SAN FRANCISCO — Nearly a year after it closed to the public, the Salesforce Transit Center will reopen July 1 after a panel of engineering experts on Monday deemed the building safe, officials said Tuesday.
Although repairs of two cracked steel beams at the center were completed last month, officials were waiting for a five-member oversight panel to certify the building was safe for reopening. At the behest of Oakland and San Francisco mayors, Libby Schaaf and London Breed, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission appointed the panel in October to conduct and independent review of the investigation into the cause of the cracked beams.
In a letter Monday to the mayors and the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, a public agency in charge of constructing and maintaining the building, commission Executive Director Therese McMillan said the panel agreed with the authority that there were no other issues with the building and that it was safe to reopen.
“We can represent to you and the public alike confidence that the Transbay Transit Center’s girder problem was isolated and that the appropriate repairs have been performed,” McMillan wrote. “We agree the steel structure is ready for service.”
The $2.2 billion center closed in September, just six weeks after it opened, when workers installing ceiling panels discovered a large crack in a structural steel beam. Subsequent inspections of the building revealed a second crack.
Authorities have since said a confluence of factors, including the building’s unique design combined with errors that occurred during the fabrication of the beams contributed to the cracks that formed in the steel. Multiple layers of oversight failed to catch the flaws until tiny microcracks grew into gaping crevices.
Repairs were completed in May, when crews sandwiched two high-strength steel plates on either side of the beams that cracked and bolted the plates in place, fortifying the weakened beams.
In addition to investigating the cause of the cracks and devising a repair, authority officials and members of the peer review panel performed a review of the entire building, looking for any conditions that might be similar to the beams that cracked. That extra layer of review took several months and the panel’s concurrence with the authority that no more work was needed was the final approval the authority needs to set a date for reopening.
from The Mercury News https://bayareane.ws/2XA01gQ
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