{"id":292386,"date":"2026-07-10T15:48:37","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T15:48:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/292386\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T15:48:37","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T15:48:37","slug":"union-says-new-york-city-building-developers-cut-corners-put-safety-at-risk-east-bay-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/292386\/","title":{"rendered":"Union says New York City building developers cut corners, put safety at risk \u2013 East Bay Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanks to a young union member who spotted shockingly buckled support beams in the Midtown East high-rise<\/a> that suffered a partial collapse Tuesday, a major catastrophe may have been averted. His union is now hailing the hard hat as \u201cThe Hero of 42nd Street.\u201d Meanwhile, slamming the project\u2019s developers as reckless, the union says the site\u2019s safety must be guaranteed if any work there is to resume.<\/p>\n

Eagle-eyed apprentice Sean Dow spotted the damaged beams while working on installing sprinklers inside the building with a crew of fellow union members. Initially, Dow had been on the 22nd floor, where he noticed that the floor had sloped down \u201cseveral inches.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI realized I saw cracks in the slab (concrete floor) and I realized that\u2019s not supposed to be there,\u201d Dow said. \u201cSo I proceeded to head down to the 21st floor, and that\u2019s where I saw the bending columns. I was there with a group of general contractors, and we decided it was time to evacuate the building.\u201d<\/p>\n

The former office tower, which was being converted for residential use, was promptly ordered evacuated by the FDNY and Department of Buildings, as were at least nine neighboring buildings, while a swath of streets around the site were closed off to vehicles and pedestrians.<\/p>\n

At a press conference near the construction site Thursday afternoon, an outraged leading union member went as far as to call for the damaged structure to be completely demolished and rebuilt from scratch.<\/p>\n

\u201cWould you live in it?\u201d Cliff Johnsen, business agent for the Steamfitters Local 638 union, fumed. \u201cI believe this building should be brought down to the ground and built the right way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Johnsen\u2019s title is equivalent to a vice president, a source said the union honcho\u2019s statement does not reflect the union\u2019s current stance on the issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe position of the union is: Demonstrate it\u2019s safe,\u201d the source said of the crippled building. \u201cAs of today, the city hasn\u2019t certified it\u2019s safe. So, the union is gonna continue to wait and see when it\u2019s safe for them to return to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mayor Mamdani said DOB is monitoring the emergency response and will conduct a full investigation.<\/p>\n

Union officials accused the project\u2019s developer of compromising safety \u2014 most notably by using cheaper, nonunion labor for most of the work.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese failures are far less likely when union standards control the job from top to bottom,\u201d Johnsen said.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s about building right and building safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"SeanSean Dow is a shop steward from Steamfitters Local 638 who warned workers about the collapsing structure at 235 E. 42nd St. (Barry Williams \/ New York Daily News)\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to DOB, as of Thursday afternoon, temporary shoring has been installed from the ninth floor to the building\u2019s roof.\u00a0Construction crews are now installing steel columns as a temporary stabilizing measure on multiple floors, and reinforcing several existing structural columns in the building. As additional steel columns are delivered to the site, they are being installed in place of the light shoring equipment.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the developers have downplayed any concerns<\/a> about the massive office-to-residential conversion project moving forward.<\/p>\n

Nathan Berman, the founder and managing principal of MetroLoft, a developer of the project, downplayed the situation\u2019s seriousness and shrugged that the damage is easily fixable. The project is adding new floors atop the existing structure.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very simple,\u201d he told The Real Deal<\/a> hours after the bent support columns were spotted and the building evacuated. \u201cYou add more load to something that can\u2019t support it, it\u2019ll give way, and that\u2019s what happened, and now it just needs to be fixed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a freak accident that something occurred with these two specific columns that either were not reinforced or were not reinforced sufficiently, and they gave way. That\u2019s it. There\u2019s no mystery, and there\u2019s no magic,\u201d he said, calling it \u201ca very fixable issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

But city officials have made no commitment about resuming construction, while focusing on a probe into what caused the near catastrophe.<\/p>\n

The steel-framed high-rise at 235 E. 42nd St. near Second Ave. formerly held offices for the world headquarters of Pfizer, but is now being renovated into luxury residential housing, the largest such conversion in city history. The project is slated to create 1,602 apartments.<\/p>\n

Firefighters were first called to the scene after a report of bricks falling from the facade of the 37-story building<\/a>. But when they arrived, firefighters learned that two support columns had buckled on the 21st floor, causing floors to sag between the 21st and 26th floors.<\/p>\n

\"OfficialsOfficials released an image of work done to correct structural problems at the former Pfizer building on 42nd St. (Dept. of Buildings via X)\u00a0<\/p>\n

No injuries were reported as firefighters evacuated the building and set up a frozen zone closed to all pedestrian and vehicular traffic from E. 40th to E. 45th St. between First and Third Aves.<\/p>\n

The off-limits area was later scaled back after work crews braced the buckling beams. Forty-third St. between Second and Third Aves. currently remains closed \u201cin the interest of public safety,\u201d according to DOB.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thanks to a young union member who spotted shockingly buckled support beams in the Midtown East high-rise that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292387,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[7339,5462,7199,262,263,266,17990,85,11168,607,9,24,55,54,12,56,3851,530],"class_list":["post-292386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-accidents","tag-architecture","tag-area","tag-city","tag-county","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-disaster","tag-latest-headlines","tag-morning-wire","tag-national-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-news","tag-ny","tag-region","tag-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}