![]() Larry Karp: What is under the ground here at the surface is rubble from the 1906 earthquake, brick and sand and debris, everything you could imagine is down here. Jon Wertheim: What is under the ground here? He did not work on the tower either but specializes in Bay Area soil conditions. Larry Karp is a local geotechnical engineer. They went with a foundation driven 80 feet deep into a layer of dense sand. It fell to Millennium's geotechnical engineers to analyze the ground below and design an appropriate foundation. What lies beneath the surface at 301 Mission Street is critical to the story. Jon Wertheim: 25 years, you've never issued a subpoena before? That power has not been used by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for some quarter of a century. ![]() ![]() Why?Īaron Peskin: We don't generally like to subpoena people. Jon Wertheim: You subpoenaed some of the engineers involved with Millennium Tower. Peskin is leading hearings into what is causing the trouble. A long time city supervisor, he starts most days with a swim in the Bay then meets constituents at a North Beach coffee shop, where the Millennium Tower is a popular topic. Aaron Peskin has a certain vitality himself. This, after all, being San Francisco - a city once described as 49 square miles surrounded by reality. When the Millennium hearings opened to public comment, it brought some livelier moments. "Nobody has owned up to why this building is not performing." And the very engineers celebrated for the building's design suddenly were being compelled to explain why the building was moving. Once news got out, local politicians seized on the story. Here's what is unusual: their data shows the Millennium Tower sinking - 17 inches so far - and tilting 14 inches to the northwest. Ten years ago, they paid $2.1 million dollars for a two-bedroom and planned to live out their retirement enjoying the sweeping view from the 42nd floor.Įngineers have tracked sinking here since the day the foundation was poured in 2006. San Francisco royalty, former 49ers quarterback Joe Montana, bought here. Inside the $550 million construction, as advertised, lavish condominiums flush with amenities, attracting tech barons and venture capitalists. And across the way, the Millennium Tower at 301 Mission Street: 645 feet of reinforced concrete wrapped in glass. Nearby, Facebook signed a record-breaking lease on this building. The new Salesforce Tower stands as the tallest building in town. The TransAmerica Pyramid, long the gem of this skyline, now dwarfed, quaint as a cable car. When the fog rolls in over San Francisco, the skyscrapers live up to the name. As we first reported this past fall, it's a story positioned - albeit at an angle - somewhere between civic scandal and civic curiosity, an illustration of what can happen when zeal for development overtakes common sense. Engineering doesn't often make for rollicking mystery but San Francisco is captivated by the tale of the leaning tower and the lawsuits it's spawned. Yet for all its curb appeal, the building has, quite literally, one foundational problem: it's sinking into mud and tilting toward its neighbors. Though priced in the millions, the inventory of posh apartments moved quickly. 58 stories of opulence, it opened in 2009 to great acclaim, then the tallest residential building west of the Mississippi. In modern San Francisco, rows of skyscrapers have begun lining the downtown streets and recasting the skyline, monuments to the triumph of the tech sector. It's a story as old as cities themselves: prosperity comes to town and triggers a building boom. San Francisco's leaning tower of lawsuits 13:56
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