What could the near collapse of a Midtown building do to NYC’s office-to-apartment craze?

Today's newsletter is curated by James Ramsay

Weather: ☀️ Sunny, highs in the lower 80s.

It's Wednesday in New York City, where the old Pfizer headquarters on East 42nd St. is stable, for now.

Crews last night began installing temporary shoring inside the building, a massive office-to-residential conversion that had been at risk of collapse earlier in the day after several support beams nearly snapped in half.

But even as structural engineers were left perplexed about what went wrong, Michael De Chiara, a real estate attorney, said he didn't expect the episode to hinder other projects like this. 

The city decided last year to rezone a 42-block section of Manhattan to accommodate more housing — and more than 2,000 apartment units in former offices are currently under construction. 

Here's what else is happening:

• "No one was running away from the fire": Residents and workers at offices near yesterday's Midtown building emergency seemed to take it in stride.
• Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the MTA yesterday released a new plan to speed up buses along 50 routes by allowing rear-door boarding and adjusting street lights to give buses a head start.
• Shark sightings have skyrocketed at the Rockaways this summer, prompting lifeguards to suspend swimming 23 times since the start of the season.
• Mayor Mamdani is vowing to release the addresses of all buildings whose water-cooling towers test positive for Legionella.
  • As of yesterday, the recent Legionnaires’ disease outbreak on the Upper East Side had infected 23 people and hospitalized 17.
• New York's multibillion-dollar power line from Canada, which Gov. Kathy Hochul called a "lifeline" for meeting rising energy demand in the summer, has already melted down twice in July.
• New Jersey officials said some residents could still be without power for days as the state recovers from the recent heat wave, which has been linked to 29 deaths between July 2 and July 6. 
• Police are investigating after a 14-year-old boy was injured on July 4 in a Lower Manhattan traffic incident involving an SUV from the NYPD commissioner’s security detail.

• Several Manhattan lawmakers are urging the city and state to start reimbursing victims of food stamp theft.
• Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman released a new ad featuring an AI-generated Gov. Hochul saying things like, "We provided luxury accommodations for illegal migrants in beautiful hotels."
• Staten Island got a pair of public health "vending machines," which offer free socks, condoms, naloxone and fentanyl test strips.
• PopUp Bagels has franchise agreements to pop up at 300 more locations across the country. 
• Twinkies are out.
• A Dolly Parton musical is coming to Broadway in December.
• Sacha Baron Cohen made another Ali G movie.
• The sea is therapy.
• Stoop is beach.