Tilting tower fix to cost public $ 30 million
Taxpayers are on the hook for $ 30 million of an overall settlement that paves the way to fix San Francisco’s infamous tilting Millennium Tower.
The public money was revealed in response to a query from The Chronicle to the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, which developed the three-blocklong Transbay Transit Center adjacent to the tower.
“This minimized the risk to the public from pending claims and additional lawsuits, which would have stretched years into the future,” TJPA spokesperson Donald Pollitt said in an email to The Chronicle.
Settlement of nine lawsuits involving more than 400 individual parties was nailed down in August 2019, and its total size, which is much larger than the public’s $ 30 million share, is being held in confidence.
The overall settlement includes the $ 100 million fix for the tilting, 58story highrise at 301 Mission Street that opened in 2009, plus millions of dollars in reimbursements to luxury condominium owners whose property values plummeted as a result of the tilting. The repair project calls for 52 piles to be drilled 250 feet down into bedrock to shore up the building —
which now sits on 950 reinforced concrete piles driven up to 90 feet deep into bay mud.
And, of course, there are the lawyers’ fees.
Those chipping in money include the tower’s developer, Millennium Partners, the TJPA and developers of two adjacent properties, Salesforce Tower and 350 Mission Street. The money will be paid largely through insurance settlements.
According to Millennium Partners, the massive excavation to build the transit center and the adjacent structures destabilized the soil under the tower — the claim was that “dewatering” had weakened the soil under the tower — and that by the time that work on the adjacent properties was finished, the tower had sunk 17 inches and was leaning 14 inches to the west.
The TJPA maintained that by the time the belowgrade work on the transit center began in spring 2011, the tower had already sunk 10 inches and was tilting. The agency is composed of the city and county of San Francisco, AC Transit, Caltrain, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, the California High Speed Rail Authority and Caltrans.
And therein lay the public liability.
While the TJPA continues to deny “in the strongest of terms” that the construction of the transit center caused the excessive movement of the Millennium Tower, the authority is nonetheless paying the $ 30 million into the settlement.
“Many parties were involved in and contributed to the global settlement of the litigation,” he said. “Some of those parties have no relationship with the TJPA. Some of those parties wear multiple hats — not just as TJPA contractors and consultants,” Pollitt said.
In return for the $ 30 million, the TJPA gets “complete release of claims against it relating to the movement of the tower, claims that were alleged to total a billion dollars or more,” Politt said.
The authority said the settlement is being paid out of the “Phase 1” budget for building the $ 2.2 billion Transbay Transit Center.
“The payment was made from bond sale proceeds backed by tax revenues. These funds are used for costs associated with the construction and design of the Transbay program,” Pollitt said. The sources of those revenues are “federal and state grants, sales taxes, property taxes, special taxes, land sales, impact fees, toll revenues, loans and bonds backed by tax revenues.”
Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who chairs the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, said that while tax dollars were used in the payout, City Attorney Dennis Herrera made sure that no city money was used.
“Not a penny of city general fund money went into the settlement,” Peskin said. At least not directly. “No money is coming from the city general fund, but a lot of money is coming from Uncle Sugar — the United States of America,” Peskin said.
The only direct San Francisco contribution to the settlement involves granting an easement so that the pilings to prop up the tower can be installed. Overhead Muni lines will also need to be moved to accommodate the construction.
Opened with great fanfare, the Millennium Tower quickly became the symbol of luxury urban living, with such famous residents as football great Joe Montana and the late venture capitalist Tom Perkins.
The tower’s real claim to fame, however, came when engineers monitoring the building discovered it was sinking and tilting.
The problem raised questions about city policies that allowed building highrises on landfill. There were also questions about whether San Francisco officials were too quick to sign off on the big projects that were sprouting up in the Transbay district.
The site also became a popular site for people to have their photos taken.
Scaffolding for the twoyear repair project is expected to go up in the next few weeks.
“A lot of money is coming from Uncle Sugar — the United States of America.”
S. F. Supervisor Aaron Peskin
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Phil Matier appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KGOTV morning and evening news and can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7: 50 a. m. and 5: 50 p. m. Got a tip? Call 4157778815, or email pmatier@ sfchronicle. com. Twitter: @ philmatier