Union says East 42nd Street building developers cut corners, put safety at risk

Kerry Burke and Leonard Greene, New York Daily News on Jul 9, 2026

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

NEW YORK — Thanks to a young union member who spotted shockingly buckled support beams in the Midtown East high-rise that suffered a partial collapse Tuesday, a major catastrophe may have been averted. His union is now hailing the hard hat as “The Hero of 42nd Street.” Meanwhile, slamming the project’s developers as reckless, the union says the site’s safety must be guaranteed if any work there is to resume.

Eagle-eyed apprentice Sean Dow spotted the damaged beams while working on installing sprinklers inside the building with a crew of fellow union members. Initially, Dow had been on the 22nd floor, where he noticed that the floor had sloped down “several inches.”

“I realized I saw cracks in the slab (concrete floor) and I realized that’s not supposed to be there,” Dow said. “So I proceeded to head down to the 21st floor, and that’s where I saw the bending columns. I was there with a group of general contractors, and we decided it was time to evacuate the building.”

The former office tower, which was being converted for residential use, was promptly ordered evacuated by the FDNY and Department of Buildings, as were at least nine neighboring buildings, while a swath of streets around the site were closed off to vehicles and pedestrians.

At a news conference near the construction site Thursday afternoon, an outraged leading union member went as far as to call for the damaged structure to be completely demolished and rebuilt from scratch.

“Would you live in it?” Cliff Johnsen, business agent for the Steamfitters Local 638 union, fumed. “I believe this building should be brought down to the ground and built the right way.”

Although Johnsen’s title is equivalent to a vice president, a source said the union honcho’s statement does not reflect the union’s current stance on the issue.

“The position of the union is: Demonstrate it’s safe,” the source said of the crippled building. “As of today, the city hasn’t certified it’s safe. So, the union is gonna continue to wait and see when it’s safe for them to return to work.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani said DOB is monitoring the emergency response and will conduct a full investigation.

Union officials accused the project’s developer of compromising safety — most notably by using cheaper, nonunion labor for most of the work.

“These failures are far less likely when union standards control the job from top to bottom,” Johnsen said. “It’s about building right and building safe.”

According to DOB, as of Thursday afternoon, temporary shoring has been installed from the ninth floor to the building’s roof. Construction crews are now installing steel columns as a temporary stabilizing measure on multiple floors, and reinforcing several existing structural columns in the building. As additional steel columns are delivered to the site, they are being installed in place of the light shoring equipment.

Meanwhile, the developers have downplayed any concerns about the massive office-to-residential conversion project moving forward.

Nathan Berman, the founder and managing principal of MetroLoft, a developer of the project, downplayed the situation’s seriousness and shrugged that the damage is easily fixable. The project is adding new floors atop the existing structure.

“It’s very simple,” he told The Real Deal hours after the bent support columns were spotted and the building evacuated. “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.”

“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. That’s it. There’s no mystery, and there’s no magic,” he said, calling it “a very fixable issue.”

But city officials have made no commitment about resuming construction, while focusing on a probe into what caused the near catastrophe.

The steel-framed high-rise at 235 E. 42nd St. near Second Ave. formerly held offices for the world headquarters of Pfizer, but is now being renovated into luxury residential housing, the largest such conversion in city history. The project is slated to create 1,602 apartments.

Firefighters were first called to the scene after a report of bricks falling from the facade of the 37-story building. But when they arrived, firefighters learned that two support columns had buckled on the 21st floor, causing floors to sag between the 21st and 26th floors.

No injuries were reported as firefighters evacuated the building and set up a frozen zone closed to all pedestrian and vehicular traffic from E. 40th to E. 45th St. between First and Third Aves.

The off-limits area was later scaled back after work crews braced the buckling beams. Forty-third St. between Second and Third Aves. currently remains closed “in the interest of public safety,” according to DOB.