MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
New York City is booming with conversions of office buildings to apartments and condos. But on Tuesday, progress on the city's biggest conversion project came to a sudden halt after workers noticed that steel columns in the 33-story skyscraper were bending and higher floors were starting to sag. Emergency officials evacuated that building and several others around Midtown Manhattan's 42nd Street. David Brand of member station WNYC has been reporting on this and he's with us now. David, good morning.
DAVID BRAND, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: So tell us a bit more about what happened.
BRAND: Well, this was a scary situation at what's known as the Pfizer Building. It's where the pharmaceutical company had its offices until they moved to another part of Manhattan. A new development team bought the building, and then two years ago, they started work on this plan to turn the empty offices there into 1,600 apartments. They're taking this existing building and completely overhauling it for housing.
They added four new floors to the original 33-story building. They expanded 10 other floors. But on Tuesday, two structural columns directly below that 10-story expansion bent nearly to the breaking point. And for a while, city fire and buildings officials thought the whole building could collapse. They've since reinforced the columns and say the building is stable. But they say they don't yet know the cause of the structural failure.
MARTIN: So this building is in Midtown Manhattan. For people who don't know the area, could you tell us a little bit about it and what happened in the surrounding neighborhood?
BRAND: Well, Midtown Manhattan is one of the busiest parts of New York City, probably one of the busiest sections of the country. We have Times Square a few blocks to the west, the Chrysler Building just a couple blocks away. The United Nations is nearby. So I imagine a lot of people, if you're not from New York City, have probably visited this area.
The city evacuated the streets and buildings in the area for several hours Tuesday. Most were back open by Wednesday morning, and people are allowed to enter and exit most of the surrounding buildings. But one of the places that was still under a vacate order yesterday is a hotel across the street. And we have a lot of tourists in town, especially with the World Cup going on in New Jersey. Alvaro Diaz (ph) is visiting from Spain, and he says he's taking it in stride.
ALVARO DIAZ: It's a bit weird, right? But I don't know. The whole city is with these huge buildings, so I can imagine something like this is bound to happen at a certain point or another.
BRAND: (Laughter) Let's hope not, Alvaro. But he...
MARTIN: I was going to say, pretty chill of him, but OK.
BRAND: Yeah. He and most guests had been transferred to another hotel near Times Square.
MARTIN: Do you think this could slow down other similar projects?
BRAND: Well, maybe. There are a lot of people already living in these kinds of buildings, though. City data shows there have been more than 3,000 new housing units constructed in office buildings since 2020. The city planning department told me yesterday that over 13,000 others are currently planned or in development. And New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani says these are important projects to help solve the city's housing shortage.
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ZOHRAN MAMDANI: I do continue to consider the conversion of office space into residential space as part of our answer to the housing crisis. I also consider that we have to do so safely and in a way that is fully accountable.
BRAND: These are complicated projects with a lot of layers of review. I mean, think about turning a big office building into places where people are going to live. Architects have to figure out how to arrange bedrooms to meet light and air requirements and take these open floor plates and then install hundreds of bathrooms. And then there's so many safety measures.
MARTIN: So when do we think we'll find out what went wrong?
BRAND: Well, Mamdani and city buildings officials say they don't yet know what caused the problem. Mamdani says they need to make sure the entire structure is safe and then complete the investigation. But they're really focusing on why those columns were so overloaded that they bent like this despite all of these safety requirements and reviews. It's the biggest project of its kind in New York City. Tenants were supposed to start moving in next year. This is causing major disruption.
MARTIN: That is WNYC's David Brand. David, thank you.
BRAND: Thank you.
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