SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) – It is the tallest residential building in San Francisco. A construction project designed to stabilize the building from sinking didn’t work. 

Now, a San Francisco supervisor tells KRON4 that it is time to bring in outside experts. 

It appears the famed Millennium Tower in San Francisco, which was first reported sinking back in August 2016, is now leaning a just little bit more.

“It tilted an additional 5-inches and sank a couple of more inches,” Aaron Peskin said. “Not good! Not good. Buildings are meant to stand up like this. There’s a little bit of tolerance but not that much tolerance.”

At this point, San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin is out of tolerance for a construction project that was designed to fix the Millennium Tower’s sinking problem.

“Appears to have exacerbated the sinking and tilting. Those are the revelations that we heard about in August. The building has actually continued to sink and tilt at a relatively alarming rate,” Peskin said. 

That is consistent with a construction report received by the Millennium Tower Association. Their spokesperson sent KRON4 a statement that reads:

“Our design engineering team, lead by Ron Hamburger, has confirmed, based on monitoring data, the increase in building movement stopped almost immediately after construction was halted and has returned to preconstruction levels of settlement and tilting which has been negligible for several years.”

A city-appointed design review board approved the design plan to stabilize the tower but in light of this recent development Supervisor Peskin says it is now time to bring in some outside engineers to examine the situation

“The fix was reviewed and recommended by this design review panel. I am now interested in other national, professional engineers to oversee their work,” Peskin said. 

Supervisor Peskin is now calling for a special hearing, which would bring the department of building inspections, members of the review board, the engineers, and construction management before the Board of Supervisors.

“I think we need to get to the bottom of why the sinking accelerated during the work that was being done. There are theories about subsurface ground dewatering. There are theories the whole that maybe some of the holes for the piles were dug too large. I want to understand who was overseeing that and who was checking that and frankly, I’m very worried that our department of building inspection is outgunned and does not have the internal expertise,” Peskin said.