New York City halts second office-to-apartment conversion this month over cracked beams

  • New York City building officials issued a stop-work order at 222 Broadway in lower Manhattan on Thursday, the second office-to-residential conversion shut down this month over structural concerns.
  • The contractor failed to notify the city about two cracked concrete beams on the top floor, which was added to support a rooftop pool deck, according to GFP Real Estate, the developer.
  • The stop-work order followed a city safety sweep prompted by the buckling of two columns at the former Pfizer headquarters building in Midtown earlier this month.
  • The Buildings Department is reviewing engineering reports on the cause of the cracks and said it will not lift the halt until it is confident that it is safe to resume construction.

Developer says stop-work order stems from reporting dispute, not safety issue

New York City building officials last week halted construction at 222 Broadway in lower Manhattan, a 32-story office tower that developer GFP Real Estate is converting into nearly 800 apartments with a rooftop pool, spa and co-working spaces. The project, formerly home to Bank of America, WeWork and other financial firms, had already begun leasing units, with studios renting for as much as $10,200 a month.

The stop-work order, issued Thursday, 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 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 and believed they were not required to immediately report it to the city, he added.

The spokesman said the cause of the stop-work order was a “reporting timeline discrepancy,” not “safety issues of any kind,” and that inspectors have found the building is stable.

The contractor on the project, Leeding Builders Group, and the engineering firm, DeSimone Consulting Engineers, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The cracked beams were located on the newly built 32nd story, which 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.

The construction halt at 222 Broadway followed an inspection blitz from the Department of Buildings prompted by the discovery of structural issues at the former Pfizer headquarters building in Midtown. MetroLoft, the developer converting that property into 1,600 residential units, was ordered to evacuate the property earlier this month after 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 caused by the extra weight of new additions on top of the building, MetroLoft founder Nathan Berman told the Wall Street Journal.

Engineers say building expansions can be done safely, but adding floors to a structure that was not 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 at 222 Broadway. A department spokesman said it will not lift the halt “until we are fully confident that it is safe to continue construction operations.”

GFP Real Estate, based in New York City, is a veteran of office-to-residential conversions. It has worked with MetroLoft in the past, including on the development at 25 Water St. in the Financial District, the largest completed office-to-residential conversion in the U.S. The developer expects the 222 Broadway project to be finished within the next year and said it does not currently expect the stop-work order to change that timing.

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. Records show Domani inspected construction at the 222 Broadway site in 2023, but that work was separate from the conversion to residential buildings.