NYC's Office-to-Apartment Conversions

**Brian Lehrer** (0:10)
It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Let's start today with that building collapse. Almost all of you know this, right? On Tuesday, the 37-story former Pfizer headquarters at 235 East 42nd Street, 2nd and 3rd Avenue, sparked a collapse scare and mass evacuations. It's right near Grand Central. As of this morning, it's been deemed, quote, safe and stable by the city's Department of Buildings after overnight repairs, though the investigation into what caused the structural failure is just beginning. This building is no ordinary construction site, and here's kind of the bigger arc of the story. It's a former office building being converted into more than 1600 apartments, set to be the largest office to residential conversion in the country. Now, the developer, Nathan Berman of Metro Loft, told the Wall Street Journal that he believes additional weight added during construction on the top floors likely caused the columns to buckle. He insisted that, in quote, 95% of the building, the structure is sound and intact, unquote. Now, over the past decade, few ideas in housing have generated more excitement, I think it's fair to say, than turning empty offices into apartments. After the pandemic, hollowed out offices around the city, New York state and city officials rolled out tax breaks and other measures to encourage that kind of conversion. According to Gothamist, city data shows more than 3,000 apartments and condos have been added through office conversion since 2020, with more than 2,000 more under construction. Last year, the city rezoned a 42 block stretch, 42 block stretch of Manhattan to allow even more.
To help us understand both the news and the bigger picture, we're joined by our own David Brand, housing reporter for WNYC and Gothamist, whose latest piece asks what this near collapse could mean for the city's office to apartment push and Peter Varsalona, a principal and vice president at RAND Engineering and Architecture, where he leads the firm's building design group. He's a licensed professional engineer who specializes in adaptive reuse and commercial to residential conversions. I think he's appropriate to this topic.
Peter, welcome to WNYC. David, always great to have you on the show.

**David Brand** (2:37)
Thanks, Brian.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:38)
And listeners, help us report this story or ask your questions. Do you live or work near 42nd and 2nd? Were you evacuated Tuesday? What was that experience like? Maybe you live in one of the 3,000 apartments and condos that have been added through office conversions since 2020, or are you considering renting in one? Has this week changed how you think about that? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text? Also, architects, construction workers, housing advocates. We invite you to. What do you think of the office to apartment conversion? Boom. What are your comments or concerns? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.
Again, you can call or you can text. David, let's start with where things stand this morning. What's the latest you're hearing on the building's condition and any ongoing impact for residents and businesses in the surrounding area?

**David Brand** (3:39)
Well, I just heard back from the Department of Buildings a little while ago about the current status of the Midtown Office Building that everyone is talking about, not just here, but nationwide, it seems. They said that shoring is still ongoing, but they have shored up floors 11 to 27
This problem occurred on the 21st floor of the building, so they did the building's floors below, floors above. They're about to start 10 They're going to go down the 9th floor and all the way up to the 37th floor in the rooftop today and in the coming days.
As for the people in the surrounding buildings, I mean, most of the buildings are back open. There was still a hotel across the street that was under a vacate order. I think it still is. My colleague, Brittany Kriegstein, wrote about that, where a lot of the visitors, the guests staying at that hotel, got the unexpected surprise of having to suddenly move and where a lot of them were transferred to another hotel in Times Square. But most of the buildings are open. 43rd Street is still closed.

**Brian Lehrer** (4:39)
So Peter, for listeners who saw the images of a bent column through a 21st floor window on social media or on the news, can you walk us through what happened Tuesday from the 8 a.m. call to the FDNY to the evacuations?

**Peter Varsalona** (4:54)
I can try. It's obviously extremely disconcerting to see, to say the least, to see something like that. I don't think you would ever classify this as a typical construction mishap. This is a pretty serious and extraordinary occurrence.
Whenever, you know, think about it as if you have to actually vacate and close off the city blocks, you have a major incident. What occurred is, we don't really know. Obviously, the investigation is going to be, a lot of us in the industry are really going to be watching it and curious to see, was it, is it design related? Is it construction implementation related? Did something happen where the sequence of the demolition or reconstruction in terms of the steel framing was altered in some way?