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191 9 Moscone Center Doings When Moscone Center opened in December 1981, it got rave architectural reviews.An exuberant Allan Temko, the Chronicle’s highly respected urban design critic, announced:“In the unprecedented exhibition hall of Moscone Center—a column-free underground space nearly 880 feet long, nearly 300 feet wide, and 37 feet high—San Francisco has another structural wonder of the world. . . . Moscone Center is not only a technological feat, worthy of a place in the empyrean of engineering with the great bridges spanning the Bay, but also a work of art.”1 But convention centers must be judged in more functional terms as well, and early evidence showed Moscone Center to be a highly troublesome work of art—most likely the result of political pressure to open the facility “on time,” even if it was not quite finished. A bare six months after its opening, serious water leaks were discovered in the foundation of the underground facility, whose floor is twenty feet below the water table. Despite $3 million worth of waterproofing in the original construction,leaks penetrated through the ten-foot-thick poured concrete slab floor and thirty-inch-thick concrete walls. The most serious dangers were to the electrical system and the concrete floor’s reinforcing steel, which could corrode and expand, causing the concrete to crack. In one case, water burst through a foundation crack in one of the underground utility tunnels and, according to a project engineer,“just shot right across to the opposite wall (five feet away) in a real hard stream.”2 And during a heavy rainstorm, “There was so much flooding that officials called the Fire Department, which manned the pumps for six hours.”3 The various contractors, subcontractors, construction managers, and public agencies naturally pointed the finger at one another.City officials were extremely 192 / Chapter 9 unhappy (“We paid for a dry building. We’re not happy with a wet building ,” commented the City’s on-site project manager);4 the supervisors called for an investigation; Mayor Feinstein threatened a lawsuit and was openly critical of CAO Roger Boas,5 who had boasted right before the center opened, “The building is waterproof as a bathtub.”6 Later, taking a somewhat different tack—that the leak problem “is something we’ve known about. . . . We expected a certain amount of water to get in . . . ”—the CAO’s office poohpoohed the problem.7 While the issue pretty much disappeared from the front pages and the political arena, an Examiner report following up on the original story noted that “while city officials said contractors had remedied ‘99%’ of the leaks, the Examiner this week found unrepaired leaks and water pouring into the tunnels through pipes designed to alleviate pressure on the foundation. During Tuesday’s rain storm, the tunnel gutters were rushing with water. One of the building’s four major sump pumps failed, flooding the pump room and the fire services room.”8 Other construction and design flaws appeared. A review of these in the December 3, 1982, Examiner noted: “The entire building was painted a flat white that isn’t washable. The unsealed granite floors and light blue rugs are impossible to keep clean. Utility tunnels continue to leak.The computer system isn’t fully installed. . . . The City still [one year later] hasn’t accepted the work of 10 of the 26 prime contractors, including those who did concrete , mechanical and electrical work, as well as installing the security system . . . . ” These problems “already have cost taxpayers more than $1 million —and will cost even more.” The City’s Bureau of Building Inspection did not give the center a certificate of occupancy until December 1983, two years after its opening, and there are suggestions that the permit was granted only under great pressure. Water was leaking into the center, and equipment was leaking out. In October 1982, it was reported that more than five hundred chrome customupholstered chairs, worth fifty thousand dollars, had disappeared. The loss was not reported to the police or insurance carrier for two months (and apparently wasn’t made public for five months thereafter).9 Several days later, the papers reported a ten-thousand-dollar baby grand piano had been stolen from the center.10 In the same month, it was revealed that the head of the City’s new Department of Convention Facilities—overseer for Moscone Center, Brooks Hall, and the Civic Auditorium—had falsified his resume and had...

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