NEW YORK | 56 Leonard | 821 FT / 250 M | 57 FLOORS

[yankeesfan1000]

^ Nothing to do with cash flow. The developer changed concrete contractor about two months ago, and found a replacement one about a month ago.

[ILNY]

^Contractor change was the result not cause of developer problems.

Any news for this tower? Did work resume?

[Blaze23]

There is and was never any developer problem! I really have no idea what you're talking about. The issue was with the concrete contractor, presumably due to how slow construction was proceeding.
Construction resumed some time last month.

http://www.yimbynews.com/2013/12/56-...on-photos.html

[miesian]

I would hate to think that this is "unbuildable".

[Submariner]

Originally Posted by miesian

I would hate to think that this is "unbuildable".

Why would that be the case?

[miesian]

Suppose an architect's plans proved to be too difficult to realize..for reasons of cost and/or engineering or materials limitations/problems? I'm not saying that is the case here, but it is conceivable.

[ILNY]

Originally Posted by Blaze23

There is and was never any developer problem! I really have no idea what you're talking about.Construction resumed some time last month.

Ok, I should not say developer problem but problem with building in general (developer, contractor....)

Originally Posted by Blaze23

"The issue was with the concrete contractor, presumably due to how slow construction was proceeding."

But why is construction so slow? Why it takes a year to build 7-8 floors?
I am not saying anything because I do not know, it's just my speculation but looking how slow the construction is progressing it seems to me that they are having some issues.
miesian summed it up in the post above.

[Blaze23]

From what I read, it seems like it is indeed due to the complexity of the building but even that can't explain why it took so long to build 8 floors, which lead to the contractor being dropped.
On the bright side, as the Yimby article mentioned, the next floors are more straight forward so this should speed up a bit.....until we get to the top floors which follow the same irregular patterns.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Blaze23

From what I read, it seems like it is indeed due to the complexity of the building but even that can't explain why it took so long to build 8 floors, which lead to the contractor being dropped.

It's because the first few floors were extremely complex. Wired NY has one of the engineers for this building as a regular poster. The building was always scheduled to be extremely slow during the first few months.

You will see it race forwards, though. The middle part is much easier, and the balconies and bump-outs will be added at the end, not during the main construction process.

Also, there was a disagreement with one of the contractors, and they were replaced, but that only delayed things for a couple weeks. The new contractors have been there for a while now.

[Hypothalamus]

Posted January 20th, 2014...
Photo Credit: ZippyTheChimp @ WNY


©ZippyTheChimp


©ZippyTheChimp


©ZippyTheChimp

[Guiltyspark]

The concrete around the base looks awesome. I was not sure I would like it, but that subtle curve is really cool.

[cityenthusiast]

I just don't think that can happen the amount of research and work that goes in into pre-construction they would not risk all the investments and loans taken to build this building. They would be absolutely sure the building is feasible before going this far. If they didn't that's the dumbest mistake that could be made in construction besides a high rise collapsing that a developer could make. This is in response to Miesian

[ILNY]

Originally Posted by cityenthusiast

I just don't think that can happen the amount of research and work that goes in into pre-construction they would not risk all the investments and loans taken to build this building. They would be absolutely sure the building is feasible before going this far. If they didn't that's the dumbest mistake that could be made in construction besides a high rise collapsing that a developer could make. This is in response to Miesian

No amount of research can guarantee 100% success. Sometimes things (shit) just happen. I am not saying this is the case with 56 Leonard but check what happened with Citigroup Center.



Citigroup Center Photo by Johan Burati

Excerpts below are from Wikipedia. You can read more about problems with Citigroup Center from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup_Center

Changes during construction led to a finished product that was structurally unsound. In June 1978, prompted by discussion between a civil engineering student at Princeton University, Diane Hartley,[2] and design engineer Joel Weinstein, LeMessurier recalculated the wind loads on the building. In the original design, the engineer calculated for wind loads that hit the building straight-on, but he did not calculate for quartering wind loads, which hit the building at a 45-degree angle. This oversight revealed that quartering wind loads resulted in a 40% increase in wind loads and a 160% increase in the load at all connection joints. This discovery was rather disturbing, since a couple of weeks prior to that, LeMessurier had discovered a structural flaw, which was introduced during construction.

Earlier in May, LeMessurier met for an inquiry on another job where he mentioned the use of welded joints in the Citicorp building, only to find a potentially fatal flaw in the building's construction: the original design's welded joints were changed to bolted joints during construction, which were too weak to withstand 70-mile-per-hour (113 km/h) quartering winds

This knowledge, combined with LeMessurier's discovery that his firm had used New York City's truss safety factor of 1:1 instead of the column safety factor of 1:2, meant that the building was in critical danger. The discovery of the problem occurred in the month of June, the beginning of hurricane season. The problem had to be corrected quickly.

It is reported that LeMessurier agonized over how to deal with the problem. If he made it known publicly, he risked ruining his professional reputation. He approached Citicorp directly and advised them of the need to take swift remedial action, ultimately convincing the company to hire a crew of welders to repair the fragile building without informing the public, a task made easier by the press strike at that time.

[Blaze23]

Actually construction has resumed. I walked by last week and there was tons of activity, and if you take a good look at the latest pic, the building gained 2 or 3 floors since the stoppage, which is quite a feat considering how slow it was before.

[ILNY]

^ It's hard to tell from pictures but you are correct, they are moving up.

[baseball1992]

I believe they are floor 10. At this point they are part the crazy floors are at the 'straight forward' ones.

[tdawg]

I work on the 45th floor of the old Citigroup Building and I think about its troubled early history every time I take a ride in one of its sketchy elevators.

[pico44]

Originally Posted by tdawg

I work on the 45th floor of the old Citigroup Building and I think about its troubled early history every time I take a ride in one of its sketchy elevators.

"sketchy"?

[M. Incandenza]

I just checked this site out in person for the first time today, and boy, this building is going to be a much more massive presence than I had imagined; at ten stories or whatever, it already really looms. I might worry about it being simply overbearing but I think the Kapoor sculpture is such a cool way to integrate it with the street, and a really nice textural and geometrical balance to the boxy forms above.

Think I'm more excited to see this as a finished structure than anything else that's U/C or proposed in NYC right now.

[Forrest Dweller]

I agree that the subtle concave curve on the slab edges looks really good. I originally thought it was a lotta fuss/trouble for an insignificant detail, BUT, it's surprising how much difference it makes.