It’s a tough time San Francisco’s Millennium Tower.

Since opening, the tower had a slight tilt. During scheduled construction in May of this year, the tower rapidly sank a few inches, causing a much bigger tilt at the top.

Now, it seems that the tilting issues has put a strain on the tower’s plumbing. According to NBC Bay Area:

“With the building now tilting 22 inches to the west, experts predict the sewer problem will get worse, as the tilting has flattened the angle of some drain lines by as much as 25 percent.”

Get all the details here.

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Centeno”,”blocks”:[{“attributes”:{“@provider”:”ohembed”,”@query”:”template”,”@url”:”https://www.iheart.com/artist/nicki-minaj-372266/?embed=true&keyid=EditorialPlayer”,”author_name”:””,”author_url”:””,”height”:”300″,”html”:”u003ciframe allow=”autoplay” width=”100%” height=”300″ frameborder=”0″ style=”border: 0;” src=”https://www.iheart.com/artist/nicki-minaj-372266/?embed=true&keyid=EditorialPlayer” frameborder=”0″>u003c/iframe>”,”provider_name”:”ohembed”,”thumbnail_height”:0,”thumbnail_url”:””,”thumbnail_width”:0,”title”:””,”type”:”rich”,”version”:”1.0″,”width”:”100%”},”embed_type”:”rich”,”html”:”u003ciframe allow=”autoplay” width=”100%” height=”300″ frameborder=”0″ style=”border: 0;” src=”https://www.iheart.com/artist/nicki-minaj-372266/?embed=true&keyid=EditorialPlayer” frameborder=”0″>u003c/iframe>”,”provider”:”ohembed”,”rendering_hint”:”default”,”schedule”:{},”type”:”embed”,”url”:”https://www.iheart.com/artist/nicki-minaj-372266/?embed=true&keyid=EditorialPlayer”},{“attributes”:{“mimetype”:”image/png”,”type”:”image”},”bucket”:”new_assets”,”caption”:””,”id”:”%2F659813c392d94c1a0d837669″,”new_tab”:false,”schedule”:{},”source_credit”:”Getty Images”,”title”:”Nicki Minaj”,”type”:”asset”,”url”:””,”use_caption”:false},{“html”:”u003cp>u003ca href=”https://www.iheart.com/artist/nicki-minaj-372266/?autoplay=true” data-catalog-kind=”artist” data-catalog-id=”372266″ data-catalog-related-id=””>u003cstrong>Nicki Minaju003c/strong>u003c/a> recalls the final moments she shared with her late father before he passed away three years ago. u003cbr />u003cbr />On Thursday, January 4, the New York rapper opened up about the last phone call she had with her dad in a radio interview. 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The post San Francisco’s Millennium Tower Now Has A Plumbing Drawback, Nonetheless Tilting appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

The designer of the troubled fix for the sinking and tilting Millennium Tower recently briefed city officials about an especially unpleasant potential byproduct of the building’s settlement – sewer backups, NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit has learned.

“Sewer lines must slope (minimum of 1/8” per foot) to enable efficient flow of material,” Ron Hamburger stated in an email to city officials in late August. He identified at-risk drains that currently slope south and east – going against the current northwest tilt – saying those lines “will experience decreased slope and may become a problem.”

The sewer system alert was part of an assessment of the building’s “functionality” since the building tilted another five inches during work that began in May on the so-called fix. That project is currently on hold pending testing and analysis of what triggered the unexpected, accelerated settlement.

Hamburger told city officials that experts are assessing the strain on vertical pipes due to the tilting, while engineers have found no signs of “distress” in the elevator system.

With the building now tilting 22 inches to the west, experts predict the sewer problem will get worse, as the tilting has flattened the angle of some drain lines by as much as 25 percent.

Already, drains in the third floor owner’s lounge kitchen are experiencing “some plugging,” Hamburger said in his email summary to city officials, and now must be “maintained with periodic chemical flushing.”

“It may be necessary to adjust this and other lines to re-establish slope” Hamburger noted in a presentation he gave to city officials.

“There’s an issue of not having enough slope or too much slope, you can have problems either way,” says Mark Savel, an architect and contractor with three decades’ experience of analyzing building failures, like the 2015 Berkeley balcony collapse.

“You can expect a clog or the system to back up — that’s why the existing system should be inspected and monitored,” Savel says.

In the meantime, residents risk losing entire wood floors and walls given the health hazard associated with any massive backups, Savel says. He adds, the risk is especially high when people use the system at once.

“Those days when you have the house full of people, celebrate a holiday or have a special occasion,” he says, “that’s the day you end up calling Roto-Rooter. Because the system you have is being put to the ultimate test.”

Savel says building managers should first order a video inspection of all the lines with an eye to identify immediate risks and long-term problems.

Any final fix, he says, which would mean adjusting the level of hundreds of pipes to allow for proper flow, should await a full stabilization of the sinking and tilting structure.

The post Tilting Millennium Tower in San Francisco Faces New Plumbing Downside – NBC Bay Space appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

First Load Transfer a Success at Troubled Millennium Tower in San Francisco | Engineering News-Record

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The post First Load Switch a Success at Troubled Millennium Tower in San Francisco appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

After 15 Years, Settlement Arrested at San Francisco’s Millennium Tower | Engineering News-Record

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The post After 15 Years, Settlement Arrested at San Francisco’s Millennium Tower appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Two residents of the troubled Millennium Tower have complained to NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit about what they fear is the unpleasant byproduct of the continued tilting of the luxury high-rise — frequent drain backups.

Mehrdad Mostafavi said he once considered his third floor Millennium Tower condo his sanctuary – even posting a sign near his kitchen proclaiming: “THIS IS OUR HAPPY PLACE.”

But that changed as the luxury rise continued to sink and tilt over the last decade, he says, and he started getting recurring flooding problems from overflowing drain pipes. He pointed to repairs he has had to make in his ceiling and walls as well as around his washing machine and his toilet. He says wastewater has even mysteriously bubbled up and filled his kitchen sink.

But, he said, all that was nothing like what he said he faced when he came home late on Sunday, June 11. The next day, he took us up to show us what happened.

“When I came home last night, the water … it was up to here,” said Mostafavi, a 58-year-old network engineer – pointing to the black and brown muck that had filled his kitchen sink and overflowed onto his countertop, cabinets, flooring and even his oven and his nearby office.

Mostafavi says he fears he will end up having to replace all his cabinets as well as the entire hardwood floor in the two-bedroom unit he bought back in 2012 for $865,000.

But Mostafavi is not alone in suffering plumbing problems. A renter on the third floor who didn’t want to be named provided NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit photos and videos of problems that she says left her entry hall hardwood floor damaged and carpets around her washing machine stained. The problems started soon after she moved there in 2021, when she had trouble with her toilet.

Millennium Tower staff blamed wipes – that she says were flushable – for clogging her system. But the problems continued, she said, after she stopped using the wipes. Crews now snake out her kitchen drain line twice a month, she says, showing us the records of their visits.

“They said that they do this to prevent clogging. And then even though they’re still doing this and we’re still having things foaming up from the kitchen, from the kitchen sink regularly,” she said.

San Francisco’s leaning Millennium Tower is now partly supported to bedrock as part of a “seismic upgrade,” but experts tell NBC Bay Area that questions remain about how well the newly bolstered tower will stand up in a quake. Jaxon Van Derbeken reports.

In August of the year she moved into her third floor unit, the lead engineer in charge of the ongoing fix project, Ron Hamburger, briefed city officials about “Functionality Issues” associated with the building. He pointed to one potential problem with the 1/8th inch downward slope per foot required by code to ensure proper drain operation. Drains tilting to the south and east, he said, will be most vulnerable to the building’s northwest sinking and tilting.

“Sewers sloping to the south and east will experience decreased slope and may become a problem,” he said, adding that the “drain line from the (second floor) kitchen has become problematic and is being maintained with periodic chemical flushing. It may be necessary to adjust this and other lines to re-establish slope.”

Millennium Tower officials didn’t answer questions about Mostafavi’s flooding issues. But they sent us a statement saying that all the water problems in the building are limited to just two third-floor units. They blame the backups on wipes and other non-flushable items, not tilting.

They cite a building engineer’s report dated in January 2022, five months after Hamburger’s assessment, recounting that tower staff was “running into issues regarding educating tenants on their habits regarding sanitary wipes and other non-flushable products that are causing backups in these lines.”

Tower officials stressed that Hamburger had “merely stated that it was possible” for such backups to happen when he gave that earlier assessment. They added that drain line slopes have “always remained within code standards.” However, monitoring data shows the tower’s tilt has gone from 19 inches at the time of Hamburger’s report to 29 inches now.

“We cannot expect this to be a one off – It’s a systemic issue that requires attention,” said Mark Savel, an architect and contractor who studies building failures like the Berkeley balcony collapse that killed six people back in 2015.

He says that while wipes flushed down toilets can obviously be a problem, tilting is the most likely cause of the backups being reported by the two tower residents. The only permanent solution, he says, is to adjust the drain lines to make sure the pipes are properly sloped downward, despite the tilt.

San Francisco’s Millennium Tower has been sinking and leaning for years and the final phase of the fix is now underway. Investigative Reporter Jaxon Van Derbeken, who has been at the forefront of the investigation for years, has some insight.

The time to do that, he says, may be now. “This is undoubtedly a health concern,” Savel said. “It’s a potential for property damage and it’s going to continue, if not worsen, over time.”

Mostafavi recalled the initial joy he felt when he bought his unit in 2012.

“I was so happy, a beautiful apartment,” he said. “I was so happy coming here, moving here.”

Now, he says, he just feels trapped in his once-beloved condo, unable to sell.

“There’s so many problems happening here now, it is more than bothersome,” he said as he stood next the sign proclaiming it to be his “happy place.”

“It is not manageable anymore moneywise and time wise, I don’t know what to do,’” he said, adding that he should change the sign outside his kitchen to reflect his current nightmare. “I have to put ‘UN-‘ here — ‘UN-HAPPY PLACE.'”

The post Millennium Tower flooding issues tied to continued tilt? – NBC Bay Space appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

A $100 million construction project to fix the sagging and tipping problems at the Millennium Tower, a notorious leaning luxury condominium structure in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood, is essentially complete, according to the building’s homeowners association.

The association said it completed a major engineering project earlier this month that involved driving 18 concrete piles into bedrock deep beneath the property at 301 Mission St. and transferring some of the building load to the new structures.

The completion marks a major milestone in a year-long saga of multiple lawsuits, millions of dollars and an embarrassing mistake in building one of the city’s top luxury high-rises.

“With a 60-story structure and a load of 18 million pounds, no one has ever done that,” said Ron Hamburger, senior director at Simpson Gumpertz & Heger, the firm tasked with stabilizing the leaning tower.

Hamburger said his company employed a relatively common engineering technique called underpinning — though the sheer scale of the effort made the project unusual. The modernization will relieve the ground beneath the building on its north and west sides, which had collapsed under the weight of the structure and led to the subsidence and tipping problems.

The refurbishment underpins the more affected corner of the building, while the rest of the building is expected to continue to stabilize and stabilize over time. Completion of maintenance access systems and restoration of transit lines, sidewalks and landscaping on the Fremont and Mission streets affected by the construction work will be completed by August.

The Millennium Tower towers over the greenery of Salsforce Park, the rooftop garden in downtown San Francisco, California on Tuesday, November 1, 2022. | Camille Cohen/The Standard

“We look forward to completing the remaining non-structural elements of the perimeter piling modernization over the coming months and are confident that the engineering modernization will restore our building’s reputation and condominium value while addressing any remaining questions about the stability of the tower will clean up,” said Howard Dickstein, president of the Millennium Tower Homeowners Association, in a statement.

The homeowners association’s lawsuit against the developer over the subsidence and tilting issues was settled in 2020, paving the way for the retrofit to move forward.

The solution is a scaled-down version of a solution originally proposed by Hamburger, which envisaged the use of 52 piles. However, as the installation of these piles began, further subsidence of the building occurred.

In 2021, work was paused for months as construction and engineering teams developed a stripped down version of the solution, which was eventually implemented.

“It’s a great relief,” Hamburger said. “It was a challenging project, both technically and because of the high publicity it had and every incident was widely reported from coast to coast.”

The property opened to residents in 2009 and is the tallest residential skyscraper in San Francisco. The 419 units were sold over the next four years, generating approximately $750 million in total revenue for developer Millennium Partners. Past residents of the tower have included Kevin Durant, Joe Montana and the late billionaire venture capitalist Thomas Perkins.

Hamburger said the project not only addressed the problems of subsidence and tipping, but also made the structure more earthquake-resistant. As part of the San Francisco-imposed building permit process, the tower is subject to a 10-year monitoring plan in which surveys and measurements are regularly recorded and submitted to city officials.

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From Mary K Jacob

June 13, 2023 | 5:50 p.m

The Millennium Tower, cheekily dubbed the Leaning Tower of San Francisco, finds itself in trouble when even a single earthquake shakes the city, The Post has learned.

Located at 301 Mission St., the 545-foot-tall building has steadily tilted and sunk further west since 2015, though the architects have tried their best to stabilize the swanky building.

The multimillion-dollar-per-unit tower slopes more than 29 inches at the corner of Fremont Street and Mission Street — a slope more than half an inch lower than previously announced.

Consulting engineer Robert Pyke, who specializes in geotechnical and seismic engineering, blamed designer Treadwell & Rollo – a company later acquired by Langan – for the foundation problems, citing a time crunch they found themselves in during the 2008 market crash were.

“There is a real possibility that the building will be red marked after an earthquake,” Pyke told The Post of the tower — a 58-story, 419-unit apartment building that was completed in 2009.

When a building is marked red, it means that the structure has been marked as so badly damaged that it is too dangerous to inhabit and entry to the property is prohibited without written permission from the regulatory authority.

Pyke cites the Hayward Fault Zone — a geologic zone located primarily at the western foot of the hills on the east side of San Francisco Bay — as capable of triggering destructive earthquakes.

A view of the Millennium Tower on August 11, 2016 in San Francisco.Getty Images

“A quake on the Hayward Fault in the East Bay could happen any day,” Pyke said. “And even this Hayward earthquake could be strong enough to significantly shake buildings in San Francisco, like the Millennium Tower. So I think there’s a longer-term risk that homeowners will actually have to move out, at least temporarily.”

In addition, Pyke stated that the tower would never get back to the same height.

And while collapse is unlikely, since it would require a “tens of feet” of incline, Pyke said if the tower got any closer to 40 inches, the elevators and plumbing would stop working, and neither would the occupants forced to move out.

The current solution hasn’t worked and probably won’t work because its original 2005 build switched from steel to concrete — making the change harder and harder, Pyke said.

“It turned out to be wrong because the effective increase in building weight was quite significant. It was a third or more higher than before. And so, technically, there was an overuse of the Old Bay Clay layer that was underneath the sand layer.”

The tilt was reportedly achieved by half an inch when engineers dug under the sinking condominium earlier this year to support the weight of the tower – which was built on a former landfill site – on either side.Bloomberg

Pyke said to prevent another tipping he would abandon the current attempt at repair, which he says “introduces too many uncertainties”.

Instead, he drilled bores (a cutting process that uses an indenting tool or drill head to enlarge an existing hole in a workpiece) on the south and east sides of the tower to remove some of the soil in the Old Bay Clay layer to level the building.

“Carefully!” said Pike.

“It’s similar to what was done on the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Probably then the progression of colonization would stop or slow down enough that it doesn’t matter, but if it does continue I might consider freezing the Old Bay Clay!”

Meanwhile, project engineer in charge of the building, Ron Hamburger, told NBC in a statement that roof data is vulnerable to weather variations and said foundation-only data is more reliable.

“We are absolutely confident that once the remaining design load has been transferred to the piles, there will be no further westward movement of the roof,” Hamburger said.

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Jacob Elliot

If you don’t mind moving into a building that once sank, here’s a condo for you.

The penthouse atop San Francisco’s Millennium Tower has hit the market for $14 million, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday. The 5,000-square-foot apartment features two bedrooms, three bathrooms, and more impressively, stunning views of San Francisco Bay.

The living room

Jacob Elliot

Software company founder Craig Ramsey is selling the condo after purchasing it in 2016 for $13 million alongside realtor Gregg Lynn from Sotheby’s International Realty. The previous owner, the late venture capitalist Tom Perkins, installed an “orchestral ceiling” in the living room, Ramsey told the WSJ. He also left several works of art that Ramsey included in the sale, such as a 6,000-pound glass sculpture. Along with these other unique features, the condo boasts a 3,500 square foot great room and an outdoor deck for enjoying the sights.

The building as a whole offers further benefits, allowing you to enjoy the convenience of a hotel with the added bonus of actually owning your space. There’s a fitness and Pilates center, salt pool, screening room, wine cellar, outdoor area with multiple fire pits, and more.

All of these amenities, however, must tarnish the Millennium Tower’s reputation. In 2016, it was reported that the building tilted and sank into the ground. At the time, Mission Street Development was being sued by the city and residents of the building. (The Wall Street Journal could not be reached for comment.) Engineers have since tried to stabilize the building and put it back upright. Simpson Gumpertz & Heger, the company dealing with the problems, told the newspaper that their efforts have been successful in restoring the building, at least partially, to its former condition. (The company did not immediately respond to Robb Report’s request for comment.)

The terrace

Jacob Elliot

“I knew the building was going over,” Ramsey told the WSJ. “As a result, I got a very good discount.”

Last year, Ramsey sold a smaller unit in the Millennium Tower for $2.7 million, and now he’s ready to give up his footprint in the building for good. While $14 million is a much higher price, Ramsey called it “aggressive” in hopes of selling the condo quickly. If a buyer can see past the building’s past, their goal can be realized.

Click here to view all Millennium Tower Penthouse images.

The post A Penthouse at San Francisco’s Millennium Tower Lists for $14 Million – Robb Report appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

San Francisco OK’s Revamped Settling Millennium Tower Fix | Engineering News Record

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The designer of the troubled fix for the sinking and tilting Millennium Tower recently briefed city officials about an especially unpleasant potential byproduct of the building’s settlement – sewer backups, NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit has learned.

“Sewer lines must slope (minimum of 1/8” per foot) to enable efficient flow of material,” Ron Hamburger stated in an email to city officials in late August. He identified at-risk drains that currently slope south and east – going against the current northwest tilt – saying those lines “will experience decreased slope and may become a problem.”

The sewer system alert was part of an assessment of the building’s “functionality” since the building tilted another five inches during work that began in May on the so-called fix. That project is currently on hold pending testing and analysis of what triggered the unexpected, accelerated settlement.

Hamburger told city officials that experts are assessing the strain on vertical pipes due to the tilting, while engineers have found no signs of “distress” in the elevator system.

With the building now tilting 22 inches to the west, experts predict the sewer problem will get worse, as the tilting has flattened the angle of some drain lines by as much as 25 percent.

Already, drains in the third floor owner’s lounge kitchen are experiencing “some plugging,” Hamburger said in his email summary to city officials, and now must be “maintained with periodic chemical flushing.”

“It may be necessary to adjust this and other lines to re-establish slope” Hamburger noted in a presentation he gave to city officials.

“There’s an issue of not having enough slope or too much slope, you can have problems either way,” says Mark Savel, an architect and contractor with three decades’ experience of analyzing building failures, like the 2015 Berkeley balcony collapse.

“You can expect a clog or the system to back up — that’s why the existing system should be inspected and monitored,” Savel says.

In the meantime, residents risk losing entire wood floors and walls given the health hazard associated with any massive backups, Savel says. He adds, the risk is especially high when people use the system at once.

“Those days when you have the house full of people, celebrate a holiday or have a special occasion,” he says, “that’s the day you end up calling Roto-Rooter. Because the system you have is being put to the ultimate test.”

Savel says building managers should first order a video inspection of all the lines with an eye to identify immediate risks and long-term problems.

Any final fix, he says, which would mean adjusting the level of hundreds of pipes to allow for proper flow, should await a full stabilization of the sinking and tilting structure.

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