City threatens to yellow tag Millennium Tower

The hits just keep coming at Millennium Tower, as both the San Francisco Chronicle and ABC 7 report that the Department of Building Inspection has threatened to yellow tag the exclusive but exclusively faulty high-rise if homeowners don’t fix several critical problems ASAP.

Last week, a condo on the 36th floor of the sinking tower mysteriously cracked in the middle of the night.

The Department of Building Inspection [DBI] says that the furtive fraction doesn’t pose a threat to public safety, and it’s not year clear whether the break is a freak accident or another manifestation of the faulty foundation that causes the 58-story building to both sink and tilt.

But ABC 7 notes that attorney for the building’s homeowners association received a letter on Wednesday demanding that homeowners take steps to make sure there are no other problems waiting in the eaves:

• Survey all of the condos in the building by 3 p.m. Friday to ensure there are no other cracks.
• Install a safety canopy to help prevent falling glass from injuring passerby by 3 p.m. Thursday.
• Repair a damaged window washing crane on the building by 3 p.m. Thursday.

If the building doesn’t make those deadlines, according to the missive, the DBI might “yellow tagging” Millennium tower.

According to a 2016 building inspection manual, a yellow tag means that a building is still inhabitable but that it’s under “restricted use”:

“A hazardous condition exists or is believed to exist that requires restrictions on the occupancy or use of the structure. Residents might be able to continue to occupy some, but not all, of these structures, with restrictions.”

This has been a hard luck week at Millennium Tower. On Sunday, a drone inspecting the building facade for evidence of additional cracks suddenly fell out of the sky and hit the building mid-flight.

It was merely a GPS malfunction, but as far as omens go, it’s not the most comforting.

• City Threatens To Yellow Tag Tower [SF Chronicle]
• SF Threatens To Yellow Tag Millennium [ABC7]
• Millennium Tower Cracks [Curbed SF]
• Drone Inspecting Tower Crashes [ABC7]
• Earthquake Safety For Soft-Story [DBI]