Repair work on the Midtown Manhattan high-rise that dangerously buckled over the summer is reportedly slated to begin shortly — with crews jacking up its sagging floors 1/64th of an inch a time.
The construction work at the former Pfizer headquarters at 235 E. 42nd Street will kick off more than three months after the buidling was dramtically evacuated over structural concerns.
Hardhats will gradually jack up the buckled floors in tiny increments — equivalent to the thickness of a guitar pick, Gothamist reported, citing newly filed engineering plans.
Eventually, the floors will be raised about 7 inches.
The Midtown high-rise, located steps away from Grand Central and the Chrysler Building, was evacuated during the morning rush in the first week of July when massive beams in the under-construction building started buckling.
Several floors of the 37-story commercial building — which is the city’s largest office-to-housing conversion project — caved in and bricks rained down on the street under the crushing strain.
Emergency crew workers were able to successfully shore up the building and a third-party engineer has been brought in to “verify and act as another set of eyes” to ensure it was safe for emergency crews to come onto the impacted floors where beams were “bending like cigarettes,” Department of Buildings Commissioner Ahmed Tigani said at a press conference on July 8.
The skyscraper’s developer MetroLoft described plans to rebuild the section of the tower immediately after the building’s summer debacle, according to the outlet.
However, the company’s strategy has since changed, according to engineering plans and reviews submitted to the Department of Buildings obtained by Gothamist.
Structural engineers who reviewed the plans to slowly jack up the floors said the developers revised strategy appeared safe and incremental.
“The threat is going too fast and missing a problem, like something that is causing damage somewhere else,” Eric Cowley, president of the firm Cowley Engineering told the local outlet.
Cowley noted he thinks “the repair is fine” and did not see a need to redevelop the entire section above the buckled columns.
Initial work was underway on the higher floors of the building near the site of the collapsed column when the local publication visited on Friday.
A spokesperson for the city’s buildings department confirmed jacking is scheduled to begin this week and records indicated columns were removed last month, according to Gothamist.
“We would not allow any work to proceed in the city if we thought it was posing a hazard to the public,” David Maggiotto of the Department of Buildings said in a statement to the outlet.
“These plans to effectuate permanent structural repairs to the building were approved by DOB following an extensive vetting and review process by senior department engineers, as well as from an independent third-party engineering firm.”
The former office building is slated to transform into a 1,600-unit complex which is said to be the city’s largest ever office-to-housing conversion project, the publication reported.
MetroLoft and the Department of Buildings did not immediately return The Post’s requests for comment.
