NYC office-to-apartment mega project resumes after near disaster

Crews have finished lifting the sagging floors at the former Pfizer headquarters, the largest office-to-apartment conversion in city history. A July structural failure forced evacuations across seven Midtown East blocks and, for a fleeting moment, threw a menacing cloud over a nationwide push to turn empty offices into housing. Two columns buckled at the 1,600-unit conversion, which touched off inspections citywide, and stop-work orders followed. Concern spread nationwide, generating questions over cost, safety and design in adaptive reuse of decades-old office buildings. Cities from Washington to Los Angeles have bet that converting vacant offices can add housing faster than ground-up construction. New York leads that push, and others emulate its tax breaks and zoning changes. Mayor Zohran Mamdani inherited a conversion pipeline of about 12,000 units and has embraced it as a pillar of his own housing affordability pitch. Mamdani has leaned into commercial-to-residential conversion as part of a multi-pronged approach to increasing housing supply. More than 40 other conversions are underway or planned citywide, adding more than 14,000 homes. The city has issued 16 new building permi...