The citys tallest residential building is sinking, and has been compared to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Now the blame game is coming swift and furious
The luxury condominiums at the Millennium Tower in San Francisco include every conceivable perk from a wine cellar and screening room to the opportunity to attend fireside chats with local and international thoughts leaders but for Frank Jernigan, one of the best features is the engineering button on the house phone.
If you have a stopped up toilet or a leak, you just hit the button and someone comes up and fixes the problem within 15 minutes, the retired Google engineer and owner of two units (one for himself and his husband, another for his husbands father) said of the building he has called home since 2011.
Its a nice touch, but residents like Jernigan are now facing an engineering problem that cannot be solved with a simple button.
The 58-story structure the tallest residential building in San Francisco and, according to developers, the tallest reinforced concrete structure in the western US has sunk 16 inches since its completion in 2008, and has tilted at least two inches toward the north-west.
All buildings settle into their foundations, but this building was only projected to sink between four and six inches over its lifetime. The revelation of the buildings unexpected decline has set off a round of lawsuits, government inquiries, and recriminations that promise to last for years.
Its unprecedented, said Steven Blum, one of the attorneys representing Millennium residents in a class action lawsuit. Ive been doing cases involving sinking buildings for almost 30 years, and I have not seen anything like this.
The only thing that comes close is the Leaning Tower of Pisa, he added. But thats a joke. There is nothing like this.
San Francisco is flanked by seven subparallel fault lines. The most notorious, the San Andreas Fault, produced the 1906 earthquake that leveled most of the city as well as the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake collapsed portions of the freeway and the Bay Bridge.
The prospect of the next big one has long kept San Francisco architecture relatively low to the ground, but in the early 2000s, developer ambitions shot skyward. Despite the fact that much of the city is at risk of liquefaction during an earthquake, and despite the fact that a group of engineers from the University of California Berkeley reportedly pushed for stricter standards for skyscrapers, developers raced ahead.
The Millennium Tower was among that first wave of new high-rises. Though it opened in 2009, just after the housing market crashed, the 420 units eventually all sold, for a total of $750m. As recently as February, a three-bedroom unit was listed for nearly $9m.
Much of that value of appears to have vanished when news of the sinking broke in August. The same three bedroom is now listed for $3.79m, and owners of 163 units have applied for property tax adjustments. In aggregate, the appeals claim a reduction in value of those 163 condos from $374m to $153m, according to city records.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/06/san-francisco-leaning-millennium-tower-investigation