A 58-story skyscraper in San Francisco is tilting and sinking making their apartments worthless

[Stuart G]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/443e7797-49a5-39c4-92ea-f1a925d4cf31/ss_a-58-story-skyscraper-in-san.html

Yahoo News / Business Insider..

Bad news keeps piling up at the "leaning tower" of San Francisco. Millennium Tower is a luxury residential high-rise that has sunk 17 inches and tilted 14 inches since it was completed in 2008. Though an inspection by the city showed it's safe to occupy, the building's wealthy residents take no solace. Their multimillion-dollar condos have tumbled $320,000 in value on average. Here's what we know about the fate of Millennium Tower.

Millennium Tower rises 58 stories above San Francisco's Financial District.

The city's fourth-tallest skyscraper contains over 400 multimillion-dollar condo units. It soars 645 feet, providing residents with panoramic views of the Bay Area... more info..but here is the most important....

But residents weren't happy after learning in June 2015 that the building had sunk 16 inches into the soil and tilted 2 inches at its base.

So far in 2017, Millennium Tower has sunk an additional inch and tilted another 2 1/2 inches toward the massive Salesforce Tower under construction across the street.....(more at link)

[ghostsinthemachine]

1. Yeah, it's a great building, in a great area

But. I think Joe Montana lives on the top floor, or he did anyway. What do the tenants do? The developer?

The lawyers must be salivating at all the possible suits.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. Millennium Tower sits on land prone to liquefaction,

the process by which loose sand and silt behave like a liquid in the event of an earthquake. The seismic activity causes water pressure in the sediment to increase and grains of sand to lose contact with each other, according to the US Geological Survey. The soil may give out under large, heavy structures.

Yep....

Too bad they did not set it on bedrock....

[Brother Buzz]

5. The building is straddling a transition; half is built on crap fill prone to liquefaction

and the other half is on reasonably consolidated fill.

One situation, or the other, the engineers can deal with, but in this case, they totally blew it.

[R B Garr]

8. That is frightening. Makes you wonder if they might

be condemned or something. Too dangerous to live in.

[Brother Buzz]

10. Crazy, but they are saying there may be a fix, and it could be ultimately straightened....

While the owners continue to reside in the tower.

Millennium Tower keeps on sinking, but there may be a fix

By Matier & Ross Updated 12:24 pm, Wednesday, July 19, 2017

<snip>

The good news for the tower’s well-heeled residents, who paid from $1.6 million to $10 million for their condominiums, is that a pair of engineering firms hired by developer Millennium Partners and other parties involved in the dispute think they have a solution that will stabilize the tower and prop it back upright.

The LERA firm and DeSimone Consulting Engineers say the problem can be remedied by drilling 50 to 100 new piles down to bedrock from the building’s basement. Each pile would be anywhere from 10 inches to a foot in diameter.

<more>

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Millennium-Tower-keeps-on-sinking-but-there-may-11297935.php

[R B Garr]

18. Thanks for the link! That still sounds like an awfully scary fix -- drilling more

pilings from the basement. I guess that's why they need two engineering firms for this because of the check and balances getting it right. I still would be scared to live there. Imagine riding the elevators, etc.

I see where Joe Montana sued the building's developers. What an awful and scary mess.

[Brother Buzz]

19. There are many lawsuits, but Montana's is interesting

Joe Montana helped promote the tower in 2010 in exchange for residency, which means he could be on the hook for lawsuits himself. He promoted the tower while management know of the problems, yet didn't tell him. He's kinda pissed because his reputation is on the line.

[R B Garr]

23. Interesting situation! It would seem liability might

extend to the City, as well, for approving construction on that ground. Though other surrounding buildings aren't in jeopardy, it seems. I sure can see why buyers were initially attracted to a high rise with those views, but how scary it's turned out to be.

Edit, I remember seeing a show (I think like Huell Howser or something like that) that showed how that area/land was built up and marveled at it, but it obviously has its downsides.

[snooper2]

16. I can fix it, will only cost me a couple thousand but I'm going have to charge 2 million

just because LOL

[jmowreader]

24. I slightly suspect that won't work

Polyurethane foam is a good product for raising a slab...but I don't think it'll pick up a 60-story building.

[Binkie The Clown]

3. Yikes! 17 inches? That's huge.

A lot of San Fransisco is built on the rubble of the earthquake that was just pushed into the bay and used as fill to create new "land".

[marylandblue]

4. This is an engineering error

The building designer has to submit soil reports to city plan checkers showing that the soil can support the building. The designer made a mistake and the plan checkers didn't catch it.

[NutmegYankee]

21. It should have had pilings down to bedrock, but that likely cost too much.

It's a major reason that you don't see many tall buildings in the US Southeast coast. Sandy soil with bedrock very deep below. In Norfolk, VA, it can be 7000 feet down.

[JI7]

6. i don't feel bad since they are wealthy

[mulsh]

7. In SF's early days these parcels were called "Water Lots" part of the wonderful history of the

liberal free market at work in all its glory. A great deal of the eastern shore of SF is built on these lots.


Here's an article with maps about water lots in the area where the Millennium Tower was built.

[link:http://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=WATER_LOT_SPECULATION|

[dixiegrrrrl]

11. Miami is another example of water lots.

People talk of buying land by the gallon in So. Fla., because the "bedrock" is porous limestone, and water flows in and out of that.
And it goes UP with rising sea levels..into the streets.

[WinkyDink]

12. I think you mean "Conservative free market." Just so as not to confuse.

[mulsh]

14. I'm too used to using the term "liberal free market" to piss off conservatives. For some reason the

term seems to upset hardcore free market fetishists, especially when they're bad mouthing liberals.

It's mostly the correct economics term but then so are terms like grifter, con artists or the archaic "flim-flam man".

[Warpy]

9. I read about it when people were first starting to move in

There is no way I can think of to shore up something that big. Had they caught the mistake (and I'm being generous) there might have been a way.

Eventually doors and windows will no longer fit, windows will start to crack and fall, and the damned thing will be unsafe and have to be demolished.

I do feel a bit sorry for people who spent everything they had to buy into the place, some undoubtedly in the hope that the profit in a few years would allow them to buy an ordinary bungalow in Silicon Valley, where their jobs were. California is nuts.

[Javaman]

13. this is going to turn into a massive lawsuit against the civil engineer.

someone completely fucked up on the geo-engineering report.

I work in this industry and I have seen lawsuits like this.

they are not pretty.

this is a massive fuck up.

[tinrobot]

15. I wonder what happens to that building in an earthquake.

Does it completely tip over?

[Tracer]

17. Maybe someday the building will look like this:

http://armchairtravelogue.blogspot.com/2009/04/leaning-towers-of-madrid.html

[MyNameGoesHere]

20. Over 400 multimillion dollar condos.

Close it down and let it be the American version of the fine tower at Pisa. That one can be blamed on lack of engineering skills at the time, this one can be a monument to greed.

[hatrack]

22. "So I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, THEN sank into the swamp . . . "

"But the fourth one stayed up!"