Warning issued on troubled high-rise
City sets safety deadline with threat to yellow-tag
San Francisco has given the managers of the sinking Millennium Tower until the end of the week to comply with a number of safety measures, as officials search for the reason a window on the high-rise’s 36th floor cracked Sept. 2. Failure to meet the deadline could result in the tower being yellow-tagged, which could limit access to the building until it’s deemed safe.
In a searing letter sent Wednesday to the building’s manager and attorneys for the homeowners association, the Department of Building Inspection cited “uncertainties” about the performance of the building’s glass curtain wall and ordered Millennium management to:
Install an “overhead protection system” around the entire perimeter of the 58-story building to prevent glass or other debris from
showering down on the sidewalk and street below. Deadline: no later than 3 p.m. Thursday.
Repair a broken windowwashing crane that will allow inspectors to evaluate the window from the outside. Deadline: 3 p.m. Friday.
Survey all of the units of the building to determine if other windows have cracked or if additional damage has occurred to the building’s facade. The city also wants Millennium to confirm that no other complaints of cracked windows have been filed by homeowners. Deadline: 3 p.m. Friday.
Failure to meet the deadlines, the department said, “will result in a yellow tag of the building, which will restrict and/or limit access to the building in order to protect public safety.”
The department also wants to know when the cracked window will be taped from the exterior as an added safety measure, when the window will be replaced and when the department can expect Millennium’s “complete forensic analysis.”
Rachel Miller, a lawyer representing the tower’s management, said in an email they would cooperate with the requests.
“We have connected with the city attorney’s office this afternoon and the city attorney is going to work with DBI on these requests,” Miller said. “They will get back to us (Thursday) with a further explanation of what is going to be required.”
The building’s management, its attorneys and its experts “are fully cooperating with the DBI’s request,” she said. “Their focus is the safety of its residents and of the public at large.”
Millennium management turned over a preliminary report on the crack to the department Friday afternoon. The assessment determined only that the issue required a more comprehensive evaluation.
“The fact that this piece of glass may have failed due to the building tilt may be a localized defect or potentially be more widespread,” the report said. “Further investigation of the building exterior is required to understand and assess the issue.” Since it opened in 2009, Millennium Tower has sunk by around 18 inches and tilted to one side.
The assessment, conducted by the engineering firm Allana Buick & Bers, painted a starkly different picture of the problem than Millennium management, which emailed the tower’s residents last Thursday to say that the crack was “an isolated issue.”
That email also mentioned previous window breaks at the tower, “which experts determined were unrelated to the building settlement.” Architects said windows can at times crack because of changes in temperature, defects in the glass and manufacturing problems.
The department also took Millennium’s managers to task for not being more communicative about the crack and their efforts to find the cause.
“DBI holds building and public safety paramount and are gravely concerned by your lack of immediate action since the cracked glazing issue was brought to your attention, about 10 days ago, on Sept. 2.” The department learned about the crack two days later following a reporter’s inquiry.
The department said it “continues to be frustrated with the communication” with the tower’s managers over a variety of issues.
“We often do not find out information about the building until we first receive calls about an issue from the media or read them in a news report,” the department said in its letter Wednesday.
The crack has kindled anxieties that it could be symptomatic of deeper problems with the building. The heavy, concrete tower rests on more than 900 “friction piles” from 60 to 91 feet long driven into the dense material underneath fill dumped into the bay more than a century ago. Those piles do not reach down to bedrock, some 200 feet down.
The tower’s developer, Millennium Partners, has accused the Transbay Joint Powers Authority of pumping out millions of gallons of groundwater during the construction of the Transbay Transit Center next door to the tower. That pumping softened the soil where Millennium’s piles were driven, causing the building to sink and tilt, the developer claims.
The joint powers authority has argued that the tower’s developer should have used so-called end-bearing piles that can be drilled into the deeper bedrock.
Department of Building Inspection spokeswoman Lily Madjus said the department’s letter on Wednesday was a followup to another letter sent Monday. While Millennium management and their attorneys confirmed they received the letter, they did not provide the detailed response the department was seeking.
“This is our third request to you for detailed information — specific dates and next steps on how you will address this issue — and have yet to be provided with the important information,” the department’s Wednesday letter said.
“The building is safe for occupancy. There’s not immediate hazard to property owners, as far as reviews have gone,” Madjus said. “This letter, along with the letter sent Monday, reiterates our concerns of (management’s) immediate actions to address the issue in unit 36B, and provide us with adequate information about what’s going on in the building.”