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Owners of condemned Chinatown building don't have same issues at their Southboro estate

The Herald introduces us to the Szetos, whom the city has sued over conditions at that Harrison Avenue building that seemed ready to collapse the other day.

The Szetos, who own Chef Orient in Framingham and Chopsticks in Leominster, live in splendor in a 17-room, 9,465-square-foot mansion on five acres of land with a fountain, lawn sculptures and a separate entrance to the house marked "Service and Delivery."

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Comments

to its four bedrooms and cost 2.1 million in 2001. He also has one of those "predatory" towing companies patrolling some of his property in Worcester.

And he donates to the Republican Party. Of course.

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This landlord is in serious trouble. Forget making them live in the place for 60 days. Thats silly. The Housing Court will make them bring it up to code, which will make them sad in the pocket book. From the article, it sounds as if this is a landlord that preys upon recent imigrants because they are less likely to go to the authorities to report all of the violations. Also, the "missing" support part of the story sounds like one of those hair brained schemes to cause a building to become structurally unsound with the idea that the City won't figure it out and will be quick to issue you a demo permit so it can be more easily redeveloped/sold. As I recall, something like this happened a few years back with the owner of the building next to the parking lot on Harrison Avenue who thought he could sidestep the historic building restrictions on his property by removing the bolts on the end of the tie rods that were holding the facade up.

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I hadn't heard the story about the other owner deliberately destabilizing his building. I had no luck googling for it.

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I see that he owns two (at least) Chinese restaurants outside of town. Any bets on how many of the displaced former tenants (as noted above, all recent immigrants) are/were employees at his restaurants? Or at other restaurants, maybe owned by friends of his?

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Taking that further, are his restaurants up to code?

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