

A management email explained that “a high-wind condition” stopped an elevator and caused a resident to be “entrapped” on the evening of Oct. As high-rise buildings are erupting in an elite part Lagos Nigeria, stakeholders could take note of these concerns.Īll buildings sway in the wind, but at exceptional heights, those forces are stronger.

Many of the mechanical issues cited at 432 Park are occurring at other supertall residential towers, according to several engineers who have worked on the buildings. The case was settled quietly the next year. The would-be buyer, who was in contract for a $46.25 million apartment, was a member of the Beckmann family, the owners of the Jose Cuervo tequila brand, according to sources familiar with the suit. The anonymous buyer of unit 84B cited a “catastrophic water flood” that caused major damage to the 83rd to 86th floors in 2016 as grounds to back out of the deal. Abramovich’s apartment several floors below the leak, causing an estimated $500,000 in damage, she said. Four days later, a “water line failure” on the 74th floor caused water to enter elevator shafts, removing two of the four residential elevators from service for weeks.Īfter the first incident, water seeped into Ms. 22, was caused by a “blown” flange, a ribbed collar that connects piping, around a high-pressure water feed on the 60th floor. There have been a number of floods in the building, including two leaks in November 2018 that the general manager of the building, Len Czarnecki, acknowledged in emails to residents. “That’s how I went up to my hoity-toity apartment before closing.” “They put me in a freight elevator surrounded by steel plates and plywood, with a hard-hat operator,” she said. She was disappointed with her purchase on Day 1, she said, when she left her home in London in early 2016 to move into what she expected to be a completed apartment, and found that both her unit and the building were still under construction. Abramovich and her husband, Mikhail, retired business owners who worked in the oil and gas business, bought a high-floor, 3,500-square-foot apartment at the tower for nearly $17 million in 2016, to have a secondary home near their adult children, The Times says. The construction manager, Lendlease, said in a statement that they “have been in contact” with the developers, “regarding some comments from tenants, which we are currently evaluating.” “They’re still billing it as God’s gift to the world, and it’s not.”ĬIM Group, one of the developers, said in a statement that the building “is a successfully designed, constructed and virtually sold-out project,” and that they are “working collaboratively” with the condo board, which was run by the developers until January when residents were elected and took control. “I was convinced it would be the best building in New York,” said Sarina Abramovich, one of the earliest residents of 432 Park.
THE DOWNSIDE LIFE SUPERTALL LEAKS CREAKS HOW TO
Now, correspondence between residents, some of the richest and most influential people in the world, reveal thorny arguments over how to remedy the problems without tanking property values. Engineers privy to some of the disputes say many of the same issues are occurring quietly in other new towers. Less than a decade after a spate of record-breaking condo towers reached new heights in New York, the first reports of defects and complaints are beginning to emerge, raising concerns that some of the construction methods and materials used have not lived up to the engineering breakthroughs that only recently enabled 1,000-foot-high trophy apartments.

The claims include millions of dollars of water damage from plumbing and mechanical issues frequent elevator malfunctions and walls that creak like the galley of a ship - all of which may be connected to the building’s main selling point: its immense height, according to homeowners, engineers and documents obtained by The Times. Six years after its sale, residents of the exclusive tower are now at odds with the developers, and each other, making clear that even multimillion-dollar price tags do not guarantee problem-free living, The New York Times reports. Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez bought a 4,000-square-foot apartment there for $15.3 million in 2018, and sold about a year later. Home to some of the world's richest, it sold in 2016 for nearly $88 million to a company representing the Saudi retail magnate Fawaz Alhokair. T nearly 1,400 feet, the 96 th-floor tower at 432 Park Avenue, New York is one of the tallest residential buildings in the world.
