- San Francisco’s Millennium Tower continues to tilt even as construction crews scramble to stabilize the luxury building
- The building, which opened in 2019 and quickly sold out all of its units, had sunk 16 inches by 2016 and was beginning to tilt to the west.
- Part of the settlement with the tenants, who sued, was $100 million to stabilize the structure
San Francisco’s Millennium Tower is sinking, causing it to tilt to the west, despite the efforts of scrambled workers to try to fix the problem with the luxurious high-rise.
According to reports, the tower is currently tilting more than 29 inches at its northwest corner, with much of this tilt occurring during the excavation phase of the plan drawn up to eventually support the tower along its sides.
Engineers saw signs of progress earlier this year when six steel columns filled with concrete were carried out along the base of the $350 million building, but that effort may have resulted in the new amount of tilt assumed by a sinking tower built on a landfill. Ex.
This tilt has resulted in walls leaking and collapsing in the facility’s underground parking garage, while residents live above.
The engineers running the project now claim that the data indicating an increased tilt may not be reliable, despite previously relying on it to support their claims of early success on the project.
said the lead engineer for the project, Ron Hamburger NBC Data from roof measurements is subject to weather fluctuations and data from building foundations is more reliable.
Data from the building’s foundation also indicates that the current tilt is more significant than previously noted, although the amount claimed for the hamburger was “minuscule” by only about a quarter of an inch.
“We are quite confident that after the remaining design load has been transferred to the piers,” Hamburger said, adding that “there will be no more … movement of the roof to the west.”
Hamburger said he and his team next plan to secure the building’s foundation to 12 sunken columns along Fremont Street that will bear the partial weight of the building’s load.
Veteran geotechnical engineer Bob Pike, who has long been skeptical of the $100 million plan to fix the leaning tower, feels considerably less optimistic about the next phase of the project.
As far as remedial work goes, this is just a mess. You spend all this money, but you still have an uncertain long-term outcome.
Pyke says there’s no way to know if fixing the tower will work as hoped and stop tilting after transferring some of its weight to the pilings rooted in the bedrock.
The design team has long claimed that there will be some bounce after the perimeter piles are connected. So far the evidence seems to suggest that will not happen.
The plan as it stands for now is to partially shift the building’s load onto those piles within the next several days.
Efforts to stabilize the building and stop its sinking and tilting have been ongoing since spring 2021.
The 58-story luxury tower opened in 2009 and quickly sold 419 apartments, including former San Francisco 49ers Joe Montana and former Giants quarterback Hunter Pence.
By 2016, the building had sunk nearly a foot and a half into the loose soil and landfill on which it was built in the San Francisco Financial District.
It was also inclined, creating a slope of 2 inches at the base, and 6 inches at the top. The building’s residents later sued the developer and designers.
The confidential settlement reached several years ago included $100 million to install 52 concrete and 140,000 pounds to anchor the building on a bedrock located 250 feet underground, with the idea that the piles would provide foundational support for the leaning and sinking tower.
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