[Burnaby] Gilmore Place | 214.8m | 64fl | Phase 1 Completed

[Metro-One]

Originally Posted by Lexus

Tower 4 - 462' , 141m
Tower 5 - 539.5' , 164m
Tower 6 - 493' , 150m

Thank you very much! Time to update the list!

[jollyburger]

Originally Posted by Lexus

But it all happened over the past 2 years. That’s why the city is going against ONNI.

It's gotten dramatically worse but there were a lot of settling issues with their plaza since Tandem got built. Maybe it's just superficial since they probably didn't spend a lot of money with the subbase of those sidewalk/plaza areas?

[madog222]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

I believe it is also a small endoreic basin, which means the water that gathers there doesn’t directly drain to the ocean (at least on the surface).

It should drain through Still Creek, no?

[chowhou]

Originally Posted by Lexus

But it all happened over the past 2 years. That’s why the city is going against ONNI.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying there isn't potentially some culpability from Onni, I'm just saying that it's not extremely surprising to see ground deformation given the soil conditions. There was always going to be some level of natural warping of the streets and sidewalks but it has almost certainly been exacerbated by the heavy vehicles and strong vibrations due to construction.

It's up to the courts to decide whether there's any negligence on Onni's part, as others have shown from historical Google Streetview images it didn't start because of Onni and it probably won't end after Onni. We generally expect that construction is going to fuckup roads, it's all a question of whether this amount of fuckup-ery here is within acceptable limits.

[officedweller]

I wonder if the subsidence is all around the Tandem buildings (and not just on the Dawson side) and whether it extends east and west past the Gilmore Place excavation.
... and what about the west side of Gilmore where there's an office building?

[jollyburger]

Originally Posted by officedweller

I wonder if the subsidence is all around the Tandem buildings (and not just on the Dawson side) and whether it extends east and west past the Gilmore Place excavation.
... and what about the west side of Gilmore where there's an office building?

I think someone posted some settling around the office building as well on Burnaby Now or somewhere. But it is interesting that the side on the other side of the street is worse than the side directly next to the excavation.

[RabidMoose]

Here's a shot I took Mar 12, 2023.

[jollyburger]

Thanks! Oh this isn't the building next door. It's the building across from the substation.

But there is a significant drop in that patch of grass next to the building. Those tree bases were level with those sidewalk pavers from Google Maps looking from Lougheed Highway.

It would be interesting to check if any of the buildings closer to the site have similar issues. This one is approx 200 m from the pit. The building right next to Henning/Gilmore doesn't seem like it's showing similar issues.

[Precix]

The subsidence isn't caused by the vibration from heavy vehicles. It is due to the giant hole they dug which drained down the water table. If you look at most projects in this area they all have above grade parking for this reason. The city should have known and the engineers should have also known this was going to happen. The city should not have approved this project but all they seem to care about is cramming as much people as possible into as small a space as possible.

Originally Posted by chowhou

Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying there isn't potentially some culpability from Onni, I'm just saying that it's not extremely surprising to see ground deformation given the soil conditions. There was always going to be some level of natural warping of the streets and sidewalks but it has almost certainly been exacerbated by the heavy vehicles and strong vibrations due to construction.

It's up to the courts to decide whether there's any negligence on Onni's part, as others have shown from historical Google Streetview images it didn't start because of Onni and it probably won't end after Onni. We generally expect that construction is going to fuckup roads, it's all a question of whether this amount of fuckup-ery here is within acceptable limits.

[GenWhy?]

ya not sure how the City of Burnaby did it here, but hence why the CofV for the Rupert & Renfrew Plan area is making us to extensive hydrogeological and geological studies prior to what form of redevelopment can be proposed for this exact reason.

[chowhou]

Originally Posted by Precix

The subsidence isn't caused by the vibration from heavy vehicles. It is due to the giant hole they dug which drained down the water table. If you look at most projects in this area they all have above grade parking for this reason. The city should have known and the engineers should have also known this was going to happen. The city should not have approved this project but all they seem to care about is cramming as much people as possible into as small a space as possible.

I'm pretty sure Fulton House and Akimbo Brentwood which were/are both construction peers of this development have significant underground parking, so that's not true. As far as I know, there have been no lawsuits lodged against Polygon or IMANI for negligent construction practices. It's also not as though they're actively pumping water out of the water table, if anyone else remembers they spent months drilling piles to dam off the excavation pit to prevent water ingress.

The approval of this project is totally fine, especially for this area. It's just a shame that we don't see more projects like this in the Lower Mainland because of these sort of NIMBY talking points.

[Spr0ckets]

Originally Posted by Precix

The subsidence isn't caused by the vibration from heavy vehicles. It is due to the giant hole they dug which drained down the water table. If you look at most projects in this area they all have above grade parking for this reason. The city should have known and the engineers should have also known this was going to happen. The city should not have approved this project but all they seem to care about is cramming as much people as possible into as small a space as possible.

Actually the reason you'd have your parking above grade in a high water table region like this with sand/silt/clay soil conditions is because you don't want to incur the cost of tanking your sub-grade structure and foundation to prevent future seepage that would compromise the structural integrity of the building in the future.

It's prohibitively expensive to have to do so for most projects enough to even kill some.

It's why typically almost all new construction in a place like Richmond will have all their parking in the podium above grade and not much deep underground.

Onni have deep pockets and can afford to stomach that cost (and they have to anyway, considering the amount of parking they're required to provide for a project of this size and how much of the retail/commercial podium they can't sacrifice to parking.)

The city couldn't possibly known that this might be the end result of such a massive excavation in an area like this that they would have restricted them from doing so.
Besides which, the soil conditions in the area are rather uneven and inconsistent as you have solid bedrock barely a couple of hundred meters away from this site to the east closer to Willingdon.

You could argue that the onus for doing an extensive soil and geological study to determine the effectsof this should have fallen on Onni themselves and their Geo consultants, but typically such consultants are only contracted to do a report on the subject site and soil conditions only on site and not necessarily the wider area or to determine what any construction effects would be beyond your site.

The most I can imagine the city might have done (Which I've seen happen in other areas with similar sensitive soil or seismic conditions) would have been to force the developer to have a heavily phased and slowed down construction schedule to allow the site and surroundings to settle enough between each phases (and smaller phases at that) before commencing the next stage.

As many have already pointed out, this sort of deformation and warping was already happening in the area and will likely continue to happen for decades beyond even after this construction project is complete.
It's the level and extent of this current warping that's causing the concern.

But you couldn't really do that here (...any more than they have already done) since it was in everyone's best interest (including the city) that his construction be complete as soon as is practically feasible, given the sensitivity and potential disruption to the skytrain guideways and the station operation directly above it.

I don't really think this is going to be a straightforward or easy case for them (the City) to argue in court.

[Spr0ckets]

Originally Posted by jollyburger

I think someone posted some settling around the office building as well on Burnaby Now or somewhere. But it is interesting that the side on the other side of the street is worse than the side directly next to the excavation.

I think this is part of the problem I was talking about in the previous post.

Even a (more) extensive hydrogeological study wouldn't have been able to predict with any reliability the extent or consistency of any subsidence in the surrounding area - again,.....given how uneven and inconsistent the soil conditions in the area are.

You have here an area closer to the construction site not experiencing subsidence to the extreme levels that an area much farther away is.

So how does one even begin to account or plan for a situation like that and if you're the city do you simply not allow any construction of this size and magnitude if there's any risk at all of subsidence in the future?
Especially given the current housing situation?

[Precix]

yes that is one of the reasons. However another reason is also so it does not draw down the water table and cause near by properties to settles. This is what is happening here, this subsidence is extreme and is directly caused by the ONNI project. Just look at the hole they dug it's absolutely massive and all the water they had to pump out. Someone must have known this would cause a problem....



[QUOTE=Spr0ckets;9892634]Actually the reason you'd have your parking above grade in a high water table region like this with sand/silt/clay soil conditions is because you don't want to incur the cost of tanking your sub-grade structure and foundation to prevent future seepage that would compromise the structural integrity of the building in the future.

It's prohibitively expensive to have to do so for most projects enough to even kill some.

[Vantage]

That is an alarming amount of settling

[RabidMoose]

Couple more shots from March 15th.



The two buildings directly west of Dawson. The north building was surprisingly not as bad, though it has a little bit of a parking structure. The south building only had a little bit.

[Alex Mackinnon]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

I believe it is also a small endoreic basin, which means the water that gathers there doesn’t directly drain to the ocean (at least on the surface).

No, it's just a swamp. It drains through Burnaby Lake. They hydraulic gradient is very flat, which is why it floods when large rains occur. Endorheic basics are usually more along the lines of deserts, where there's more evapouration or groundwater flow than water inflow, so the water dead-ends. The water isn't able to rise until it finds an exit point in those cases.

Still Creek just stays mostly still until it floods, then it spills it banks. It still drains into Burnaby Lake though at a rather relaxed pace, owing to how flat the ground is there.

There's a few lawsuits on this matter already. Basically the soil around here is like a sponge and this huge hole (allegedly) dried the sponge out, causing the space that the water occupied in the soil to partially collapse. It will be interesting to hear what was anticipated settlement, and what was allowed by the city.

[jollyburger]

Yeah even in that office park driveway photograph if you go back to August 2017 you already see signs of those pavers were already settling.

It's hard to tell from Google Maps but even the parking lot in that office park has a lot of weird sloping going on.

I guess on the bright side they can tear it down in a few years and built a giant condo.

[officedweller]

The buildings all look to be stable -
so it looks like it's the roads and sidwalks that need to be built up again.

[jollyburger]

Just noticed that most of the towers south of Dawson seem to have parking in at least two levels with no real underground parking?