Pfizer Building fix: crews to raise sagging floors about 7 inches, starting next week

Starting next week, crews at the Pfizer Building, 235 East 42nd St. in Midtown, will begin jacking its sagging floors back up, the Department of Buildings said. Under the new engineering plan, each lift will measure just 1/64th of an inch.

The tower is slated to become the city’s largest office-to-housing conversion. In July, two columns on the 21st floor folded under a major expansion of the existing structure, and city officials said they feared the building could collapse.

How the Pfizer Building repair will work

Newly filed plans call for raising the floors in tiny increments, each roughly as thick as the edge of a business card, until the total gain reaches about 7 inches. Records show the bent columns came out last month.

The approach marks a shift. Right after the failure, developer MetroLoft spoke of rebuilding the damaged section of the tower, but plans and reviews now on file with the Department of Buildings lay out a different strategy. Engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti, whose past city work includes the arch at Grand Army Plaza and the 70-story Orchard in Long Island City, drafted it, and a second firm, Plan B Engineering, reviewed it. MetroLoft and Thornton Tomasetti declined to comment, and Plan B Engineering did not return phone calls.

What the Department of Buildings says

Agency spokesperson David Maggiotto said the plan is safe and that department engineers will oversee the work. He said senior department engineers and an independent third-party engineering firm approved the permanent repairs “following an extensive vetting and review process.”

The columns had never been reinforced, even though an engineer’s city-approved instructions called for turning the thin I-shaped beams into sturdier box shapes. The department has not yet released the results of its investigation into what caused the near-collapse.

According to job filings, Barone Steel Fabricators handled the initial steel installation. After the July incident, the department added other Barone projects to a citywide safety enforcement sweep. The company’s executives gave no answer to questions about the project. Paul Callan, an attorney for Barone, said the firm is no longer on the site after it “completed all required work under the contract to date.”