San Francisco’s Millennium Tower tilt is deepening as engineers scramble to reverse the tilt

News

by Catherine Dunleavy

June 11, 2023 | 12:27 a.m

It’s the Leaning Tower of San Francisco.

Millennium Tower in the Gulf region has continued to tilt further and sink deeper to the west despite the architects’ relentless efforts to stabilize the elegant building.

The multimillion-dollar-per-unit tower now leans more than 29 inches at the corner of Fremont and Mission Streets — a leaning half an inch deeper than previously disclosed, according to revised monitoring data. By the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit.

The half-inch tilt was reportedly obtained while engineers dug under the sunken condominium earlier this year to support the weight of the tower – which was built on top of a former landfill – on its sides.

Repair engineers have shown progress in stabilizing the north side of the Millennium Tower along Mission Street after executing six concrete-filled steel piles along its base in January, but perhaps at a cost on the tower’s west side, data shows.

Roof-based observational data – which is based on roof measurements and foundation-based determinations – indicates that the tower has shifted about an inch to the west compared to its tilt before it was supported on the north side.

The engineers responsible claim the data may not be reliable, despite it being cited as evidence of success earlier in the first phase of the project.

Project engineer Ron Hamburger told NBC in a statement that the numbers on the roofs are subject to the vagaries of the weather and said the data based purely on the ground is more reliable.

Figures based on the foundation also show that the tower leans more westward than ever, but only by about a quarter of an inch – the lean Hamburger claimed it was “neglected”.

“We are quite confident that after the remaining design load has been transferred to the outriggers,” Hamburger said, adding that “there will be no further … movement of the roof to the west.”

Hamburger and his team next plan to secure the foundation for dozens of sunken piles along Fremont Street that will bear the partial weight of the building’s load.

Each pile is 24 inches in diameter and has been driven 270 feet into the bedrock and is designed to support one million pounds of weight. According to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Engineers hope to reverse the trend — which was revealed to residents in 2016 — by the end of the month.