So, unless there was room outside of these buildings to add extra supports and often there is not because office buildings in places like New York and Chicago are often right next to each other what they are doing is downright dangerous to anyone in those buildings or nearby.
So, without the extra engineering supports which might not be possible in these situations what they are doing is likely very dangerous because these buildings were never built with this much weight in mind and so supports will tend to collapse under the extra weight they were never engineered for in the first place as office buildings.
New York construction scare shows challenges of converting offices into housing
The
buckling of two steel columns at the former Pfizer headquarters in
Manhattan has raised questions about one of the nation’s largest
office-to-apartment conversions
ByR.J. RICO Associated Press, JESSICA HILL Associated Press, and PHILIP MARCELO Associated Press
July 10, 2026, 3:02 AM
NEW YORK -- When two steel columns buckled this week inside the former Pfizer headquarters in midtown Manhattan, the scare prompted evacuations and halted work on one of the nation’s largest office-to-apartment conversions.
It
also highlighted the complex engineering behind adaptive reuse
projects, which have become increasingly popular as officials try to
tackle a nationwide housing shortage by transforming offices that have
sat underused since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The
plans call for turning two office buildings — one built in 1909, the
other in the 1960s — into about 1,600 apartments by adding more than a
dozen stories atop the older structure and redesigning and expanding the
other. The buckling occurred on the 21st floor of the newer structure,
and crews have installed temporary supports as officials investigate.
Engineering
experts said the conversion project is complex and poses many
challenges, which include making sure older buildings can safely support
new loads and carving up office floors to accommodate residential
living.
But none said the high-profile setback should make people doubt the ability of engineers to complete such projects.
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“I
don’t think it really brings into question our understanding of how to
do something like this,” said Ben Schafer, a structural engineering
professor at Johns Hopkins University.
On
its website highlighting the midtown project, adaptive reuse firm
Collaborative Construction Management says the nine-story building from
1909 will be “threaded through” with a new addition of about 30 stories
of poured concrete.
Schafer,
who is not involved with the undertaking, said the likely approach is
to have the century-old building continue to carry its own weight while
building a new structural system to support additions.
“My
interpretation would be that they’re going to leave that building
carrying its own load, and they’re just going to poke holes in it so
that they can take the load from the building that they’ve put above it
and bring it all the way down to the foundation,” Schafer said.
Schafer
said construction on the other tower presents a different challenge:
punching holes in the existing floor plate to bring light into
apartments, while also ensuring that the steel frame can support the
newly added loads.
City
officials have not determined what caused the columns to buckle. But
both Schafer and Emily Guglielmo, a San Francisco-based structural
engineer, believe the failure likely resulted from the added load.
Spokespersons
for MetroLoft, the project developer, didn’t respond to requests for
comment Thursday. But Nathan Berman, the firm’s founder, acknowledged in
an interview with The Wall Street Journal that the added weight from widening the top 15 or so floors of the building likely caused the damage.
Guglielmo
thinks that either the original design assumptions were misunderstood,
something went wrong during the design or construction process, or
construction crews overloaded or weakened the structure.
Adding
stories to existing buildings is common in dense urban areas where land
is scarce, she said, but it requires reviewing original construction
documents and inspecting the building before determining how additional
floors will affect the structure.
“In
cities and towns that don’t have that available geography, you’re going
to see a lot more of this type of a design where there’s an adaptive
reuse to an existing building,” Guglielmo said.
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To many structural engineers, demolition should occur only as a last resort.
“Tearing
buildings down is a terrible waste,” Schafer said, pointing out that
buildings and the construction sector are responsible for about 40% of
the world’s energy-related carbon emissions. “From a sustainability
standpoint, that’s a disaster.”
Beyond
the environmental costs, demolishing and hauling away the remnants of
huge buildings is especially expensive in dense cities such as New York.
If an existing structure can safely be reused, engineers generally prefer that.
James
LaFave, a structural engineering professor at the University of
Illinois, said a steel-framed building from the 1960s, like the former
Pfizer structure, would typically be a “very good” starting point for a
conversion.
New
York, especially, has embraced this push, as officials have made zoning
changes and enacted tax incentives to spur housing production. A report
from the New York City comptroller's office
last year noted there are 44 adaptive reuse projects in the city that,
as of early 2025, had either been completed, were underway or could move
forward.
Pfizer
moved out of the building in 2023 after opening a new office near Penn
Station, leaving the property vacant. Construction on the property began
in 2024.
Joshua
Harris, director of Fordham University’s Real Estate Institute, said
office-to-residential conversions are a key part of solving the housing
shortages in New York and other cities, even if they come with risk.
“In
a certain sense, it’s not terribly surprising that this happened, and
we should have a little bit of grace,” he said. “These are very, very
complicated surgical procedures being done to very old buildings.”
“This
is part of the reality of fixing the housing crisis,” Harris continued.
“Things like this can happen. It doesn’t look as complex as putting a
rocket into space, but, in a real estate sense, construction in an
environment like Manhattan on 42nd Street and Second Avenue is very
complex.”
Guglielmo,
the California engineer, said a combination of building codes,
inspections and experienced construction crews makes failures like this
rare.
“We’re
very fortunate here in the United States that we are not seeing these
types of failures on a day-to-day basis,” she said. “We’re privileged to
have really robust building codes that explain to us as engineers how
to do our designs in a way that’s safe.”
Still,
Harris said it is likely a gut check for the industry, as office
conversions transform once sleepy business districts across the city
into 24/7 neighborhoods, like parts of Wall Street in recent years.
“If
this building has a problem, all the other projects that have been sort
of greenlit, they’re going to want to review to make sure that it’s not
something similar,” Harris said.
___
Rico reported from Atlanta and Hill reported from Las Vegas.
Bears don't like noise. In Fact, in Yosemite people bang on their cooking pans with a spoon to drive them away from their campsites. Because Bears have sensitive ears like dogs do.
So, when a dog is barking at a bear the bear may kill that dog immediately. So, if you want to live and survive a bear encounter you might have to allow your dog to die from the bear to survive this yourself. Because the Dog knows how dangerous the bear is usually but isn't prepared for how big and strong and fatal a bear can be for a dog.
A Bear can easily rip your car door off it's hinges in fact they regularly do this in national parks if they smell food in your car (whether or not you are in the car at the time). So, understanding just how fast a bear can rip a door off your car even when it is closed by using their long claws imagine what a bear can do to you with one swipe of their front claws. One swipe is often fatal to people because they will bleed out from this one swipe within minutes.
So, if you want to survive an encounter with a bear often you have to write off your dog or dogs especially smaller dogs not as swift as a 70 pound or larger dog who might be able to run away from a bear. However, you as a human are not fast enough to run away from a bear if you are near to this bear.
If you are a block or more away from this bear you might hide in your car or truck or camper. However, I have seen first hand what a black bear can do to a Cabover camper when they literally tore a Cabover Camper in half to get at food. When I arrived there were things scattered all over the road when I arrived from my tent with my family to see if I could help. When I realized no humans were injured I went back to my tent to help protect my family because we had already seen the shadow of the bear pass our campsite and tent just before this and before that there was screaming and banging of pans and yelling at the bear to leave then in Yosemite National Park at one of the campgrounds we were staying in then in our 5 man tent. I was with my wife and 3 children then and we were going to climb Half Dome up the wire then in 1985 before we went to India and Nepal then later in December. This was likely in September or October of 1985.
A
woman in Alaska was rushed to a hospital Thursday after she was
attacked by a bear on the deck of her house while protecting her dog,
investigators said.
The
unidentified woman left her Kenai house with her two dogs around 4:54
a.m. when she encountered the brown bear and its two cubs, according to
the Alaska Department of Public Safety.
A bear sits in Brooks Camp in Bristol Bay, Alaska on Sept. 21, 2023.
The Washington Post via Getty Images
One
of the dogs got back inside the home but another ran into the front
yard, authorities said. The woman quickly picked up a shotgun from the
home, went back outside and fired three or four rounds to scare the
bears away, according to investigators.
