SF’s landmark tower for rich and famous is sinking and tilting

The Millennium Tower, a leading symbol of San Francisco’s new high-rise and high-end living, is sinking — setting the stage for what could be one of the most contentious and costly real estate legal battles the city has ever seen. Rated by Worth magazine as one of the top 10 residential buildings in the world, the Millennium at 301 Mission St. is home to such A-listers as Joe Montana and Hunter Pence. [...] his recent death, it’s where venture capitalist Tom Perkins owned a penthouse. There are potentially big public dollars at stake, with the owners alleging that the massive hole dug next door for the new Transbay Transit Center is to blame for the building’s issues. The problem first came to light in 2010 when the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, the public agency constructing the transit center, hired the consulting firm Arup to gauge how the excavation could affect the tower. According to the consultant’s initial report, by the time excavation began — two years after the $350 million Millennium was completed — the tower had already settled 10 inches. [...] “the building has continued to settle vertically, now 16 inches,” representatives of the Transbay Joint Powers Authority said in a statement in response to questions from The Chronicle. P.J. Johnston, spokesman for tower builder Millennium Partners and its principal owner, Sean Jeffries, said a nine-month, independent structural safety review in 2014 “determined the settlement has not significantly affected the seismic performance of the building, and does not represent a safety risk.” An attorney for the Millennium homeowners association’s board, John Gill, recently sent a confidential letter to some of the more than 400 residents saying the board was “actively engaged in negotiations with Millennium Partners to resolve building settlement issues.” The authority also signed an agreement with the Millennium developer in 2008 “to repair, at its own cost and expense ... any damage to the development substantially caused by TJPA’s construction activities,” according a copy of the agreement on file at San Francisco City Hall. “To cut costs, Millennium did not drill piles to bedrock,” or 200 feet down, the transit center authority said in its statement. [...] the shifting and sinking of the concrete platform beneath the building has necessitated what Johnston called “minor repairs to sidewalks and connections at the ground level.”