Archinect - News

San Francisco's Millennium Tower is sinking again despite foundational corrections

2024-02-22T17:52:00-05:00

San Francisco’s ill-fated Millennium Tower is making headlines once again for problems taking place beneath its turbulent foundation.

This time, the 58-story skyscraper is sinking even further on its vertical axis as it settles to the north and west, alarming some building scientists who feel the movement could result in significant corrosive damage despite some recent positive corrections.

Engineers say a fix that has been previously made to anchor its foundation into bedrock on the north and west sides has mostly failed to produce the 4-inch reversal their advanced data models had predicted, instead posting a correction of just a quarter-inch a year and, as outside experts surmised, causing the new directional shift that's happening in an unexpected area.

Now, the building is sinking from underneath the center of its foundation mat at a rate of one-tenth of an inch per year. The phenomenon is known as "dishing." A local geothermal engineer who is monitoring the issue told NBC Bay...

San Francisco's Millennium Tower is tilting even further, despite engineering fixes

2023-06-15T16:54:00-04:00

Despite initial progress in the first phase of the so-called fix earlier this year, the sinking and leaning Millennium Tower in San Francisco is now tilting more to the west than ever, according to monitoring data reviewed by NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit. The tower is currently leaning more than 29 inches at the northwest corner of Fremont and Mission streets, much of the added tilt occurring during the digging needed to prepare to support the tower along two sides.

The data came from a rooftop monitoring system, which the fix’s chief engineer Ron Hamburger said was less reliable than the one contained in its foundation before stating the half-inch tilt recorded was "negligible."

A geotechnical engineer working on the $100 million project expressed his dismay to reporters, saying: "You spend all this money, but you still have an uncertain result long term."

The structure is leaning so much that some involved think it could potentially be red-tagged in the aftermath of a major earthquake, which the U.S. Geological Survey says has a 20% likelihood of occurring in the next 30 years.

Concerns after high winds cause windows to shatter on San Francisco towers

2023-03-29T12:47:00-04:00

A city official in San Francisco is calling for extensive reports into the integrity of facades in the city’s downtown after a recent storm caused windows from multiple high-rises to be damaged.

According to the San Francisco Department of Buildings and Inspections, four buildings in downtown San Francisco suffered glass failure during a high-wind storm last week. The Millennium Tower suffered one broken window, as did 1400 Mission and 50 California, while the Salesforce East building suffered one broken window on every floor from floors 11 through 30.

As a result of the glazing failures, shards of glass were scattered across Mission Street, posing a hazard to pedestrians below. City officials have since directed building managers to secure impacted windows and commission professionals to ensure all buildings are safe, stable, and secure.

In the meantime, San Francisco supervisor Aaron Peskin told ABC7 ...

The Millennium Tower is now sliding as it sinks (and tilts)

2022-03-01T11:06:00-05:00

It’s doing it (again). San Francisco’s Millennium Tower is on the move once more, this time in an entirely different dimension as the 13-year-old building is sliding while it sinks and tilts.

Now the tower is said to be moving to the east, specifically. The firm in charge of stabilizing the former Handel project testified the 58-story building’s “horizontal movement” in documents that were provided to the city during last year, according to NBC Bay Area.

The reflection of a building and crane on Millennium Tower's (301 Mission Street) curtainwall glass. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons user Hydrogen Iodide.

Ron Hamburger is back again as the engineer telling everybody they were essentially fine to occupy and that the building’s shift left has added another half inch since beginning construction on the perimeter pile upgrade late last summer, coupling with the 24-inch tilt on the roof to create an inch-wide gap between the tower’s foundation mat and adjacent building's five-floor und...

San Francisco’s infamous Millennium Tower is still sinking… and it may be running out of time

2022-01-11T19:35:00-05:00

[...] Millennium Tower – a luxury condominium where star athletes and retired Google employees bought multimillion-dollar apartments before they realized it was sinking – is continuing to sink and tilt to the side by about 3in (7.5 cm) a year, according to the engineer responsible for fixing the troubled building.

At that rate, the building’s elevators and sewage systems would cease to function within a few years according to engineer Ron Hamburger’s report to the city’s municipal Board of Supervisors last week. He also told the 11-member body that the movement was inevitable, adding that, based on his observations, the degradation would continue “whether we are conducting work at the site or not.”

Hamburger did reportedly declare the building safe for use, however, stating that the placement of 18 steel piles in the bedrock of the structure would help significantly increase its stability.

The 58-story Handel Architects-designed tower became a headache for the property managers shortly after opening in 2009 to considerable fanfare. Repairs had to be halted back in August after it was discovered to be sinking at an accelerated rate just weeks after the $100 million rescue scheme had begun. The sinking process has thus far reaped a lot of unwelcome consequences, although some inventive onlook...

Work on San Francisco's Millennium Tower repair halted after further sinking discovered

2021-08-30T13:24:00-04:00

Work on the $100 million fix of the Millennium tower has halted as engineers scramble to figure out why the building has suddenly sunk an inch in a matter of weeks since construction began, NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit has learned.

The “perimeter pile upgrade” project, paid for as part of a confidential settlement reached last year, is designed to reinforce the foundation of the 58-story, luxury Millennium Tower after it had been discovered in 2016 that the northwest corner of the structure had sunk 16 inches since its opening in 2009. Fast forward to 2018, an inspection revealed the building had descended an additional two inches.

Previously on Archinect: Settlement reached for sinking Millennium Tower in San Francisco

The upgrade project was developed over several years and calls for the installation of 52 concrete, 140,000-pound piles that would anchor the building to bedrock approximately 250 feet below ground. However, shortly after work began on the stabilization project in May, apparent acceleration in both the tower’s sinking and tilting to the west has appeared. And, as reported by NBC Bay Area, the foundation has sunk an inch since the start of the work, resulting in a tilt of 22 inches.

The Milleni...

This conceptual sound installation will let San Franciscans “hear” the sinking Millennium Tower

2019-11-15T15:42:00-05:00

Creating a work about the sinking high-rise was an easy choice, according to Martínez. “We started researching San Francisco, and current events in the city, and the Millennium Tower popped up,” Martínez said. “We knew almost instantly we wanted to do a project that was in some way going to connect with some of most expensive real estate on earth collapsing under the weight of itself as a metaphor for late capitalism.”

Cristóbal Martínez and Kade L. Twist of interdisciplinary arts collective Postcommodity were compelled to make an art piece based on the sinking, tilting Handel Architects-designed Millennium Tower in San Francisco, as a timely metaphor for late capitalism collapsing under the weight of itself. The duo made a data map of the tower's minuscule movements and created a conceptual sound-art piece called “The Point of Final Collapse.”

Starting today, the piece will be played for 4 minutes at 5 p.m. from the tower at San Francisco Art Institute's campus on North Beach, and projected to Downtown San Francisco via long-range acoustic devices. The piece will play every day until the tower is fixed or torn down, the artists say in the article.

Settlement reached for sinking Millennium Tower in San Francisco

2019-09-03T15:00:00-04:00

Ever since its opening in 2009 the Millennium Tower has been slowly sinking, so far it's settled about 16 inches on its southwestern corner, causing the entire to tilt around 14 inches. Residents applied for a permit to perform a retrofit back in December 2018 and a plan is now in place to stabilize the structure.

After a long legal battle between homeowners, the building's developer and a neighboring construction project, a settlement has finally been reached, reports The Guardian. While details of the deal remain confidential, it is clear that Millennium Partners and Transbay Joint Powers Authority will be required to pay for the $100M plan to retrofit the tower.

$100 million plan to stabilize Handel Architects' leaning San Francisco tower takes a step forward

2019-08-28T15:30:00-04:00

The [stabilization plan] calls for 52 piles to be drilled 250 feet down into bedrock to shore up the building, now leaning 17 inches to the north and west. The 2-foot-thick circular steel piles would be filled with steel reinforced concrete. Twenty-two would be sunk along Mission Street and 30 on Fremont Street.

The reinforcements will join the tower's existing 950-pile foundation in helping to stop the tower's drift.

According to The San Francisco Chronicle, a report written by a panel of experts studying solutions to the sinking problem states, "In our professional opinion, once the foundation retrofit is constructed, the building is expected to have performance consistent with the stated design objectives."

San Francisco's sinking Millennium Tower: new $100 million plan promises 'cheaper' fix

2018-12-07T15:48:00-05:00

All sides in the Millennium Tower debacle appear to be nearing an agreement on a $100 million-plus fix to stop the 58-story high-rise from sinking further [...] The latest plan calls for drilling piles into bedrock from the sidewalk on the building’s southwest corner. The proposal would be less extensive and intrusive than the plan floated in April, which called for drilling as many as 300 micro-piles to bedrock through the building’s concrete foundation.

City of San Francisco will yellow-tag sinking Millennium Tower if safety deadlines not met

2018-09-13T17:49:00-04:00

The department also took Millennium’s managers to task for not being more communicative about the crack and their efforts to find the cause. The department said it “continues to be frustrated with the communication” with the tower’s managers over a variety of issues. “We often do not find out information about the building until we first receive calls about an issue from the media or read them in a news report,” the department said in its letter Wednesday.

In the ongoing saga of the sinking Millennium Tower, the City of San Francisco's Department of Building Inspection has given the tower's managers until tomorrow to comply with a handful of safety measures, in response to a crack that appeared on a window on the 36th floor earlier this month. If management misses the deadline, the tower could be yellow-tagged, which could restrict access to the building until it is safe.

A new crack appears in San Francisco's sinking Millennium Tower

2018-09-10T16:32:00-04:00

A large crack formed in a window at the sinking and tilting Millennium Tower over the Labor Day weekend, prompting officials there to block off part of the sidewalk on Mission Street as a precaution, NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit has learned. City inspectors issued a notice of violation on Tuesday, giving the Millennium management 72 hours to report back on the extent of the problem and the soundness of the building’s façade in light of the failure.

The latest safety concern over San Francisco's sinking Millennium Tower occurred Labor Day weekend when residents heard creaking sounds followed by a loud popping noise in the building. Soon after the incident a resident living on the 36th floor found a crack in his window. The high rise is currently tilting about 18 inches when measured at the top.

Concerns over another sinking building in San Francisco

2018-06-28T16:17:00-04:00

In a city where a tilting 58-story tower has attracted international attention, the construction of big buildings now is scrutinized for any sign that a newcomer might be causing structural damage to its neighbors. Which is why a full investigation was launched this winter after an anonymous complaint that the excavations for a pair of new, extra-tall towers were harming the 18-story high-rise in between. And the scrutiny is certain to continue [...].

"The building in question is 25 Jessie St., an 18-story tower from the early 1980s," reports the SF Chronicle, and so far the structure has only sunk less than an inch—far less than the infamous Millennium "Leaning" Tower just two blocks away that has sunk 17 inches and tilted 14 inches to the east over the past ten years.

San Francisco's sinking Millennium Tower now emitting unsafe odors found to be a fire hazard

2017-12-19T13:36:00-05:00

In a December 2016 assessment of the issue obtained by NBC Bay Area, Palo Alto-based building consultants Allana Buick & Bers Inc. trace the odors to openings between the building’s façade, or curtain wall, and the core structure. The consultants point to the “excessive” settlement as a likely source of the issue, adding, “This condition may be more widespread than these two test areas and may be present in the entire stack. We recommend further investigation of this issue.”

New fire hazards have been found in San Francisco's infamous Millennium Tower, making the luxury high-rise that has sunk 17 inches since 2009 even less safe than previously thought. According to a December 2016 assessment carried out by building consultants Allana Buick & Bers Inc., gaps between the building's walls and structural frame have been found. These openings "represent a breach in the fire and smoke barrier" that in the event of a fire, would allow smoke to jump floors posing a huge safety risk to the occupants.

Allana Buick & Bers Inc. were hired by condo owner Paula Pretlow to assess the tower in order to trace the source of foul orders that had been plaguing the occupant. The consultants discovered that smells were likely coming from gaps that had occurred as a result of the structure's settlement. However, these findings were redacted from the copy of the report they returned to Pretlow.

Pretlow has spent a year in court fighting to see the original reports and after ...

SF Millennium Tower continues to sink; engineers suggest a possible fix

2017-07-19T17:29:00-04:00

A fix appears to be in the works for San Francisco’s sinking and tilting Millennium Tower — just as a new report estimates the 58-story luxury high-rise has sunk yet another inch in the past seven months. [...] That lean is now up to nearly 14 inches at the building’s roof — an additional 2-plus inches more than the tilt measured in January.

A pair of engineering firms hired by developer Millennium Partners think there's still hope to save the troubled structure and straighten it up again: "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," the Chronicle reports. "The engineering firms estimate the fix will cost $100 million to $150 million — more than your average home foundation repair, but a lot less than the billion-dollar-plus price tag that some experts have feared."

Urgency is increasing though as a new engineering report by Arup Group presents evidence that the rate of sinking remains steady and cracking in the basement continues.

Still no end in sight of San Francisco's 'Leaning Tower' fiasco

2017-01-05T13:01:00-05:00

Pamela Buttery lives on the 57th floor. To demonstrate how her home tilts slightly to the left, Buttery hits a golf ball straight ahead toward the window. [...] The ball takes a sharp left turn toward the direction of the tilt, and it ends up in the northwest corner of her living room. [...] How to fix the tower, or at least keep it from leaning even more? Some solutions include pouring a concrete collar around the foundation or building a buttress.

Representatives of the sinking luxury condo tower put the blame on the Transbay Transit Center, a sizable new train and bus terminal currently under construction nearby:

"Millennium spokesman P.J. Johnston says workers have been pumping out huge amounts of water as they tunnel through the soil. Johnston says that process, known as dewatering, is destabilizing the ground. [...] Johnston says engineers have inspected the tower and confirm it's safe."

Many of the million-dollar-property owners at this now infamous address aren't easily quietened though, and a permanent engineering fix has yet to be found.

The troubled structure previously in the Archinect news:

The sinking towers of San Francisco

2016-10-24T14:33:00-04:00

Facing a legal and public-relations nightmare with its sinking and leaning Millennium Tower, the San Francisco highrise’s developer is redesigning the foundation of its newest luxury condo project up Mission Street — with the idea of going all the way down to bedrock. [...] the 58-story Millennium Tower at 301 Mission St. [has] sunk 16 inches and is leaning 2 inches to the northwest. That condo high-rise sits on a concrete slab with piles driven 60 to 80 feet deep, well short of bedrock.

In contrast, the 706 Mission St. tower was designed without any piles. Instead, it was to be held up by a four-story basement garage sitting on a bowl-shaped concrete slab, 12 feet thick at the center and 5 feet thick at the edges.

The Millennium Tower is already sinking even though it was built just a few years ago. The problems plaguing the site raise questions about the integrity of buildings built on bay fill that aren't anchored to bedrock. The SF Chronicle broke the story a few months ago.

More news from the Bay Area: