How low will it go? Millennium Tower’s troubles haven’t peaked
San Francisco Chronicle
By Matier & Ross
08 August 2016

Pat and Jerry Dodson look out a window toward the construction of the Transbay Transit Center from their condo on the 42nd floor of the Millennium Tower in downtown San Francisco.  Photo: Connor Radnovich, The Chronicle

Revelations that the Millennium Tower in downtown San Francisco has sunk 16 inches and is tilting are just the opening act in a mega-million-dollar “who knew what and when” drama that portends even more troubles ahead for the high-end high-rise.

sinking at a rate of about an inch a year

A geotechnical engineer hired by the 58-story condo tower’s homeowners association — and paid for by the developer — warned residents in May that the building is still sinking at a rate of about an inch a year and shows no signs of slowing down, according to those in attendance.

Patrick Shires, owner of a Los Gatos engineering company and a 40-year veteran in the field, said that over time the tower “most likely” will sink an additional 8 to 15 inches into the landfill beneath it at 301 Mission St. unless steps are taken to stop it. That means the worst-case scenario would have the South of Market landmark descending a total of 31 inches.

The building’s 2-inch tilt to the northwest at its base could get worse as well, Shires told the condo owners — some of whom are already taking legal steps to make someone pay for what they fear will be sinking home values.

Shires did not return our calls, and Charlie Goodyear, a spokesman for the homeowners association, declined to comment on the May session, except to say “it was conducted privately for the benefit of members.” He added that “the association has been assured that the building remains structurally sound.”

Millennium Partners, which opened the $350 million haven for the well-heeled in 2009, didn’t directly address Shires’ findings. Through spokesman P.J. Johnston, the company said it will work with residents “to monitor the situation and take further steps, should they be deemed necessary.”

One concern is earthquakes, which Stanford structural engineer Gregory Deierlein told us “may further aggravate the settlement in ways we don’t have much experience with.“

Some of the residents are pretty unhappy.

“The real issue for me is that it (the sinking) hasn’t slowed down,” said Jerry Dodson, a patent lawyer who lives with his wife, Pat, in a two-bedroom unit on the 42nd floor.

Their unit has no visible damage, but cracks and some water intrusion have appeared in the underground garage.

There has also been some cracking and buckling in the sidewalks outside the 419-unit building.

The Dodsons lay the blame on Millennium Partners for what they say is a flawed design, starting with the decision to anchor the structure with piles that go down roughly 80 feet into landfill rather than 200 feet to bedrock.

Millennium Partners has said the design is safe and is no different from what some other high-rise builders have done on landfill.

It has blamed the problems on a huge hole that was dug next door starting in 2010 for the still-under-construction Transbay Transit Center bus and rail terminal. That project is run by the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, which consists of San Francisco, AC Transit, Caltrans and the operators of Caltrain — meaning that if Millennium Partners’ assessment is correct, those taxpayer-funded government entities could be on the hook for tens of millions in repairs.

The authority has denied responsibility for “the tilt and excessive settlement” and, like the Dodsons, has blamed design flaws in the building.

That stance has Millennium Partners shooting back, accusing the transit center authority of making “misleading and self-serving” claims.

According to Johnston, the transit center authority knew the building was sinking faster after it began digging, but didn’t stop “despite this awareness, and assurances that it would suspend construction on its project if any impacts arose.”

We’ve confirmed that some owners in the Millennium Tower have filed legal claims against the authority, alleging that the problems are hurting their condos’ value. The claims, which the authority has rejected, are the first step in potential lawsuits.

The transit center authority, which spent $58 million to shore up the building before undertaking its big dig in 2010, said in a statement late Friday that the legal claims are “misplaced.” The statement also said the authority put the developer on notice more than two years ago that its building is flawed.

And by the way, the authority said, its consultant found last month that the building’s tilt at the base isn’t 2 inches — it’s more than 6 inches.

the lean at the base translates into an alarming 15 inches at the top of the building

That wasn’t the only alarming news about the tilt. Shires, the geotechnical engineer, estimated that the lean at the base translates into an alarming 15 inches at the top of the building.

Millennium Partners’ Johnston took issue with both assertions. “We have every reason to believe there is no tilt or negligible tilt at the top,” he said.

As for the ground level, “my understanding is that it is less than 2 inches,” Johnston said. “We will be measuring all these issues in the coming weeks, and we will take appropriate steps when we have data.”

Residents aren’t angry just with the transit center builders. Some think the building’s owners owed it to them to tell them about the sink and the lean sooner than they did.

They say Millennium Partners first alerted representatives of the homeowners association to a potential problem in June 2015 — six years after the building opened and well after most of the units were sold.

But Millennium Partners said the sinking didn’t pose a problem early on. According to spokesman Johnston, “all closings of condominium units occurred before (the transit center authority) started major excavation.“

in 2010, the Millennium had already settled 10 inches

The developer originally estimated that the building would settle up to 6 inches over its lifetime. But geotechnical records show that by the time the transit center excavation began in 2010, the Millennium had already settled 10 inches. Millennium Partners then revised its estimates for the expected settling to between 10.3 inches and 12.3 inches.

The Dodsons, who bought their condo in April 2009, say no one told them about the sinking — or a 2008 agreement between Millennium Partners and the transit center authority to monitor how the excavation could affect the tower.

They say they and many of their neighbors found out about the problems only in May. Now the Dodsons are preparing a legal claim of their own — against Millennium Partners.

everyone lawyering up

With everyone lawyering up, San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin is trying to keep the legal dogs at bay. He’s planning to introduce a resolution this week “that makes it abundantly clear that regardless of the outcomes ... the city and county of San Francisco is not going to bail anyone out or pay one penny, because it’s not our problem.”

That may be wishful thinking. The city holds three of the five seats on the Transbay Joint Powers Authority board, and it recently took over construction management of the $2.4 billion transit hub after agreeing to provide a $260 million bailout loan.

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Homeowners in sinking, tilting Millennium Tower file class-action lawsuit seeking $500 million
sfist
By Caleb Pershan
10 August 2016

After news broke that the 58-story, 419-residence Millennium Tower, completed in 2009, had sunk 16 inches in height and tilted two inches northwest, pissed and panicked homeowners were pretty sure to sue, and you know what? They did just that, filing a class-action lawsuit against both the developer of their shifting building and the public entity developing the neighboring Transbay Transit Center.

The Chronicle's Matier & Ross report that the charge is being led by one resident, John Eng, who is working with four law firms on behalf of the homeowners association. If granted class-action status, the suit would seek at least $500 million.

The aggrieved group is going by the name the Millennium Towers Litigation Group, made up of the law offices of Blum Collins LLP, Catalano & Catalano, Foreman & Brasso, and Mark M. Garay, Esq. From their press release:

The Millennium Towers in San Francisco is built on landfill. It is the heaviest concrete building built in this seismic zone and, unlike other neighboring buildings, it is not anchored into the bedrock below. It has been reported that the building was expected to settle evenly to the depth of approximately 6 inches over its lifetime, but has now settled 12 - 16 inches and is leaning 15 inches at its top to the northwest. We are informed that some owners are reporting problems with uneven floors, difficulty opening and closing doors, windows, and cabinets, and that some interior wall cracks have been observed. To date, none of the potentially responsible parties have accepted any responsibility for this problem nor have they offered any assurance that this condition will not continue to deteriorate.

Developer Millennium Partners has been eager to shift the blame to the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, the agency that began work on the neighboring Transbay Transit Center in 2010. “301 Mission exists in a location where major underground construction work was subsequently performed by others, who were obligated to monitor and protect existing structures, and to mitigate any impacts of their work,” Millennium Partners said in a statement to the Business Times. Not so, says the Transbay Joint Powers Authority. “The residents’ claims against the TJPA are misplaced; as demonstrated by data collected over more than seven years, full responsibility for the tilting and excessive settlement of the building lies with Millennium Partners, the developer of the Tower,” read a TJPA statement. “Millennium Partners’ poor design decision is the cause of the tilt and excessive vertical settlement of the Millennium Tower.” The Millennium Towers Litigation Group will go after them both, and by targeting the TJPA, a public entity, will involve the city and taxpayer dollars.

Stanford's Earthquake Engineering Center's Greg Deierlein, an independent consultant, originally determined that the tower had sunk far more than expected. And, further, a geotechnical engineering expert hired by the homeowners' association predicts that the building might sink another 15 inches in the coming years for a total of almost three feet.

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Millennium Partners releases report; claim sinking tower safe in earthquake
KTVU
05 October 2016

The developers of a controversial South of Market residential high rise that is sinking more than expected released a report today stating the building remains safe, even in an earthquake.
  
The report from engineering firm Simpson, Gumpertz & Heger states that the Millennium Tower at 301 Mission St. remains structurally sound despite settling much farther into the bay mud it sits on then was originally anticipated.
  
"We conclude that the settlements experienced by the 301 Mission tower have not compromised the building's ability to resist strong earthquakes and have not had a significant impact on the building's safety," the report states.
  
The 58-story tower, which includes more than 400 luxury residential units, has become the subject of controversy since initial reports in August that it has sunk as much as 16 inches and is leaning around 15 inches to the northwest at its peak. Current projections suggest it could ultimately sink more than 30 inches.
  
Developer Millennium Partners has blamed the building's excessive settlement on groundwater pumping from the neighboring Transbay Transit
Center construction site and today pressed that claim with the release of a report from engineer John Egan.
  
Egan's report states that prior to the start of construction on the transit center in 2010, the Millennium Tower's settlement was gradually decreasing.
  
"Continued dewatering of the Transbay Transit Center and other sites near 301 Mission St. is likely contributing to ongoing and future settlement of the building," the report states.
  
The Transbay Joint Powers Authority responded with a lengthy statement rejecting those claims. The authority argues that the building had already settled more than expected before dewatering even started on the transit center project, and that other buildings in the area have not been similarly affected.
  
Instead, the authority blames the foundation used for the building, a concrete slab with piles driven into sand rather than down to bedrock, and the weight of its concrete construction.
  
"[Millennium Partners] false allegations concerning the impact of the TJPA's work on the Tower are designed to divert attention from [their] own liability," the statement from authority spokesman Scott Boule said.
  
"Because the Tower's foundation is grossly inadequate, the excessive settlement and tilt of the Tower would have occurred and would continue regardless of the TJPA's activity," Boule said.
  
The troubled tower has become the focus of a lawsuit filed by an individual homeowner and an investigation by the City Attorney's Office into whether Millennium Partners properly notified buyers of potential structural issues.
  
Supervisor Aaron Peskin also questioned Department of Building Inspection officials at a hearing on Sept. 22 to determine when they became aware of problems with the building and why they did not take action sooner.
  
In the midst of it all are the owners of the tower's units, whose property values have taken a significant hit in the wake of recent media coverage. The homeowners association last week launched its own independent testing program to monitor and collect building settlement data.
  
The Millennium Tower Association today said it "appreciates" the engineering report's finding that the building is safe and can withstand an earthquake.

"The association is working with other independent experts to review the... report, as well as identify an appropriate repair of all settlement-related conditions and recovery of repair costs from all responsible parties," the group said in a statement.

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First post-sinkage Millennium Tower condo sells
Curbed
By Adam Brinklow
12 October 2016

Of course, few people assumed that the Millennium Tower would go the rest of its functional life as a building without ever selling another home. (Although you could probably have gotten some outside betting odds for it.) It was only a question of how long it would take and how much it would be for?

Now we know: Unit #18F changed hands on September 8, five full weeks after the city (and entire world) learned about the tower’s sinking prospects. Since it was never listed on MLS, the sale largely flew under the radar until the city updated their own records.

The slightly tilted but nevertheless multi-million dollar condo.

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.

People working with Millennium Tower homeowners tell us that there have been other sales in the building at losses as some owners decide throw in the towel and take what they can get. This is the first we’ve heard of a profitable post-sink sale.

What kind of person buys into a building mired in so much bad news? Probably someone who sees it as an opportunity. "It could be that some people who would never be able to afford a home in a building like this might see now as their one big opportunity to get in," says attorney David Casselman.

(Though based in Southern California, Casselman now has hundreds of clients in the building as he works with the Homeowner’s Association prepping for what may turn out to be a flurry of lawsuits, although nobody is technically being sued yet.)

There are also probably speculators who just see an opportunity to buy cheap and flip it for big money later, "Like buying a stock after the market crashes," Casselman says.

In either case, buyers are obviously betting big that the developer or the city will employ a fix that saves the building from catastrophic harm. Although some tower residents now claim their homes aren’t worth a dollar, at least one of their new neighbors evidently disagrees—2.3 million times.

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California Today: A View of San Francisco’s Leaning Tower From Space
New ork Times
Mike McPhate
30 November 2016


Two European satellites have captured a stunning portrait of the subtle topographical shifts at work in the landscape of the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Sentinel satellites, operated by the European Space Agency, have been snapping radar scans of the region since 2015 as part of their mission to collect data on the earth and oceans. Analysts have since compared the movement of physical features over time — down to mere millimeters.

In the case of the Millennium Tower, it could also become a factor in a court fight as San Francisco wages a legal battle that accuses the developers of failing to disclose issues with the structural integrity of the downtown skyscraper.

The Sentinel satellite images — captured from early 2015 to September of this year — show that the 58-story luxury condominium building is sinking into the soft soil below at a rate of nearly two inches a year.

A separate examination this year found that the tower had descended about 16 inches altogether, while tilting roughly six inches, since opening its doors in 2009. The developer has insisted that the building is safe.

Nicholas Sitar, a professor of civil engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, said that a small amount of sinking was to be expected among structures on the reclaimed land along San Francisco’s waterfront.

The Sentinel satellites, for example, found that the new Salesforce East tower, across the street from the Millennium Tower, was also sinking.

The rapid rate of the Millennium Tower’s descent, however, was troubling, Dr. Sitar said. Not least to its concerned residents.

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San Francisco’s ‘Leaning Tower’ has residents fuming
WKNO 91.1
Editor
04 January 2016

They call it "The Leaning Tower of San Francisco."

But it wasn't always that way. The luxury skyscraper was billed as "state of the art" when it opened a few years ago. People paid millions for condos there.

Now the Millennium Tower is sinking and tilting — about 6 inches to one side. Residents and the city are suing the developer.

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.

"So there it goes rolling," she says. "And it kind of picks up speed."

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.

Buttery bought this unit as the tower was being completed in 2010. But documents obtained by the city show that as early as 2009, developers and city building inspectors knew the tower was settling faster than expected.

Buttery and other residents were not told until May 2016, and by then, the building had sunk more than a foot and was leaning 6 inches to the northwest.

"San Francisco has been in the midst of an unparalleled building boom, the largest building boom we've had since World War II, arguably since the Gold Rush," says San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin. "And we need to make sure that we are building buildings that are safe, that people's investments are safe."

Peskin is leading what is likely to be a long series of investigative hearings on the troubled tower. Some key questions: Should the city require high-rise developers to drill their foundations into bedrock? Also, why is the building's frame made of concrete instead of steel?

The Millennium Tower's foundation is anchored into a landfill. Concrete is cheaper, but it's also much heavier.

And what about the massive new train and bus terminal being constructed right next door? 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.

"We need to stop the dewatering, work together on any remediation that needs to be done to fix any damages," Johnston says. "And then we'll sort out all the liabilities later."

engineers have inspected the tower and confirm it's safe

Johnston says engineers have inspected the tower and confirm it's safe. Still, that leaves perhaps the biggest question of them all: 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.

Buttery, who is 76, says so much for her peaceful retirement.

"I've moved on into depression about it," she says. "So it's a gloomy feeling."

Even her favorite pastime — putting golf balls — doesn't give her the same joy it once did. No matter which way she hits them, they all end up in the same corner.


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