“Dodson and other residents blame developers for what they say is a flawed design. The tower’s foundation, for instance, uses piles driven 60 to 90 feet into landfill, rather than the pricier option of going down at least 240 feet to bedrock.”
Yeah, nothing like a luxury building where they cut costs somewhere that no one will notice.
Back in the 1990s, I worked in a skyscraper a couple blocks away at the Embarcadero wharf, and had an office looking across the bay towards the Bay Bridge. The City sold some land next to us, and I watched as a developer built a hotel. Noisy as heck for a long time as they drove piles into the ground, and very deep. Not only that, but they then drove steel piles at angles around every vertical pile, perhaps seven angled for each vertical pile at the basement level, and these were all welded together with brackets. They made sure that building would not sink. And it was a seven-story hotel. That leaning Millennium Tower is 58 stories in height.
It's well known that much of this land is former bay, filled in with sediment, shipwrecks and garbage from the 1800s. The original bay shore actually extended many blocks inland. So driving piles to bedrock should be mandatory (but isn't).