Residents and hotel guests were allowed back Wednesday into nearby buildings around a midtown Manhattan high-rise after structural damage forced evacuations, while workers installed temporary fixes to shore up the building. The streets around the site gradually returned to life, but four other area buildings remained off limits and the city said it would conduct a broader inquiry into what went wrong.
Who Gets Displaced
Sally Grant and Margaret Clark were among those waiting to be let back into the Hampton Inn near the damaged former Pfizer building. They had traveled from Scotland to see Bon Jovi perform at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday, but were evacuated and told to leave their belongings, including their credit cards, passports and medication. Clark said, "They could have given us five minutes to grab our belongings, you know, instead of just saying everybody out, everybody out," and added, "We've been left with nothing. We slept in the streets last night. The police wouldn't help us. It's been awful. Absolutely it's ruined our holiday."
That’s the human cost of the emergency order. People at the bottom were shoved out fast, with no time to gather the basics, while the machinery of property protection and public safety kept moving around them. Four other area buildings stayed off limits, and major streets remained closed, frustrating pedestrians and drivers as the city managed the fallout.
Authorities responding to emergency calls at the building discovered two mangled support beams and sagging floors on the 21st floor early Tuesday, triggering mass evacuations and street closures in an area not far from the Grand Central transit hub and the Chrysler Building. In the initial hours, officials believed the steel-framed building, which was empty other than the workers, wasn't necessarily at risk of a total collapse, but "more of a localized collapse," as Fire Chief John Esposito described it.
What the City Says
Mayor Zohran Mamdani said no more movement had been detected in the massive office-to-apartment conversion project at Pfizer's former headquarters near Grand Central Terminal. He said, "As soon as we answer the emergency questions around safety in this moment, we are going to be conducting a full investigation as to how we got to this point," adding, "Because this is not a necessary consequence of an office to residential conversion. This, however, is clearly a breakdown in that process."
The city’s answer, for now, is inspection, supervision and more inspection. On-site contractors were eventually allowed to reenter the building late Tuesday to do emergency repairs after city officials carried out a floor-by-floor inspection and found encouraging signs. Temporary shoring and beams were installed throughout the 37-story building as crews made their way to the top. Photos shared by the city's Department of Buildings showed multiple steel rods inserted side-by-side next to one badly bent column.
The department said the emergency work is being supervised by the owner's engineer and an independent, third-party engineering firm hired by the owner. Once the emergency repairs are complete, Mamdani said city building officials will conduct a "rigorous assessment" to ensure the plans and the site are fully compliant with all codes before any non-emergency work proceeds. The language is tidy. The power arrangement is not: the owner hires the engineer, the city polices the result, and everyone else waits outside the tape.
Who Profits, Who Waits
The renovation project is billed as the largest office-to-residential conversion in the city's history, creating some 1,600 units of housing. The plans call for transforming a pair of office buildings by adding more than a dozen stories atop one tower and redesigning the other. New York, along with other major cities, has for years been pursuing ambitious overhauls to transform underused office space into residential buildings, in part to help struggling business districts and take strain off tight housing markets in need of more apartments.
Mamdani, a Democrat, told reporters Wednesday that he considers the conversions "part of our answer to the housing crisis," but added that the projects must be done "safely and in a way that is fully accountable." The future of the project remains uncertain while the cause of the structural issues is under investigation.
Unionized construction workers protested near the site Wednesday, using a large inflatable rat, to slam the developers for using non-union workers. That protest cut through the polished language of housing policy and redevelopment. The workers were there to name the labor arrangement behind the project, while the developer’s office stayed silent.
Spokespersons for MetroLoft, the project developer, didn't respond to requests for comment Wednesday, but the company has stressed that the building is not at risk of collapse. Nathan Berman, the firm's founder, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that the added weight from widening the top 15 or so floors of the building likely caused the damage.
There were signs of things returning to normal Wednesday on the streets surrounding the construction site, with people walking dogs, pushing strollers and riding bikes. Gawkers also paused to point and take photos of the hulking glass-and-steel tower, and some major streets remained closed. Elinor Ruskin, 94, was among those redirected by police after trying to get through a closed block. She said, "These things happen. I don't know if they will catch the mistake or what they will do. Anyway, you know, this is New York City."
Antoine Mouthon, who works nearby at the United Nations, said he had been skittish around the construction site after seeing the aftermath of a large sheet of metal falling from the building last August. He said, "A whole year after I avoided that street. I thought they cleaned up their act." Sabrina DeRizzio, another passerby, said she lives in one of the converted office towers and wondered why developers keep trying to turn outdated office towers into modern housing. She said, "It's not the best," adding that it's impossible to hang anything on the concrete walls and the unit never feels properly insulated. "The infrastructure is just not the same," she said.
The story was updated to correct the name of Grand Central Terminal. Associated Press video journalist Ted Shaffrey in New York contributed to the story. The article was written by Philip Marcelo, Michael R. Sisak and Anthony Izaguirre.