Metro Loft, David Werner to Rebuild Collapsed Portion of Former Pfizer HQ

Nathan Berman’s Metro Loft has a plan to rebuild the expanded portion of the former Pfizer headquarters building that caused an alarming structural collapse on Tuesday and drew national attention.

Berman and his partner, David Werner Real Estate Investments, had been in the middle of converting the former Pfizer HQ at 235 East 42nd Street and 219 East 42nd Street into a 1,600-unit apartment building, which included adding 11 floors to the existing structure. The partners now plan to replace the facade, floor plates and steel reinforcements on those 11 floors that buckled under the pressure of the new construction.

Collapsing columns and falling bricks inside the property on Tuesday led to evacuations in neighboring buildings and street closures. Workers managed to stabilize the shifting building by Wednesday morning.

“We are prepared to rebuild that portion of the building,” Berman told Bloomberg in a Thursday morning update. “It will be reskinned, everything will be leveled, fixed in place, and it will be brand new.”

The height of the 21st floor of the building — which is taller than other floors — and unreinforced columns were attributed as the cause of what city officials feared could lead to a partial collapse of the skyscraper.

Workers spent Tuesday and Wednesday assessing the damage and temporarily reinforcing the new floors with jacks.

But leaders from Steamfitters Local 638 held a press conference Thursday afternoon, contesting that work should not be continuing and that the issue could have been avoided with more skilled labor on the site as opposed to non-union.

“When you have steel columns bending in half — the last time that the city of New York saw that was on 9/11 — this is irresponsible contracting,” Cliff Johnsen, business agent of Steamfitters Local 638, said during the press conference. “The developers are trying to say that this is no big deal, but the battalion chief of the FDNY went in there and decided that we need [to evacuate] a five-block radius.”

The near-collapse took place at the largest office-to-residential conversion project in the U.S. How the incident could impact the public perception of office conversions or whether Metro Loft will face fallout from lawsuits is unclear. (It seems the lawsuits may have already started.)

“This 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,” Berman told reporters Tuesday. “It’s very simple. You add more load to something that can’t support it, it’ll give way, and that’s what happened, and now it just needs to be fixed.”

By Thursday, a Metro Loft spokesperson said the company would not be commenting any further. “They are focusing their efforts on fixing the building,” the spokesperson said.

But Johnsen wasn’t so convinced as Berman that the incident was just a stroke of bad luck.

“Is it an installation issue? Is it an engineering issue? Possibly. But it is not a freak accident,” Johnsen told Commercial Observer. “From my point of view, if you take a Local 40 Ironworker, 40 years experience, and you hand him a print. That steel setup, due to his experience, I believe he would have said, ‘Hold on, this doesn’t look right. Let’s take another look at this.’”

In fact, the bending columns and sinking floors were first noticed by a 25-year-old union worker, Sean Dow, who just finished a five-year apprenticeship roughly a year ago. Dow was first to report cracks forming and the floor sagging about two inches. 

Dow was also responsible for prompting other workers to evacuate the building.

When he brought the bending steel columns and broken windows to the attention of the general contractor, he was told, “Don’t worry, you’ll work on the floor below,” according to Johnsen.

Dow and other workers are not currently receiving pay while the work is stalled.

Potential dangerous conditions at the East 42nd Street property did not appear to be new, as several incidents and violations had been reported at the building in the past few years. There were complaints filed with the New York City Department of Buildings (DOB) that a worker fell six feet off a ladder, a metal panel fell from the 33rd floor to the street level below, and unapproved excavations took place in the cellar.

Possibly the most alarming complaint filed with the DOB came from October 2025.

“Unlicensed workers and unsafe conditions,” the complaint said. “Today a large item fell and broke through five floors and almost hit someone. There are gas machines without proper ventilation. These are hazardous conditions for the workers. The wielders are unlicensed, there aren’t any spotters, and the sparks hit workers because they don’t use a safety blanket for welding. There are chipping gun usage above without protection from falling debris. Pieces of concrete are constantly falling from above.”

When the DOB inspected the site, officials found no violations happening at the moment.

The New York Times reported Thursday that a private firm, Domani Inspection Services, had conducted several inspections of major alterations being done at the property and had signed off on them, effectively certifying the safety of the bolting and welding of the structural changes Metro Loft and David Werner planned to make to the building. While it’s unclear whether Domani’s work contributed to the property’s partial collapse on Tuesday, the Times reported the firm has been previously cited for missing dangerous components at other Manhattan construction projects.

A spokesperson for Domani did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Construction workers evacuated the former Pfizer HQ on Tuesday morning after emergency officials found two steel support columns buckling and several upper floors sagging inside the 37-story high-rise at 235 East 42nd Street. Just hours later, floors 21 through 26 began to cave in, FDNY sources told Pix11.

A large FDNY response subsequently got underway Tuesday, with Second Avenue closed, and offices along East 42nd Street and adjacent buildings evacuated.

Authorities also evacuated nine adjacent buildings to the site as they created a “frozen zone” and a “collapse zone” within the boundaries of First to Third avenues and East 40th to East 45th streets.

There were no reported injuries and all workers were accounted for, according to authorities.

Barry LePatner, founder of LePatner & Associates and a lawyer who specializes in the construction industry, told Commercial Observer that reports of the building continuing to shift were “highly unusual” for a building of its size and longevity. 

“Whatever they’re doing in terms of the internal renovation for the conversion, [reports] would indicate that they’ve taken down certain structural members, which has weakened an awfully large part of the building on more than one side,” LePatner said. “That sounds very unusual.”

In a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other city officials said the 37-story building had continued to shift since the morning following measures taken by FDNY to stabilize the structure.

“Two structural columns have buckled in addition to multiple cracks and sagging floors, and the building remains unstable,” Mamdani said during the press conference. “Since arriving on scene, we have witnessed additional movement in one of the compromised columns. First responders and structural engineers are working closely with the project engineer to develop plans to shore up the impacted floor. If the floor is deemed to be secure, engineers will enter and begin shoring up the building.”

An FDNY official said Tuesday that if the building collapses, it would likely only be a partial, or “local collapse” rather than a total collapse.

While the building seems to have now stabilized, it draws attention to a growing office-to-residential conversion trend in the U.S., and whether those projects meet adequate safety standards.

Since 2024, Metro Loft and David Werner had been transforming the former Pfizer office buildings into more than 1,600 apartments and added additional floors, making it the most significant office-to-residential conversion in the U.S. after SoMa, a 1,320-unit conversion project at 25 Water Street in Manhattan’s Financial District, was completed last year. Gensler is the architect on the project, and GACE Consulting Engineers has been listed as the project’s structural engineer.

The development partners secured full control of the ground lease for the Grand Central office building at 235 East 42nd Street in 2024, the same year it secured financing for the adjacent, nine-story 219 East 42nd property. Northwind Group provided $75 million of acquisition financing in August 2024, and Madison Realty Capital financed a $720 million construction loan for the project in May 2025.  

The new 30-story building at 219 East 42nd Street, previously just nine stories, was topped out eight months ago, according to a post on GACE’s LinkedIn page. Renovations at 235 East 42nd Street, where additional floors were also added, were ongoing.

Emily Davis can be reached at edavis@commercialobserver.com, while Mark Hallum can be reached at mhallum@commercialobserver.com.