There is a 7 year old apartment tower in San Francisco called the Millennium Tower.
It’s a gorgeous building, and it has a pool, a theatre, and some big VIPs own apartments in it, like Joe Montana.
But, there’s also a teensy problem with this tower – it’s starting to lean! It started leaning very slowly, barely perceptible at first. One lady that owns an apartment in it was practicing putting in her living room. She began to notice that her putts were always drifting to one side on the room! The entire tower has sank around 16 inches, but unevenly.
As with most “towering” problems, the finger pointing is heavy and getting ugly.
The building developers blame it on a big city construction project just a short distance away. The developers say that project caused a change in the geotechnical features of the whole area.
Some blame the developers for taking corners in cutting costs. One red flag was that they drove the support piles down 60 to 90 feet, when most buildings of that size use 240 feet piles for their support columns. And, this tower is apparently built on an old landfill. Hmmm…
Everyone is lawyering up, and it’s getting heated. I’m glad I have nothing to do with that project!
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