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A Tower on Billionaires' Row Is Full of Cracks. Who's to Blame?
- danso 1y agoNon-paywall: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/nyregion/432-park-avenue-condo-tower.html?unlocked_article_code=1.uk8.1VCG.0_I-9_iLUd8M&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/nyregion/432-park-avenue-...
- steveBK123 1y agoUsed to work next to this tower, was always oddly empty. The only movement you ever saw were maids cleaning the occupied units. Many units were unoccupied concrete shells, 7 years after sales began and 5 years after construction completion. It also raises the issue of new dev condos in NY in general - there are always problems and stakeholders are often busier trying to allocate blame than fix them. The $100M repair bill sounds staggering, but put against a $2.5B sell through price for 125 units.. we are talking 4%. The facade photos are scary for such a young building, this thing is not going to age well, clearly will be a public safety issue soon. This is what the city's otherwise overzealous facade inspection schedule is made for.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y agoI could picture an alternate reality where the cost of pedestrian injury is factored into the cost of doing business. People gathering below hoping to be hit by falling billionaire debris in hope of a payday.
- steveBK123 1y agoAn interesting thought experiment, but given the height of the building… it will be the victims families collecting any payday.
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- ramses0 1y agoGot you, 'fam! https://metro.co.uk/2017/02/17/man-stands-under-loose-sign-for-two-days-hoping-itll-fall-on-him-so-he-can-sue-6455419/ https://metro.co.uk/2017/02/17/man-stands-under-loose-sign-f...
- ks2048 1y agoReminds me of São Paulo's famous Copan building. It's tiles were falling off, so they covered it in a big net and haven't been able to fix it for 10+ years.
- cyanydeez 1y agoExternalities are the bane of capitalism. We wouldnt have capitalism if it had to be accountable.
- m0llusk 1y agoThat is sloppy thinking. If you have private property and the ability to profit from labor then you have Capitalism. The need to regulate architectural liabilities goes back as far as history. The current thinking that any regulation impedes Capitalism is both radical and new.
- cyanydeez 1y agoOk, bit you wpuld not have profit if you had to pay for labors heapthcare Sloppy is not knowing what externalities are.
- edoceo 1y agoOne can still have profit and pay for healthcare. Dozens of examples exist.
- cyanydeez 1y agoThen explain why the largest capitalist government can't do that.
- StackRanker3000 1y agoIt could, it just doesn’t want to. Or at least the inertia and obstacles of gaining enough political support for doing it, paired with the reluctance of the powerful entities that gain from the existing system, prevents it from happening. But there is nothing that makes it fundamentally incompatible with still allowing private enterprise and profit
- cyanydeez 1y ago
- blactuary 1y agoA 2 year old was killed by a piece falling from a building a few years ago. Her father wrote a heartbreaking book about it https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/once-more-we-saw-stars-jayson-greene/1135732870?ean=9780525435341 https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/once-more-we-saw-stars-jays...
- bell-cot 1y ago> In all, the problems at 432 Park could cost over $100 million to remedy, according to engineering reports that the condo board commissioned and the independent engineers who reviewed the tower’s condition. TBD how much "over" might be. Further down, there's a $160M estimate. Then there's the issue of whether all those repairs would work correctly, to actually fix everything. Vs. needing a $tbdM second round of repairs. Or more.
- steveBK123 1y agoWorth noting that dubious concrete is not the only way in which this developer pushed the envelope. The height itself was only possible by using a loophole that was quickly closed. To summarize - a quarter of the floors of the building are uninhabited mechanical floors, which exist purely to push up the total height of the building. This allowed pushing inhabited floors higher more desirable views and pricing. The loophole was more or less that only inhabited floors counted against the building square footage / height zoning. No one contemplated that a developer would be willing to waste 25% of floors to juice the height, but given the 0.1% market he was selling into.. it worked. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/nyregion/tallest-buildings-manhattan-loophole.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/nyregion/tallest-building...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- milesvp 1y agoAny building taller than 15 stories is likely already sacrificing square footage for height. As I understand it the square footage maximizing height with modern building techniques and materials is somewhere around 15 floors. As you go taller you need to start sacrificing internal volume for more reinforcing material and, surprisingly (to me when I learned this) elevators. The taller you go the more elevators you need to quickly move people around. I’m curious if this just isn’t already well known in the zoning world? We build tall buildings because the higher floors are more valuable which make up for the smaller amount of total real estate. Logical extension of this is to sacrifice whole floors for height if that is what zoning required. I’m also curious how long it took someone to figure out this loophole (since it’s easy to say it’s obvious after the fact).
- rapnie 1y ago> against a $2.5B sell through price Given the state of capitalism I wouldn't put it above and beyond ruthless property developers to consider the initial building costs as cheap investments to reserve space on the property map, and help keep condo prices high. And cut corners during the construction to increase ROI.
- potato3732842 1y agoGiven the state of regulation I wouldn't put it beyond anyone with a brain to build now and just accept that the building is a cheap investment to get their floor plan and unit count grandfathered in and while they might have to deal with low vacancy and high ongoing/refit costs it'll pencil out in 5-15yr when every new development is saddled with costs they didn't pay and they'll be able to under-cut the market. (This is the whole reason "old mill into apartments" conversions exist, obviously not in NYC though. You literally couldn't build those footprint buildings on those lots today without non-starter size investments in compliance stuff).
- nabla9 1y agoAs many of the owners are billionaires or close to it, it's no surprise that it's mostly empty. Most of them don't live in NYC; they just don't want to live in a five star hotel while visiting. Chinese, Russian, and Gulf billionaires buy them to serve as emergency assets. Losing some value doesn't matter to them as long as they have a few hundred million dollars stashed away in NYC, London, Geneva as physical property.
- raybb 1y agoIt’s also an example of the "spatial fix," where global capital parks itself in real estate as a safe asset rather than in the local economy. Basically turning urban housing into a storage vehicle for surplus wealth instead of a place for people to live. https://sk.sagepub.com/ency/edvol/geography/chpt/spatial-fix#_ https://sk.sagepub.com/ency/edvol/geography/chpt/spatial-fix...
- pbronez 1y agoYup. We should tax this out of existence.
- b112 1y agoIn Vancouver they charge more property tax if the building is empty. https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/empty-homes-tax.aspx https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/empty-homes-t... Not sure if it's enough, but it's something. I like this part: False declarations False property status declarations may result in fines of up to $10,000 per day of the continuing offense, in addition to payment of the tax.
- ryandrake 1y agoThis needs to happen everywhere, and it should be exponential. Each year a property is vacant for 6 or more months should double the tax.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- reactordev 1y agoProbably a shell front for laundering money. Like the I-4 eye sore in Central Florida. Or Trump Towers. Or crypto.
- billy99k 1y agoOr million dollar art sold from a politician's son.
- digdugdirk 1y agoI do hope you've tuned your hypocrisy radar to appropriately detect the impact and scope of the issue, rather than blindly following partisan talking points.
- _DeadFred_ 1y agoI mean Trump just got caught on mic discussing business for his son. His sons literally made a billion dollars from a crypto pump and dump that's only value was it's ties to the current regime. This person doesn't care about corruption, they care about using it to promote their narrative: https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-overheard-hot-mic-apparently-talking-business-indonesian/story?id=126525454 https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-overheard-hot-mic-apparently...
- reactordev 1y agoCorruption is the family business.
- mindslight 1y agoI'm really hoping that the pendulum swings back hard enough for these criminals to become personas-non-grata in the United States, and maybe even most of the Western World. Eventually real Americans will have had enough with the pOlItiCaL pRoSeCuTiOn and lAwFaRe fairytale narratives pumped out by their LLM bots, and hopefully we can just get over it and move to strip every generation of these fuckers of their stolen wealth. They can abscond to China or Russia and find out how much Xi or Putin actually values their service. (I'm of course always expecting to be disappointed though)
- bell-cot 1y agoSounds like the developers felt that being "true to" their 1400-foot-tall artistic vision trumped any mere engineering realities. And churned through engineers and consultants 'till they found ones were were willing to tell 'em what they wanted to hear. > ...and new cracks are appearing in its load-bearing facade. No bets on whether it'll survive the next https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_Hurricane_Sandy_in_New_York https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_Hurricane_Sandy_in_...
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- dehugger 1y agoThe article also calls out that the building has yet to be subjected to sustained hurricane winds. I certainly wouldn't want to be inside it the first time that happens.
- Simulacra 1y agoResponsibility is attributed primarily to the building’s developers (namely CIM Group and Macklowe Properties) and the design/construction team. I'm curious about the concrete composition, would not substandard concrete cause this problem, or is it more the bedrock? I couldn't discern that clearly.
- alecco 1y agohttps://www.nytimes.com/video/realestate/luxury/100000010458698/a-tower-on-billionaires-row-is-full-of-cracks-whos-to-blame.html https://www.nytimes.com/video/realestate/luxury/100000010458... (short video version)
- dumbmrblah 1y agoWonder what the HOA fees are.
- tuna74 1y agoIsn't this a condo building?
- jcranmer 1y agoCondo associations are generally HOAs.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jeffbee 1y agoThe listing for unit 52B says $9147/mo but that's just to keep the elevators running and the windows washed. The larger cost would be that you own a share of a gigantic liability which is hard to value.
- noir_lord 1y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01KX_JXHH2M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01KX_JXHH2M solid overview from the always informative b1m.
- OptionOfT 1y agoI recently saw one of those companies that build these sky scrapers going public. I'm sure that'll be good for the long-term safety of those buildings. /s
- gafferongames 1y ago[flagged]
- ipnon 1y agoIf this becomes unfit for habitation it will likely stay in the skyline indefinitely. 1 Seaport has had construction stalled since 2017 because of a 3 inch tilt off axis. The default in NYC is to let the concrete stand as a monument to failure. Perhaps it’s for the best. Every time New Yorkers raise their eyes to the sky they are reminded of state of local real estate.
- hu3 1y agoTIL, thanks. Found a video about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_8lrUPaLIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_8lrUPaLIY
- browningstreet 1y agoArvin Haddad has made a few videos about units in this building, including the penthouse, but here he reviews an average unit’s layout. His channel is an interesting view into how badly designed a lot of very expensive real estate happens to be. https://youtu.be/j8_DZQrfgRA?si=FcfIU3B6KFw3s31N https://youtu.be/j8_DZQrfgRA?si=FcfIU3B6KFw3s31N
- m101 1y agoExposed concrete, in a building with challenging engineering around wind, in an environment with regular freezing temperatures. Sounds like it was bound to happen even with that ash. The repair cost sounds cheap tbh.
- betaby 1y agoHousing construction quality is generally poor in the USA and Canada. xUSSR countries (Russia, Estonia, etc ) have harsher climate and yet concrete building there are fine.
- woodruffw 1y agoNew York’s climate is pretty harsh: you have annual freeze/thaw cycles, lots of rain and ice, plus high winds and an annual hurricane season. The problem here is not a general one with urban building quality in the US, but the fact that this specific piece is a part of a many-headed scam: the developers themselves built it quickly and cheaply because they knew that their clients are using it as a (foreign) asset, and not as a living space. The tenants in turn are doing exactly that, and they knew exactly what they were getting into; the reason they’re suing is to protect the value of their asset for the next sucker. Normal buildings in the US, including new builds, do not have this particular dynamic.
- jcranmer 1y ago> New York’s climate is pretty harsh: you have annual freeze/thaw cycles, lots of rain and ice, plus high winds and an annual hurricane season. In terms of freeze/thaw cycles, it's not really about having annual cycles that makes a climate harsh, but rather having persistent daily cycles. A climate where the winter daily high sits comfortably above freezing and the winter daily low sits comfortably below freezing is going to be much harsher on buildings than one where the weather goes below freezing in fall and stays below freezing all winter--you're seeing like 10× the freeze/thaw cycles per year. Between climate change and urban heat island effect, Manhattan is probably moving into the winter-daily-freeze/thaw-cycle climate zone.
- sema4hacker 1y agoSan Francisco also has a well-known hi-rise disaster. You would think that after decades of the USA building skyscrapers that new construction would be a slam dunk.
- sandworm101 1y agoThe US still biulds skyscrapers? From what i have read, the vast majority in recent decades have been biult in china, on the order of 20x as many biulds. And outside of a couple cities like NYC and SF, sky scrapers are rare in the US. Per population, canada and australia have nearly twice as many. It is therefore no great suprise that American firms are no longer leaders in the field. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_the_most_skyscrapers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_the_mos...
- knollimar 1y agoIt only makes sense in dense areas. I work in the high rise electrical industry, and it's like 7 cities here if that matters to anyone. I'm exclusively NYC based, but it's nice to know where you can buy parts from.
- margalabargala 1y agoA different country with 3.5x the population building a majority of skyscrapers, doesn't mean that the US doesn't build skyscrapers. The three countries you mention build skyscrapers in far more densely populated areas. Canada and Australia may be huge, but they are mostly empty and all the population congregates in a tiny fraction of the land area. The US is more more evenly populated by comparison. The thing to compare here, which might be tricky to get numbers on, is skyscrapers per local population density.
- creer 1y agoEven in San Francisco, it has everything to do with artificial goofy zoning. It's not like the city lacks the space to spread out. (NYC also - but less so.)
- jerlam 1y ago
- hollerith 1y agoWhat an eyesore that thing is!
- ramraj07 1y agoI actually like it personally, as a building. What it represents, however, is an abomination.
- wmf 1y ago432 Park is such a tragedy. The full-floor units look beautiful but the building is so poorly engineered. A waste of money and air rights.
- theli0nheart 1y agoI don't know about anyone else, but simply looking at this building makes me nervous. I can't imagine how it could remain structurally sound in high wind conditions. Those open-air floors just don't seem like they'd be enough to offset the lack of aerodynamics.
- robertkrahn01 1y agoJust put scaffolding around it, will fit much better into NYC :D
- pavel_lishin 1y ago> But only a few years after the 102-floor apartment tower near 57th Street was completed, water began seeping through some ceilings, the elevators broke down repeatedly and owners complained that their living rooms creaked and swayed in the whipping Midtown wind. Even if someone guaranteed to me that this was the safest building in the world, my acrophobia would absolutely prevent me from living in a place that swayed in the wind like this.
- crmd 1y agoAs 432 Park shows, unregulated development here in nyc does not increase the supply of homes for people to live in but rather the supply of abstract assets for wealthy people to launder and store wealth, for which there seems to be a nearly endless international demand. Housing can either be an affordable resource for people to live in, or an asset that’s likely to appreciate faster than the rate of inflation. There are strong arguments for both. As New Yorkers we need to make our vote in November count and decide which is the priority.
- hnburnsy 1y agoFor all those complaining about empty units, it's this a good thing? This small patch of real estate (it is a narrow skyscraper at 15:1 with a footprint square base with each side measuring 93.5 feet) is generating millions in property tax revenue without having to 'service' its residents, with no additional children to educate, no additional drivers on the streets, and no additional people in the parks. Also recommend watching the B1M video on this that others have recommended.