SF New Developments

Building S.F.”s new highrises poses daunting challenges

San Francisco Business Times - February 23, 2007 by Elizabeth Browne San Francisco Business Times Contributor

Tall buildings are a tall order. As downtown San Francisco prepares to grow its skyline with a sprouting of new highrises in the Rincon Hill and SoMa neighborhoods, those designing and building the new skyscrapers are negotiating an increasingly complex set of challenges to meet project timelines, deliver structurally sound buildings, and to stay on budget. It”s a delicate balance to maintain, and one that has led to innovative designs to handle, for example, sway caused by wind and earthquakes, as well as building techniques that both speed construction and keep costs down. Those working on San Francisco”s spate of new tall buildings say that executing these projects — some of which will rise more than 60 stories — is further complicated by a city moratorium on performance-based building design (see related story, Page 33), rising construction costs, and limited space to handle equipment and workers in the neighborhoods where the new highrises will be concentrated. Such challenges can delay and even halt highly structured building timelines, and in projects costing hundreds of millions of dollars to build, one day lost can translate to more than $100,000. Taller equals tougher When it comes to highrises, “the number of problems magnify themselves by the number of floors,” said Jeffrey Heller, of Heller Manus Architects, which has been involved in the designs of Tishman Speyer”s Infinity condo towers on Spear Street and its 34-story office at 555 Mission St….

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