The suit also stated that “over time the building most likely will sink an additional 8 to 15 inches into the landfill” over which it is built, and the tilt, currently measured at about two inches toward the northwest, could also get worse. In the complaint, the plaintiff called the building “defective,” and claimed Millennium Partners “knew that the Millennium and Subject Homes were not of marketable or habitable quality.” The suit noted that the building sits on a manmade “mud fill” in an area that was once underwater and asserts that the decision to build on a concrete slab and 80-foot piles, instead of piles anchored into the 200-foot-deep bedrock, was made “to cut costs.” Webcor Builders was the general contractor on the job, according to the Concrete Reinforcing Steel Institute.Īlmost a decade after completion, in August 2016, The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Millennium condo owner John Eng had filed a lawsuit against both the building’s owners, Millennium Partners, and the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, whose nearby construction may have caused the tower to begin sinking and tilting. Opened in 2008 at the cost of $350 million, the Millennium Tower was designed by Handel Architects, with structural engineering by DeSimone Consulting Engineers. San Francisco’s leaning and sinking Millennium Tower is now partly supported on two sides to bedrock, a major milestone for the troubled so-called fix designed to stabilize the high-rise and reverse its lean. “It’s been a challenging project both technically and also because it was so much in the public eye and every incident was widely reported coast to coast.” “It’s a great relief,” said Ron Hamburger, a senior principal with Simpson Gumpertz & Heger, the engineering firm in charge of the project. The completion of the most recent work, in which 18 concrete piles were driven into bedrock deep under the property to shift a portion of the building’s load onto the new structures, marks another step in a saga that has spanned years and reportedly involved multiple lawsuits and millions of dollars to fix the original construction error. The building’s tilt has also been reported to have worsened since construction to mitigate the issues launched in November 2020, leaning roughly 29 inches to the northwest corner. The association did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.Last week, the homeowners' association for San Francisco’s Millennium Tower announced that a $100 million project to fix the building’s leaning issues has been “substantially complete.”Īccording to reports, the 645-foot-tall residential condominium, composed of 58 stories, has sunk a total of 17 inches since its completion in 2008. Shortly after work began, however, the sinking and tilting accelerated the building now has a tilt of 22 inches, NBC Bay Area reported.Ī spokesperson for the Millennium Tower Association told the San Francisco Chronicle that the building is safe, but that it would suspend work on the project out of caution while it works to better understand the issue. In May, crews started work on the perimeter pile upgrade project to install 52 concrete, 140,000lb piles to anchor the building to bedrock 250ft below ground. This is a one-of-a-kind situation we won’t ever see again in San Francisco.”Ī confidential settlement reached last year included a $100m plan to fix the building, and compensate homeowners in the building for estimated losses. “It will be a roadmap for other downtown developments for what to avoid. “This litigation exposed a lot of problems in the development of this particular building,” Niall McCarthy, an attorney representing a group of homeowners, told the Guardian in 2019. Photograph: Beck Diefenbach / Reuters/Reuters Pedestrians inspect cracks near the sinking Millennium tower in San Francisco in 2016.
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