New York City Halts Construction at Another Office-to-Residential Conversion
Inspectors issue stop-work order at planned 32-story apartment tower in Manhattan, carrying out safety sweeps after former Pfizer building buckled
- New York City officials halted construction at 222 Broadway, marking the second office-to-apartment conversion project shut down this month.
- The stop-work order was issued after the contractor failed to notify the city about two cracked concrete beams on the building’s top floor.
- The inspection followed a city safety sweep prompted by structural issues at another conversion project, the former Pfizer building.
New York City building officials last week halted construction work at another Manhattan office tower that is being converted into apartments, marking the second time such a project was shut down this month over structural concerns.
Construction stopped on Thursday at 222 Broadway in lower Manhattan, a building formerly home to a number of financial firms that the developer is turning into a 32-story residential building with nearly 800 units, a rooftop pool, a spa and co-working spaces.
The work shutdown came after city inspectors said the contractor failed to notify the city about two concrete beams on the top floor that had developed cracks, according to a spokesman for the developer GFP Real Estate.
The beams initially cracked in March but were repaired quickly, the spokesman said. The contractor and engineers considered it a minor issue, he added, and thought they weren’t required to immediately report it to the city.
The cause of the stop-work order was a “reporting timeline discrepancy,” not “safety issues of any kind,” the spokesman said. Inspectors have found that the building is stable, he added.
The contractor on the project, Leeding Builders Group, and the engineering firm, DeSimone Consulting Engineers, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The construction halt at 222 Broadway followed an inspection blitz from the Department of Buildings, which was prompted by the discovery of structural issues at the former Pfizer headquarters building in Midtown.
MetroLoft, the developer that was in the process of converting the former Pfizer building into 1,600 residential units, was ordered to evacuate the property earlier this month. At that construction site, two columns buckled, placing the high rise at risk of partial collapse and causing nine neighboring buildings to shut down temporarily.
The structural problems were at least partly because of the extra weight of new additions on top of the building, MetroLoft founder Nathan Berman told The Wall Street Journal.
The cracked beams at 222 Broadway were also located on a newly built top floor: The 32nd story was added to support the rooftop pool deck. GFP declined to comment on whether the weight of those new additions contributed to the beams cracking.
Engineers say building expansions can be done safely but adding floors to a structure that wasn’t originally built to hold such weight requires complex engineering. If calculations or assumptions are wrong, floors might be added before columns are properly reinforced and structures could fail.
The Buildings Department is currently reviewing the engineering reports on the cause of the cracks. It won’t lift the halt “until we are fully confident that it is safe to continue construction operations,” a spokesman said.
The office tower at 222 Broadway was a workplace for Bank of America, WeWork and other companies. The developer expects the project to be finished within the next year, and so far doesn’t expect that timing to change. The apartments have already started leasing, with rents ranging from $4,000 to $10,000.
GFP, based in New York City, is a veteran of office-to-residential conversions. It has worked with MetroLoft in the past. The two firms, along with Rockwood Capital, led the development at 25 Water St. in the Financial District, the largest completed office-to-residential conversion in the U.S.
City officials have fanned out across the city to probe other work sites, including ones connected to MetroLoft or Domani Inspection Services, the private building inspector that MetroLoft hired for the old Pfizer building.
Domani plays a prominent role in New York City’s construction industry, acting as an independent third party to inspect work sites to ensure construction complies with safety codes. Records show Domani inspected construction at the 222 Broadway site in 2023, but the work was separate from the conversion to residential buildings.