A 58-story skyscraper in San Francisco is sinking and people are fighting over whose fault it is
Vanguard Properties
But as the saying goes, the higher you rise, the further you fall.
City officials are scrambling to figure out the series of events that led to the development and sinking of the $350 million Millennium Tower. The skyscraper, which houses some 400multimillion-dollar condos, has sunk 16 inches and tilted two inches since it opened in 2009. All told, it could sink over 30 inches, according to CBS.
While the building is not currently at risk of keeling over, residents are furious that their property values are plummeting, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The city will hold a hearing starting September 22 to piece together statements from the high-rise's developers and city officials about what caused the sinking.
Here's everything you need to know about the Millennium Tower.
Millennium Tower sits on the edge of San Francisco's eastern shoreline.
The luxury condo building soars 645 feet, making it the tallest concrete structure in San Francisco and providing unparalleled views of the Bay Area.
Source: Wikipedia
Completed in 2008, the Millennium Tower includes top-notch amenities, including a pool, fitness center, wine cellar and tasting room, and concierge service.
It's no surprise that in the first five weeks, Millennium Tower sold $100 million worth of condos, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. There are 419 units total.
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
It's been home to some pretty famous tenants over the years, including former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Joe Montana and late venture capitalist Tom Perkins.
Source: Business Insider
But residents aren't happy after learning last year that the building is sinking. It's sunk 16 inches into soil and tilted two inches to the northwest since opening in 2009.
Source: Business Insider
The building's developers, Millennium Partners, argue that construction nearby is to blame for any sinking or tilting. A transportation hub, the Transbay Transit Center, broke ground next door in 2010, two years after the Millennium Tower was completed.
The new terminal, developed by the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, includes a 60-foot hole for the train tunnel and an underground buttress between the Millennium Tower and the transit site.
Source: San Francisco Business Times
A founding partner of Millennium Partners says there's "only one issue" — that construction for the Transbay terminal pumped too much water out of the ground.
"Dewatering" is the process of removing groundwater or surface water from a construction site to provide a safe work environment and prevent erosion of the soil.
When the water levels under the Millennium Tower dropped, the sand compressed and caused the building to settle, according to Chris Jeffries, a founding partner at Millennium Partners.
The issue came to light in 2010, five years before tenants were notified, when the Transbay Joint Powers Authority hired a consultant to find out how excavation could affect the tower.
The Transbay Joint Powers Authority maintains it is not at fault for the building's sinking.
Now the developers of the tower and terminal, the city of San Francisco, and the residents of Millennium Tower are wondering if something could have been done to save the skyscraper from its crooked fate.
San Francisco supervisor Aaron Peskin says yes. In early September, Peskin raised suspicion that city officials knew the building might sink before anyone moved in.
Peskin, who served on the Board of Supervisors from 2005 to 2009 and was reelected last year, uncovered documents from 2009 allegedly showing the city's building inspection department expressed concerns about the tower's unusual settling to the developers, just before the building was supposed to open its doors.
Six months later, the tenants of Millennium Tower were approved for move-in.
"I believe, and I know this is a very serious allegation, that there was some level of political interference," Peskin told reporters on September 13. He did not elaborate.
There's also confusion about why the building's developers were allowed to anchor the building 80 feet into packed sand rather than 200 feet down to bedrock.
When Millennium Partners went after the organization behind the Transbay Transit Center in the media, the Transbay Joint Powers Authority fired back.
In 2010, when the agency hired a consulting firm to dig into the new transit hub's impact, they found that the tower's tilting and sinking was due "entirely to the failure of the foundation piles for the Tower to reach bedrock," according to Scott Boule, a TJPA spokesman. In other words, the terminal developers blame Millennium Partner for not digging deeper than dirt.
Supervisor Peskin seems to agree.
In a press conference earlier this month, he told reporters that there was no paper trail showing why the city allowed Millennium Partners to build on packed sand instead of anchoring the building to bedrock.
The design isn't all that unusual. Some of the city's best known buildings, including the Embarcadero Center and SF MOMA, were built on sand instead of bedrock.
Millennium Tower sits on an array of nearly 1,000 pillars shoved into the ground.
Its own weight combined with the resistance of the soil underneath should keep it in place under most conditions, according to Iowa State University architectural design professor Tom Leslie.
"Imagine driving a broomstick into sand. You can only go so far before there's enough broomstick in contact with the sand to put up fearsome resistance," Leslie told Curbed in September.
While the word "bedrock" gives a greater sense of security, drilling into sand is a "perfectly acceptable way" to secure a building, Curbed reports.
Source: ABC7
The skyscraper sits on land that is "prone to liquefying," though it probably won't fall.
Millennium Tower is located in an area that is highly vulnerable to liquefaction, a process in which loose sand and silt behaves like a liquid when shaken by an earthquake.
"If you put a very heavy object on soil that is potentially saturated and isn't consolidated, it will move due to a loss of shear strength," earthquake site Temblor explains.
But Millennium Tower is unlikely to fall anytime soon, according to reports from a seismic center at Stanford University. There is no immediate danger to its structural integrity even though it is sinking and there reportedly have been signs of cracks and water intrusion in the building's garage.
The city is now launching an investigation into whether officials had been pressured to approve the tower in spite of the warning signs. On September 20, a city attorney formally subpoenaed the building's developers, Millennium Partners.
Source: ABC7
A spokesperson for Millennium Partners called the accusations that the firm asked for "any inappropriate treatment" from city agencies "simply outrageous."
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, who served as the city's mayor from 2004 to 2011, when the Millennium Tower was approved and built, refused to comment.
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Even Supervisor Peskin is under fire. The San Francisco Chronicle ran a headline this week that read, "Peskin didn't make a peep when Millennium Tower was OKd [sic]."
![Even Supervisor Peskin is under fire. The San Francisco Chronicle ran a headline this week that read, "Peskin didn't make a peep when Millennium Tower was OKd [sic]."](http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/57e19ea8b0ef973f1b8b6dd8-1200/even-supervisor-peskin-is-under-fire-the-san-francisco-chronicle-ran-a-headline-this-week-that-read-peskin-didnt-make-a-peep-when-millennium-tower-was-okd-sic.jpg)
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
In August, a group of residents filed a class-action lawsuit against Millennium Partners and the Transbay Terminal developers to recover the losses in property value.
Source: SFist
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors will hold a separate hearing starting September 22 to uncover what the city knew and how it responded after learning the tower was sinking years ago.
A city attorney has subpoenaed the developers at Millennium Partners and current and former members of the Department of Building Inspection, NBC Bay Area and SFist reports.
But in spite of everything going on, Millennium Tower is home to the most expensive one-bedroom on the market, which slashed its asking price this month from $3.8 million to $3.6 million.
Not a single unit has sold since news of the Millennium Tower debacle broke in early August, Hoodline reports.
Source: SF Curbed
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