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San Francisco Landmark, Luxury High-Rise Millennium Tower Is sinking fast

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D

Dalek

Member
SF Landmark, Luxury High-Rise Millennium Tower Is Sinking Fast


millennium-exterior.jpg
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SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) — The Millennium Tower, one of the city’s most prestigious addresses, is sinking fast.

The luxury high-rise is home to celebrities like Joe Montana and Hunter Pence. Condominiums in the 58-story building have price tags as high as $10 million.

According to KCBS and Chronicle Insider Phil Matier, the Millenneum Tower has sunk by 16 inches since its completion in 2009. It’s also tilted by two inches to the northwest.

Who is to blame for the problem depends on who you ask.

Millennium Tower officials say the sinking was triggered by excavation work for the nearby Transbay Terminal. But Transbay officials point out that the tower had already sunk by ten inches before the Transbay dig began. They blame the problems on the way the high-rise was built.

“To cut costs, Millennium did not drill piles to bedrock,” said the transit authority in its statement. Had it done so, “the tower would not be tilting today.”

The Millennium Tower sits on an area of mud-fill. It is not steel-framed, and instead relies on shear walls, columns and beams. The building is anchored over a thick concrete slab and its pilings extend about 80 feet into dense sand, not into the bedrock which lies about 200 feet below street level.

In quake-prone Northern California, the sinking is raising major concerns.

P.J. Johnston, spokesman for Millennium Partners and principal owner Sean Jeffries, said a 2014 independent safety review “determined the settlement has not significantly affected the seismic performance of the building, and does not represent a safety risk.”

Johnston says several other downtown buildings have similar foundations, including the Intercontinental and St. Regis hotels.

Still, Greg Deirlein, director of Stanford’s Earthquake Engineering Department says the sinking problem is “significant… and of concern.”
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http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-s-landmark-tower-for-rich-and-famous-is-8896563.php
The Millennium Tower, a leading symbol of San Francisco’s new high-rise and high-end living, is sinking — setting the stage for what could be one of the most contentious and costly real estate legal battles the city has ever seen.

Rated by Worth magazine as one of the top 10 residential buildings in the world, the Millennium at 301 Mission St. is home to such A-listers as Joe Montana and Hunter Pence. Until his recent death, it’s where venture capitalist Tom Perkins owned a penthouse. Condos sell for anywhere from $1.6 million to north of $10 million.
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F

Fuchsdh

Member
I'm amazed that SF allows such structures not to be built with bedrock foundations, especially given that it's in one of the most precarious spots.
 
B

BlueTsunami

there is joy in sucking dick
I love how they charge exorbitant prices for a space in the high rise but they couldn't go the extra mile and make sure its secured to the bedrock due to cost.
 
A

ahoyhoy

Unconfirmed Member
So what's the angle measure at for people in the building?

Would a pencil roll off an unadjusted desk?
 
D

Dalek

Member
Fuchsdh said:
I'm amazed that SF allows such structures not to be built with bedrock foundations, especially given that it's in one of the most precarious spots.
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The majority of the Financial District is landfill. There are old ships and boats buried deep below the skyscrapers in San Francisco that people arrived on during the Gold Rush days and just abandoned.
 
Tal Shiar Agent

Tal Shiar Agent

Banned
Dalek said:
The majority of the Financial District is landfill. There are old ships and boats buried deep below the skyscrapers in San Francisco that people arrived on during the Gold Rush days and just abandoned.
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You can also find the head of a certain android buried under the city.
 
B

bagandscalpel

Member
BlueTsunami said:
I love how they charge exorbitant prices for a space in the high rise but they couldn't go the extra mile and make sure its secured to the bedrock due to cost.
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Foundations are things that tend to be shortchanged, which is bad for people living in and around the buildings built on top.

But, it gives us amusing case studies in which said buildings tilt over in nearly one piece.
 
DonMigs85

DonMigs85

Member
Did the sinking affect the entrance/doors going into the building? They aren't level with the ground anymore? Or did the entire surrounding area also sink?
 
F

FStop7

Banned
The Millennium Tower sits on an area of mud-fill. It is not steel-framed, and instead relies on shear walls, columns and beams. The building is anchored over a thick concrete slab and its pilings extend about 80 feet into dense sand, not into the bedrock which lies about 200 feet below street level.
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What? Doesn't this make the building vulnerable to liquefaction? This would be insane to do in San Francisco, where there was all kinds of severe damage caused by liquefaction during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
 
M

MiniBossBattle

Member
Wow, the builder didn't do the right thing. I thought they had to drive those foundation supports till it hit something solid, not rest softly on the landfill (basically what that entire area is.).
 
N

Nafai1123

Banned
It's no mystery that much of downtown is built upon land fill. If a major earthquake happened the ground would basically liquify.
 
U

uncblue

Member
I'm not sure who the journalist spoke to but the structural system (concrete vs steel) has no impact on foundation design.
 
I

Imperfected

Member
Geez, SanFran housing prices really are jacked if $10,000,000 doesn't even get you an apartment built to code.

At what point does this start to have an effect too significant to ignore, like throwing the building out of alignment with its surrounding streets?
 
D

Dalek

Member
Trapped at the Pinnacle of Luxury: Life at the Top of S.F.’s Leaning Tower

Buttery-800x600.jpg

Millennium Tower resident Pamela Buttery putts golf balls as they roll in the direction of the tower’s lean

must see video of the golf ball:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzoaSF42G3I

Pamela Buttery was about 70 years old when she decided it was time to say goodbye to her house in Monterey County.

“Big home, lots of work,” she explains.

She also wanted to live near her son in San Francisco, who has disabilities that prevent him from driving. So, in 2010, Buttery bought a brand-new condominium on the Millennium Tower’s 57th floor. It had every amenity she could want: valet service, round-the-clock security guards and maintenance workers. She thought she would live here for the rest of her life.

“It sounds morbid, but I have a spare bedroom — just for visitors at the moment — but I thought that I could have somebody live there and take care of me when I get older,” Buttery says. “I do not want to be a burden.”

Buttery never dreamed her South of Market home in the Millennium Tower would be the burden. She was a real estate developer for several decades and thought she had made a shrewd investment in a premier property, for which she paid more than $3 million.

“State-of-the-art construction, state-of-the-art engineering,” Buttery sighs.
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Unfortunately, the skyscraper — often referred to as the “Leaning Tower of San Francisco” — has become notorious around the world. When I visit Buttery at her home, I see that it is leaning slightly to my left. I think that I must be imagining things. So, Buttery shows me with a golf ball. She gently tosses it toward the window. The ball slows down, spins, then turns to the left in the direction of the tower’s lean.

“It’s going right for the corner,” I marvel. But I still don’t quite believe it. I pick up a another golf ball, and kneel on the floor to do my own experiment.

“I’m going to make it go to the right,” I say. Normally, it would keep rolling right and then stop. Instead, the ball slows and spins.

“And there it goes back left again,” I say. It lands in the same left corner, right next to the other ball.
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It really doesn’t take a do-it-yourself experiment to know that the Millennium Tower, which is located at the corner of Mission and Fremont streets, has a problem. Engineers on the ground estimate it’s sinking about 1 inch a year. Satellite images from the European Space Agency show the skyscraper may actually be sinking at double that rate. It’s also leaning roughly 6 inches to one side.

Millennium Tower developers insist the building remains safe. But Buttery can’t stop thinking about various disasters that could happen. Like, this one: “The elevators stop working and I wake up one morning and I smell sewage or gas. And that scenario is before the city steps in and decides to condemn the building.”

“Ultimately, we’re going to have to find a fix for this building,” says San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin. “I am not yet confident that it is safe over the long term.”

Peskin is leading what is likely to be a long series of committee hearings trying to untangle who’s to blame for the tower’s troubles. Is it the developers? The city’s building inspectors? The builders of the new Transbay Transit Center next door? All three?

Meantime, Buttery and her neighbors are deep in the muck of multiple lawsuits. This is not the peaceful retirement she had imagined. “Actually, I’ve moved on into depression about it,” she says. “It’s a gloomy feeling.”

She would like to sell her place. “But nobody’s buying.”
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S

Syriel

Member
Dalek said:
She would like to sell her place. “But nobody’s buying.”
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Now that's just not true.

Sept 2016:
Despite the bad press, the new buyers (one Qian Zhuang and Michael Liao) felt that the two-bed, two-bath condo was worth a very respectable $2.3 million. Amazingly, that’s $500,000 more than its next most recent sale back in May of 2012.
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http://sf.curbed.com/2016/10/12/13258144/millennium-tower-condo-sold-sells

Dec 2016:
Marking the most expensive condominium sale in San Francisco in more than five years, since the $28 million sale of bonkers the St. Regis penthouse, the penthouse inside the Millennium Tower, a lavish pad once owned by noted VC Tom Perkins, sold this month for a cool $13 million.

The 5,500-square-foot home comes with two bedrooms, two and one-half baths, and sunrise-to-sunset views of the city.
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Living_Day_9478.0.jpeg


Terrace_Night_North_9873.jpg


http://sf.curbed.com/2016/12/16/13987094/millennium-tower-penthouse-record-sale
 
M

mysocksarepink

Banned
as a structual steel project manager, the bolded in op doesn't surprise me at all. People in construction always want to build cheaply and are shocked when this shit happens.
 
L

Lambtron

Unconfirmed Member
Dynamite Shikoku said:
If you're rich, why would you live in an apartment
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I'm far from rich, but I have zero interest in owning a single family home. My partner and I do not have children, we don't need a large place for family gatherings. I'd rather invest money into a condo than a house.
 
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