NEW YORK — Residents and hotel guest were slowly allowed back onto cordoned off Manhattan streets on Wednesday after columns buckled and floors sagged at an under-construction apartment building, triggering widespread evacuations and street closures over concerns that it might collapse.
Crews worked through the night to shore up a massive development at the building that used to house Pfizer's headquarters. Mayor Zohran Mamdani confirmed Wednesday that there has been no additional movement in the building since it was deemed stable late Tuesday.
“The building is stable and yet we are going to continue to prioritize the safety of all in that immediate area,” he said.
Four nearby buildings remained under evacuation orders, the mayor said. Normally busy midtown streets around the construction site also remained closed.
Elinor Ruskin, 94, was among those redirected by police Wednesday after trying to get through a closed block. She took it in stride.
“These things happen. I don’t know if they will catch the mistake or what they will do,” she said. “Anyway, you know, this is New York City.”
While the cause of the structural issues remains under investigation, unionized construction workers took the opportunity to slam the developers for using non-union workers. They staged a protest, complete with a large inflatable rat, near the site Wednesday.
“We’ve got enough skilled workers in our union," said Anthony Williamson, an executive board member with Local 79 Construction and General Building Laborers. "This would have never happened in New York City if they had done the right thing.”
Antoine Mouthon, who works nearby at the United Nations, recalled seeing the aftermath of a large sheet of metal falling from the building last August.
“A whole year after I avoided that street," he said. "I thought they cleaned up their act.”
Sally Grant and Margaret Clark were waiting to be let back into the Hampton Inn. 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.
“They could have given us five minutes to grab our belongings, you know, instead of just saying everybody out, everybody out,” Clark said. “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.”
Work continued, meanwhile, high above in the glass-and-steel tower.
Mamdani said temporary shoring and beams were installed on floors 18 through 23 of the building, and additional supports will be added throughout the day as crews make their way to the roof and down to ninth floor.
Once the emergency repairs are complete, the city’s Department of Buildings will conduct a “rigorous assessment” to ensure the plans and the site are fully compliant with all codes before any non-emergency work proceeds, he said.
Authorities responded to emergency calls at the building early Tuesday to discover two mangled support beams and sagging floors on its 21st floor. The building itself, along with a wide stretch of a bustling area not far from the Grand Central transit hub and the Chrysler Building was evacuated and area streets closed.
Fire Chief John Esposito said officials believed the steel-framed building wasn't necessarily at risk of a total collapse, but that "it would be more of a localized collapse.”
On-site contractors were eventually allowed to reenter the building to do the emergency repairs after city officials did a floor-by-floor inspection. The building was empty other than the workers.
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 another tower.
MetroLoft, the project developer, has said the building itself is not at risk of collapse and that no debris fell from the building, though Nathan Berman, the firm's founder has acknowledged the added weight from widening the top 15 or so floors of the building likely caused the damage.
___
Associated Press video journalist Ted Shaffrey in New York contributed to this story.