Oops! (I see a lawsuit or two in this future.)

Developers in New York have been converting what had been Pfizer HQ in Midtown Manhattan to residential use. (Pfizer has decamped to a spiffier, hipper more happen' new build in NYC's Hudson Yards.) The old Pfizer building, located in fairly prime real estate on East 42nd, is being turned into 1600, with 25 percent of the units designated for affordable housing.

The conversion has been interesting for a couple of reasons. One, it's New York City's (and maybe even the country's) largest ever commercial-to-residential conversion; and second, they were adding 19 more floors to one part of the existing structure, and a few new floors will be topping off the more recent, higher section. (The original building, over 100 years old, had ten floors; the new part of the building, constructed in the early 1960's, had 32 or 33 floors - I've seen both figuress.)

In order to add floors to the OG structure, and to the newer 1960s-vintage building, they needed to add support columns.

In early July, a couple of columns buckled and the building started to sag. It was in danger of becoming "dangerously unstable." The building and it surrounds were evacuated, and construction was shut down. 

Initially, it was reported that only two columns were compromised. 

But a review of public documents obtained by The Times through a records request to the New York City Department of Buildings shows that steel plates were missing or inadequate on eight more columns that were supposed to be strengthened to support floors being added above.

In the documents, the insufficient reinforcements were referred to as “missing/partial length,” which could include missing plates intended to strengthen steel columns, or smaller plates — called “stiffener plates” — to ensure structural continuity through floors. Plates that were shorter than designed could also have been mistakenly put up. (Source: NY Times)

Hmmmm. That doesn't sound good.  

Someone was supposed to be checking out those columns to make sure they were up to spec. As Daniel Linzell, Worcester Polytechnic Institute's engineering dean, noted:

“It appears that whoever’s eyes were supposed to be confirming that the columns’ strengthening was completed were not.” He said he did not believe that this happens regularly in the construction industry.

Good to know!

“This appears to be a lack of oversight,” he said.

I'd say. 

Shutting down a project of this magnitude is costly, even if it's only for a short time. (The structure has been declared stable.) Then there's having to go in and rectify what should have been done right the first time. 

The columns buckling mid-construction is actually a godsend. They get to make the repairs before anyone's living in the building. Imagine if it had been occupied? 

I'm no clairvoyant, but I can see a ton of fingerpointing and plenty of lawsuits before this one is settled. Financial and reputational damages, coming right up!

And how'd you like to be a member of the sales and marketing team responsible for selling/renting these 1,600 apartments? This situation has got to knock prices down, one would think. And, whatever the price, you'd have to be desperate to take a flyer on a building that had experienced a mini-collapse. I sure wouldn't be comfortable living there, hoping every creak wasn't signaling a floor caving in. Or something.

The thought of a building collapse is particularly front-of-mind, given that the recent 25th anniversary of 9/11 has brought up all those images of the World Trade Center Towers going to ashes and dust. (By the way, according to my construction engineer brother Tom, the Towers were well built, and actually held up remarkably well. It's just that they hadn't been engineered for the unimaginable - huge airliners, fully loaded with jet fuel, deliberately crashing into them.)

Not that I'm ever going to be living in Manhattan, but a newer build and likely a much higher rise than the 5-storey, 160 year old building I've been living in for 35 years now, is in my future. Hope nothing collapses around my ears!

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Image Source: Reddit