Millennium Tower Residents Claim Marble Test Shows Building's Lean
SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX 5) – A couple living in San Francisco's Millennium Tower posted a video that demonstrates how much the building is leaning.
The video posted on Vimeo shows a marble, rolling one direction, then reversing course.
KPIX 5 caught up with the married couple who posted the video, and they say it clearly demonstrates their home on the 50th floor is leaning.
"The marble illustrated it quite dramatically," Frank Jernigan said.
Jernigan and Andrew Faulk bought their apartment in 2011 for $4 million. Since then, they have learned the building has a significant lean to the northwest, the same direction the marble rolls.
"We were shocked," Jernigan said.
Faulk said he was "Very surprised, because we don't feel anything."
They are angry because they say the building owners, the Millennium Partners, lied to them. That they knew the building has been leaning since 2009 and is getting worse. And that it was built on liquefaction.
Jernigan: "They said it will withstand an 8.0 earthquake and beyond."
KPIX 5 reporter Joe Vazquez: "The marble tells a different story."
Jernigan: "It does."
Supervisor Aaron Peskin has been holding hearings about the sinking building.
"It's really heartbreaking," Peskin told KPIX 5.
So far, the marble is the only test he's seen. He's still waiting for the experts to find out exactly how much the building is leaning.
"But we don't have any independent data other than the fact that somebody who lives on one of the higher floors has put a marble on his floor and shows that it rolls, guess what? To the Northwest," Peskin said.
The building owners did not comment on KPIX 5's story but have said in the past that even though the building is sinking and leaning, the building remains safe.
