.

3) And you’re going to have to go through a full Department of Buildings review for a work permit.

Hiring the architects: An architect, if you’re moving a wall or two or three isn’t really charging you for the drawing, he’s charging you for the stamp, which will then allow you to process those drawings through the Department of Buildings. And that stamp is going to cost you about $15,000. The drawing will be additional to that. So another $5000 or $10,000 in drawing depending on how complicated your wall moving is.

Once you have that together, which will take a month or two, you can then take it to your building for approval.

I strongly recommend you talk to your building first and say this is what I intend to do. I understand the process, but this is what I intend to do so that you don’t get to the end of it and then they say you can’t do it.
Once you have your architectural plans in hand, you submit them to the building, they will review it there may be an architectural review process with the building’s architect, and they may ask you to change things for ADEA compliance, (the American Disabilities Act Compliance or space in light and that sort of thing), but your architect should be familiar with all those rules and help you with the process.

Once it’s approved, and the documents are signed by your building. It can then be processed and sent off to the Department of Buildings where you will need to hire an expediter. An expediter is the team of people that actually process your document with the Department of Buildings, and they will charge you around $5,000 including the various fees from the DOB.

I hope that was useful. And if you’d like more information, click on the link below.