A $100 MILLION Fix Made San Francisco’s Leaning Tower Lean MORE

A resident of San Francisco's Millennium Tower rolls a marble down the hallway, and it comes back. The 58-story skyscraper leans more than two feet, and the roughly $100 million repair meant to stop it made it lean further before it helped. We follow the whole story: a tower that had already sunk more than 8 inches before anyone moved in, piles that never reached bedrock, a blame war with the transit center next door, a repair that had to be stopped, a jacking system that finally halted the sinking on two sides, and new monitoring data showing the center still settling. Then the big question: what happens to a leaning tower when the next major Bay Area earthquake hits? Its own engineer drew the line, and it's about a foot away. To be clear: no engineer on record is predicting a collapse. This is about how close the building is to the limit where it stops working as a home. Chapters 0:00 The marble that rolls back 0:28 Sinking before anyone moved in 1:45 Joe Montana's building makes the news 2:06 The piles never touched rock 2:40 The neighbor they blamed 3:15 Nine lawsuits, one secret settlement 3:36 The $100 million fix 4:05 The fix that made it worse 5:01 Eighteen piles and a bumper jack 6:10 Two feet, permanently 6:41 What the sensors found 7:45 The hidden wall 8:03 Structure of the Year 8:36 When the ground shakes 9:56 The line that matters 10:46 About a foot from the line Sources NBC News – sinking high-rise, residents and records: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/... NBC Bay Area – fix designer, 6.5 ft and 40-inch limit: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigat... NBC Bay Area – new tilting stops the fix (2021): https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigat... NBC – tilting 3 inches per year (2022): https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/na... NBC Bay Area – the marble and projected recovery (2023): https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigat... NBC Bay Area – center may be sinking (2024): https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigat... ENR – first load transfer (2023): https://www.enr.com/articles/55821-fi... ENR – settlement arrested (2023): https://www.enr.com/articles/56665-af... Millennium Tower Association – 2020 settlement: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-relea... SFist – taxpayer share of the fix: https://sfist.com/2020/10/21/sf-taxpa... CRE Daily – resale prices (2025): https://www.credaily.com/briefs/mille... NCSEA – 2025 Structure of the Year: https://www.ncsea.com/news-post/ncsea... USGS – Bay Area earthquake outlook 2014–2043: https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/fs2... Music: "Myst on the Moor" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) — Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... #MillenniumTower #SanFrancisco #Engineering