Repairs at the former Pfizer headquarters — under conversion to more than 1,600 apartments — continue through the night, with evacuation orders still covering 4 neighboring buildings
A Manhattan high-rise was declared stable late Tuesday after two structural columns buckled on its 21st floor, triggering evacuations of seven nearby buildings in midtown Manhattan, according to The Associated Press.
According to NBC News, Buildings Commissioner Ahmed Tigani reported that the structure had shown no movement for several hours after crews put in place emergency jacks and fresh steel reinforcements. "I can say right now the building is stable," Tigani told NBC News.
The 37-story building, the former headquarters of pharmaceutical company Pfizer $PFE, is located on East 42nd Street between Second and Third avenues, near Grand Central Terminal. Developers say the apartment conversion project, which will yield upward of 1,600 units, represents the biggest office-to-residential transformation ever undertaken in New York City, according to the AP.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani described the situation as "extremely serious" after construction workers first spotted the buckled beams, according to the Guardian. Fire Chief John Esposito noted that because the structure relies on a steel frame, any potential failure scenario would be contained rather than catastrophic, according to the AP.
MetroLoft founder Nathan Berman told The Wall Street Journal that expanding approximately 15 floors near the top of the building put excess load on the structure, and that the two failed columns may have been missed during the reinforcement process. "Ninety-five percent of the building, the structure is sound and intact," Berman told the Journal.
According to CNN, Berman said the shoring operation on the compromised floors was on track for completion by Thursday morning, with permanent replacement of the damaged structural elements to follow after the Department of Buildings signs off. Full stabilization could require shoring work extending all the way to the building's foundation — a span of roughly 20 floors — and by Wednesday, over 100 shoring jacks had arrived on site and were staged for installation, CNN reported.
As of Wednesday, evacuation orders were still in effect for four buildings in the surrounding area, while a fifth faced a partial order affecting only its ground-floor businesses, according to CNN. Office workers in the evacuation zone were given no firm return date, with unofficial estimates putting the wait somewhere between a few days and two weeks.
City building regulators have ordered the property owner to bring in an independent engineer to carry out a forensic investigation into what caused the structural failure, according to CNN.
