If MetroLoft is the company doing the conversion from office to apartments, was this reinforcement something they were supposed to install, or something that should have been installed by the original builder when the building was built 50 years ago but somehow was omitted way back then?
If the former, yeah, they screwed up & now have a mess to clean up.
If the latter, I have some trouble totally blaming the current outfit. If the process demands that they validate every beam, girder, rivet and whatever as installed versus the original plans, that’d be one thing they overlooked. But I doubt that degree of rigor is required, expected, or customary. Perhaps it should be.
Because MetroLoft was adding 10(?) stories to the original building.
I also believe that sampling was done of the original beams & someone calculated they could handle the additional load. What the standards for how much sampling, whether they were followed & if this ultimately shows that the standards need to be changed should all come out in the investigation that (hopefully) is happening.
I would think (hope, at least) that any structural engineer signing off on a plan to add stories on top of an existing structure would be responsible for confirming the soundness of the existing framework as well as determining what if any structural support needs to be added. Relying on decades-old as-built drawings seems like a recipe for disaster. Even if everything was built to spec back in the day, that’s no guarantee it hasn’t degraded or been modified since.
On an related note, evacuation of the building in the first WTC bombing was messy, and directly credited with the creation of the “shelter in place” doctrine implemented in response. That people in un-affected parts of the building should remain in place, so as not to create chaos, and also not interfere with rescue attempts and containment efforts.
The engineering appears to have been correct. The builders didn’t adhere to the place. No engineer would ever believe decades old blueprints. Even if they were correct at the time, there were certainly modifications made since. I was in that business for a couple years
I revise my previous assertion about the flophouse. At this point I’d feel more comfortable living in a refrigerator box. At least I know the cardboard is corrugated all the way through.
Since the plans called for re-enforcing the beams, I don’t see that anyone thought the original beams would handle the load. Without the extra stories the building seemed to last just fine.
Firms With Checkered Pasts Tied to Troubled Midtown Construction Project: Among those connected to companies that worked on 235 East 42nd Street were a man who once bribed city officials and a developer who gave a loan to Bernard Kerik. [shared link]
Yes, they didn’t follow the plans that called for changing the I beams into double box beams by adding reinforcing beams to the ends of the I. But who was supervising the construction?
I had a great uncle who was an architect. He told me the following story. He had designed a building for offices. He was also charged with supervising the construction. It was part of his job. He came by one day and they were pouring concrete from a mixer truck. Since it was part of his job, he looked at a tag on the mixer. It was the wrong strength. He told the construction foreman that they had to stop pouring, take out what had been poured and start over with the right strength concrete. The foreman refused. My uncle took the plans and erased his name and started to walk away. The foremen screamed, “You can’t do that; we will never get a certificate of occupancy without your signature.” “Tough” said my uncle, but I will never sign off on the construction if you use weaker concrete. So they stopped pouring and removed what had been poured.
The moral of the story is that someone has to be in charge and certify that the plans had been followed.** Whoever it was didn’t do his job.
Today I ran across an interesting article about a similar local situation.
There’s a large and still successful mall near here which had a Sears as one of several anchors. Sears of course died and there the hulk sits even unto today. Your standard windowless big box. Seems no other department store wants to move in.
Anyhow, they’re going to demo 168K square feet of ex-Sears down to bare dirt. And then plant grass to keep down the dust.
The eventual phase 2 plan is to put up a 200 room hotel, 400 apartments, and a walkable “main street” stye retail arcade in the same spot. This is, of course being fought by the “NIMBY; too much traffic here already” crowd. No idea who’ll win that battle. But the plan includes no attempt to reuse anything on the Sears site except the surrounding mall parking lot.
I have a really hard time understanding people who want to preserve the local character of … a defunct Sears Store surrounded by a typically Sears-sized parking lot.
If there were building that near me, I’d be all for it.
'Zactly. That immediate part of town is full of nicely appreciated large-ish houses. The only thing they want is zero more cars on the nearby roads.
The developers recognize this whole 'burb is ideal for tearing down every strip center and building a 20 story highrise condo on the site, with the same retail going back in on the ground floor, but at 5x the rent. And doing the same to some older neighborhoods of single family housing or 2-story older cheapo apartments.
People who already own homes almost never want more homes built near them. Especially homes that might be appealing to anyone who earns any less than them. It’s very much a case where the solution to sky-high home prices (building more housing where people actually want to live, which sometimes necessitates more density) is bad for those who already own homes. The appreciation that you mentioned, of course., the traffic that comes with more people that you alluded to, etc. And people who already own homes in an area can vote there.
The Sears by me is defunct of course. The building is pretty much unusable. They aren’t even using the second (top) floor because the ancient super narrow escalator is broken. The bottom is a mattress store and a consignment shop for old out of date heavy furniture. It’s a great location and has a giant parking lot. Back when Covid started it was going to be the overflow for all of the sick people which didn’t come to pass. The former Sears tire center in the same lot is the donation drop off point for a chain of thrift stores.
They are talking about making it housing but there would need to be a shitton of infrastructure upgrades first. Maybe it will be ready in a decade.