The work to repair a Midtown Manhattan high-rise that became dangerously unstable this summer is expected to take a major step forward next week, after the city approved a plan to lift its sagging floors.
For months since the building buckled in July, its future had been uncertain. Construction crews, supervised by city officials, had installed supports to temporarily stabilize the structure, the former headquarters of Pfizer, which was undergoing a conversion to apartments.
Now, a plan, approved on Wednesday, to lift the damaged floors by roughly six inches using jacks could help bring about a more permanent solution for the building at 235 East 42nd Street. If successful, it could offer clarity about the fate of what was once one of the most ambitious office-to-residential conversion projects in New York City.
Andrew Rudansky, a spokesman for the Buildings Department, said the repair work would be overseen by city officials and engineers. It would not require the closure of streets or any evacuations.
“The Department of Building’s primary responsibility is the safety of our fellow New Yorkers, and we would not allow any work to proceed in the city if we thought it was posing a hazard to the public,” he said.
MetroLoft, one of the two companies developing the building, declined to comment.
The buckling of the columns on the 21st floor of the building on July 7 prompted fears of a collapse and led to an emergency evacuation of a major commercial area of Manhattan. The episode also placed intense scrutiny on office-to-residential conversions, which have been embraced by city officials, including Mayor Zohran Mamdani, as a smart way to repurpose old buildings and help solve the city’s housing shortage.
A New York Times investigation this summer found that steel plates necessary to reinforce the two columns and four others across the 19th and 20th floors were not installed before the buckling occurred, even though they had been part of structural engineering plans. Plans later showed that there were insufficient reinforcements on eight additional steel columns.
The city is continuing an investigation into what went wrong.
On Wednesday, construction crews could be seen working at the site. Arben Contracting Trucks were parked in the middle of East 42nd Street.
Two men on an aerial work platform worked on the facade of the second floor.
Engineers say that the jacking project can proceed safely only with a vast computational effort and an array of gauges to estimate loads on the steel throughout the building. The computing almost certainly includes teams of structural engineers creating a 3-D model of the building to understand how loads will increase, decrease and be redistributed throughout the structure as the jacking proceeds.
Even then, the jacking must take place with extreme care, in almost imperceptible increments, as the gauges measure how the bones of the old building and the new addition react to the upward push of hydraulic pumps.
Andrea Barnes contributed reporting.
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