Hours after city officials warned of an "extremely dangerous situation" at the in-progress conversion of the former office property, Nathan Berman of MetroLoft said in an interview with The Real Deal that reports of the building's impending collapse have been "blown a little bit out of proportion," adding that despite videos of sagging upper floors and buckled support columns, the building "was never at risk of collapse" and the issues are "fixable."

Berman disputed a claim made earlier in the day by Cliff Johnsen of Steamfitters Local 638, who told reporters that the builders had not used enough steel to support the added weight.

"Total nonsense. This was well designed, and approved by structural engineers," said Berman. "This is a freak accident that something occurred with these two specific columns that either were not reinforced or were not reinforced sufficiently, and they gave way. That's it. There's no mystery, and there's no magic."

Berman said the added weight during construction likely led to columns bending. "It's very simple," said Berman. "You add more load to something that can't support it, it'll give way, and that's what happened, and now it just needs to be fixed."

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"When you add more floor area, you do this according to certain plans, which we have, and then those plans were approved by the building department, but mistakes sometimes happen, or sometimes you run into a faulty column, which may have been cracked before, and it went undetected," said Berman.