SAN FRANCISCO — A 58-story luxury apartment building in San Francisco continues to sink and is tilting about 3 inches per year.
Construction on the Millennium Tower in San Francisco began in 2005 and was completed in 2009. According to Curbed San Francisco, the tower is the sixth-tallest building in the city. But since construction was completed, officials say the building has tilted some 26 inches north and west of where it was initially constructed.
"We start this new year 2022 as we ended last year and many other years, with the Millennium Tower continuing to sink and tilt," city supervisor Aaron Peskin said prior to a recent meeting, according to KNTV-TV in San Francisco.
The engineer responsible for fixing the troubled building says that without a fix, the luxury building's lean could reach a 40-inch tilt, which would be the point at which the elevators and plumbing may not continue to operate.
KNTV reports the engineer told the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in an update hearing last week that the building remains safe and that installing 18 steel piles to bedrock is the best way to stop the tilting and possibly reverse some of it.
"The building does continue to settle at a rate of about one half inch per year and to tilt at a rate of about three inches per year," he said, according to KNTV. "It is doing this whether we are conducting work at the site or not. The building remains safe, but although the building remains safe, we believe the project needs to resume construction and complete this construction quickly."
