DOB Approves Jacking Plan for Pfizer HQ's Sagging Floors

The city has approved a plan to lift the sagging floors at the former Pfizer world headquarters conversion at 235 East 42nd Street by roughly six inches using hydraulic jacks, under Department of Buildings oversight, with no street closures required, according to a New York Times investigation mirrored by DNYUZ.

Why it matters

This is the fix for the scare this desk has tracked since July: the July 7 buckling of columns on the 21st floor that forced the evacuation of seven nearby Midtown buildings, and the air-rights repricing that followed once engineers found reinforcement had never been installed. Jacking the floors back into place, rather than only shoring and rebuilding, is the city signing off on a path back toward a usable structure for Metro Loft and David Werner Real Estate’s conversion of the connected 235 and 219 East 42nd Street parcels into more than 1,600 apartments. DOB spokesman Andrew Rudansky said of the department’s oversight, “The Department of Building’s primary responsibility is the safety of our fellow New Yorkers.” Metro Loft declined to comment.

The numbers

The plan calls for raising the damaged floors about six inches with hydraulic jacks, work the Buildings Department says will not require closing streets or evacuating anyone, a lighter-touch approach than the wholesale reconstruction some reports floated in July. The approval came on Oct. 14, 2026, exactly 99 days after the July 7 column failure, a span this desk has covered in two prior pieces: the initial structural-risk warning on July 13 and the air-rights repricing story on July 18, once engineers determined that steel plates meant to reinforce the buckled columns, and six others, were never installed.

What’s next

We will track when the jacking work actually begins on site and whether the Buildings Department signs off on the floors as a permanent fix or requires further reinforcement before the conversion resumes toward occupancy. For the earlier stages of this story, see our coverage of the original structural-risk scare and the air-rights repricing that followed, or the full New York market coverage.