The developer of a Midtown Manhattan skyscraper evacuated after its support beams began buckling has described the incident as a “freak accident,” as he looked to deny that the building was at risk of collapse.
At least nine neighboring buildings had to be evacuated on Tuesday after construction workers inside the 37-story building noticed that support columns had started to collapse, during work converting the former Pfizer headquarters into apartments.
“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,” Nathan Berman, the developer behind the conversion of the building, said in an interview with the Real Deal, a real estate publication.
Reports of the massive development on East 42nd Street’s impending collapse had been “blown a little bit out of proportion,” Berman insisted, after heart-stopping video showed buckled support columns on the 21st story.
Berman also dismissed accusations that the builders hadn’t used enough steel to support the added weight of the renovations, made by Cliff Johnsen of Steamfitters Local 638.
“Total nonsense. This was well designed and approved by structural engineers,” he said.
He added that the building “was never at risk of collapse,” describing the issues as “fixable,” blaming the bent columns on the added weight during construction.
“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,” he said.
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