New York City building officials are conducting safety inspections at additional construction sites across the five boroughs in the wake of a structural failure at an office conversion project on East 42nd Street last week.
Department of Buildings spokesperson Andrew Rudansky said the wave of inspections was targeting other construction projects as part of a probe into what caused structural columns to buckle at the former Pfizer Building, where developers are turning an old office tower into hundreds of new apartments.
“As part of our ongoing investigation into the structural failure at 235 East 42nd Street, DOB is performing construction safety enforcement sweeps at other work sites located in the city,” Rudansky said.
Rudansky declined to say which locations the agency was targeting for enforcement or whether the inspectors were focusing on projects belonging to the building owner, MetroLoft, or handled by the structural engineer, GACE Consulting Engineers.
But two people familiar with the new round of enforcement said building inspectors would target projects involving the same companies that own or are contracted to work on the Pfizer Building office conversions.
The New York Times first reported on the enforcement Tuesday.
A MetroLoft spokesperson declined to comment. GACE Consulting Engineers did not respond to a request for comment.
The Department of Buildings has not yet determined exactly what caused a pair of columns on the 21st floor of the Midtown high-rise to bend, causing the floors above to sag.
The structural failure occurred directly below a major addition that expanded the building by 10 floors, starting nearly two dozen stories above the ground. MetroLoft also added four new stories atop the existing 33-story project.
City officials have deemed the building structurally sound after adding temporary supports between the ninth story and the rooftop. A partial vacate order is still in effect.
MetroLoft Managing Director Mitchell Wasser told Gothamist in a written statement last week that the company plans to “fully rebuild” a portion of the building above the broken structural columns.
The building is part of the largest office-to-housing conversion project in the city and was scheduled to open to tenants next year. The new apartment complex, which will be combined with an adjacent building, is expected to include about 1,600 units.
City and state officials have embraced office-to-residential conversion projects to alleviate New York’s dire housing shortage. Department of City Planning spokesperson Joe Marvilli said 10 office buildings have been converted to housing since 2020, with 44 other projects in the works.
The Department of Buildings has routinely investigated other projects following structural disasters. After a partial collapse of a building in the Bronx in 2023, building officials reviewed hundreds of additional projects handled by structural engineer Richard Koenigsberg.
The agency’s investigation found Koenigsberg had misidentified the Bronx building’s load-bearing facade, leading construction workers to remove bricks from a structural column and causing the collapse.
The city conducted a similar review of projects handled by general contractor Yakov Eisenbach after another partial collapse in the Bronx earlier this year.
The Department of Buildings suspended Eisenbach’s licenses after its review found a pattern of Eisenbach ignoring stop work orders, the agency said at the time.
