According to the story, that was one of the plans but that strategy would still end up costing $350M (the cost of originally putting up the whole darn building). Stupid. Again, my handyman would have figured it out right from the get go. Go to bedrock and no one will bother you again on this project…
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That thing still standing there? 
Held up by scaffolding, yes…
Home depot has a good black Friday sale on it. They should stock up.
Did you finish your roofing project yet?
No. I’m not going to have enough good weather left. I was installing new joists, and I thought they looked awfully flat. Flat roof should have 1/4" slope per foot for drainage. Sure enough, it was dead flat, so I have to make the middle 3" higher. I got one side done, but what was supposed to just be replacing plywood on the other side is now a much bigger project to lift the center 3".
I honestly could have been done had I realized it was going to be replacing the entire roof and just done aggressive demo. The partial demo trying to preserve as much “good” roof as possible was very time consuming, and it kept revealing more and more bad. I’m definitely glad I didn’t hire someone though. None of the quotes included a lot of the work, so it would have easily ended up 50%+ more expensive.
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Impressive. Did you find that wood and other stuff at HD seemed in general to be way more expensive these days? My contractor warned me but I didn’t believe him until I was in there and saw the pricing of materials.
Honestly, I haven’t purchased enough until very recently to know.
The deck I mentioned ended costing $17k. I thought it was a $5k job.
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Never, ever, buy a condo…
Maybe it’s time to get one on discount ?
Assuming you can find one discounted at this point, perhaps, but what owner is going to sell at a discount now if they are somehow pitching in to fix the old girl? And besides, why gamble on something that might or hopefully will be fixed when you can easily buy a property without any obvious issues? Honestly, there are easier ways to make money than to take a stab at this…
I want to lean on SFDragonboy, duh!
Plenty of better deals.
You have to admit @Elt1, sure enough, the fix now is to essentially go to bedrock to the tune of 100M. I stand by my original statement: my handyman would have gotten this right from the get-go. How so, over all these highly educated engineers/consultants? Because all contractors (good and smart ones) know when and where to cut corners. A cosmetic cut corner is one thing, but any good contractor does not want to return to redo a job, especially one that involves the foundation for a freaking 58 story skyscraper. A good contractor would have assessed that with the type of soil we have here, the additional weight from the design used, it would be best to simply go to bedrock from the get go. No need to calc it out or study it more. That is and was the answer, plain and simple.
Curious how much more it would have cost to go to the bedrock to begin with. How much did they actually save by not doing it.
Well, my retired architect poker buddy who would have worked on a project of this scale (worked on skyscrapers in both India and Asia) did say originally that it would have been expensive (to go another 200 ft or so to bedrock) but again that is what separates good planning vs very poor planning, right? At the time, he like Mr. South Lake Tahoe would not comment or go against the profession but to me, it was simply a no-brainer. I mean, earthquake country, landfill soil, a heavier design, and a really expensive project that should have easily demonstrated financially the value to go to bedrock (come on, these condos are multi millions of dollars). Penny wise, pound foolish…
That thing still standing up there? 
BA bedrock is notoriously soft. The Golden Gate is founded of soft serpentine bedrock. The State Rock btw.
It is easy to be an armchair quartetback. The only decent bedrock is in PAC Heights. I guess that 95% of SF high rises are on driven piles. Driven to refusal not bedrock. Just like the millennium tower