In a presentation to the Cedar Isles Condominium Association board on April 11, Socotec, a Met Council engineering consultant, said that “thermal changes” are responsible for 75% of the potentially dangerous cracks that suddenly appeared in the concrete condos last January.
Socotec consultants said the nearby Southwest Light Rail (SWLRT) construction, only feet away from the building, played only “a very minor role.” They said the building is safe and the council can resume work on the tunnel.
The condo board disagreed strongly in a statement that said in part: “To claim that after 40 years of thermal expansion and contraction the building coincidentally suffered extensive damage due to that cause while severe shaking and drilling was occurring only feet away strains credulity.”
The board and several news outlets have asked the Met Council to release the data that support its findings. The Met Council has declined.
Such a report would reveal how Socotec arrived at its finding that thermal changes are 75% responsible for the damage.
It could also include information on how soil conditions — and thus the structure’s stability — are being affected by the drilling, bulldozing and use of massive quantities of water for cooling and other construction purposes. (The Met Council says unstable soil in the area is one of the main drivers of its recently announced three-year delay and request for an additional $550 million, which drives the total SWLRT budget to $2.75 billion.)
It is not known whether the Met Council has the report and will not release it, Socotec has the report and has not released it to the Met Council (thus shielding it from public view), or, as condo resident Russ Palma suspects, no written report exists.
Palma says Met Council claims that the building has structural flaws are immaterial, since the building has stood, undamaged, for decades, and it was only when construction began that the damages occurred.
In fact, the cracks have occurred almost exactly as predicted, floor by floor, in a 2018 engineering study conducted by Itasca Consulting in 2018. The condo association commissioned that study out of concern that SWLRT construction so close to their buildings would cause damage.
