The Leaning Tower of San Francisco
How would you feel if you plunked down 1.5m-5m on one of the premier new condo's in teh city, and realized that is is SINKING. AND LEANING. LITERALLY! Not only that but there is evidence the city knew about it 7 years ago, and covered it up. At the top the left side of the building is about 15 inches higher than the right side. This is unbelievable, and the building owners are full of extremely powerful people so the war is just beginning.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/14/us...ium-tower.html
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Thomas Fuller, the San Francisco bureau chief for The New York Times, provides today’s introduction with news in the case of the sinking Millennium Tower.
For years, San Francisco was a famously low-rise city. Then came the tech boom and the race was on to build the glass and steel edifices that populate the world’s great cities. But in earthquake-prone San Francisco there’s a catch: many of the city’s new skyscrapers are concentrated in a neighborhood of squishy land reclaimed from the bay.
One of the new buildings, the 58-story Millennium Tower, has now sunk by 16 inches. Worse, the condominium building is sinking unevenly.
The scandal of San Francisco’s Millennium Tower turned decidedly more political on Tuesday when Aaron Peskin, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, told reporters that he had unearthed official documents showing the city’s building inspection department had raised concerns about sinking seven years ago, just before the building was supposed to open its doors.
A letter sent by the city to the engineering firm spoke of “larger than usual” settlement of the structure and asked whether the consequences had been studied.
Yet six months later, in August 2009, the city declared the building safe for occupancy.
On Tuesday, Mr. Peskin questioned why the city allowed people to move in.
“I believe, and I know this is a very serious allegation,” Mr. Peskin said, “that there was some level of political interference.”
The response to the city’s query by the engineering firm, DeSimone Consulting Engineers, is missing from the official record, Mr. Peskin said. He has called hearings scheduled for Sept. 22, and city officials will be subpoenaed.
The hearings are likely to capture the attention of the California political class because the mayor at the time the building was approved, Gavin Newsom, is now lieutenant governor and has aspirations to become governor.
P.J. Johnston, a spokesman for Millennium Partners, told The San Francisco Chronicle that suggesting the firm received special treatment from the city was “simply outrageous.”
Some of the owners of the building, which includes the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Joe Montana, are trying to band together to recoup losses in property values.
In August, a small army of lawyers filed a class-action lawsuit against the building’s developers as well as the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, a government entity building a transportation hub next door to the Millennium Tower. Whether or not the construction of the Transbay transport terminal contributed to the sinking has yet to be determined.
Mark Garay, one of the lawyers for the apartment owners, says it is too early to pinpoint the precise causes for the building sinking, but that it had already begun significantly before work on the transport terminal started.
“What we do know is that the foundation of this building does not go into bedrock,” he said. “It’s all landfill. It used to be part of the bay.”
Perhaps what is most clear at this point is that all of this is only the beginning of the story.
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The building will sink another 8 to 15 inches, descending a possible total of 31 inches, according to the suit. What’s more, the “tilt at the base of the building translated into an alarming 15-inch tilt at the top of the building,” the suit says. Earthquakes could make it worse, the homeowners say.
Mr. Peskin is focused on the city’s role, and has pointed to a February 2009 letter written by a building department official, as evidence that the city knew about the sinking before it issued a certificate of occupancy in August that year. The buildings department did not return a call seeking comment.
“Why did the city not inform the public at large that we knew, in 2009, that this was going on?” Mr. Peskin said. “I am going to be asking all these questions: What did the city know, when did they know it, who did we tell it to, what’s this mean, not only for this building, but other buildings?”
Mr. Peskin served two terms on the board of supervisors from 2001 to 2009 before being re-elected last year and has long been a political foe of Gavin Newsom, the former mayor of San Francisco, who is now California lieutenant governor and running for governor.
Since winning re-election, Mr. Peskin has also positioned himself as an opponent of current Mayor Ed Lee, who served in Mr. Newsom’s administration. Mr. Lee completed Mr. Newsom’s term when he was elected lieutenant governor and went on to be elected to a full term in 2011 and re-elected in 2015.
Neither Mr. Newsom’s nor Mr. Lee’s offices immediately responded to requests seeking comment on the building.
Mr. Peskin has said that the building department was subject to “pressure,” though he did not specify the source of that pressure.
The developer said that suggesting it “asked for or received any inappropriate treatment by city agencies, at any time in this process, is simply outrageous.”
The developer has also said the building was designed and constructed to meet city standards and all of its permits were properly obtained.
The group has also said that the building is safe, and says it has sunk because of excavation and construction work done nearby by the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, a multi-jurisdiction agency which is building a multibillion dollar transportation and housing hub.
The suit by the homeowners also names the authority as a defendant, and describes its project as making the problem worse by “digging the biggest hole the City has ever seen.”