SF Bay Area Development News [Archive]

612bv3

April 6th, 2005, 06:37 AM

Lawmaker wants to delay high-speed rail bond vote again
By STEVE LAWRENCE, Associated Press Writer

Monday, April 4, 2005

Assemblyman Alberto Torrico thinks California's high-speed rail project is a great idea that's ahead of its time.

The Fremont Democrat has introduced legislation that would postpone a public vote on $9.95 billion in state bonds that would help pay for the first leg of the project, a line linking Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Planners envision the system eventually stretching 700 miles and linking San Diego, Los Angles, Fresno, Sacramento and San Francisco with trains running at top speeds of more than 200 mph.

"High-speed rail, intercity rail, light rail, BART — all of these mass transit options that get people out of their cars are clearly things that should have been a priority 30 years ago," Torrico said.

But he contends it isn't the right time to ask the public to increase the state debt to begin construction. "If we put it up for a vote and it goes down, the political will to move forward may be gone."

Lawmakers initially placed the bond measure on the ballot last year, then moved it to the November 2006 ballot out of the same concerns expressed by Torrico — that the state's budget woes would discourage voters from approving the measure.

Torrico's bill, which is scheduled for a hearing Monday in the Assembly Transportation Committee, would move the bond measure to the November 2008 ballot.

He says the delay would give the state time to deal with its persistent budget deficits. "Once we do that and turn the corner we can start to consider long-term infrastructure projects the state needs. This (high-speed rail) is one of them."

But Mehdi Morshed, the executive director of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, says continued delay could make the project prohibitively expensive.

"The longer we wait, the harder it's going to be," he said. "At some point in time you can't do it. There's too much development (in the way) and your costs keep going up."

One of the Legislature's leading supporters of high-speed rail, Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, says he'll try to kill Torrico's bill if it reaches the Senate.

"I think people are ready to vote for a public works project that would produce as many jobs as it would produce," he said. "People are ready to vote for a positive thing. This may well be the only positive thing on the ballot people can get excited about."

___

Associated Press Writer Don Thompson contributed to this report.

612bv3

April 6th, 2005, 06:41 AM

As you all know, this bond will help fund the new Transbay Terminal. This is really depressing news. :(

612bv3

April 6th, 2005, 06:51 AM

where is pier 70?
Pier 70 is the dry dock area. It's basicly south of the Ferry Building, the odd # piers are north from Ferry Building and the even # piers are south.

naughtyins0mniac

April 7th, 2005, 12:40 AM

Pier 70 is the dry dock area. It's basicly south of the Ferry Building, the odd # piers are north from Ferry Building and the even # piers are south.
thanks.. i didnt know that..

612bv3

April 7th, 2005, 07:33 AM

I don't know if this is old.

8 East San Fernando,
San Jose, California

http://www.rockgroupdevelopment.com/images/8_east_sanfernan.jpg

— New 336,000 Square-Foot Office Tower

— 21-Story Building Will Be Among Tallest in San Jose

More about this building in this website. http://www.rockgroupdevelopment.com/8east/

queetz@home

April 7th, 2005, 10:20 AM

Can San Jose sustain an office tower of that size nowadays? Its been a long time since I've been to the San Francisco Bay Area but a couple of years ago, I went to Santa Clara. I saw these huge office buildings which cater to high tech companies with signs saying, 900,000 sq feet available for lease! I hear Silicon Valley has recovered or is recovering from the high tech bust so can someone shed some light on that?

612bv3

April 8th, 2005, 06:47 AM

^ The Building posted above is currently on-hold, I think.

By the way, the San Francisco Love Parade is on SEPTEMBER 24TH 2005. It will have a Green Day Concert in SBC Park.

*NOR CAL*

April 9th, 2005, 08:59 AM

Is the love parade the same as the gay parade?

612bv3

April 9th, 2005, 08:15 PM

Is the love parade the same as the gay parade?
It's completely different. You're thinking about the Gay and Lesbian Pride Parade. I guess you've never heard of the Love Parade in Berlin.

Here some info from their website.

About Loveparade San Francisco
Loveparade San Francisco (LPSF) has been a labor of love for a core group of volunteer individuals' who, after 3 years in the making, presented the city of San Francisco, the US and the world with its extraordinarily successful inaugural event on October 2nd 2004. LPSF is the official Love Parade organization of the US through a partnership with Loveparade Berlin. With rave reviews from sponsors, vendors, the city of San Francisco, the float organizers, DJs and of course the participants.

San Francisco offers a unique backdrop for our event. The Love Parade started in Berlin, Germany in the early 90s as a way to foster tolerance, diversity, community and welcoming of all cultures. San Francisco with its unique make up of diverse communities, languages, cultural acceptance and understanding makes this one of the best locations in the US - and the world - for this event. San Francisco is home to one of the largest and most cutting edge electronic music scenes in the US, and Loveparade San Francisco helps to foster new and emerging talent on a wrlds stage. By offering this event in San Francisco, Loveparade helps to promote our city as the jewel of the West, a promise easily realized throught the City's entertainment venues, amazing scenery and diveristy.

Anyways there's going to be some wild costumes there. You can visit their website and you'll find pictures and more info. http://www.loveparadesf.org/index.php (http://http://www.loveparadesf.org/index.php)

StevenW

April 9th, 2005, 11:57 PM

Wild! :D

612bv3

April 11th, 2005, 12:51 AM

300 Spears
http://63.240.68.122/FirmFiles/25/images/121704_0428.jpg
http://63.240.68.122/FirmFiles/25/images/300tsp-ms-northwest2.jpg

201 Folsom
http://63.240.68.122/FirmFiles/25/images/201_o4-eir42.jpg
http://63.240.68.122/FirmFiles/25/images/o5-all2.jpg

199 New Montgomery
http://63.240.68.122/FirmFiles/25/images/199nm-a.jpg

555 Mission
http://63.240.68.122/FirmFiles/25/images/kpf-555mission.jpg

612bv3

April 11th, 2005, 01:08 AM

324 Howard
http://63.240.68.122/FirmFiles/25/images/524%20Howard%20St.jpg

Exchange Place
http://63.240.68.115/FirmFiles/25/images/ExchangebushA.jpg

612bv3

April 11th, 2005, 01:11 AM

Website showing how 1101 O Farrell might look in the skyline.

1101 O Farrell (http://www.sfpix.com/citizen-cad/st_mark/index.html)

It might be a NIMBY site.

612bv3

April 11th, 2005, 01:16 AM

One Rincon Hill
http://www.pmainc.com/thumbnails/th-onerincon.jpg

naughtyins0mniac

April 11th, 2005, 07:17 AM

waaaaaaaaaaah.. im lost. whats that 324 howard and that 1101 o farell and exchange place?!

bay_area

April 11th, 2005, 07:07 PM

DT Office Market coming back strong....

S.F. view offices pulling down top dollar

Resurgence in investment banks, venture capital drives rise
Lizette Wilson
April 8, 2005

Big spenders are rolling back into San Francisco and up the city's highrises to lease the swankiest view space. And the price is rising fast.

In the past few months a handful of firms, including hedge fund Caxton Associates LLC and law firm McKenna Long & Aldridge, LLP have leased prime view space. Those firms did deals for the 33rd floor of the Transamerica pyramid and the 41st floor of 101 California St. for $60 and $53 per square foot, respectively -- a major pop from the mid-$40s range similar space commanded less than a year ago.

"Asking rental quotes in the $50s or even in the $60s doesn't elicit the broker pushback it would have in 2004," said Jim Ousman, managing director of leasing for Equity Office Properties. "That's an indication this higher-end space is priced accordingly."

As the rest of the San Francisco office market struggles with vacancy rates that remain in the high teens and average rents stuck at around $30, the vacancy rate for view space -- the upper floors of the best highrises -- is an estimated 5 percent, according to a recent study by Cushman & Wakefield. Prices are being rapidly marked up to leverage that scarcity.

Space available now includes as much as two floors at 345 California St., two floors at 50 Fremont St., the prime 50th floor at 555 California St. and the top seven floors at One Maritime Plaza. Asking rates at those locales range from the low $50s at 50 Fremont to an eye-popping $65 per square foot at the 50th floor of 555 California.

Leasing agents representing landlords say the rise is being largely driven by tenant demand.

"They're back, they've got dough and they've got requirements. The user that is rent insensitive will pay for the views," said Shorenstein's director of leasing Charlie Malet, adding an existing tenant at the BofA tower recently signed a letter of intent at more than $60 a square foot to expand by a few thousand square feet. "We're seeing multiple parties interested in the same piece of high-end space. There's some pressure there."

He added: "It's a turnaround and we're certainly happy with it."

Like Malet, EOP's Ousman said he's also seen the market balance tip more toward the landlords in the past few months. It is rumored EOP's asking rental rates for former Cooley Godward space at One Maritime Plaza is as high as the $60 range, although Ousman declined to discuss specific prices, saying only: "We're about trying to find the right match for the space. We hope to attract tenants that are looking for high-quality view space."

Cushman & Wakefield's Margaret Duskin, who is leasing two floors of prime space at 345 California, said interest in the space has been "dramatic" despite the fact it hasn't even formally hit the market. "The resurgence in investment banking and venture capital has driven the rental rates for high-rent view space," she said.

Whether these high rents for high-class space will have a trickle-down effect on the less desirable space is unclear.

The average asking rents of Class A space in the central business district last quarter increased roughly 3 percent to $30 a square foot, according to averages from Grubb & Ellis Co. and CB Richard Ellis research reports. Some pockets are a little hotter, however, like at 50 California where rents have increased 20 percent over the past six months to as high as the mid $40 range.

As for the commodity space -- meaning the lower-floor, non-view space -- many industry watchers see flatline growth for the rest of the year.

Cushman & Wakefield's Brad Van Blois, who authored the report on view space, emphasized the 1.6 million square feet of full view space in the city is dwindling fast, but is unlikely to effect the balance of the office market.

He predicted rents for commodity space -- now dragging overall office vacancy to about 19 percent and going for the low to mid 20s -- will continue to stay flat through the remainder of 2005 without any significant job growth in the city.

Shorenstein's Malet agreed, noting: "It's still a dog fight in the low-floor, non-sexy, non-view space. There's a lot of that out there."

Lizette Wilson covers real estate for the San Francisco Business Times.

© 2005 American City Business Journals Inc.

bay_area

April 11th, 2005, 07:11 PM

Buyers place condo bets in Oakland

In Oakland, due diligence is for wimps.

In at least four recent deals totaling more than $6 million, developers are plunking down big bucks for land, gambling that the city will grant permission for major condo projects.

That's a risky strategy, but it helps builders move quickly to cash in on the housing market before it cools. For experienced developers, it at least feels like a safer bet, because they see a consistency and enthusiasm for housing in the Oakland planning process unheard of in past years.

And Mayor Jerry Brown has less than two years to complete his goal of bringing 10,000 residents to downtown Oakland.

"People are fairly aggressive right now," said Patrick Lane, the mayor's 10k point man, who said he's noticed a pronounced trend toward faster land buying. "I think it's because of the recent sales -- the Franklin 88 and the Essex have gotten some really good numbers" -- $550 a square foot at Essex, according to those selling the units.

Roman Knopp, a Russian developer who has worked extensively in the South Bay, has acquired a chunk of land and is in the process of buying another near 16th Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way in downtown Oakland for a combined $130 per square foot. Knopp needs new entitlements, since he has plans for condominiums, and the first seller, developer Joe Hernon, had entitled his parcels for office use.

Developers traditionally wait to get those entitlements before closing on a property, either by buying options on the land or stretching escrow out over a year or more. Whitney Cressman broker Thomas Gregoire, who with Dave Wientjes of Whitney Cressman represented Hernon in the deal, said more and more buyers are eschewing such a plodding approach.

"Dave and I have a list of clients who are willing to purchase property unentitled and not contingent on zoning," Gregoire said. "They know the market, and that's what's making the difference."

Another developer rolling the dice is AF Evans of San Francisco, which bought a parking lot at 901 Jefferson St. for the second phase of its Market Square condo project in Old Oakland. Its first phase is entitled; the second phase, which it closed on in January, is not. Gregoire and Wientjes brokered that transaction, as well.

"You are coming to a point in the cycle where interest rates are making people nervous and they want to get stuff done," said Richmond broker John Troughton, with Cushman and Wakefield.

But Troughton isn't seeing a surge of pre-entitlement buying in Richmond, nor is Jim Clark, a Cornish and Carey broker who sells industrial land in Emeryville, Oakland and Richmond, often for conversion to residential.

"There's just too much risk there" still, Clark said. "Would I like to see it? Yes. It would make the deals go along better."

Still, there is some sign pre-entitlement buying is happening in downtown Oakland. At 1100 Broadway, developer Bill Sumski and his partners late last year acquired the historic Key System office building, with condominiums as one of two possible uses. While the site has been entitled as a hotel and office structure in the past, it will need brand-new entitlements if Sumski goes to the hottest market sector right now, which is still housing.

Sumski said in February he moved on the site in part because he was confident in city planners.

"The city is very motivated," Sumski said.

Ryan Tate covers East Bay real estate for the San Francisco Business Times.

bay_area

April 11th, 2005, 07:16 PM

Downtown Oakland Housing Update Spring 2005
http://www.business2oakland.com/main/images/10k-Hsg-Update-Feb-2005-MAP.gif

612bv3

April 12th, 2005, 05:03 AM

waaaaaaaaaaah.. im lost. whats that 324 howard and that 1101 o farell and exchange place?!
I think they're all proposals. Press on the links if you want some info.

324 howard (http://www.hellermanus.com/portfolio_project_hm.cfm?ProjectID=%25%24HK%2FZM9%20%0A&categoryid=%22%24HL%24%0A)

Exchange Place (http://www.hellermanus.com/portfolio_project_hm.cfm?ProjectID=%25%24HK%2F%5B%3D%21%20%0A&categoryid=%22%24HL%24%0A)

I don't really have info on 1101 O Farrell.

612bv3

April 13th, 2005, 02:42 AM

Downtown Oakland Housing Update Spring 2005
http://www.business2oakland.com/main/images/10k-Hsg-Update-Feb-2005-MAP.gif
They should start building highrise condos around Lake Merritt and Jack London Square. It's nice to know that there's a lot of things going around Oakland.

bay_area

April 13th, 2005, 04:35 PM

Actually,
as far as Downtown Housing is concerned, Oakland is one of the most active cities in the entire nation.

612bv3

April 15th, 2005, 03:00 AM

^ I didn't know that, too bad they're not going to build that Light Rail.

Monkey

April 19th, 2005, 08:54 AM

I hate to turn my attention away from Oakland :( but take a look at these beauties:

http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2005/04/18/ba_rincon_18_ph01.jpg

Rincon Hill, Harrison & Fremont,and they're RESIDENTIAL :banana: The 2nd firm involved is Arquitectonica.

The picture of the rendering is from today's San Francisco Chronicle, shown in connection with a lengthy and very fine article entitled Rincon Hill on the Rise (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/04/18/BAG7KCAJG11.DTL&type=printable) by the paper's wonderful architecture writer John King. :okay:

It appears there's something of a master area plan in the works for this section of SF so close to downtown. It would require some adjustments and commitments, but, having read King's article, I think it would be just fantastic if the City pulled itself together to make it become reality. The first stage of approval is set for Thursday before the Planning Commission; let's keep our fingers crossed! :cheers:

612bv3

April 20th, 2005, 01:51 AM

Great find WH! I love that picture of 300 Spear, it's beautiful alright. It just started construction and I can't wait to see rise up from that parking lot. :banana:

naughtyins0mniac

April 21st, 2005, 12:36 AM

man i enjoyed reading that article...

Monkey

April 21st, 2005, 01:23 AM

Glad to hear that, insomniac! :) We're really lucky to have John King. I think he's a fine writer, and I like his attitude. :okay:

612bv3

April 21st, 2005, 06:48 AM

^ I loved the Loma Prieta series he wrote a few months ago, those were great.

Monkey

April 22nd, 2005, 09:51 PM

Glad you follow King's excellent articles too, bv3! :)

Then you've surely seen how he panned Heller Manus yesterday in his piece on the Hotel Vitale (
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/04/21/BAGGGCCIUM1.DTL&type=printable). :D The man is a treasure! :okay:

612bv3

April 23rd, 2005, 06:15 AM

^ I agree with everything he said in that article about the Hotel Vitale, they really could have done better, much, much better.

Monkey

April 24th, 2005, 12:04 AM

Right! Not only could they, but they should have done better. A lost opportunity. :( A scandal really. :bash:

J.A.C.

April 29th, 2005, 12:18 AM

One Rincon Hill
http://www.pmainc.com/thumbnails/th-onerincon.jpg

I like this one a lot.

Monkey

April 29th, 2005, 12:37 AM

I think there's an initial step for approval scheduled before the SF Planning Commission. Let's hope those folks will like it, too, and get ready to remove some barriers and devise & approve some area plan modifications so that these towers can become reality! :)

612bv3

April 29th, 2005, 02:06 AM

Daly seeks fees on new Rincon Hill high-rises
Money would aid existing residents

Suzanne Herel, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly wants developers who build high- rise homes on Rincon Hill to pay a fee to combat the negative effects that he believes the projects will have on low-income residents who live South of Market.

At Tuesday's Board of Supervisors meeting, Daly asked the city attorney to draft a law requiring such a levy and to establish a South of Market Community Stabilization Fund.

"The ripple effect of the new development -- skyrocketing property values and diminished land availability -- threaten to bring about displacement of existing businesses and low-income residents," Daly said.

He said the fund would be used to counter displacement and increase opportunities for employment and housing for South of Market residents, many of whom live on low or fixed incomes.

The City Planning Commission isn't scheduled to vote on the Rincon Hill rezoning plan, which would authorize the residential towers, until May 5 at the earliest. After the commission's vote, it will go before the supervisors.

The ever-changing plan to transform an industrial district into a luxury neighborhood would allow up to five new towers above 35 stories that would house apartments and condominiums with panoramic views of San Francisco Bay.

The high-rises would alter the city's skyline, climbing as high as 550 feet in selected spots in the area bounded by the Embarcadero, Second Street, Folsom Street and the approach to the Bay Bridge.

Already approved for the neighborhood are four high-rises by Tishman Speyer Properties. The supervisors approved the Tishman Speyer project early last year, but only after Daly brokered a deal with the developer that netted more affordable housing units than are required by city law to accompany such projects.

The current rezoning plan for the rest of the 12-block area at the foot of Market Street "gives away great density bonuses," Daly said Tuesday.

naughtyins0mniac

May 2nd, 2005, 07:31 AM

whew.. never been here for a long time.. btw, i went to metreon yesterday. bloomingdale's mission facade is almost done. the last floor level already has walls.. and this morning, seen the federal building. theyre putting on real clear glass windows which is so cool..

612bv3

May 3rd, 2005, 01:38 AM

^ Nice, haven't been to SF lately, too much work to do.

Monkey

May 3rd, 2005, 03:23 AM

I haven't been in the City for a while, either. Sounds like there's a bunch of new stuff to see -- thanks for the hint, insomniac! :)

As to Supervisor Daly's fee demand, I saw that article, too, bv3. I wonder what effect it will have?

Palal

May 3rd, 2005, 05:11 AM

Monkey

May 3rd, 2005, 10:02 AM

Glad you see it that way, Palal! :okay:

612bv3

May 4th, 2005, 01:41 AM

Stem cell panel picks S.F.
Tally of points after weekend site visits gives city clear edge for Friday's full-committee vote

Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Science Writer

Tuesday, May 3, 2005

http://sfgate.com/c/pictures/2005/05/03/ba_stem_cell_hq_fx.jpg

San Francisco bested three competing California cities Monday in the battle to land the headquarters of the state's $3 billion stem cell program, scoring well ahead of the second-place finisher.

After totaling up points for location, amenities and general impressions, key decision makers for the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine decided San Francisco was clearly the best place to be. Although there is still technically a chance of an upset, it appears almost certain that the institute's full 29-member board, known as the Independent Citizens Oversight Committee, will go along with the eight-member subcommittee's preferences when it meets Friday to make the final call.

Sacramento narrowly edged out San Diego as the No. 2 choice, while a proposed site in Emeryville finished last.

San Francisco won largely on the strength of the Bay Area's biomedical research institutions, as well as the estimated $17 million value of incentives the city is offering the stem cell program, which include 10 years of free rent, $900,000 worth of hotel accommodations and free use of laboratory facilities at San Francisco General Hospital.

San Diego and San Francisco had long been considered the most likely choices. Although the Southern California city's bid was boosted by a location surrounded by other top research centers and biotech companies, it had no comparable offer on hotels and lab space.

Sacramento's proximity to state government and low housing costs pushed its score much higher than many observers had expected, despite the city's lack of biomedical heft. Emeryville, where the stem cell program is being housed on a temporary basis, was praised for local enthusiasm for the stem cell venture -- but penalized for not having big conference facilities other than borrowed space at two local businesses, Chiron Corp. and Pixar.

More than a dozen cities initially entered bids to host the Proposition 71 headquarters, all of them seasoned with generous discounts. The subcommittee threw out all but the final four based on staff recommendations, then conducted site visits of the finalists over the weekend to choose the winner and a runner-up.

The only real contest now is between San Diego and Sacramento for second place. And that matters only if a new chief executive is chosen for the Prop. 71 program who has a strong preference to be in the No. 2 city, rather than San Francisco.

"I feel good," San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said after the decision. Newsom and Sacramento's mayor, Heather Fargo, attended the proceedings, which were held in a UC Davis Medical Center conference room a short drive from the State Capitol.

"The (San Francisco) location is as good as it gets," Newsom said, adding that his administration will "continue the advocacy" until the final vote. The San Francisco site is on the third floor of a new mixed-use building at 250 King St. overlooking SBC Park and near the UCSF Mission Bay campus.

Robert N. Klein, chairman of the site search subcommittee as well as the full oversight board, did all he could to soften the disappointment for the also-ran jurisdictions. He noted that much bigger plums are yet to come, once the stem cell enterprise starts issuing grants for new laboratories. And the "real winners," he insisted, are patients and taxpayers who will reap the benefits of the additional research financed by the savings gained from the municipal subsidies offered in the winning bid.

No other state government program has ever been courted in such a fashion, he said, calling it evidence of "a renaissance in California for science and medicine," likening it to what happened in Europe during the middle of the 17th century.

Most of the subsidies are being financed by private contributors and business leaders anxious to add a prestige nameplate to their city's skyline - - even though only 50 administrative employees will be working at the stem cell institute's central office.

Winning the stem cell program will help "create a real psychological turnaround" for the regional economy, said Jim Wunderman, president and CEO of the Bay Area Council, a regional business group.

"We've been hurt by significant job losses," he said. "The economy of the Bay Area is at stake."

But he insisted it would be a mistake for San Francisco advocates to assume the contest is over.

"Basically we're now in the bottom of the eighth, and we have a nice lead. But there is still a 29-member panel that has to discuss this, and nobody has heard from them yet," Wunderman said.

Monday's subcommittee meeting was a mixture of tortured discussion of the scoring process and sometimes subjective judgments about the merits of the four finalist locations.

San Francisco had a commanding lead going into the meeting based on results of an initial round of scoring. On a scale of 200 maximum points, San Francisco was awarded 158, followed by Sacramento (135), San Diego (127) and Emeryville (119).

The site visits were scored separately, on a 90-point scale. Up to 10 negative points were also allowed to account for such "burdens" as high living costs and, in San Diego's case, its distance from the state capital.

In the site visit rankings, San Diego was the top point-getter, with an average 72.8 points awarded by the eight subcommittee members, only five of whom actually participated in the weekend tour.

Sacramento got 65.5, largely on the strength of the community support demonstrated during its site visit and the quality of its proposed office location near the Sacramento River at 1 Capitol Mall. San Francisco was given 64.75 points, followed by Emeryville at 52.7.

The scoring by individual board members varied widely and clearly reflected hometown favoritism. Phyllis Preciado, for instance, a Fresno doctor who extols the merits of the Central Valley at nearly every meeting she attends, gave Sacramento an almost perfect score based on the site visits.

John Reed, head of the Burnham Institute in La Jolla, gave San Diego a nearly perfect score, while dinging San Francisco for poor "functional suitability" of a building that includes condominiums and retail stores rather than high-end laboratories.

But it was only the grand total of all the scores, from both sets of evaluations, that mattered: And San Francisco ended well out front, with 222. 75, followed by Sacramento (200.5), San Diego (199.8) and Emeryville (171.7).

The razor-thin margin separating Sacramento and San Diego led Klein to recommend that all three top vote-getters be invited to make one last presentation on Friday when the full board meets. However, none of the bidders will be allowed to add any new incentives to their offers.

The attention drawn by the location derby has largely overshadowed a question considered far more important by most biologists: How soon will the money start to flow?

Klein had initially targeted the first grants for this month, but that will not happen. In fact, lawsuits have been filed that effectively block the state's ability to issue Prop. 71 bonds.

Gov. Schwarzenegger invited Klein and his colleagues at the stem cell institute to a private briefing in his office after Monday's meeting. Although the governor's staff indicated it was merely an update, Klein said the talk would include matters related to the litigation, presumably including details of an alternative financing plan Klein has been trying to assemble in order to get the stem cell enterprise going this summer.

Monkey

May 4th, 2005, 04:32 AM

Thanks! :) That's pleasing news indeed, bv3! :banana: I figured that SF would be chosen ... where else do you have such world renowned universities as Berkeley and Stanford in close proximity? Now let's just hope the full panel will give the thumbs up! :okay:

On another note, it seems the developers of the Emporium/Bloomingdale's project committed a no-no that is now costing them dearly: they demolished a section of the old building that was meant to be preserved. The punishment: $2.5mio to the City for preservation work elsewhere. Here's the article (http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/05/03/BAGBICIUVA1.DTL) in today's San Francisco Chronicle.

612bv3

May 4th, 2005, 06:08 AM

Thanks! :) That's pleasing news indeed, bv3! :banana: I figured that SF would be chosen ... where else do you have such world renowned universities as Berkeley and Stanford in close proximity? Now let's just hope the full panel will give the thumbs up! :okay:
I'm really glad that SF has a really good chance of getting this, it will seriously help fill in the hole the dot-com burst left.

On another note, it seems the developers of the Emporium/Bloomingdale's project committed a no-no that is now costing them dearly: they demolished a section of the old building that was meant to be preserved. The punishment: $2.5mio to the City for preservation work elsewhere. Here's the article (http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/05/03/BAGBICIUVA1.DTL) in today's San Francisco Chronicle.
Thanks for the find, I haven't heard of this until now. I'm really surprised, I hope it doesn't put a dent on the Bloomingdale's/Mall project.

612bv3

May 5th, 2005, 03:31 AM

I found this on Webcor's site. It's going to be right next to Lake Meritt, where the highrises are.

CATHEDRAL OF CHRIST THE LIGHT
http://www.webcor.com/auto_images/large/halfrenderingsmall1115054405.jpg
Owner: Catholic Cathedral Corporation of the East Bay
Construction Manager:Conversion Management Associates
Design Architect: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
Architect of Record: Kendall/Heaton Associates
Structural Engineer: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
Mechanical Engineer:Taylor Engineering
Electrical Engineer: The Engineering Enterprise

5 level subterranean parking

Monkey

May 5th, 2005, 04:32 AM

Thanks for the find, I haven't heard of this until now. I'm really surprised, I hope it doesn't put a dent on the Bloomingdale's/Mall project.

I doubt that it will ... after all, such contingencies are probably built
into the project. But I'm sure the fine will have something of an
"ouch" effect.

Upon reading the article you'll find that this penalty is not entirely immune
to challenge: it appears that there was a lack of clarity and specificity
among the various SF departments in charge of issuing the permit. :bash:
Thus the company may have acted in perfectly good faith when it destroyed
those portions of the old building.

Now this new Oakland project: :eek2:

naughtyins0mniac

May 6th, 2005, 01:51 AM

will that project be built? its gonna be way taller than other buildings in oakland if it will.

612bv3

May 6th, 2005, 02:04 AM

I'm not even sure what the towers are for, I think it might be some kind of mistake made by Webcor. I think the church is designed by SOM. It'll be replacing that parking lot.
http://www.liturgicalenvirons.com/images/cmp_phoChristTheLight.jpg

612bv3

May 6th, 2005, 02:17 AM

I can't wait to see this built.

California Academy of Sciences

http://www.webcor.com/auto_images/large/image0011115054971.jpg

officedweller

May 6th, 2005, 03:13 AM

So that SOM cathedral design replaces the Calatrava design?
http://www.metropolismag.com/images/images_0601/cal/g.jpg

612bv3

May 7th, 2005, 03:48 AM

^yea, SOM will replace that design.

612bv3

May 7th, 2005, 03:50 AM

UCSF acquires land for hospital at Mission Bay
Option for 99-year lease locks in parcel

Staff Writer
Published: Thursday, May 5, 2005 10:59 PM PDT

University of California, San Francisco administrators say they are finalizing a deal with Catellus Development Corp. that locks in the company's last Mission Bay parcel, 9.7 acres just south of 16th Street that is slated for a new hospital devoted to caring for children, women and cancer patients.

"Our plan is not to build a replacement hospital," explained Bruce Komiske, executive director of facilities planning for UCSF Medical Center. "It's something that really hasn't been done before, and that's to create a very healing, uplifted environment that's family-centered."

San Francisco officials have touted the advantages of having a clinical research hospital close to the scientists moving in north of 16th Street to the rapidly rising Mission Bay campus there — a point that could become even more relevant over time if the much-sought California Institute for Regenerative Medicine comes to the area.

On its Web site, Catellus describes its deal with UCSF as an option agreement for a 99-year lease, with option payments equal to the rent amount.

Although an architect has not yet been selected for the project, Komiske said the SmithGroup has been working this spring to work with staff on a general outline so financial and scheduling arrangements can go ahead. He said a design competition would probably be held this summer to promote original ideas for a state-of-the-art environment with amenities that would include hospitable lobbies and gardens.

Things are unfolding on a "day-to-day basis," Komiske said Thursday. Preliminary documents have indicated that a Children's Hospital would open first — partly because existing facilities in the "functionally obsolete" hospitals on UCSF's main Parnassus campus split the unit into three different pieces.

While 210 beds were initially contemplated at Mission Bay, that number could rise, since the need for existing beds has gone up in the past year and half. The hospital could open in seven years.

UC regents voted to go ahead with the real estate negotiations this spring, also taking note of ongoing discussions with city health officials about whether a public hospital could "co-locate" with UCSF at Mission Bay as a way to extend currently successful staff-sharing between the two institutions at San Francisco General Hospital.

San Francisco Health Director Dr. Mitch Katz has pursued the possibility of building a smaller public hospital at Mission Bay while retaining outpatient services at the current Potrero Avenue location as a way to meet state seismic requirements for inpatient beds without breaking the bank.

Last year, health commissioners put off asking voters to fund the state-mandated upgrade to see if such a deal might be worked out.

612bv3

May 7th, 2005, 03:51 AM

Navy close to turning over Treasure Island base

By Justin Jouvenal
Published: Thursday, May 5, 2005 10:59 PM PDT

SAN FRANCISCO — The Navy is close to turning over an old base on Treasure and Yerba Buena islands that The City hopes to transform into a swanky neighborhood and tourist destination complete with a museum, hotels, open space and a new marina, according to city officials.

The authority planning the project, which has crawled along for more than a decade and has been criticized by environmentalists, said it should take possession of the 455-acre Navy Station Treasure Island as soon as the end of the year. Construction could begin in as little as two years.

"This is going to be a massive, new San Francisco community," said Tony Hall, executive director of the Treasure Island Redevelopment Authority.

612bv3

May 7th, 2005, 04:14 AM

IT'S FINAL!!!!!

San Francisco selected as site of stem cell institute

Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, May 6, 2005

Fresno -- After two rounds of close voting, San Francisco was chosen Friday afternoon to become the headquarters of the state’s stem cell institute, making the city poised to become the world capital of the emerging science.

San Francisco won by a five-vote margin, gaining the nod from 16 members of the institute’s board of directors. San Diego finished second with 11 votes.

Sacramento was eliminated after a first round of voting, when it received just three votes; all those votes switched to San Francisco in the next round.

"This secures our future as a point of destination for discovery," said Mayor Gavin Newsom after the vote. He believed San Francisco’s international status, along with 46,000 square feet of free lab space at San Francisco General Hospital, ultimately swayed the board.

The selection process has been an intense courting period with dueling city dowries, as city officials throughout the state tried to persuade members of the institute’s governing board that their municipality was more desirable than other sites in California.

The cities offered free rent at some of the state’s most desirable real estate, along with goodies like free rides on jet planes, free use of gourmet kitchens, free furniture and — in San Francisco — free access to SBC Park. The institute will employ only 50 people, but will decide how to spend $3 billion approved by voters for research grants.

Los Angeles, San Jose and Emeryville were among the other entities bidding for the headquarters. Los Angeles and San Jose were eliminated early on, and Emeryville was knocked out earlier this week.

San Francisco was the front-runner throughout the selection process and will give the institute free office space for 10 years in a building across the street from SBC Park, along with other amenities. The bid’s perks were valued at $17 million.

612bv3

May 7th, 2005, 04:16 AM

San Francisco named HQ for stem cell agency

By PAUL ELIAS, AP Biotechnology Writer

Friday, May 6, 2005

(05-06) 17:55 PDT Fresno, Calif. (AP) --

California's $3 billion stem cell agency named San Francisco as its permanent headquarters Friday, a designation the city expects will bring it scientific prestige while boosting its economy.

"There is no question it will be an anchor for business," Mayor Gavin Newsom said during a news conference after the vote. "This secures our future as a point of destination for discovery."

The headquarters itself will house only 50 employees, but three cities fought for the honor Friday during the monthly meeting of the board that oversees the agency as if they were vying to land a major pharmaceutical company with tens of thousands of jobs. San Diego, Sacramento and San Francisco each promised the stem cell institute free rent in luxury office buildings and millions of dollars in other perks.

Walter Barnes, a 40-year veteran with the state's Department of General Services who helped vet the bids, said the amount of perks offered by so many bidders for a state facility was unprecedented.

"I have never seen such an enthusiastic response to a procurement like this," Barnes said.

Newsom said the city's bid was worth $17 million in perks, including 10 years' free rent in a new building directly across the street from the San Francisco Giants baseball stadium. San Francisco also will provide 2,600 free hotel rooms and discounts on another 14,000 rooms, which he said were worth $900,000. It will also provide free access to several conference centers, including the Moscone Convention Center, which can accommodate more than 40,000 people.

Newsom said one of the deal's lynchpins was the free use of 46,000 square feet of laboratory space at San Francisco General Hospital.

Newsom and other civic leaders said the institute will entice biotechnology companies operating in other parts of the country to relocate to San Francisco. The city also is expected to host international scientific conferences.

"It will be a nexus for a lot of activity," said Steve Burrill, a San Francisco biotechnology analyst who helped the city put together its bid.

The stem cell institute was created in November after voters overwhelmingly approved a measure allowing California to borrow $3 billion to fund human embryonic stem cell research over 10 years. The institute plans to build at least a 17,000-square-foot office where its employees will help dole out nearly $300 million in research grants annually for 10 years.

The squabbling over where in California that would happen broke out almost immediately among the 29-member board that oversees the agency, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. The disagreements broke down along geographical lines.

Dr. Ed Holmes, dean of University of California, San Diego Medical Center, complained he was "miffed" by how each city's bid was scored — San Diego scored highest from personal visits by key stem cell agency officials, but San Francisco's overall score was highest because of the high marks state officials initially gave it.

Two San Francisco board members — Jeff Sheehy of the University of California, San Francisco and David Serrano-Sewell of the city attorney's office — defended their city's overall top score and derided Holmes for suggesting it wasn't earned properly.

In the end, the board voted 16-11 — two members were absent — to award the headquarters to San Francisco.

"It's important," said board member Dr. Phil Pizzo, dean of Stanford University's medical school. "But it's not as important as where the funds go to do the research."

Indeed, San Diego and Sacramento officials said they would now turn their attention to landing multimillion dollar grants the institute plans to dole out to build new laboratories and other facilities necessary for human embryonic stem cell research.

No timetable for those grants have been announced, but institute officials said they hope to begin awarding modest individual grants by November. The board on Friday appointed 15 scientists from outside California to oversee the grant application process.

Two lawsuits challenging the institute's legality are hampering its ability to award any grants. The institute can't borrow any money while the lawsuits are pending unless it files a special lawsuit called a "validation suit" to ensure lenders they will get paid back. Board chairman Bob Klein said the institute is considering such a move.

Klein also said the institute is discussing borrowing money from philanthropic institutions and paying them back once the lawsuits are settled. One lawsuit alleges the institute's oversight of $3 billion is illegal and the other alleges that the proposition language that created the agency was unconstitutional. Klein has said both lawsuits are without merit.

612bv3

May 7th, 2005, 04:23 AM

So much good news! Time to celebrate.
:dj:
:dance:

naughtyins0mniac

May 7th, 2005, 07:50 AM

yeah huh..

about the islands, if ever, hope they keep em green..

naughtyins0mniac

May 8th, 2005, 08:06 AM

bloomingdale [may 7th]
view from mission st.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v227/naughtyins0mniac/f_r_i_s_c_o/d7c06666.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v227/naughtyins0mniac/f_r_i_s_c_o/58ac6c4e.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v227/naughtyins0mniac/f_r_i_s_c_o/254f6a18.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v227/naughtyins0mniac/f_r_i_s_c_o/52bd9eed.jpg

view from 4th st.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v227/naughtyins0mniac/f_r_i_s_c_o/af92e61c.jpg

612bv3

May 11th, 2005, 03:26 AM

:eek2: WOW, it looks great, thanks for the pictures!

Monkey

May 11th, 2005, 04:37 AM

Thanks, insomniac! You saved me the trip. :) I hope somehow I'll be able to return the favor one day.

naughtyins0mniac

May 12th, 2005, 12:25 AM

Thanks, insomniac! You saved me the trip. :) I hope somehow I'll be able to return the favor one day.

were you planning to go to the city?..

i took em coz we went to mels drive on saturday... and im also a reporter in this thread right?.. ill try take pictures of the federal building and rincon hill this weekend, if you dont mind? lol.

Monkey

May 12th, 2005, 01:30 AM

Would I mind? But no, quite the contrary ... I'd be elated! :banana:

612bv3

May 22nd, 2005, 09:35 PM

HERE'S A BETTER PIC OF THE CHURCH I POSTED IN THE LAST PAGE, IT'S FROM THE CHRONICLE.
http://sfgate.com/c/pictures/2005/05/22/ba_high_res_craig.jpg
http://sfgate.com/c/pictures/2005/05/22/ba_oakland_cathedral51.jpg

Here's an article about it written by John King.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/22/BAGU0CSU631.DTL

Here's an article about the groundbreaking.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/22/BAG8VCSQJO1.DTL

http://sfgate.com/c/pictures/2005/05/22/ba_cathedral22_092.jpg

streetscapeer

May 25th, 2005, 07:47 PM

great pics of the new bloomingdales...love all that glass:)

Monkey

May 26th, 2005, 09:50 PM

Going back to bv3's post on the new cathedral in Oakland:

Thanks for posting it! :okay: Following St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco decades ago, this will be the first major sacred building in our area. It does sound quite intriguing, and I'm glad Oakland gets it. :cool:

edsg25

May 27th, 2005, 01:51 AM

I am by no means suggesting it, nor do I necessarily think it is a good suggestion, but I am curious:

was Treasure Island ever considered as a site for a new 49er stadium?

612bv3

May 27th, 2005, 01:59 AM

^Not that I know of, the only sites for the new 49ers stadium that I've heard about is Candelstick or Mission Bay, but not Treasure Island.

I just got back from the city from a field trip to SFMOMA, I couldn't take any pictures of the 300 Spears or the Bloomie b/c my teacher told me not to bring my camera.:( I did however see a big hole in the site of the 300 Spears so it's going pretty well.

612bv3

May 27th, 2005, 02:03 AM

I want to share this drawing that I like.
http://www.archnewsnow.com/features/images/Feature0126_03x.jpg

naughtyins0mniac

May 27th, 2005, 02:32 AM

612bv3

May 27th, 2005, 02:46 AM

^ We passed by it, we took the bus.

Monkey

May 27th, 2005, 03:48 AM

The bus ... how perfectly civic! :okay:

But too bad you weren't allowed to bring your camera! :(

Palal

May 27th, 2005, 09:13 AM

edsg25

May 27th, 2005, 01:17 PM

Monkey

May 28th, 2005, 09:30 AM

You're probably right with your assumption about height limits on any new construction on TI, edsg. Yet the day when those will be put into place seems quite a while away yet. ;)

Also, I don't think TI would be suitable for a major new football venue unless ALL fans abandoned their cars and adopted a sudden liking for public transit. Of course there could be an enormous fleet of special ferries on game days, probably from both sides of the Bay ... :cool: Yet I consider it unlikely that the 49ers would build a new stadium there.

Now the news of the day that I really want to report here is the fate of a 51-story residential building that just seems to have been given a new chance. :)

According to an article in the business section of today's San Francisco Chronicle (http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/05/27/BUGLHCVJMB1.DTL&type=printable), a Superior Court Judge has found the EIR for the planned new Transbay Terminal flawed and insufficient. If the decision is allowed to stand, the aforementioned condominium project at nearby 80 Tacoma can go ahead. :horse: Of course there's already talk of an appeal, and, knowing the slowly grinding wheels of justice,things will take a long time before they are finally decided and the projects involved can go ahead.

612bv3

May 29th, 2005, 05:37 AM

I had a couple other questions on the mid-bay islands:

• May I assume that there would be some very serious height limits set on TI development? There are some very great sight-lines between SF and East Bay that could be seriously affected by any form of high rise construction.

• Is the Bay Bridge physically set up for what would be far more on-and-off traffic from the YB on-and-off ramps that civilian development of TI will engender? Isn't it a shame that BART can't serve the midbay islands? TI development will create a first: a part of SF not attached to the rest of SF. Can TI really be integrated into the framework of SF.

• Is there any thought of YB development? Obviously man-made TI is a natural for reuse. YB's topography (and beauty) make it far less attractive for development.

I don't even think they should start building buildings in Treasure Island that's over 5 stories high. Treasure Island was reclaimed a long time ago and sits on very unstable grounds. If you've seen pictures before they reclaimed Treasure Island, you'll see that it's sitting on sand and that ain't good during earthquakes.

It's kinda hard getting off Treasure/Yerba Buena Island. You have to wait for a moment were there isn't a car before you can enter the freeway and that ain't easy when you're entering a very busy freeway/Bay Bridge. There are plan's to have a ferry going to Treasure Island when it's developed.

I don't think there's talks about development in Yerba Buena. A lot people would be against it if there was one. Plus, cutting those trees down for development would result into erosion, so that ain't good.

612bv3

May 29th, 2005, 05:41 AM

Now the news of the day that I really want to report here is the fate of a 51-story residential building that just seems to have been given a new chance. :)

According to an article in the business section of today's San Francisco Chronicle (http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/05/27/BUGLHCVJMB1.DTL&type=printable), a Superior Court Judge has found the EIR for the planned new Transbay Terminal flawed and insufficient. If the decision is allowed to stand, the aforementioned condominium project at nearby 80 Tacoma can go ahead. :horse: Of course there's already talk of an appeal, and, knowing the slowly grinding wheels of justice,things will take a long time before they are finally decided and the projects involved can go ahead.
Well, I don't know if that's good news or bad, I want the Transbay terminal built, but I also want 80 Natoma to be built. 80 Natoma has a very interesting architecture.:yes:

Monkey

May 29th, 2005, 08:40 AM

Right you are, bv3: we do need a better terminal building. :) And indeed wouldn't it be nice if we could get both! :cool:

naughtyins0mniac

May 29th, 2005, 11:48 PM

300 Spear St.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v227/naughtyins0mniac/ssc/331c260d.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v227/naughtyins0mniac/ssc/b2e41579.jpg

Watermark
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v227/naughtyins0mniac/ssc/c5b24ce3.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v227/naughtyins0mniac/ssc/40f959bf.jpg

**[5/28/05]
©

naughtyins0mniac

May 29th, 2005, 11:52 PM

i have a question..
whats this?
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v227/naughtyins0mniac/ssc/72410e9f.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v227/naughtyins0mniac/ssc/0345e84c.jpg
and look! the japan coast guard!
[5/28/05]
©

edsg25

May 30th, 2005, 12:21 AM

I don't even think they should start building buildings in Treasure Island that's over 5 stories high. Treasure Island was reclaimed a long time ago and sits on very unstable grounds. If you've seen pictures before they reclaimed Treasure Island, you'll see that it's sitting on sand and that ain't good during earthquakes.

It's kinda hard getting off Treasure/Yerba Buena Island. You have to wait for a moment were there isn't a car before you can enter the freeway and that ain't easy when you're entering a very busy freeway/Bay Bridge. There are plan's to have a ferry going to Treasure Island when it's developed.

I don't think there's talks about development in Yerba Buena. A lot people would be against it if there was one. Plus, cutting those trees down for development would result into erosion, so that ain't good.

I realized that Bay Bridge traffic would have been an issue here. However, the dynamics of Sundays (when the Niners would be playing virtually all their games) would be different. You're certainly not dealing with people crossing from East Bay into the city for work. And an early start to NFL games means a lot of people would be at the stadium by 10:00 for tail gaiting.

I'm not saying this is a good spot for the stadium, but NFL scheduling does make it work more than any other pro-sport would. Ferry service would be a possiblity.

Too bad UCSF has all that land tied up across CB from SBC...that would have made an ideal spot for a 49er stadium, linked to the Giants.

612bv3

May 30th, 2005, 12:27 AM

@insomniac - Are you talking about the cruise ship or the pier? The ship is part for the Princess Cruise Lines and that's Pier 30-32, where the James R. Herman Cruise Ship Terminal will be built.
http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2000/02/16/mn_waterfront-piers30-32.jpg
http://bryantstreetpier.com/images/picture2.jpg
http://bryantstreetpier.com/images/picture4.jpg
http://www.bryantstreetpier.com/images/picture1.jpg
http://www.bryantstreetpier.com/images/picture7.jpg
http://www.bryantstreetpier.com/images/picture3.jpg

612bv3

May 30th, 2005, 12:35 AM

I realized that Bay Bridge traffic would have been an issue here. However, the dynamics of Sundays (when the Niners would be playing virtually all their games) would be different. You're certainly not dealing with people crossing from East Bay into the city for work. And an early start to NFL games means a lot of people would be at the stadium by 10:00 for tail gaiting.

I'm not saying this is a good spot for the stadium, but NFL scheduling does make it work more than any other pro-sport would. Ferry service would be a possiblity.

Too bad UCSF has all that land tied up across CB from SBC...that would have made an ideal spot for a 49er stadium, linked to the Giants.
If it does work out, they still have to got through the residents of Yerba Buena Island. They will certainly complain about traffic and the pollution. And yes, there are a few houses in Yerba Buena Island.

There was a plan to build an arena in Mission Bay but it didn't go anywhere, Mission Bay is an ideal place for a stadium since it's very close to Caltrans station and Muni, but the 49ers are sticking with their current location.

612bv3

May 30th, 2005, 12:40 AM

naughtyins0mniac

May 30th, 2005, 10:11 AM

@insomniac - Are you talking about the cruise ship or the pier? The ship is part for the Princess Cruise Lines and that's Pier 30-32, where the James R. Herman Cruise Ship Terminal will be built.

i know... i was just playing, lol. actually they already have this.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v227/naughtyins0mniac/ssc/50803d4e.jpg

612bv3

June 1st, 2005, 01:40 AM

i know... i was just playing, lol. actually they already have this.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v227/naughtyins0mniac/ssc/50803d4e.jpg
Just making sure.

Monkey

June 3rd, 2005, 05:00 AM

There's news on the Emporium/Bloomingdale's front again:

http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2005/06/02/bu_bloomies_032_mjm.jpg

^^^ According to the San Francisco Chronicle, which carried the above photo accompanying an article (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/06/02/BUG5ID1QOL33.DTL&type=printable) in today's business section, a major steel beam was put into place in the structure. :okay: Work (primarily on the interior) is slated to continue for 16 months. That means we might be able to do next year's Christmas shopping in the new complex! :)

Monkey

June 3rd, 2005, 05:08 AM

On another subject, we've had some inquiries about TREASURE ISLAND recently, notably from edsg. :)

The SF Chronicle's worthy architecture critic John King visited a series of proposals by teams of Cal students that were on exhibit and writes about possible future plans for the site in today's Datebook section (http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/06/02/DDGP4D19131.DTL&type=printable). Dream big, he says. :okay:

naughtyins0mniac

June 3rd, 2005, 07:57 AM

oh wow. look at that picture!

rt_0891

June 3rd, 2005, 08:10 AM

Wow! SF must be booming with construction right now. :)

The Mad Hatter!!

June 4th, 2005, 08:27 PM

New blueprint for highrise S.F.
Miami's Arquitectonica sweeps in for city's biggest, highest projects
Lizette Wilson
Arquitectonica has designs on the Bay Area.

The Miami-based architecture firm has quickly and quietly become the architect of choice for the region's three biggest housing projects: San Francisco's tallest residential development now in the pipeline, a five-building complex on Market Street and one of Oakland's largest-ever waterfront redevelopments. All told, they comprise up to 6,000 units that will begin rising from the ground during the next two years and transform the Bay Area's skyline.

"We do large port-of-entry waterfront cities -- cities that are urbanizing with a lot of redevelopment. Nothing exceeds the popularity of the highrise condominium market now," said Bernardo Fort-Brescia, who co-founded the firm with his architect wife Laurinda Spear in 1977. "I'm in San Francisco every two weeks now."

During his visits, Fort-Brescia meets with San Francisco planners -- a group he says has gotten an undeserved bad rap among architects -- and his firm's ever-expanding list of clients with local projects.

These include Signature Properties, which is redeveloping Oak Street to Ninth Avenue along Oakland's waterfront and building a 16-story residential project at Mission Bay, along with Angelo Sangiacomo, who is building Trinity Towers at 1177 Market St., and Tishman Speyer Properties, which is building the 40-story and 35-story towers in Rincon Hill.

Arquitectonica has doubled the size of its Miami headquarters, its L.A. and Paris offices all in the past month and now counts 400 employees worldwide.

The firm has no San Francisco presence.

Fort-Brescia, who indicated he was surprised by his firm's rapid growth, said for now the L.A. office is handling West Coast projects, but he may explore opening a Bay Area office should additional projects warrant it. He said his firm has a full plate as it is.

"We're a low-key firm. We haven't done any outreach or marketing in San Francisco," he said. "People call us."

Indeed, Sangiacomo cast a net nationwide exploring potential designs for his Trinity Towers project before hitting upon one of Arquitectonica's. It struck a chord and "someone gave him our name. He called us up," recalled Fort-Brescia. "We didn't know him before." Catellus Corp. also contacted the firm to do initial designs for a residential site in Mission Bay. When Signature Properties purchased the land and entitlements earlier this year, President Mike Ghielmetti liked the design and kept it. The project breaks ground this summer. Then there's Tishman Speyer.

After working with Arquitectonica on projects in New York and Paris, executives enlisted their help to tweak the design of their 300 Spear St. towers.

Those highrises will serve as a gateway to San Francisco for people entering via the Bay Bridge and will be Arquitectonica's first big mark on the city. Local firm Heller Manus Architects crafted the initial plan, with Tishman Speyer bringing in the Miami squad to massage the final product.

"We share ownership of this design," said Principal Clark Manus, noting the towers façade is now curved rather than angled and there are 160 fewer condo units than initially planned. Although some artistic professionals might be miffed by the late entrance of an out-of-towner with a radically different style, Manus insists that's not the case.

"Bernardo and I are pals. Our work together in this has been a marriage of balance. We're peers on the top of this tier."

And the top of the Rincon towers tier is a very high spot indeed.

Standing as high as 550 feet, the new construction will be among the city's tallest residential buildings and will dramatically change the character of the low-slung, low-key Rincon Hill.

Glass paneled and sinewy, the towers will serve as a fresh landmark eclipsing the area's tired Bank of America digital clock. The visual impact -- industrial chic with geometric flair -- is common among Arquitectonica projects.

During a recent party, Catellus CEO Nelson Rising, who manages more than 40 million square feet of space nationwide, was chatting with Signature Properties' Ghielmetti about Arquitectonica's versatility and lauding its "punch through" design at Mission Bay. The building is characterized by brick red and industrial gray support beams with recessed glass. It reaches 16 stories in some spots, including the windscreened rooftop patio. Ghielmetti hardly needed to be convinced to keep the design however.

He liked the building so much he re-hired the firm to do one of the conceptual plans for his upcoming Oakland development. The project, which is seeking approval for as many as 3,000 units in various buildings, includes an elliptical-glass-shaped structure designed by Arquitectonica.

"From our very first meeting, they were very easy to work with and they could always come up with some kind of solution to problems as they presented themselves," said Ghielmetti. "They're very creative, but it's all the day-to-day stuff that makes them very valuable."

While Ghielmetti's Mission Bay project is industrial chic, the Trinity Towers complex will be the antithesis. A village-type feel will dominate the 1,410-unit development characterized by pedestrian-friendly terraces.

The variety in Arquitectonica's Bay Area creations are paralleled in it's portfolio worldwide.Projects include everthing from the Miami Children's Museum, a wavy white stucco bunker punctuated by sky-scraping conesto the bronzed and articulated high-rise Westin Hotel at Times Square in New York.

Arquitectonica's best known building, however, is the Atlantis condominiums in Miami, which owes its renown to being prominently featured in the opening credits of "Miami Vice."

"All our designs are very modern and abstract with clean lines, but they are all very different too," said Fort-Brescia. "I want them all to look distinct from one another. I don't want people to see one design all over the place. I start my career over with every new project."

Lizette Wilson covers real estate for the San Francisco Business Times.

612bv3

June 4th, 2005, 09:20 PM

Great article! :applause: Thanks for sharing, I've their last renderings of their project in Market Street, it's not as good as 300 Spear, but it's pretty good. I can't remember if I've heard about their Oakland project.

StevenW

June 6th, 2005, 03:53 AM

Great article, indeed. :)

bay_area

June 8th, 2005, 04:04 AM

realized that Bay Bridge traffic would have been an issue here. However, the dynamics of Sundays (when the Niners would be playing virtually all their games) would be different. You're certainly not dealing with people crossing from East Bay into the city for work.
As far as traffic volume....Saturday and Sunday from 12pm-8pm are the busiest times during the entire week to cross the bay bridge(in either direction)...its been confirmed by CalTrans stats. Games and other events only add to that.

One of the strange traffic facts of The Bay Area.

PDXPaul

June 8th, 2005, 07:27 AM

I wonder if that's due to the high BART ridership on weekdays for commuters. Or to rephrase, I wonder if cross bay movement is higher on weekdays when BART is included.

bay_area

June 9th, 2005, 04:44 PM

OMG...one need only to look at the BART strike in the late 1990s to realize the contribution of BART......It took me 3.5 hrs to drive from Oakland to DT San Francisco because the strike put 50,000 more cars into the Macarthur maze.........its not perfect, but we'd be up shits creek without BART.

612bv3

June 11th, 2005, 02:30 AM

There might be another strike with AC Transit, SamTrans, and BART as soon as July 1 if they don't solve the problems they're having.

612bv3

June 11th, 2005, 02:32 AM

612bv3

June 12th, 2005, 12:53 AM

Here's news on the A's proposed ballpark.

De La Fuente pushes for new ballpark on estuary's waterfront (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/06/11/BAG1AD78001.DTL)

tyronne

June 16th, 2005, 08:47 PM

hello, just wanna share this photo i took around december last year. i haven't been able to take some photos lately.
http://internet.ggu.edu/~tragudo/bloomingdale_dome.jpg

anyway, 555 Mission is so near my school (GGU) but i already graduated so i haven't been there for some time now. the last time i passed by there, there's fence and i think excavations are still being done.

612bv3

June 18th, 2005, 06:15 AM

Transbay Terminal work can proceed
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/06/17/BAGM0DA9LV1.DTL&hw=transbay+terminal&sn=001&sc=1000

A state appeals court on Thursday ordered work to continue on the Transbay Terminal, despite apparent flaws in the project's environmental impact report.

The order delivered by the three-judge First Appellate District of the state Court of Appeal reversed a Superior Court ruling in May halting all work on the $4 billion regional transit project that would build a new transit hub and redevelopment district in downtown San Francisco.

The earlier ruling said the project's environmental impact report, a legally required assessment of major construction's effect on the immediate surroundings, failed to sufficiently address plans for a high-rise condominium tower.

Thursday's decision, however, was a defeat for real estate developer Jack Myers, who sued the city after the Board of Supervisors last fall blocked his plans for the condominiums, which would rise 51 stories at 80 Natoma St.

Transbay Joint Powers Authority officials, who also were named as a defendant in Myers' lawsuit, said they were pleased.

Apoc

June 18th, 2005, 09:35 PM

Besides the cathedral, are there any other major projects for Oakland? :cheers:

612bv3

June 19th, 2005, 04:00 AM

The Oakland Estuary, here's some links...
http://www.portofoakland.com/realesta/reso_05.asp
http://www.murakaminelson.com/estuary.html

Apoc

June 20th, 2005, 03:50 AM

Thanks! :cheers:

612bv3

June 20th, 2005, 04:14 AM

I was on my way to Fiesta Filipina today and I passed by the new Federal Building in SF.
http://img291.echo.cx/img291/4111/img06480as.jpg

tyronne

June 21st, 2005, 02:43 AM

i just wanna add these :)
i took them last saturday.

http://internet.ggu.edu/~tragudo/fedres_06182005_001b.jpg
http://internet.ggu.edu/~tragudo/fedres_06182005_002b.jpg
http://internet.ggu.edu/~tragudo/fedres_06182005_003b.jpg
http://internet.ggu.edu/~tragudo/fedres_06182005_004b.jpg

http://internet.ggu.edu/~tragudo/bloomingdale_06182005_001b.jpg
http://internet.ggu.edu/~tragudo/bloomingdale_06182005_002b.jpg

612bv3

June 21st, 2005, 06:27 AM

Thanks tyronne, your pics are much better than mine. It was great to see some glass on the new Federal Building.

naughtyins0mniac

June 22nd, 2005, 12:28 PM

man the pics i took on saturday were nothing compared to your pics.. oh glassy mission st..

StevenW

June 27th, 2005, 01:39 AM

good pix. :)

dewback

June 30th, 2005, 03:00 AM

A New Stanford Stadium...
http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2005/06/08/sp_stadium_210_pg.jpg

Here's the link.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/06/08/SPGJSD58851.DTL&hw=stanford&sn=002&sc=989

A modified Stanford Stadium (to less than 70,000 seats) would kill any Olympic bid similar to the 2012 one (with Palo Alto in the center). I guess they could use a new Candlestick Park as an Olympic stadium in case the city bids again. Cal wants a new stadium? I didn't know that.

aUen

July 2nd, 2005, 02:08 AM

6 - 30 - 05
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a114/auen00/ssc/fc182648.jpg

612bv3

July 2nd, 2005, 05:45 PM

Thanks for the update aUen.

612bv3

July 14th, 2005, 05:40 AM

http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/12125927.htm

$3 million gift for Mexican Museum

AN FRANCISCO - A Central Valley housing developer has given the Mexican Museum a surprise $3 million donation, moving the museum closer to its goal of building a permanent home in downtown San Francisco.

"The overriding consideration was my love for Mexican art," said donor Scott Salazar Meyers, who heads Del Valle Homes in Modesto and joined the museum's board a few months ago. "Seeing the structure go up will be my biggest thrill, and I hope this builds momentum for other donations."

The museum, which was founded by a San Francisco artist, celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, and is one of the oldest institutions of Latino culture in the United States.

Museum director William Moreno said the pledge has reinvigorated the campaign to raise $8 million by year's end to fund construction of its new building, which will be six times bigger than its current home in Fort Mason. Moreno said the museum will draw on city bond money to develop the building, which will house five floors of exhibitions.

By 2008, staff hope to move its 12,000 pieces - which span from pre-Columbian sculpture to Chicano art of the 1970s - to it new home across the street from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

612bv3

July 14th, 2005, 05:47 AM

http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_2839442

Condo complex slated for City Center

OAKLAND — More than 35 years ago, civic leaders dreamed of revitalizing downtown Oakland by tearing down the old to create a gleaming, $200 million City Center complex of office towers, large department stores, parking garages and a high-rise hotel spread over 15 city blocks.
The project would provide jobs for 12,000 people and generate millions in tax revenue.

The dream faded with the years as costs increased, the economy turned sour and department stores such as Liberty House, Bullock's and JC Penney pulled out, leaving the city's core peppered with vacant lots that have taken a very long time to fill.

Now, Shorenstein Realty Investors Three is moving forward with a plan to build 284 or 450 condominiums on one of the last two remaining City Center blocks, bordered by Martin Luther King Jr. Way and 11th, 12th and Jefferson streets.

Shorenstein will pay $8.1 million for the lot, which is owned by the city. If all goes well, construction should begin by winter 2007. Within two years the surface parking lot that has beenthere for decades will be replaced by an eight-story, L-shaped complex filled with new residents.

But if City Center's past is a clue, nothing is easy when it comes to downtown development, and the complicated proposal headed to the City Council for approval on July 19 is no exception.

The deal gives Shorenstein — a company that specializes in building offices, not housing — the option to subdivide the lot so construction can be done in two phases. The company has a year to buy both parcels, and 18 months after that to start construction on the first phase. It will partner with a housing developer on the project.

The company is not required to start construction on the second phase of the project for three years, or give that part up entirely. In yet another twist, Shorenstein could decide to scrap the residential plan altogether within the next 12 months and build an office complex there instead.

Those details did not concern Dan Vanderpriem, the city's Redevelopment Agency director. The city owns the lot and needs to sell it, he said.

"Right now, nothing is being done, it's a parking lot, so I'm not concerned about half of it getting done," he said. "They have the option to develop it for a limited amount of time, and after the time period has elapsed, we can sell it to someone else. The objective is to get it into other hands."

Big dreams for revitalization

The city spent $40 million just assembling the various properties that were later demolished in anticipation of the massive 15-block City Center shopping and office complex. A few historic buildings, the Pardee Mansion on 11th Street and the African American Museum and Library and First Unitarian Church on 14th Street, were spared.

At the Dec. 18, 1973, grand opening for the project's first new office tower, the 10-story Wells Fargo building at 14th and Broadway and groundbreaking for the 25-story Clorox building, Harold Ellis, president of Grubb and Ellis, predicted the regional complex would be completed by 1977, according to an article in the Oakland Tribune.

"It will contain five office buildings, a hotel and a major retail center providing 12,000 jobs," Ellis told the crowd, which included media from around the country. "It will create $4 million in new tax revenues for the community and $4.5 million a year in new revenue for the state.... This project will revitalize the central city and will reverse the escape to the suburbs."

But Grubb and Ellis, the city's first development partner for the project, was eventually replaced by Bramalea Ltd., and by 1980, plans for the vast, regional shopping mall foundered and were eventually scuttled when anchor tenants could not be found. A few years later, work began on the much smaller, garden-style pedestrian shopping and office plaza also known as Oakland City Center, across from City Hall.

In December 1996 Shorenstein purchased the Oakland City Center complex and assumed development rights for four other downtown parcels. At the time, the deal represented the eighth amendment to the regional City Center redevelopment project since Grubb & Ellis signed the original agreement on Nov. 4, 1970.

Market conditions change

Shorenstein intended to construct office towers on the four vacant downtown blocks, including a 26-story building on the 11th and MLK parcel. But only one, 555 City Center at 12th and Clay streets, was completed, and by the time it opened in 2002 the office market had dried up and the housing market had taken off.
As a result, Shorenstein relinquished its rights to build on one of the four parcels at 13th and Jefferson streets. The city sold it to the Olson Company, which has since started construction on 250 condominiums.

Shorenstein still holds the right to build office and commercial space on the final vacant "City Center" parcel on Clay Street between 11th and 12th streets behind the APL building.

Under the agreement going to the city July 19 — the 11th amendment of the original deal — the company would be allowed four more years — until 2013 — to purchase and develop that property.

Councilmember Jane Brunner (North Oakland), chair of the city's Community and Economic Development Committee that considered the deal last Tuesday, wondered if the city wasn't giving too much. She wanted guarantees that Shorenstein would complete the residential project and not leave half the block empty.

"They are getting three years' extension and no guarantee they will do anything on that lot," she said.

But Thomas Hart, executive vice president with the Shorenstein Company, said the deal actually moves up the timetable for construction on the residential project by three years.

He said it's likely the entire project would be built at the same time, and that construction would start within a year to take advantage of the hot housing market. However, the agreement does give them an option if the market should shift back to office space, he said. In that case, the value of the lot would decrease to about $4.8 million.

Although the dreams for a regional shopping destination were never realized, Patrick Lane, the city's redevelopment project manager, said the various office projects, including the federal building, have combined to create as many jobs.

He estimated the value of the 284-unit condominium project at $127.8 million and said that project alone would generate approximately $7.9 million in net tax revenues through 2022, when the Central District redevelopment zone expires. Not the same as 1973 dollars, but impressive, nonetheless, he said.

The company is considering two residential design options: adjoining eight-story L-shaped buildings surrounding an open courtyard that faces Lafayette Park on 11th Street, or a project that combines an eight-story complex on the west side and a 20-story tower on the southeast corner. The tower option, Hart said, is the less likely option. Both designs include underground parking.

The colors and style will complement the Shorenstein office building across the street, the Federal Building on the next block and the Landmark Place condominiums across the street. Ground-floor residents will enter directly from the street via stoops that resemble brownstone entrances.

At a meeting earlier this month Landmark Place neighbors expressed concerns about the new development taking up scarce parking in the neighborhood. An amendment added to the project's environmental report requires the developer prepare a traffic and parking study to make sure the project does not negatively impact the area's parking supply and take steps to provide more parking if it does.

The city will reimburse Shorenstein approximately $800,000 in clean up costs. The final design plans should be heard by the full Planning Commission by late July.

"We have a great stake in City Center and we want to do it right, to provide transitions between high rise elements of City Center and lower elements to the west," Hart said.

612bv3

July 14th, 2005, 05:51 AM

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2005/06/27/story5.html

High-rise condo tower moves ahead in San Jose

A Chicago developer plans to build a $110 million, 21-story condo project in the South of First Street area of downtown San Jose.

A development agreement has been inked between the San Jose Redevelopment Agency, which owns the land, and Mesa Development LLC.

The 208-unit project could be one of the first true high-rise condominiums in downtown, but it won't be the last. Eight more high-rise residential projects are on the books for downtown.

"We did a lot of market studies and analysis," says John Weis, deputy executive director of the Redevelopment Agency. "We feel there is pretty deep demand."

He says the last condos to sell downtown, units in the Park Townsend project, were going for between $375,000 and $400,000. Mesa's development will go for considerably higher prices, given the views it will offer and other amenities like concierge service.

Mesa isn't worried about selling the condos for an estimated $625,000 in 2008 when they hope to hammer in the last nail, says Richard Shields, one of three owners of Mesa. "We're hoping to set a new high water mark."

Of the four developers who responded to the agency's request for qualifications a year ago, Mesa was the only one who offered a high-rise project and who had experience with that type of construction, Mr. Weis says. Mesa is no stranger to such projects. It has built them in Wisconsin, has one going into Indianapolis and is working on a 56-story project in Chicago.

If Mesa can get a building permit before June 30 of 2006, the city will waive the requirement that a certain percentage of the development be sold as affordable housing. It's an incentive program the San Jose City Council voted in a year ago to get high-rise developers interested in downtown, Mr. Weis says.

The agency owns the site and will sell it or $10 million to Mesa. The 1.1-acre parcel is at the northeast corner of South Market and San Salvador streets sits across the street from the entrance to the San Jose McEnery Convention Center. The agency bought it in 2001 as a staging area for reconstruction of the Fox Theatre.

Mesa won't need height approval from the Federal Aviation Administration because the development will be lower than the neighboring Marriott hotel, Mr. Weis says.

Mr. Shields figures with the cultural attractions downtown, the entertainment and parks, it won't be difficult getting more residents to buy homes there.

"Anything you can do to put feet on the sidewalks and lights in the windows will be good for downtown," he says.

612bv3

July 14th, 2005, 06:00 AM

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2005/07/04/story1.html

Oakland highrise prize: 860 condos

A full city block is for sale in the heart of downtown Oakland, and sellers expect up to 860 units of highrise housing at the site and an adjacent lot.

Agents for the 14 owners of the block are still preparing formal offering materials. But preliminary discussions with city planners and condominium builders have unearthed strong support for high-density housing at what is now an indoor parking lot, preschool and playground.

If approved to the maximum density allowable under city law, a housing-and-retail development on the site could rival Forest City Enterprises' Uptown project as the most ambitious residential undertaking under Mayor Jerry Brown's 10k initiative to bring 10,000 residents to the center of the city.

Bounded by 12th, Webster, 11th and Harrison streets, the site is a stone's throw from Oakland Chinatown, a community residential developers have lately been falling over one another to court. A recent condo project there, SNK's Franklin 88, amassed a substantial waiting list with virtually no marketing. The sellers at 12th and Webster intend to tout the site's appeal to Asian homebuyers.

Unlike projects planned just a year or two ago, which stayed well under 10 stories, development at the plot is expected to reach 15 stories or more, well into expensive and time-consuming highrise development territory. Such density would allow the site to nearly match Forest City's Uptown in total housing units, but on a fraction of the land.

Just how high the tower rises depends on which builder picks up the project and how many units they attempt. Even a 400-unit project would require 15 stories or more.

The result would be more residents for a neighborhood starting to attract more shops and entertainment venues but still struggling with crime and a persistent dearth of retail. For example, a much vaunted Whole Foods market is a dozen blocks away, leaving the neighborhood without a grocery store to serve a tide of new and planned residents.

It also spells more home ownership opportunities for residents of nearby Chinatown and Koreatown, who in the past have had to pursue home ownership in far-flung suburbs like Walnut Creek.

Still, any developer will need to answer concerns about parking, nearby historic buildings and a neighborhood zoning that would allow far fewer than the 860 units allowed under the city's general plan. City planners have said there is a possibility for breaks from traditional requirements due to nearby transit like the 12th street BART station, the downtown location and the mayor's push for more housing in Oakland's core.

Owners of the site, including the families behind the Cochran and Celli auto dealership located there decades ago, recently selected BT Commercial as the exclusive listing agent and plan to circulate a formal offering packet by the end of July. They expect to collect offers in September and close by the end of January 2006.

The buyer would assume responsibility for entitling the site and would not be entitled to any refund if such efforts fell through.

Gary Fracchia, who with Ric Russell and Whitney Strotz is brokering the sale for BT, said he expects the plot and the adjacent quarter block across Harrison on 12th Street will fetch close to $20 million.

The brokers expect interest from both condominium developers like Pulte Homes, Olson Co. and Signature Properties and also from apartment developers like BRE.

612bv3

July 14th, 2005, 06:30 AM

http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2005/06/13/story2.html

Take me out to ... the hotel

Plans are under way to bulldoze a building opposite SBC Park and erect a 10-story, $30 million boutique hotel in its place.

Managing Partner of San Francisco-based Chelsea Development Harold Moose said city approvals have gone smoothly and he hopes to secure final entitlements within two months.

At that point, he'll select a contractor and fast-track construction with the goal of opening the hotel in time for the 2007 Major League Baseball All-Star Game on July 10.

"It will be a boutique hotel like Vitale. Not a Marriott or a Hilton," said Moose, a 35-year city resident who first developed the Holiday Inn at Washington and Kearny streets more than 30 years ago. "We'll bring in an operator. We're talking to potential management companies now."

Although Moose said he and his two project partners are delighted the stem cell headquarters is located just a block away and Mission Bay will soon fill up with office and lab space users, those are the not the catalyst they're banking on to fill the hotel's 132 rooms.

He expects neighborhood residents to drive most of the business.

Some 1,500 units under construction now are located within a three-block walk from the site -- 785 units available for purchase and 745 for rent -- and slated for completion by 2007.

Said Moose: "That's the big market. If you have hundreds of one- and two-bedroom units and they have guests, you need a place to put them."

If the approach is unconventional, so, too, is the design at 144 King St.

The 10,000-square-foot lot, now hosting a one-story building with three small tenants, will have no on-site parking. All cars will be valet parked at a neighboring lot and a special drop-off and pick-up lane will be created to avoid ball park traffic.

The hotel proposal comes amid a flurry of hotel development in and around Mission Bay. Farallon Capital Management controls a parcel near Third and Channel streets, entitled for 500 hotel rooms, where Larkspur Hospitality of Corte Madera is considering building a lodge. Developer Circe Sher is in the process of entitling a 70-room boutique hotel at Fifth and Townsend streets.

Six blocks northwest, adjacent to the Moscone Convention Center, Continental Development Corp. has entitlements for a 550-room highrise hotel. Across the street from the convention center, St. Regis Hotels and Carpenter & Co. are set to open a 270-room luxury hotel.

Further afield from Mission Bay, Joie de Vivre Hospitality's 199-room Hotel Vitale opened in the spring on the Embarcadero at Mission and Steuart streets.

bay_area

July 16th, 2005, 11:05 PM

From the July 8, 2005 print edition
UC option: 43 stories in Oakland
Bidders step up with headquarters plans
Ryan Tate
The University of California has collected bids for its headquarters in downtown Oakland, including one to build the city's tallest building.

Both local and national developers have submitted proposals to the university, which is trying to consolidate a smattering of Oakland-area offices into one building, possibly a new one. The bids range from a low-cost lease on existing office space to a brand-new skyscraper.

Perhaps the most ambitious bid comes from Encinal Terminals Inc. of Oakland, which is proposing a 43-story tower combining condominiums on the top floors, office space in the middle, retail on the ground floor and parking underground. It would be by far the tallest Bay Area building outside of San Francisco, eclipsing Oakland's 28-story Ordway building.

The design, by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP, is dramatic and slender, featuring what the designers call a "glass envelope" around the outside rising into a sort of "crown" above the building's roofline. The intent is to give the university a distinctive, world-class headquarters while enlivening what is now a quiet stretch of Broadway.

Aside from Encinal, Shorenstein Co. and Prentiss Properties are believed to have proposed new buildings. Both signed a UC log to submit bids, and neither has nearly enough available, contiguous space in their existing Oakland buildings to meet the university's needs.

In addition, local developer Bill Sumski and his partners at East End Oakland LLC, who bid on the property, could elect to pursue either a new building or an upgrade of an existing building.

If the university elects to commission a new building, it would be the city's first new office highrise since April 2002. As the Encinal proposal shows, it could also constitute a new city landmark and focal point for neighborhood activity. The decision is also important because it will open holes in whichever buildings the university leaves behind, testing the resilience of Oakland's tight market for Class A space.

The university has said that cost will determine which proposals advance to the next round of judging, a winnowing expected on July 18. But the ultimate decision will be left to the UC Board of Regents, a top-lofty group consisting primarily of gubernatorial appointees, who could be won over by a more bold, if expensive, headquarters.

The cheapest option is offered by financial giant UBS, which has a long-term lease on 195,000 square feet of class B office space adjacent to, and owned by, the downtown Sears. UBS and its agent Larry Westland of TRI Commercial believe they can offer space for just $24 per square foot per year, which they say is about $10 per square foot per year less than rents required to support a new building.

Shorenstein of San Francisco and Prentiss of Dallas, Texas are both large companies holding real estate throughout the country, including several buildings each near the university's existing headquarters at 1111 Franklin St. in downtown Oakland. Conventional market wisdom says the two companies' ready access to capital could help them an edge.

bagel

July 19th, 2005, 04:59 PM

Finally!!!

OAKLAND
Feud now water under the bridge
Governor signs bill that ends political fighting over new bay span
Erin Hallissy, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation Monday to end a year of political squabbling and allow construction to go forward on the suspension span that will be the centerpiece of the new eastern half of the Bay Bridge.

With the current eastern span and its under-construction replacement as a backdrop, Schwarzenegger signed six copies of the bill and handed them to a bipartisan group of legislators and officials. The governor and lawmakers who gathered in Oakland agreed last month on a compromise that allows bridge tolls to be raised $1 starting in 2007 to help pay for what is now estimated to be a $6.3 billion bridge.

"The Bay Bridge is critical to the Bay Area's economy, and an important part of the transportation infrastructure carrying millions of people and billions of dollars in goods every year,'' Schwarzenegger said at a press conference at the Port of Oakland. "We now have a plan that will build a safe and modern bridge that will become another great landmark here in the Bay Area. ''

Schwarzenegger acknowledged the lengthy delays and difficult negotiations over the deal, joking that his transportation secretary, Sunne Wright McPeak, was "15 years old'' when she started the talks. He also credited state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, saying, "He was a hard negotiator, he was a tough negotiator.''

The legislation calls for the state to contribute an additional $630 million to help cover the $3.6 billion in cost overruns on the new eastern span. Motorists will have to pay $4 starting in 2007 to cross all toll bridges in the Bay Area except the Golden Gate, to cover much of the rest of the overruns.

Perata said it was not unusual for Bay Area drivers to pay higher tolls for bridge projects.

"We've always paid about 60 percent of the freight with tolls,'' Perata said.

He added he was pleased that the deal allows for a single-tower, self- anchored suspension span, which will be far more dramatic than the causeway that Schwarzenegger had pushed for after it was revealed last year that the project was well over budget.

"We're not going to build just a freeway on stilts,'' Perata said. "We're going to build the bridge the Bay Area wanted.''

Perata, noting that the push for a new eastern span began in 1989 after the Loma Prieta earthquake caused part of the bridge deck to collapse, acknowledged that it's a little embarrassing the old bridge is still being used. But he said the new agreement "does indicate how well we do work together when we put our minds to it. We'll take a few moments to enjoy this, and then we'll get on to other things.''

Schwarzenegger was clearly enjoying the bipartisan moment, but was dogged by questions from the media about his decision to give up his job as editor of two bodybuilding magazines, costing him at least $1 million a year in potential salary. His only comment was a joke after he was asked if he'd miss the income.

"I have no problem about the money, but my wife (might)," he said. "It means less diamonds.''

And although the officials gathered for the press conference were happy with the legislation, others were not. State Assemblyman Joe Canciamilla, D- Pittsburg, voted against it, saying it was not a good deal for the Bay Area.

"I think it sets a precedent for regions becoming more responsible for state projects than the state,'' he said, adding he wouldn't be surprised if there were more cost overruns and bridge tolls would have to be increased to $5.

"We are again looking at a design that's never been tried on this scale in this seismically active area," Canciamilla said. "You're building in incentives for the costs to increase.''

But Jim Wunderman, president of the Bay Area Council, which represents major employers in the area, said the legislation was a fair solution to the problem of replacing the bridge.

"We think that it's painful to all the stakeholders, which is the nature of a true compromise,'' Wunderman said. "I think the new span will be welcomed by the public. It's going to be a really beautiful design, and it's going to say something about the world of possibilities.''

Work has continued on the skyway portion of the new bridge, which is about 75 percent complete. McPeak said the state would soon start putting together bids to put out for the suspension span, which will connect the skyway to Yerba Buena Island. The whole bridge is scheduled to be completed in 2012.

E-mail Erin Hallissy at ehallissy@sfchronicle.com.

Page B - 1
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/07/19/BAGGGDPV3B1.DTL

StevenW

July 20th, 2005, 04:29 AM

Is there a rendering of the bridge? :)

bagel

July 20th, 2005, 05:14 AM

Hmm. I know there are better ones out there, but here's one from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:ProposedSFOBBEasternSpan.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d6/ProposedSFOBBEasternSpan.jpg

There will only be one tower. I personally think that a 1-tower suspension bridge looks somehow incomplete, but I guess it's wait and see until the real one rises. It looks majestic, definitely moreso than the elevated freeway that the Governor proposed, but I feel that Oakland deserves something even more graceful.

RafflesCity

July 22nd, 2005, 03:02 AM

Singapore Cruise Centre to run new San Francisco terminal

22 Jul 05

By DONALD URQUHART

(SINGAPORE) The Singapore Cruise Centre (SCC) will soon be basking in a greater international limelight when it begins operating San Francisco's glitzy new cruise terminal from Jan 2008, part of the city's US$360 million Bryant Street Pier Project.

http://business-times.asia1.com.sg/mnt/media/image/launched/2005-07-22/dusf22-220900.jpg

After years of political wrangling, intensive lobbying and countless environmental impact studies, San Francisco's James R Herman International Cruise Terminal has finally entered the construction phase.

Work is set to be completed by end-2007 with the SCC-managed terminal beginning operations by Jan 2008, SCC president Cheong Teow Cheng told BT yesterday.

But even before that happens the home-grown cruise specialist will likely be operating cruise terminals at Mediterranean ports in Cyprus and Turkey as early as the middle of next year as it aggressively moves to tap an emerging niche operations and consulting market around the globe.

The San Francisco terminal will, however, be the shining jewel in SCC's crown. 'It will help give us a brand name,' even greater than the company's current reputation, Mr Cheong said. 'It's helping us already in securing two more contracts in Europe,' he added in reference to the two Mediterranean bids where he confidently put the likelihood of winning at 90 per cent.

Heralded as the long-awaited 'revitaliser' of San Francisco's spectacularly situated but woefully dilapidated waterfront, the ambitious waterfront project will cover nearly 65,000 sq m at Piers 30-32 in the heart of the city's South Beach neighbourhood not far from the iconic Golden Gate Bridge.

The project includes a 22-storey condominium adjacent to the terminal which is nearing completion, a public park and marina, as well as the cruise terminal itself which also boasts substantial retail and office space.

The San Francisco Cruise Terminal (SFCT) consortium, which is made up of Lend Lease Capital, Real Estate Services, HF (USA) Inc, Chinese Maritime Transport and Whitney Cressman, was selected in January 2000 to undertake the project which has been languishing under environmental issues since.

HF (USA) Inc is a Mapletree company which was inherited from PSA Corporation after it hived off its non-container port-related businesses.

The SCC is essentially sub-contracted by Mapletree to operate the terminal Mr Cheong said, adding that this includes only the cruise passenger business and not the retail or commercial space which will be managed by the SFCT.

The SCC will be seconding a couple of its key personnel to the new terminal and will also be leveraging on its in-house developed software and specialised IT knowledge, according to Mr Cheong.

'But obviously America is a very different operating environment,' he said pointing to the strong stevedoring and other labour unions.

With the currently operating cruise terminal built in 1914 at Pier 35 scheduled to shut down when the new one is operational, the likely scenario he said was for existing terminal employees to be brought onboard the new terminal.

The cruise centre features two berths, one of about 300 metres in length and the other 500 metres which is more than ample for handling the largest of cruise vessels currently operating in the world, at around 340 metres, according to Mr Cheong.

The cruise terminal building has also been designed for multi-purpose use to take into account the cruising off-season, when it can be used as an exhibition hall.

Well placed to tap the cruise market to the Mexican Riviera as well as north to Alaska, San Francisco saw close to 220,000 cruise passengers in 90 vessel calls from 25 cruise lines in 2004.

Whose Homepage

July 22nd, 2005, 03:13 AM

Thank you for the news, Raffi! :) Sounds good! :cool:

RafflesCity

July 22nd, 2005, 04:21 AM

Hi WH!

Yah I wanted to share it..the news sounds exciting...are people looking forward to this project? :)

Whose Homepage

July 22nd, 2005, 05:25 AM

I frankly don't have much of an image of the area as it is now, so I can't really say.

tyronne

July 22nd, 2005, 05:42 AM

is this the one being constructed right beside the SBC Park?

Whose Homepage

July 22nd, 2005, 06:32 AM

From the "Bryant Street" reference, it sounds like it ... at least it would seem quitie close. It would appear that the current cruise terminal ... whatever it was, wherever it was, just the (lookalike & VERY handsome) piers to the north of the Bay Bridge ... will be moved to the south end, with a totally new look. :)

612bv3

July 22nd, 2005, 06:36 AM

^ YUP, it's basicly that empty pier that held the X-Games awhile back. I posted pics of this project in this thread and naughtyinsomniac posted pictures he took of the pier while he was in the Embarcadero.

VansTripp

July 22nd, 2005, 06:37 AM

tyronne

July 22nd, 2005, 08:37 AM

^i knew it! i should've taken some pix when i went to see the Giants game last July 9th. oh well...

MrMetropolitan

July 22nd, 2005, 11:55 PM

612bv3

July 23rd, 2005, 12:01 AM

I tried im u on AIM but u r offline in long time?
I'm usually offline in AIM, I rarely sign on.

612bv3

July 23rd, 2005, 12:09 AM

"The ambitious waterfront project will cover nearly 65,000 sq m at Piers 30-32 in the heart of the city's South Beach neighbourhood not far from the iconic Golden Gate Bridge."

Shouldn't that say "Bay Bridge" not "Golden Gate Bridge"?
Maybe 'not far' could mean a few miles, but a lot of people make that mistake which is very sad. I once saw this person in TV who called the Bay Bridge the Golden Gate. They look nothing alike but I guess they don't know any better.:dunno:

aUen

July 23rd, 2005, 02:27 AM

Developers agree to pay up to $50 million to build Rincon Hill

Developers of five proposed downtown residential towers agreed Thursday to pay a record-setting $25 per square foot in impact fees, under a deal that could yield $34 million in services for low-income residents in the area.

"This is a model for big developments," said Supervisor Chris Daly, after announcing the agreement for the massive Rincon Hill project near the foot of the Bay Bridge. Daly, who initially sought an even higher fee of $28 per square foot and brokered the new agreement with developers, said that a threat to put a ballot measure before voters might have clinched the deal.

"There was a possibility," he said. "Clearly, I thought about all the avenues I could pursue."

Developers such as Ezra Mersey, with two projects in the area between Folsom Street and the freeway, and their attorneys stepped to the microphone during the Budget and Finance Committee hearing Thursday to urge officials to back the arrangement. "I think it does a very, very good job at a very, very difficult task," Mersey said.

One component of the deal that may have swayed developers is the postponement of nearly all the fees, except an up-front $500,000 payment, until after the units are ready to be sold and occupied.

Although the plan moves thousands of new housing units — mostly luxury condos in waterfront high rises — toward a more certain timeline, a battle may still loom over how to spend the new revenue.

Supervisor Jake McGoldrick this week proposed the same fee level but urged giving $6 million to citywide improvements and $14 million for affordable housing around town, rather than earmarking all the revenue for services in the immediate neighborhood. His plan, like Daly's, could end up before the full board for a vote

Aug. 2.

Mayor Gavin Newsom also expressed concern about Daly's breakdown for the fees and predicted further debate would take place. But he called the latest news "a very big step in the right direction" and commended his frequent adversary Daly for being "a very strong advocate for his district." Daly represents District 6, in which Rincon Hill is located.

To April Veneracion of the South of Market Community Action Network, the possibility of reaching once idealistic goals in the heavily Filipino neighborhood seems a lot more realistic because of this week's agreement. "It's a recognition that we live here, we're a community and you can't just steamroll over us," she said.

Both Newsom and the developers are stressing the need to move ahead before the red-hot real estate market cools off. "This market needs to be captured," the mayor said, adding that he hopes to see similar movement with several other large housing projects currently on the drawing board.

VansTripp

July 23rd, 2005, 03:46 AM

I'm usually offline in AIM, I rarely sign on.

If u want talk me on AIM then just send me via PM. :)

Apoc

July 24th, 2005, 09:18 AM

Whose Homepage

July 25th, 2005, 05:20 AM

Seems the Regents & their handlers and underlings are taking their time, Masher. After all, it took them 10 years after they first decided to build a new campus in 1990 to come up with a site and then another 5 to build it (Merced).

Also, didn't they build a new UC HQ building in Oakland all that long ago?

I still remember when Berkeley hoped to land that project; didn't happen, of course. Instead, a new Vista College facility is now being built on the site.

Whose Homepage

July 25th, 2005, 05:26 AM

612bv3

July 28th, 2005, 05:57 AM

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/07/27/BAGH7DU13U1.DTL
Peskin proposes ban on condo conversions of hotel rooms
Phillip Matier, Andrew Ross

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2005/07/27/ba_sfsupes09h_c_08ja.jpg
First it was the Fairmont Hotel. Now the famed Palace Hotel on Market Street is also thinking of turning some of its rooms into more lucrative condos -- and it's quickly turning into a high-stakes showdown with San Francisco City Hall.

The first move came last week when Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin -- who has become the Hall's pre-eminent dealmaker (and breaker) -- introduced emergency legislation to ban hotel conversions to condos, saying he didn't want to see the town's leading industry "cannibalize'' itself for the sake of a quick buck.

He proposed his ban after the Fairmont atop Nob Hill announced plans to turn more than a third of its rooms (226 in its ugly tower wing) into condos.

Peskin's action caught a lot of real estate insiders off-guard and had them scratching their heads over the weekend wondering what was really going on.

Well, on Tuesday they got the answer.

"This is about jobs,'' Peskin told us bluntly.

That same message had just been delivered to a handful of hotel reps and their lawyers who met privately with Peskin in his office Tuesday morning -- including reps from both the Fairmont and the Palace, as well as the venerable Mark Hopkins.

Peskin was clear that if the hotels hoped to stop the board from banning the conversions, then they had better sit down with hotel union boss Mike Casey right away and assure him no jobs would be eliminated.

Some in attendance said Peskin also appeared to have a second message for the 14 major hotels that have been locked in a protracted contract standoff with Casey and the union: Settle or the city's entire hotel industry may pay the price via the condo ban. Those 14 hotels include the Fairmont and Palace.

"Personally, I think this is all about the labor strife,'' said one hotel rep, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity around the issues.

But Peskin said he was referring only to jobs lost from converting hotel rooms to condos. According to the Visitors and Convention Bureau, there are about two workers for every hotel room, Peskin said.

In any event, Casey said the two issues are "completely and totally unrelated.''

He pointed out that there are actually two hotel interests at work here. Some of the 14 hotels are run by management outfits that would have little interest in turning rooms into condos, because that means fewer rooms to manage. But at the same time, those hotels have substantial real estate interests among their owners.

"These owners are in a greedy fashion trying to capitalize on a real estate boom, and doing it at the expense of middle-class jobs,'' Casey said.

What's more, Casey added, turning hotel rooms into condos means less space for conventioneers -- and that will make it tougher for the city to compete for the big conventions that are needed keep the Moscone Center filled year-round.

Pam Duffy, a lawyer who represents the Fairmont and attended Tuesday's sit-down with Peskin, said City Hall would be overreacting if it banned hotel room conversions outright without so much as a study.

"The Fairmont hasn't even filed an application,'' she said. "They're declaring a tsunami warning when there's been a raindrop.''

Duffy noted that there are 33,000 hotel rooms in the city. And even if every room being mentioned for possible conversion became a condo tomorrow, she said, "it still wouldn't make a dent in the convention center hotel rooms in this town.''

Whose Homepage

July 28th, 2005, 09:54 AM

I don't agree with Peskin. :down:

612bv3

July 31st, 2005, 06:41 AM

I was very lucky to pass by 300 Spear St. today.

300 Spear St.
http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/3324/img07528rm.jpg
http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/5372/img07530zg.jpg
http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/7503/img07540ff.jpg
http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/4307/img07552ec.jpg

Whose Homepage

July 31st, 2005, 09:25 AM

We were all lucky that you passed by 300 Spear Street today, bv3. :) Thanks! :okay:

StevenW

July 31st, 2005, 04:01 PM

Great pix! BTW, Oakland needs and deserves a new tallest. Hope the 43 story tower gets built! :)

612bv3

August 1st, 2005, 06:54 AM

^ Yes, Oakland does need a new tallest, I can't wait to hear if they're going to build it.

Whose Homepage

August 1st, 2005, 10:02 AM

Rather than requoting StevenW, I just plain repeat it because he said it so nicely:

Oakland needs and deserves a new tallest. :okay:

And please let it be a beauty! :master:

612bv3

August 1st, 2005, 11:56 PM

http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2005/08/01/story1.html
Condo tower ready to soar
After four years, group to start work on 58-story project
Lizette Wilson

Construction of San Francisco's tallest residential building is set to begin in September.

Towering above neighboring developments and redefining the city's skyline, the Millennium Tower at 301 Mission St. will pack 420 condos into a building extending 645 feet in the sky -- an engineering feat that also makes the building the city's fourth highest.

Demolition of vacant buildings and other site work begins Aug. 1.

New York-based Millennium Partners, which also created the nearby Four Seasons Hotel and Residences and the Metreon, is developing the $400 million project. It was designed by Handel Architects of New York and is being built by Webcor Builders of San Mateo. Financing was arranged and led by HSBC Group and Bank of America.

"It's a structural science project once you get up that high," said Sean Jeffries, a principal with Millennium Partners. "We've been working on this for four years and can't wait to get it officially commenced."

Demolition at the one-acre parcel bounded by Fremont and Beale streets begins Aug. 1, with Webcor crews clearing three vacant buildings from the site. Official groundbreaking is slated for September with construction expected to finish in late 2008 or 2009.

Shuttering earlier plans to include hotel and office space, the development will be all condos -- one-, two- and three-bedroom units ranging from 700 square feet to 6,000 square feet.

Millennium Partners is still determining the pricing as well as the availability of the units. Although Millennium intends to sell the units, principals are reserving the right to also rent some, depending on market conditions.

Indeed, the Bay Area's overheated housing market could cool considerably in the next three or four years, particularly in San Francisco.

Nearly 30,000 units are in the city's project pipeline now, with nearly two dozen multi-family residential projects already under construction.

Of those units, some 1,500 -- all located in Mission Bay and developed by the likes of Bosa, Signature Properties, Avalon Bay, Urban Housing Group and IntraCorp -- will be coming to market with similar upscale residences in 2007.

Tishman Speyer's high rise at 300 Spear Street -- a $450 million development standing as high as 450 feet -- will also be completing construction in 2007, with 656 upscale condos hitting the market in October.

Jeffries said Millennium is continuing to monitor the market's appetite and for now, thinks it will remain as voracious as it has for the past few years.

Case in point?

Centurion Real Estate Partners, which purchased the Beacon ealier this year, has sold 286 of the 304 units in the west tower since March. The group will begin marketing the 304 units in the east tower in September (renters still occupy most of them, and have been given notice), but has already sold 50.

"It appears that the more that's being constructed and the more people you bring downtown ,the more there's a demand for it," Jeffries said. "It's feeding on itself."

And with and 11-story tower and a 58-story tower, the Millennium project will be quite a mouthful.

The development will reach 645 feet at its peak, making it the fourth tallest building in the city following the Transamerica Pyramid and the Bank of America building, which reach 853 feet and 779 feet respectively. It will be the tallest building constructed since California Center, which stands at 695 feet, was completed in 1986.

612bv3

August 2nd, 2005, 12:00 AM

http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2005/08/01/story1.html
Hotel to be site of condo tower
At 30 stories, it would be city's tallest
Brad Berton and Andrew F. Hamm

The owner of one of Silicon Valley's largest and most-recognized properties -- the resort-style Hyatt San Jose near the Mineta San Jose International Airport -- is in talks to transform his 16.5-acre holding into a mixed use residential complex that would blend a hotel with as many as six high-rise condominium towers.

At least one of the envisioned towers would soar toward the full permitted height of 305 feet, making the 30-story towers the tallest buildings in San Jose.

Manoucher "Manou" Mobedshahi, who has owned the lushly landscaped Hyatt at North First Street and Old Bayshore Highway since 1997, says no agreement has yet been struck, but brokers working on the deal confirm exclusive negotiations are underway with a buyer.

"We would be handling the hotel business; we don't know about the condo business. That would be handled by someone else," Mr. Mobedshahi says.

Jim Schmidt, vice president at Cornish & Carey Commercial in Santa Clara, declined to identify the front-running bidder but says most of the numerous interested parties, including one now working with Mr. Mobedshahi, evaluated the property on the basis of redeveloping at least a portion of the property for residential use.

"If they can do that, there's no question the financial value is significantly greater than maintaining the property as a hotel," say Tom Callahan, CEO of hotel advisory firm PKF Consulting's West region in San Francisco.

Mr. Schmidt and C&C senior sales associate Mark Russell have been overseeing the property's marketing efforts on behalf of the ownership group known as Manco Partners, which is headed by Mr. Mobedshahi. While Mr. Schmidt won't reveal the top bid, he said Mr. Mobedshahi's original asking price was $100 million.

Mr. Mobedshahi would neither confierm nor deny that price, but says no deal is imminent. He says it would take at least three years to get the necessary permits together once a deal is struck to begin construction.

"It's all market-driven," Mr. Mobedshahi says.

In 2001, Manco Partners submitted plans to the city of San Jose to build an 30-story office complex on an empty four-acre section of the Hyatt property. That plan fell apart when Silicon Valley office vacancy numbers went from 2.5 percent to 16 percent today, according to figures from CB Richard Ellis. Other surveys have put that number at over 20 percent.

Indeed, the deal now under negotiation is contingent on San Jose's approval of a residential redevelopment plan. And, because the property is in a residential overlay zoning designation, the city's in-place entitlements allow for residential development at a density of 55 units per acre and a maximum building height of 305 feet.

At 305 feet, the development would become the city's tallest. San Jose's new City Hall was initially planned for 320 feet but was reduced to 288 feet due to restrictions imposed by Mineta's air traffic patterns. The Hyatt site is not within an airport approach overlay zone.

"The views would be spectacular," Mr. Schmidt says.

The combined residential-hotel complex could be a model for city efforts to redevelopment the North First Street area known as the Golden Triangle, Mr. Mobedshahi says.

"We hope to be in the forefront of the makeover of North First Street," he says.

The two, three and four-story buildings along First Street are outdated and are not giving their owners full value of the property, Mr. Mobedshahi says.

The hotel property could be developed in several different ways, depending on who the developer is and the market at the time the deal is struck, Mr. Mobedshahi says.

Ideally, a new condo tower hotel would be built on the empty four-acre parcel located at the back of the property, Mr. Mobedshahi says. Then, a portion of the existing 512-room hotel complex that consist of nine free-standing buildings would be razed to build a new hotel tower and one or more condo towers. As those new buildings come on line, the rest of the existing hotel would be torn down and new condo buildings built as the market dictates, Mr. Mobedshahi says.

Mr. Mobedshahi says he would like to keep at least 200 hotel rooms in operation at all times during construction.

"In the long run, it will happen. I think it is true for all of First Street," he says.

The hotel, which served as a corporate training facility for Chicago's Hyatt Corp., had already undergone a $21 million improvement program since Mr. Mobedshahi acquired it in 1997.

The Hyatt property appears to boast numerous attractions as a residential high-rise site. It's adjacent to a light-rail stop, and residents would have quick and easy access by bus to the airport, Mr. Schmidt says. It's also easily accessible from much of the North San Jose area the city recently decided to up-zone in order to accommodate more than 80,000 expected new jobs.

Silicon Valley's hospitality market has been in a slump since the dot-com bubble burst in 2001, but is recovering. Hotel-room occupancy rate in San Jose was nearly 52 percent in June, up from 43.65 percent a year earlier but still far off the 80 percent vicinity seen back in the 1999-2000 period. The Hyatt's room rates range from $89 to $109 on weekends, $129 to $149 weekdays.

Meanwhile single-family and condo prices have continued to skyrocket, due in part to attractive mortgage rates, even amid a slow general economic rebound. Dataquick reports that Santa Clara County's median condo price today is in $450,000 vicinity, up a sharp 20 percent from year-ago levels.

When Mr. Mobedshahi purchased the structures and underlying ground from Hyatt Corp. in 1997 -- he'd been leasing the property through a franchise agreement -- Business Journal sources estimated he paid less than $875,000 per acre for the land. If the property fetches the reported $100 million asking price, he would earn about $6 million per acre, which is double the per-acre price many close-in properties entitled for residential development have fetched recently. Mr. Mobedshahi recently sold the 171-room Hyatt Sainte Claire in downtown San Jose for an estimated $19 million to the Madera-based Larkspur Hospitality Co. LLC.

Meanwhile, San Diego's Urban West Associates recently offered $19 million-plus per acre for a strategic 1.48-acre downtown San Jose site the company is eyeing for twin 25-story luxury condo towers.

"Right now, it makes sense to build condos and perhaps some retail," Mr. Mobedshahi says. "Anything we would do there will take years."

Investors have been eyeing Silicon Valley hotels for a while now, Mr. Callahan says.

"The market isn't there but the vision is there for the future," says Mr. Callahan, who estimates it may be three years before Silicon Valley hotels return to profitability.

Whose Homepage

August 2nd, 2005, 04:55 AM

Uhhh ... how disappointing! There's another article in today's San Francisco Chronicle (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/08/01/EDG4PDMT471.DTL&type=printable) on how to best allocate the mitigation funds for the proposed 500ft Rincon Hill residential towers. In the paper there's a nice simulation of the area with the new towers. Alas it's missing in the online version. :(

robertee

August 3rd, 2005, 02:21 AM

612bv3

August 3rd, 2005, 02:56 AM

San Francisco soon to have Museum Row
http://www.sfexaminer.com/articles/2005/08/02/news/20050802_ne06_museum.txt
Three projects in Yerba Buena area near completion
By Emily Fancher
Staff Writer
Published: Tuesday, August 2, 2005 1:20 AM PDT

San Francisco will have a Museum Row in two years, when three new art institutions are expected to open at the doorstep of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

It has been a long road for the Contemporary Jewish and Mexican museums and the Museum of the African Diaspora, struggling to raise funds in the post-Sept. 11 world as well as deal with design and construction challenges that have delayed opening in the Yerba Buena area.

The new timetable for the construction of the Contemporary Jewish Museum is expected to be approved today by the Redevelopment Agency, which is partially funding the projects. The agency also expects a fundraising update from the Mexican Museum this week.

When it opens in 2008, the Contemporary Jewish Museum will anchor the north end of Jessie Square, a new park that will be bordered by St. Patrick's Church to the east and the new Mexican Museum to the west.

Just across the street in the St. Regis Hotel, the Museum of the African Diaspora is scheduled to open in December.

"In this case, more is better," said William Moreno, executive director of the Mexican Museum. "There's room for everybody."

The development of the Jessie Street parcel will mark the completion of the Yerba Buena project area, which sparked community battles over displacement of low-income residents when it was designated for redevelopment in 1966. After years of lawsuits, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SFMOMA and the Marriott hotel were eventually completed.

Margie O'Driscoll, executive director of the American Institute of Architects San Francisco, said the three new museums will further cement Yerba Buena as a cultural destination and the high-profile design of the buildings will help drive cultural tourism to the area.

The Contemporary Jewish Museum designed by Daniel Libeskind — the master planner for New York's Ground Zero redevelopment — will combine the façade of the historic Jessie Street Power Substation with a slick blue metallic addition behind it.

Connie Wolf, the director of the Contemporary Jewish Museum, said Libeskind's building will be integral to the entire museum experience.

Though not as well known as Libeskind, the architect of the new Mexican Museum, Ricardo Legorreta, is gaining recognition for UCSF's Mission Bay community center, expected to open this fall.

Though all three museums said they have made significant progress in fundraising — the Mexican Museum announced a $3 million pledge a few weeks ago — they face other challenges. The Jewish and Mexican museums must tackle the transition to much bigger spaces and the Museum of the African Diaspora is a startup.

"It's a dramatic change," Moreno said of the move. "Quite frankly, for an institution our size, this is a huge leap and when we come out the other side, we'll be a different organization."

612bv3

August 3rd, 2005, 06:45 AM

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/08/03/HOTELS.TMP
Hotel workers union, city OK pact on condos
Accord brings 18-month halt to any conversions
Rachel Gordon, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, August 3, 2005

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin and union leaders brokered a political agreement Tuesday that would bring a temporary halt to the nascent plans of luxury hotels in the city to convert tourist rooms to high-end condominiums.

Peskin -- backed by the hotel workers union and opposed by the hotel owners -- was pushing a permanent ban and had lined up a veto-proof majority of eight of his colleagues on the 11-member board to support his legislation. But the day before his proposal was headed to committee for a vote, Peskin agreed to what amounts to an 18-month moratorium on the condo conversions.

He is expected to amend his proposed ban today so it would expire after a year and half. He also will change his proposal so it only would affect tourist hotels with 100 or more rooms. He originally wanted it to regulate hotels with 50 or more rooms.

If Peskin's amended ordinance is approved, the city would conduct a wide-ranging analysis of how hotel-to-condo conversions might affect hotel workers, the city's tourism industry and other aspects of the San Francisco economy, as well as on city tax revenue.

"What this does is give everyone a chance to take a deep breath and look at the facts,'' said Mike Casey, president of San Francisco's Local 2 of Unite Here, the hotel workers' union. The temporary moratorium, he said, "is a reasoned approach.''

Peskin submitted the ban July 19 in response to the Fairmont Hotel's plan to convert 226 of its 591 rooms into 60 housing units. Although the owners of the landmark hotel atop Nob Hill have not filed a conversion application with the city, representatives did confirm their intent.

The Palace Hotel downtown also is looking at the prospect, and Newsom and Peskin expect others to follow.

The Fairmont and the Palace are two of the 14 hotels embroiled in a lingering contract dispute with Casey's union. The union has broad support at City Hall.

The conversion of hotel rooms into deluxe residences is a growing national trend that already has taken root in New York City, Chicago and Washington, D.C.

Peskin and Newsom met Tuesday behind closed doors with Casey and representatives from the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council. Hotel representatives were not present.

But Pam Duffy, attorney for the Fairmont, said a moratorium would be "a mature and thoughtful way to examine the issue, assuming that it isn't for a protracted or unreasonable amount of time."

Michael Theriault, secretary-treasurer of the trades council, said he wasn't keen on any legislation that had the potential to stymie construction jobs. Althoughhe's not thrilled by the compromise plan now on the table, he said he could live with it.

"We're going to hold our fire,'' Theriault said.

Peskin said it was important to him to protect hotel workers while the city crafts an overall policy on the issue.

"This compromise will ensure that we protect the workers who have dedicated their lives to our hospitality industry while studying the long-term effects that hotel-to-condominium conversion might have on San Francisco's economy," Peskin said.

Newsom concurred. "This gives us all time to make informed decisions so we can do what's best for the city,'' the mayor said.

StevenW

August 3rd, 2005, 11:59 AM

The Millennium Tower should be an awesome addition to the city. :)

tyronne

August 3rd, 2005, 09:18 PM

wow! re: millennium tower. that's so near my school. :okay:

612bv3

August 3rd, 2005, 11:32 PM

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/08/03/BAGFOE230T1.DTL
Supes approve $50 million deal for new housing
Developers to pay city a fee for allowing them to build high-rises on Rincon Hill
Charlie Goodyear, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, August 3, 2005

San Francisco supervisors approved an agreement Tuesday that would require developers seeking to build high-rise towers on Rincon Hill to pay an additional $50 million in fees as compensation for South of Market residents affected by the project.

The 9-2 vote came after months of negotiations between developers and residents and a flurry of last-minute dealmaking at City Hall involving Supervisor Chris Daly, whose district includes Rincon Hill.

Developers ultimately were persuaded to pay $25 per square foot despite a study by the Mayor's Office of Economic and Workforce Development that said any fee above $20 might make the project too expensive. Daly, who has hailed the deal as historic, said Tuesday it "raises the bar in terms of looking at responsible development in San Francisco."

Under the deal, $34 million will flow into a South of Market improvement fund to create jobs and housing for residents in the area who could keenly feel the effects of the development, which is expected to bring 2,200 market- rate condominiums to the area.

In an area bounded by the Embarcadero, Van Ness Avenue, and King and Market streets, nearly a third of all households report an annual income of less than $15,000, according to Daly. But, the supervisor pointed out, the median sales price of residential real estate in the 94103 ZIP code is $650, 000. The deal over the Rincon Hill development, he added, should help close the gap between rich and poor residents in the area.

To that end, developers will pay another $70 million to meet affordable- housing requirements that are imposed on all builders of residential projects in the city. About 700 such units are planned, with half to be built in the South of Market area and the other half placed throughout the city.

In recent months, debate on the project has centered on what fees the developers would pay rather than the merits of building five towers, some as high as 550 feet, near the Bay Bridge. In an impassioned speech to his colleagues Tuesday, Supervisor Jake McGoldrick decried what he called a "schizophrenic" approach to the Rincon Hill development and called the deal mired in "the politics of turf in San Francisco."

The agreement as brokered by Daly provides too many benefits for the South of Market area, he added, without taking into consideration other parts of the city that also could be affected by the development.

"I don't want this city getting balkanized," McGoldrick said. "I don't want this city getting fractured, and I think unfortunately that is what's happening here today. We should think as one city, not as 11 districts."

McGoldrick had proposed to take $3 out of every $25 in additional fees to be paid by developers for the benefit of the South of Market neighborhood and spread the funds across the city to other neighborhoods. But, he said, that idea received "no serious follow-up" at City Hall.

Matt Franklin, director of the Mayor's Office of Housing, said the agreement reached Tuesday on the Rincon Hill development represents the "first big neighborhood plan in San Francisco" in many years. "We need more housing supply, at all price points, and a lot of affordable housing will be produced by this," he said.

612bv3

August 3rd, 2005, 11:38 PM

Congress has approved the transportation bill. Article here --> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/07/30/MNGD2E0IQ61.DTL

Bill highlights: what's in it for the Bay Area

San Francisco

$29 million

New Transbay Terminal, Caltrain downtown extension

$14 million

Replacement of Doyle Drive approach to Golden Gate Bridge

$5 million

Bikeway and trail plan for Presidio and Golden Gate National Recreation Area .

North Bay

$27 million

Highway 101 widening at Novato Narrows

$5 million

Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit commuter rail service

$5.6 million

Widen Highway 101 between Santa Rosa and Windsor

$6.4 million

Highway 12 widening through Jamieson Canyon .

Peninsula and South Bay

$3 million

Merging lanes on Highway 101 in Millbrae

$8 million

New interchange at Interstate 880 and Coleman Avenue in San Jose

$10.8 million

Road improvements in East Palo Alto's Ravenswood District .

East Bay

$17.5 million

Reconstruction of the Interstates 80-680-Highway 12 interchange in Cordelia

$14 million

Brentwood-Tracy expressway

$1.6 million

Caldecott Tunnel fourth bore (design and planning)

$2.5 million

Transportation center above Ashby BART Station

Whose Homepage

August 4th, 2005, 12:51 AM

Hey, I was sure we had already talked about the new Transportation Bill in this thread ... what happened? :dunno:

The problem is, this is not a transportation bill but a highway bill. :bash: Just a superficial glance at the above allocations makes it clear: the primary beneficiary of these funds are roads and drivers; actual expenditures for public transit are close to zero. :cry:

612bv3

August 4th, 2005, 02:33 AM

^ Yes, it's a sad fact that public transit wont get a lot of money out of it, but I like the fact that it will give a little bit of money to build the new Transbay Terminal.

Whose Homepage

August 4th, 2005, 07:06 AM

Well yes, I'm glad about the new terminal, too. :) But it's a pittance! :bash:

What also upsets me :rant: is the allocation for the 4th bore for the Caldecutt Tunnel, although it funds only planning and design. I know the $$$ for construction will come. :(

That's one of the big problems with CalTrans: they keep expanding & widening their freeways and building new exits, but once all those cars have left their system, they just wash their hands of the consequences. Most city streets, built long before CalTrans even came into existence, simply are not equipped to handle the outpouring of cars coming down those exit ramps! :mad:

612bv3

August 4th, 2005, 11:10 PM

^^That must be a big problem in Berkeley. Traffic was terrible the last time I was there. Caltrans has done nothing right lately.

612bv3

August 4th, 2005, 11:35 PM

Here's a nice article from John King. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/08/04/DDGNTE1QHM1.DTL

My favorite part of the whole article:
A skeptical San Franciscan who looks at his anti-growth neighbors sees hypocrisy mixed thickly with environmental zeal.

"I am sick and tired of new arrivals here buying the SUV, a condo in S.F., getting a job in Petaluma, then putting a 'Save Tahoe' sticker on the car and fighting every high-density, transit-friendly initiative," writes Brian Grieb, who lives in the Richmond District.

612bv3

August 5th, 2005, 09:59 PM

http://www.insidebayarea.com/athletics/ci_2915755
A's focus returns to Coliseum site for new ballpark
Authority, Wolff to meet next week, possibly to discuss plans for stadium along the I-880 corridor

OAKLAND — The Oakland Athletics are once again looking at building a new ballpark near McAfee Coliseum and think Oakland and Alameda County can help by securing the land, government and team officials say.
During the past month, team managing partner Lewis Wolff divulged new details by telling an Internet fan Web log Wednesday and a television audience in July that the team was seeking an intimate stadium possibly along the Interstate 880 corridor in Oakland.

The interviews come as Wolff and leaders of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority prepare for a meeting next week. Authority leaders said the meeting was scheduled to discuss the team's new stadium plans and could be followed by a news conference next Friday in which Wolff plans to make an announcement.

Wolff was traveling Thursday and could not be reached for comment. Although staff members in his office said he did not read the blog and they could not verify its accuracy, they said he did speak to http://www.athleticsnation.com.

In that interview, Wolff talked at length about why the team needs a new stadium, where it could be built and how the government could help.

Wolff also displayed a firm grasp of the area's reluctance to spend public dollars on a sports stadium because of the financial fiasco that resulted from the Raiders deal in 1995.

"Cities have things that are better than funds," Wolff said, according to the Web site. "What we're hoping for down the road is that there will be some leadership on the public side, and when I say that people immediately say, oh, you want them to pay for it and hand it to you, but that's not true.

"They've been burned in Oakland," he added.

Alameda County Supervisor Gail Steele, who serves as Coliseum Authority chairwoman, said Wolff has made similar statements in recent meetings.

Steele said a location along the Oakland Estuary in a development referred to as Oak-to-Ninth is probably not feasible. Wolff has said he was focused on a site near the Coliseum.

"I kind of agree with Lew," Steele said. "I would like it in some place in the vicinity of the Coliseum. I tend to agree that he looked at the site down by the water, but I agree that it is impossible, transportation-wise."

Neither Steele nor Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente would say whether they would support spending public dollars to secure land for a site.

"I don't know what land we are talking about yet, and you can't answer that question unless there is a specific piece of land," Steele said.

De La Fuente was more blunt.

"I'm prepared to work with the A's and explore possibilities for sites, but I can't make a blanket statement that we are going to put land together for them," he said. "I want to be absolutely clear. It has to be their money. (Putting land together) does not mean it is their money."

De La Fuente also showed frustration that talks have not progressed since Wolff announced last year the team was going to take control of the planning and site location for a new ballpark.
"We talk a lot, and nothing happens," he said. "I want to make sure that we are not just talking. ... It is going to be up to them to at least show, or give us some indication, what area they are looking at."

Wolff also appears ready to make some final decisions.

"I don't want to sit around five years and find out that we can't do something," he said in the Internet interview. "We're closer to coming up with some ideas. ... I think the big thing is that it isn't just going to happen without a lot of work between ourselves and whoever we deal with."

As he has said repeatedly, Wolff stressed the team is looking for a site in its territorial rights area. Those areas are determined by Major League Baseball, and the Athletics own Alameda, Contra Costa and, Wolff said on the Web site, Monterey counties.

"In order of priority, I would like to be in Oakland if we could. If not, something to do with the city and county throughout the JPA, and otherwise, the county," he said. "I don't know where to go beyond that. That's all we have the right to do."

Despite not having a firm location pinned down, the A's do seem to have a stadium in mind.

During the A's telecast last month, Wolff said the team is looking at building a small, intimate stadium with unique aspects such as condominiums by the outfield and suites by the field.

The team's stadium committee — composed of top team officials, three architectural firms and Wolff's son — has toured a number of Major League Baseball parks and arenas.

Wolff said during the telecast the team is considering incorporating arena designs into the stadium. Those include small suites near the field that would hold six people. It also includes building a ballpark to seat a maximum of 35,000 fans without the third deck of seating most have.

Nevertheless, without a site, the team won't be able to compete in the future, Wolff said.

"We recognize that the area, especially the city of Oakland, has huge and much more important priorities, from school systems to safety," Wolff said on the Internet. "But we're still going to need some acreage to build this ballpark and it was in a blighted area. Do we have the resolve to clear the blight?

"Unless there is a change, I'll be giving an update report soon to the JPA which will be a little more specific than it was a few months ago," Wolff said.

Whose Homepage

August 5th, 2005, 10:52 PM

@bv3 (& whoever else is viewing these pages):

1. Glad we see things the same way! It's really scandalous the way CalTrans runs its show with generous funding while the cash strapped cities bear so much of the burden! :bash: And you're right: traffic in Berkeley is worsening. The streets are often clogged. Yet Cal is still on vacation, and all the students with their cars haven't even arrived yet! I anticipate a significant deterioration of conditions come September. :(

2. Yes, I read that article, and the one it's based on. YEA for John King! :okay:

3. It would make sense to build a new stadium for the As in the vicinity of the old one if the downtown location fails. I wish Wolff the best for obtaining a site & keeping the team in Oakland. :) -- Btw, perhaps you should also post the article in the "Athletics moving to Sacramento" (or sth) thread.

4. Thanks for posting all this stuff! :cheers:

612bv3

August 6th, 2005, 03:19 AM

http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2005/08/01/daily46.html
BART San Jose extension survives another swing of the ax
Timothy Roberts

The proposed BART extension from Fremont to San Jose and Santa Clara has escaped another attempt by federal transit officials to derail the project.

The federal transportation bill passed by the House on July 29 contains a section that would prevent the Federal Transportation Administration from applying new rules to lower the cost-effectiveness rating of the project and make it an even lower priority for federal funding.

"The exemption gives new momentum to a project that we all know is critical to maintaining the high quality of life in our region," said Rep. Mike Honda, the San Jose Democrat who added the exemption to the legislation, in a statement.

Skeptics like Eugene Bradley, the founder of the VTA Riders Union, see it differently.

"This is just an attempt to makes sure funding for this boondoggle will come through," he said.

BART boosters say the cost-effectiveness rule is unfair to to the BART project, which has been in the works since 2000 when voters approved a half-cent sales tax to cover more than half of the project's cost. Since then, local elected officials and the representatives of business groups have pursued the federal share of the cost, which comes to $494 million.

The Valley Transportation Authority, which is designing and would build the project, is gearing up a campaign to convince voters to support another half-cent sales tax to make up for the drop in sales tax revenue during the economic downturn.

The FTA has always taken a dim view of the project. In February, the agency recommended against funding the BART extension, saying it wasn't cost-effective. It also said the cost of project had risen from $4.1 billion to $6.2 billion. The agency has been signaling its concerns since 2002 when it raised questions about the demand for the service.

But BART supporters point out that local taxpayers are willing to foot more than half the bill, that the BART line is an investment for the future and that new housing and offices will spring up along the line that will create further demand for public transportation.

Most galling to BART supporters is that the FTA opposition is coming long after public officials promised and voters approved the project.

"The FTA staff came forward with some policies not set by Congress that make it more difficult for high-cost areas like California and Silicon Valley to receive funding," said Carl Guardino, the president and CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, who led the 2000 campaign to get voter support for the transit project. Federal funding guidelines often fail to take into account the high cost of living here, Guardino said.

"The bill says that projects like BART that were already in the process would not be negatively affected by this much later policy adopted by the FTA," he said.

Earlier this year, Honda negotiated an agreement with the FTA that apportioned the federal funding to only part of the 16-mile, $4.1 billion line, a segment most likely to meet FTA ridership demands.

612bv3

August 6th, 2005, 03:31 AM

http://www.sfexaminer.com/articles/2005/08/05/columnists/challenges_and_opportunities/20050805_co02_challengesopps.prt
2005: Challenges & Opportunities
Bonnie Nelson

For more than 15 years, Bonnie Nelson and her partners at the consulting firm she co-founded, Nelson/Nygaard, have worked with communities to develop alternatives to single-occupancy vehicle transportation and to create a vision for mixed-use, walkable, transit-oriented developments. In that time the firm has worked closely with nearly every major transit agency in the region and has consulted on major development and transit projects in San Francisco, including the Transbay Terminal and Treasure Island. Examiner editor Zoran Basich spoke to her this week about the transit challenges facing the region.

Where does San Francisco rank with other large American cities in terms of its transit systems? We're good but not great. You can't compare San Francisco to the densest cities in America like New York and Chicago, where it's very easy to travel without a car. In San Francisco it's entirely possible to travel without a car, but it's not easy. Part of the reason is that when you have a 49-square-mile city with competing demands for bicycles, cars and transit on almost every street, and where our transit system shares our street right of way, it is very difficult to keep transit moving. And it's travel speed that causes people not to want to ride transit.

What is the key to good public transit? The key is making transit work faster. When a transit route follows the general pattern that you would follow driving around in your car, to go from Point A to Point B, and when it is fast and frequent, then it is real easy to make that choice [to use public transit]. The thing in San Francisco that helps us is that there are a lot of penalties for driving in this city. Parking is very expensive and parking capacity is very limited, so there are built-in disincentives to driving. What transit has to do is provide a reasonable alternative on a playing field that is already tipped in its favor. It has to provide a positive experience for the public, a reasonable level of comfort, a reasonable guarantee of reliability. If it does those things, it should do quite well. One of the challenges to San Francisco is how to keep transit moving in a city that is getting more congested over time.

If San Francisco could go back and create a new, interconnected transit system from the ground up, what would it look like? If we were starting with a blank slate, the question is, how would we rationalize our system? Where would the transit streets be? Do we need to have transit service on Geary, Clement and Balboa? Or would it make more sense to consolidate service on Geary and have really great service on Geary that people would be willing to walk to from those other adjoining blocks? You can't spread resources on every street in The City and also guarantee transit speed on every street in The City. If you decided to consolidate service on Geary and also had a transit-preferential policy that guaranteed that service, it would make a very attractive corridor. The fact that it's a block off Clement would not bother people. People would walk a block.

One way to promote transit use is to build denser housing in transit corridors, yet in San Francisco, denser housing is often opposed on the basis of too many cars, too much congestion. What is the solution? Often when people oppose densification, parking and traffic complaints are just a smokescreen for something else. I worked on a project years ago for supportive housing for nine women, sort of a halfway house for women who had undergone drug treatment and were now being reinserted into the community. The neighborhood complained bitterly about parking. In fact, what they objected to were the nine women who were moving in, not parking.

I think we have to be really honest about what the problem is. We can control parking, we can control the number of spaces, we can control the way street parking is handled. But first we have to be very clear about what the true nature of the problem is.

There's a school of thought that says new housing should be built without parking attached, to discourage cars in The City. What is your view?

I am not so naïve as to think that we will have a huge number of people in San Francisco, particularly given the price of housing in San Francisco, who will not have cars. It would be my hope that people who in other communities would have two, three or four cars could get by with one. But what I really care about is that we disconnect the costs and impacts of the parking space from the costs and impacts of the house. A perfect example is that now with some condominiums, the cost of the parking space is separate from the price of the unit. That allows you to make a conscious choice and understand what the cost of building and maintaining that parking space is.

I also think City CarShare is very important. I have seen it blossom to allow people who otherwise might have to have more than one car to figure out how to survive with one. If everybody went on a car diet — I am not saying that everyone should get by without a car, I myself have owned a car for some time — but City CarShare makes that possible.

How is Muni doing? After years of criticism, funding problems, and meltdowns, is it a good urban transit system now? It's an improving system. It's a system that is very fragile, and I worry about it. It was, quite honestly, easy to be an improving system when the economy was improving through the late 1990s and into the early 2000s when the dot-com boom was happening and money was flowing very easily into The City. It was expected that Muni should improve, and it did. The other thing that happened in the same time frame was that long-anticipated vehicle replacements happened — brand-new light-rail vehicles, brand-new articulated buses, brand-new electric trolley buses. New vehicles tend to be more reliable and the system works better. All of that happened. Now Muni is in a position where it has less money available, there's an operating deficit, it's a relatively high-cost system and it simply doesn't have the money it needs to maintain current services. So it's very important that we really take a step back and figure out how we can make it sustainable under all economic conditions.

612bv3

August 6th, 2005, 05:15 AM

A's moving to Sacramento? Discuss it here: http://skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=241731&page=1

612bv3

August 6th, 2005, 05:33 AM

43 story tower in Oakland update!!!

http://www.insidebayarea.com/timesstar/localnews/ci_2905055
UC looks to lease Oakland high rise
University wants to consolidate offices; final proposal is due in Nov.
By Michelle Maitre, STAFF WRITER

The University of California Office of the President is looking to set up shop in a second office building in downtown Oakland.
The university wants to consolidate about 800 employees currently scattered throughout five satellite offices into one centralized location closer to current headquarters at 1111 Franklin St.

Proposals for the project stipulate it could be a new building constructed for the university or leased space in an existing or renovated building. Developers would pay the construction costs in exchange for a lease agreement with the university.

University officials are mum on proposal details, saying the information is a real estate transaction exempt from disclosure under California public records laws.

But spokeswoman Jennifer Ward said officials have narrowed the original field to between three and five proposals and have asked developers to submit more detailed information on their plans.

A final proposal will be submitted for approval in November to UC's governing Board of Regents, Ward said.

In addition to the Franklin Street headquarters, UC currently pays millions each year to house employees at four leased locations and one in Berkeley. Monthly rental costs range from $341,000 for space at the Kaiser Center at 300 Lakeside Drive in Oakland to $48,600 for offices in the Oakland City Center building at 1111 Broadway, according to information from the university.

The leases all expire within the next several years, with the largest leases expiring in 2008 and 2010.

Developers Prentiss Properties Trust and Shorenstein Company LLC have both submitted bids for the new project, according to published reports and company officials, but further details were not released. Local company East End Oakland LLC also reportedly submitted a bid, but partner Bill Sumski declined to comment.

An early proposal submitted by Encinal Terminals Inc. of Oakland called for a 43-story mixed-use high-rise with condominiums, office space and retail. The building would have been the tallest in Oakland, but Encinal President Peter Wang said his proposal was rejected by the university.

Wang said he still hopes to build the structure with different tenants.

Another early proposal came from TRI Commercial on behalf of UBS banking and financial services, according to TRI Commercial Senior Vice President Larry Westland.

That proposal — also rejected by UC — offered about 200,000 square feet of office space in the Sears building at 1925 Broadway with annual rent at $24 per square foot, which Westland said is cheaper than rents needed to support a new building.

"I was told by the university the building was not institutional quality for their needs," Westland said. He added, "As a taxpayer, I'm disappointed more regard wasn't given to the potential economics of a new building, in light of the considerable debt that taxpayers like you and me are going to be forced to assume in the future."

Ward said one consolidated office would save money.

"It's a lot more expensive to have offices scattered throughout downtown Oakland and Berkeley than to be housed under one roof," she said. "In addition, by having UC centrally housed in two buildings, that helps us work closer together."

The UC president's office is the administrative headquarters of the UC system, which serves about 208,000 students annually.

StevenW

August 6th, 2005, 05:47 AM

I found a cool link I think all you guys would like.
http://www.virtuar.com/ysf2/buy.htm

It's a virtual tour through all of San Francisco. You can see allot on line but it's MUCH better if you'd buy their cd-rom.

check it out. :)

612bv3

August 6th, 2005, 06:11 PM

Thanks for the link StevenW, it was fun looking at places that I've never been to in San Francisco.

StevenW

August 6th, 2005, 07:50 PM

Cool. :cool:
Glad I could pass it along. :)

612bv3

August 7th, 2005, 02:00 AM

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/04/BAGA7E2IKC1.DTL&type=printable
Mayor has new goals for low-cost housing
Cecilia M. Vega, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, August 4, 2005

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday new goals that could help the city meet, for the first time, its targets for building much- needed affordable housing.

By 2010, San Francisco should have 15,000 new housing units, 5,400 of them going to low- and moderate-income households, because of several construction projects in the planning stages and a streamlining of the city's over-stretched Planning and Building Inspection departments.

"We're about to experience a housing boom in San Francisco," Newsom said.

The mayor announced these goals, which he called "historic," at a news conference in the city's Mission Bay neighborhood, flanked by members of the planning and building inspection commissions and Chamber of Commerce and against a backdrop of cranes and construction workers building new housing.

But not everyone was impressed. "We'll see in five years," said Sam Dodge, project director of the Central City SRO Collaborative low-income housing advocates.

A report recently released by San Francisco's Planning Department indicated that the city is thousands of units short of meeting affordable housing obligations set by the Association of Bay Area Governments, targets required by state law.

Newsom said Wednesday that that would change under his new five-year plan. He touted this year's $5.3 billion budget, which he is expected to sign today, adding 59 new employees to the Building Inspection and Planning departments.

That, along with technological improvements to computer databases that link all city departments that handle permitting and development issues, could help eliminate a backlog in permit applications.

Newsom also cited developments, such as those planned at Rincon Hill, that could bring five residential towers, as high as 550 feet, to the blocks bounded by the Embarcadero, Second Street, Folsom Street and the approach to the Bay Bridge.

In addition to city-sponsored projects and nonprofit groups that receive state and federal money to build affordable housing in the city, San Francisco also has a law that requires private developers to sell or rent between 12 and 17 percent of their units at below-market-rate prices.

612bv3

August 8th, 2005, 02:05 AM

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/07/REGC0E2V6Q1.DTL&type=printable
Cruise control
Condos are first step in bold terminal plan
- Dan Levy, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, August 7, 2005

http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2005/08/07/re_watermark_3.jpg
http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2005/08/07/re_watermark_4.jpg
http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2005/08/07/re_watermark_1.jpg

It was a dot-com dream that was vaporized by the dot-com bomb -- a spanking-new cruise ship terminal just south of the Bay Bridge on Piers 30-32 in San Francisco.

The 100,000-square-foot structure was supposed to have a soaring glass lobby with stunning up-close views of the bay and the bridge. High-end office space, shops and restaurants would surround the building, and a new public amenity called the Brannan Street Wharf would be available to waterfront frolickers.

However, only one part of the $360 million plan has gotten off the ground -- a 22-story condominium high-rise on a parking lot across from the piers. Called the Watermark, the austere glass-faced tower is under construction and set to open by the end of the year.

Given the continued strong demand for housing -- especially of the deluxe high-rise kind -- it's a good bet that all 136 units in the Watermark will find buyers.

Prices will range from the $700,000s for a small one-bedroom on a lower floor to $1.7 million and up for three-bedroom units on the 17th floor and above. Penthouse units will be even pricier, and homeowner dues for all residences will run around $700 per month.

But the rest of the terminal plan is years away from breaking ground. Rents from the project's 325,000 square feet of office space will be needed to underwrite the terminal and retail space proposed for the piers, but current commercial rents are too low to make the plan pencil out.

Conventional wisdom says that office rents should be in the $50s-per- square-foot range before new development can occur. At the end of June, the office vacancy rate for prime downtown space in San Francisco was about 18.2 percent, and average asking rents were about $31 per square foot, according to Grubb & Ellis.

"The city will need to see sustained rent improvement over an extended period of time" before ground is broken, said Paul Osmundson, project manager for developer San Francisco Cruise Terminal LLC, a joint venture of Lend Lease Corp., a publicly traded Australian real estate company, and Mapletree Investments, an arm of the Singapore government.

Real estate experts don't see strong rent growth until at least 2007.

One thing the Piers 30-32 office space will have going for it: location. Imagine doing business with the Bay Bridge looming outside, or a cruise ship gliding by, or with new shops and restaurants outside the front door. And barring an unforeseen incident, Red Java's House, a remnant of the old waterfront, will still be serving chili dogs and burgers out of its wooden shack in the northwest corner of the piers.

"We will be right on the water, with city views and a completely exciting environment," said Skip Whitney of Whitney Cressman, the commercial brokerage that has the leasing assignment. "With all the residential development going on and being so close to transit, it's a no-brainer."

Whitney said at least one of the three office buildings could be leased to a single tenant -- a bullish attitude worthy of the roaring tech days.

Osmundson said about $50 million will be necessary to repair and seismically upgrade Piers 30-32, now basically an 11-acre parking lot that is used for random events like the Delancey Street Foundation's annual Christmas tree sale. In 1999 and 2000, at the height of dot-com bubble, the piers were the home of the gnarly alternative-sport X Games, drawing thousands of people to the waterfront for days.

But before the piers' offices, terminal or retail space are built, Lend Lease and Mapletree are obligated under its agreements with the port and Bay Conservation and Development Commission, which regulates waterfront development, to start work on the Brannan Street Wharf, a 15,000-square-foot, wedge-shaped attraction that will be the main public amenity for the project.

Still without a final design, the wharf will sit along the Embarcadero south of Piers 30-32 and have seating areas, public art, a lawn and a small floating dock for kayaks and other small craft.

The commission has mandated that construction on the wharf begin by 2008. The port's project manager, John Doll, said he hopes to begin work next year. A small portion of the Watermark condo sales, about $325,000, will be put toward the wharf construction.

But the lion's share of condo proceeds -- after Lend Lease and Mapletree pay back lenders, recoup costs and take a 12.5 percent return -- will be put into an escrow account for the terminal, office and retail construction.

The project's permit from the commission says work on the entire plan must be completed by the end of 2012, although the commission can extend the permit if the original timetable is not met, said Andrea Gaut, a commission permit analyst. Among the major environmental issues still to be addressed by the developers are water quality and air quality mitigation for passenger ship discharges and diesel fuel use.

Gaut said the developers may end up using shoreside power hookups that use cleaner fuels than diesel.

While the developers wait for the office market to improve and refine their design for what will be the largest new project on the waterfront since the Giants' ballpark, the cruise business in San Francisco has already picked up steam.

In 2002, the port had about 40 annual cruise ship calls and 60,000 passengers. This year, the port expects 81 calls and about 205,000 passengers.

The big jump has come from new cruise business to Mexico, which supplemented the Alaska trips that have been the port's mainstay for decades.

This has happened despite the continued effect of the archaic Passenger Services Act of 1886, which restricts foreign-flag ships from transporting passengers between ports or places in the United States.

The seawall parcel where the Watermark is being built has approvals for two more condo buildings, one of seven stories and the other 11 stories.

But condo owners in the Watermark are likely to be well enscon-ced before the neighboring buildings are erected. The future condos will have to go through normal design and land-use reviews at the port, which is historically a lengthy and often frustrating process.

"To get our project where we are today is a miracle," Osmundson said, recalling how the commercial rent crash in 2001 and regulatory wrangling with the commission and the California State Lands Commission almost doomed the terminal plan. "We spent $12 million on entitlements before we even got to build the tower."

But Boris Dramov, an architect who sits on the Port Commission's waterfront advisory panel, said that the glacial pace of the project's progress is par for the course.

"I think it's happened rapidly and well," Dramov said. "The adaptive reuse of an urban waterfront takes time. From a cost perspective, you've got expensive pile construction on the piers, and from the regulatory side, you've got other limitations."

StevenW

August 8th, 2005, 03:41 AM

Awesome views of the Bay Bridge. :)

Whose Homepage

August 8th, 2005, 05:03 AM

Yes, those condo dwellers to be will have fabulous views! :cool:

--------

bv3, you come up with all those articles at breathtaking speed ... there's hardly time to react! :eek:

Yet let me make a couple of comments on the quick:

UC headquarters: well, they take their own sweet time, don't they! :D Alas over the years they've shown time and again that they much prefer doing what's good for UC rather than what's good for the city where they happen to be. :bash: Remember, whatever space they occupy is tax exempt. :D

Fremont - San Jose BART: yes, sounds like a good idea! I know people who drive frome here to SJ or someplace down there in Silicon Valley & back every day ... dreadful thought! :runaway: So for them the BART extension may be a good thing. On the other hand, remember that the BART extension on the Peninsula was to serve not only as airport connection but also as a commuter line; they're now reducing the frequency of trains due to lack of ridership. Seems people simply failed to embrace the new line & still drive to the city. :( So the Fremont - San Jose line may turn out to be similarly unpopular.

Nelson\Nygaard (yes, that trendy firm has a back slash in its name -- the guy in the paper got it wrong! :D): Nothing new there. I had the dubious pleasure of watching that outfit at work a few years ago when the City of Berkeley hired them on a project that was of interest to me. Yes, clustering mixed use density near transportation nodes ... now how often have we heard THAT before? :D If we lived in a perfect world, car free housing might make sense. But we don't. Fear about personal safety and the lack of shopping within easy walking distance of most homes make the idea downright ludicrous, although, of course, it's being pushed like crazy in Berzerkeley. ;)

The new SF Cruise Terminal: Raffles City of Singapore posted an article on it just a short while ago. :) Seems a lot of water will be coming under the Bridge before that project becomes reality. :(

612bv3

August 8th, 2005, 07:26 AM

^^ I'm wont be online as much this week. I'm reading Angels & Demons right now and then The Da Vinci Code right after. I'll be busy reading this whole week, but I'll still post articles when I have time to waste.

612bv3

August 14th, 2005, 01:18 AM

http://www.sfexaminer.com/articles/2005/08/12/news/20050812_ne06_candlestick.prt
Housing plans for Candlestick area raise questions

By Jo Stanley
Staff Writer

An early wave of extensive residential development proposed along waterfront property near Monster Park is facing questions about how much planning has been done to get ready for a whole new community.

Signature Properties, whose 433-unit complex would just uphill from three office buildings at Executive Park, is proposing three mid-rise towers and 150 townhouses, with market rate units going for $400,000 to $700,000, with a plan to build 53 affordable homes.

At Wednesday's meeting of the board's Land Use Committee, questions were raised about the proposed development's impact on city services.

"I can't help but feel that, once again, the Southeast sector of this city has been left out as a stepchild," said Land Use Committee Chair Sophie Maxwell, who represents that district. "We're bringing 4,000 people in to a very underserved area."

Maxwell said she wants to hear about plans for Muni, fire and police service to the 71 acres of the proposed site. She also said that the number of total potential units planned for the area through various housing proposals in the pipeline — 1,750 — rivals Rincon Hill downtown, where developers recently agreed to pay record-setting mitigation fees and planners spent months discussing what sort of neighborhood should rise up there.

On Wednesday, the developer's representatives testified they have agreed to fix up nearby park space on Bayview Hill as well as make street improvements and create 4.5 acres of on-site open space.

Neighbors from the Little Hollywood and Visitacion Valley neighborhoods asked for additional improvements, including making a six-lane approach to Monster Park safer so residents could walk across to the state park at Candlestick Point.

The head of the Visitacion Valley Planning Alliance, Fran Martin, said the area's infrastructure is going to be hit hard by an estimated 33 percent growth in population during the coming years if all the plans go ahead.

In the end, supervisors voted to forward the item to the full board without recommendation. But afterward, Maxwell said that unless the Planning Department is able to come up with a comprehensive approach to developing the area before Sept. 6, the plan may well be turned down.

612bv3

August 14th, 2005, 01:24 AM

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/12/BAGV9E6VD51.DTL&type=printable
A healthful development for Oakland

- Chip Johnson
Friday, August 12, 2005

There's finally a Bay Area redevelopment project that everyone can get behind, and it's something they can even sink their teeth into.

More often than not, the mere utterance of a development proposal puts some Bay Area residents on guard, even in cities whose downtown districts are in dire need of sprucing up. In Oakland, Mayor Jerry Brown's plan to revitalize the area with 10,000 new residents, shops and entertainment venues has met with opposition on some projects.

But the creation of an upscale grocery store that caters to health- conscious shoppers is wildly popular -- and is another sign that more people with more money are heeding the mayor's call, and the allure of the real estate market, to move downtown in the Bay Area's third-largest city.

While no-growth Oakland residents have taken exception to high-rise towers on Lake Merritt -- or a gleaming new Catholic church there -- the prospect of a Whole Foods Market built in a landmark building near the shore of the lake is satisfying on several fronts.

"This is one of the few construction sites I've worked in the Bay Area where 99 percent of the people who walk by say they really want this to happen, '' said Ricky Phillips, the field supervisor for Charles Pankow Construction Co., the project contractors.

The entry of the store into the Adams Point area north of the lake signals a change for the better in the neighborhood.

And when it opens in the fall of 2006 it will be the latest example of how upscale retailers are recognizing the more-sophisticated tastes of Oakland shoppers -- and their disposable income. After all, Whole Foods didn't get the nickname "Whole Paycheck'' for nothing.

"We've identified Oakland as a vibrant, multicultured and diverse market that matches well with our product mix,'' said Anthony Gilmore, the chain's president for 19 stores in Northern California, including those in San Francisco, Mill Valley, Palo Alto, Walnut Creek and Berkeley.

The Austin, Texas-based grocer said demographic research has shown that its stores are more successful in areas with higher education. The stores cater to its clientele and provide quality locally grown and produced foods. In Atlanta, the markets carry a healthful mix of Guatemalan and Cuban foods. In Oakland, the store is expected to carry a wide selection of Mexican dishes.

The new store is part of an effort to more than double the number of stores in Northern California in the next decade. Los Altos is the latest city to approve a new Whole Foods store, he said.

"We encourage our store operators to use local vendors, and the Oakland store will be different from Whole Foods Markets in Cupertino and Monterey,'' Gilmore said.

And selecting a historic building was a nod to preservation and its place in the East Bay community. Whole Foods is doing a similar renovation in Chicago's Wrigleyville, the neighborhood named after the historic home of the Chicago Cubs, Gilmore added.

The decision to use the facade and another wall from the Cox Cadillac Building at 27th and Harrison streets provides store operators with an opportunity to create a unique look. The new, 44,000-square-foot store will have a design different from any of its previous stores, Gilmore said.

In March, contractors began the prep work, environmental cleanup, brace supports and retrofit work to original structural supports. Construction of the store, which will include restoring the building facade, will start in earnest next month. The final proposal is a scaled-down version of the original plan, which included as many as 100 units of housing above the store.

The project is a rare case of how the desires of preservationists have dovetailed with the city's push to repopulate and reenergize its downtown core. Whether or not the work is actually a renovation is a matter for debate, but when it's completed in 2006, only two of the original four exterior walls in the landmark building will remain.

Maintaining the original facade of the building satisfies historic preservationists and provides the city with a piece of its historic architecture. In this case, the building was built in the 1890s and first used as a headquarters office for the Oakland Cable Co. The building later became an automobile showroom until the business shut in the mid-1990s.

It's not as if a single store is going to reverse the fortunes of Oakland, but it's a step in the right direction. The creation of more than 150 jobs and the entrance of an upscale market in downtown Oakland certainly suggests that retailers are picking up on what's happening on the east side of the Bay Bridge.

If Oakland can compete for stores like Whole Foods Market, perhaps the next time a desirable franchise starts looking for a site in the East Bay, Emeryville may not be the first place they think of anymore.

612bv3

August 15th, 2005, 06:25 AM

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/14/REG9ME6MT11.DTL&type=printable
Leading builder sets its sights on Bay Area
- Kelly Zito, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, August 14, 2005

One of the nation's largest private home builders is making its first foray into the Bay Area.

John Laing Homes, the Newport Beach (Orange County) firm whose roots reach back to 1840s Great Britain, expects to break ground on two new projects here late this year.

The first, in San Ramon, is a 72-unit luxury development where lots range from 17,000 to 85,000 square feet and prices start at $2.5 million. The other is a 156-unit "mansion condo" project on Mare Island where the buildings look like large manors but are divided into several condos. Homes there will start over $500,000.

Many of the biggest builders in the business -- Pulte, Centex and Lennar -- already compete in the Bay Area, a region commonly known for its dwindling supply of land, NIMBYism and strict development regulations.

However, plenty of urban infill opportunities remain, particularly for a firm that plans to build a relatively small number of homes here -- 300 to 400 by the third or fourth year of operation, said Roger Menard, who will oversee John Laing's Bay Area division. Some of the larger builders construct 1,500 homes annually.

Last year, permits for more than 26,800 single- and multifamily homes were granted in the nine-county Bay Area, according to the Construction Industry Research Board. The median price for a detached home in the Bay Area was $644,000 in July, up 18 percent from the same month last year.

Amidst the soaring demand for homes here, "cities are getting proactive about promoting building around transit lines and reusing old sites," Menard said.

He cited Signature Properties' residential developments in downtown Oakland and the push to raze midcentury commercial buildings in the South Bay to make way for homes.

John Laing's origins date to the 1840s, when James Laing, the father of John, built a home in the English countryside. The company grew in Britain and entered the U.S. market in the mid 1980s. In 1998, John Laing Homes merged with Watt Homes. The firm operates mainly in California and Colorado.

The privately held company sells about 2,000 homes a year and had revenue of nearly $1.5 billion in 2004, according to Hoovers.com.

The firm said it is the second-largest private home builder in the nation behind Shea Homes. Professional Builder magazine ranked John Laing No. 26 on its list of the top 400 public and private builders in the country.

John Laing Homes' Bay Area division will have its headquarters in Pleasanton and eventually employ about 85 people, Menard said.

612bv3

August 15th, 2005, 09:35 PM

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/15/DDGM9E772S1.DTL&type=printable
De Young skyscraper to get a second life as a swanky hotel
- Jesse Hamlin, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, August 15, 2005

http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2005/08/15/dd_chron16010r.jpg
http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2005/08/15/dd_building02.jpg
http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2005/08/15/dd_building.jpg
http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2005/08/15/dd_chron16002r.jpg

It dominated the San Francisco skyline for nearly a decade, the first skyscraper in the West, a steel-framed 1890 Chicago wonder. Its imposing brick and stone Romanesque form signaled the brash Gilded Age ambition of publisher M.H. de Young and the mushrooming metropolis he championed.

But for the last 43 years, the old Chronicle Building, standing at the spiritual hub of San Francisco -- on the odd-shaped corner where Market, Kearny and Geary streets converge -- has been hidden beneath a jacket of white aluminum, steel and glass that was bolted to the brick walls in a middling attempt to jibe with the modern towers shooting up along Market in the 1950s and '60s.

Now the jacket is coming off. The old building where Mike de Young stirred up stories and hatched dreams and schemes is being restored, then reborn as a ritzy condo hotel that typifies the state of downtown real estate today.

Originally designed by the famed Chicago early modernist firm Burnham & Root, the de Young Building, as the engraving says above the richly carved red- sandstone entry arch recently exposed to public view, now belongs to Alameda developer Jim Hunter. He bought the winged 16-story building in '99, before the commercial real estate market went post-dot-com kaput. Like others with acres of empty office space, he went residential. So he's sinking $90 million to restore the old building, add eight floors on top and build condos and "fractional-ownership" hotel suites, to be run in all likelihood by Ritz- Carlton.

"I like old buildings," said Hunter, whose successes include the restoration of the Rialto Building on New Montgomery Street and the prize- winning job he did on Denver's old Equitable Building.

So does Jay Turnbull, the preservationist San Francisco architect whose firm, Page & Turnbull, is overseeing the restoration of the historic facades of this Chicago-style Richardson Romanesque tower. He's pleased to expose the city's oldest office building, the place where Mike de Young cooked up San Francisco's renowned 1894 Midwinter International Exposition, dashed off rejection letters to Jack London and put out a boisterous paper that took on political enemies and competitors.

"The building is full of history," said Turnbull, who's working with designing architect Charles Bloszies and Plant Construction on the project, which is expected to be finished in about two years. "It's a good expression of the times, of an exuberant and energetic time in the history of San Francisco and California, and this great personality of de Young, who was a tireless booster of California.''

De Young and his older brother, Charles, had started the Daily Dramatic Chronicle while still in their teens, with a $20 gold piece borrowed from their landlord. A mix of theater gossip, jokes, ads and news, the paper was passed out free around town. Its early contributors included such uncredited writers as Mark Twain and Bret Harte. The paper scored its first scoop reporting the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and over the next decade The Chronicle's circulation soared and, with it, the fortunes of the de Young family.

The paper was operating out of a four-story building at Bush and Kearny in 1880 when Charles de Young was shot and killed by Isaac M. Kalloch, son of mayor Isaac Kalloch, a Baptist preacher whom de Young had shot and wounded earlier that year after Kalloch had delivered a sermon insulting de Young's mother (the term "whore-mongering" was used). That was after The Chronicle published an expose about Kollach's shady past. Today, people just sue.

Mike de Young, a Republican leader some called a blackmailer, was nearly assassinated in 1884 by Adolph Spreckels, who was enraged by a Chronicle story accusing his sugar-baron father, Claus, of swindling shareholders. Young Spreckels was acquitted -- some say the jury was fixed -- and de Young survived and prospered. In the late 1880s, he engaged the big-time Chicago architects Burnham & Root, pioneers of the new skyscraper construction, to make him a great tower that would be "the strongest, the safest, and, for its size, the most expensive office building in the world," as The Chronicle trumpeted in its June 22, 1890, edition. The paper devoted pages to every aspect of the building, from its four-story bronze-faced clock tower to the electric-gas desk lamp in de Young's office, the pneumatic tubes and the Edison dynamos -- the first in the city -- that converted steam to electricity that lit the building.

The enormous edifice, sparingly adorned with cornice and corbels and brick and terra cotta belting, "is essentially an imposing modern office structure, with no pretensions to prettiness," some anonymous scribe wrote, "but a splendid monument to enterprise and skill and a token of the material advancement and commercial prosperity of the great capital city of the Pacific coast.''

By 1898, when the Spreckels, who published the Call, built that paper's extravagantly domed new building across the street at Market at Third, other skyscrapers had risen. But in 1890, The Chronicle was it (The Hearst Building at Market and Third, where the old Examiner was published, was built in 1909 and handsomely remodeled by Julia Morgan in '37).

The famed clock tower caught fire and was destroyed in 1905 during the re- election victory parade for the corrupt mayor Eugene Schmitz, whom de Young had crusaded against. The mayor's supporters shot off bottle rockets, some of which landed on de Young's beloved clock tower. Later that year, the publisher had Burnham design two new stories in place of the clock tower and a 16-story addition on Kearny. The job was just about done when the '06 quake hit.

The building survived the shaker but was gutted by the ensuing fire that swept the city, as were the Examiner and Call buildings. The top floor, with its heavy typesetting equipment, collapsed, smashing every floor on the way down. The southeast corner of the building crumbled. That evening, the staffs of The Chronicle and the Call, who put out a joint edition with the Examiner the next day published in Oakland, met at the Evening Bulletin.

"The pink glow of the fire, near-by on three sides now, was the only light," wrote James Hopper, a Call reporter, whose memoir appears in Malcolm Barker's "Three Fearful Days." "The order given to the Chronicle men was: 'The men of the Chronicle will meet at the Chronicle Building to-morrow at one o'clock, if there is any Chronicle.' That given to the Call was: 'The men of the Call will meet at the Fairmont to-morrow at one o'clock, if there is any tomorrow.' There was a to-morrow, but long before one o'clock the Chronicle was a gutted ruin and the magnificent Fairmont, like a great Greek temple upon its hill, was blazing like a funeral pyre.''

The Chronicle building, near Lotta's Fountain, where '06 quake survivors gather every April 18, was faithfully reconstructed by Willis Polk, the noted San Francisco architect who was Burnham's man here. In 1924, when The Chronicle, which is now owned by Hearst, moved to new quarters at Fifth and Mission, the engraving above the old arch was changed to "de Young Building." It remained office and retail space, an aging brick beauty that was draped in metal in 1962-63 by the Home Mutual Savings and Loan Association.

"Banal," said Bloszies, the architect doing this renovation, in a pithy review of the "modern" cladding now being dismantled. A number of classic older buildings in town, including the AAA headquarters on Van Ness Avenue, were similarly covered when "modernization was the rage."

"This is like buried treasure," Bloszies added, peering at the interlacing floral patterns carved into the reddish stone arch.

The building's interior, with the exception of historic stairways and other vintage elements, will be ripped out, and the structure seismically upgraded with hundreds of tons of new steel and concrete. Parts of the historic facades that were shorn off in order to hang the metal jacket -- including the cornice and a vertical row of bay windows on Market -- will be rebuilt according to photos and other source materials, mostly with a fiberglass-concrete compound that's often used for historic preservation. The same material, in a bisque color and scored with texture, will be used to face the eight-story addition.

The goal, Bloszies said, was to design "a new addition that's modern but doesn't distract from the grandeur of the original building. So the trick is to do something new, but that's in scale and character with the old." The new forms are terraced and set back in a way that "sculpts the top, so that from the corner viewpoint, which is the dominant one, you see the addition kind of fading up to the sky, and the original building dominating in the foreground.''

There'll be noise and commotion and delays around the building site for months, but it will be worth it, promises Plant's construction manager, Paula Pritchard.

"Probably nothing we do over the next couple of years is going to make pedestrians and drivers particularly happy," Pritchard said. "But we hope they can be patient, for the jewel we're going to unveil.''

With the new de Young Museum opening in Golden Gate Park where he started it in 1895, and the revival of his tower downtown, it would undoubtedly please the publisher to know he's in the news again.

Whose Homepage

August 15th, 2005, 10:10 PM

Now that's what I call wonderful news! :)

Thanks, bv3, great article. Not only does it describe the project and the building's history, but it also gives us a glimpse of San Francisco's wild and crazy past! :nuts: :guns1:

StevenW

August 16th, 2005, 12:15 AM

Awesome!

612bv3

August 16th, 2005, 01:33 AM

This is great news indeed, I'm so happy. I wish they would do the same to the Call Building!
http://www.sanfranciscomemories.com/postcards/call/callbig2.gif
This is how it looks like today. Central Tower (formally the Call Building). :(
http://www.emporis.com/en/il/im/?id=374841

Whose Homepage

August 16th, 2005, 09:55 AM

O man, YESSS! :)

Let's put that on our wish list & hope somebody like Mr. Hunter of Alameda will come around and do the same favor to this building! :okay:

612bv3

August 16th, 2005, 08:30 PM

http://www.sfexaminer.com/articles/2005/08/16/news/20050816_ne07_mission.prt
Mission Street sees condo boom
By Emily Fancher
Staff Writer

The area around the Transbay Terminal is hopping to life while plans to renovate the station into a major regional transportation hub are moving slowly.

The Millenium Tower, a 58-story skyscraper at 301 Mission St., will begin construction in early September next to the terminal, as a developer down the street at 535 Mission St. attempts to build a 35-story tower with 287 condos. And the area around the terminal is expected to become a redevelopment area in the next decade with the eventual development of 3,400 housing units as well as offices and hotels.

"Without a doubt, in cities across the world, you see intermodal transportation hubs become a focus and locus of development," said Todd Ewing, managing director of the San Francisco Center for Economic Development, "and that's what we're seeing with the Transbay Terminal, even though it's in a prospective situation right now."

Sean Jeffries of Millenium Partners said in an e-mail that he sees the start of the Millenium tower as the "kickoff" to the transformation of the Transbay Terminal area, located on lower Mission Street

Victor Gonzalez, director of development for Monahan Pacific, said the project at 535 Mission St. will likely go to the Planning Commission in September. Gonzalez said the slender tower will have an outdoor pool, fitness area and studios to two bedrooms.

This is the first major project approved for office space that was not built and then was redesigned as residential, said Kelley Amdur, the project's planner.

Though housing in the area is taking off, office projects remain at a standstill.

Tishman Speyer is approved to build a 500,000-square-foot-office building near Monahan Pacific's project at 555 Mission St., but construction has not started and the company did not return a call seeking comment.

Frank Fudem, senior vice president of BT Commercial, said office buildings that were approved during the dot-com years are in a holding pattern even though the vacancy rates are dropping.

"We're not close to justifying new construction," he said.

But Margaret Duskin, senior director for Cushman & Wakefield of California, said the market for existing office space in the southern Financial District is strong.

Recently completed office buildings near the terminal include 199 Fremont, 101 Second St., 560 Mission, and the Foundry Square office buildings at First and Howard.

As for when building might begin again, she is not sure.

"As rents are rising, I would think most owner-developers are reviewing the situation now," she said, "and they're deciding when would be the right time to make their move," she said.

StevenW

August 16th, 2005, 11:41 PM

That Millenium Tower is my favorite, so far. Others are great, too, but I just love the design and height of that tower. :D

OettingerCroat

August 18th, 2005, 10:26 PM

hey do you guys think SF will ever see a building taller than the pyramid?

612bv3

August 19th, 2005, 11:31 PM

^^probably, space is very limited in San Francisco, but I think it wont be very soon. SF needs recovered from the dot-com bust first.

OettingerCroat

August 20th, 2005, 05:55 AM

so currently, what is the tallest building U/C, approved, or nearly approved in SF?

612bv3

August 20th, 2005, 06:03 AM

Millennium Tower - 645 feet - 4th tallest in SF
construction will start soon
Millennium Tower's website --> http://www.millenniumptrs.com/millennium.htm
http://www.handelarchitects.com/project/400x300/301%20BAYBRIDGE.jpg

OettingerCroat

August 20th, 2005, 08:44 AM

dude its out in the middle of nowhere, will it even affect the skyline at all?

Whiked918

August 20th, 2005, 08:55 AM

hey do you guys think SF will ever see a building taller than the pyramid?

I think the pyramid should always be the tallest. I read it was suppost to be 1000 something feet except the city denied that because it would mess up the view from nob hill. I could have read incorrectly though.

OettingerCroat

August 20th, 2005, 09:05 AM

no you are 10000% correct, and its a shame that it wasnt that tall. now our limit is a tiny little building at 48 stories and 260 m. its frustrating to say the least w/o going way pottymouth.

612bv3

August 20th, 2005, 06:12 PM

dude its out in the middle of nowhere, will it even affect the skyline at all?
Of course it will affect the skyline. Click on the link over the picture I posted and you'll see a picture of the building with the rest of the SF skyline.

612bv3

August 21st, 2005, 12:14 AM

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/08/20/BABADIGEST4.DTL&type=printable
SoMa developer fee gets signed into law
- Cecilia M. Vega
Saturday, August 20, 2005

Developers planning to build high-rise towers on San Francisco's Rincon Hill will pay $50 million in additional fees as compensation for South of Market residents who will be affected by the project under legislation signed into law Friday by Mayor Gavin Newsom.

In a letter to the Board of Supervisors, Newsom said he will ensure that the money is spent on benefits such as affordable housing and not political organizing.

Without naming names in the letter, Newsom was clearly chastising Supervisor Chris Daly, who represents the South of Market community and persuaded developers to agree to the high fees. The mayor wrote that the Rincon Hill project "was marred by the worst type of strong-armed 'alderman- style' tactics" and that such behavior is "simply unacceptable."

Daly, in a statement, said, "Although the mayor has chosen to criticize our efforts today, I believe it is better to celebrate the power of community and developers working together."

Newsom said he plans to work with supervisors on legislation to make sure people do not have to endure "shakedowns and threats" and said he is prepared to take the issue to voters.

612bv3

August 21st, 2005, 12:25 AM

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/counties/alameda_county/12432831.htm
A's have Plan B for Oakland stadium
By Guy Ashley
CONTRA COSTA TIMES

Naysayers who write off the latest Oakland A's stadium proposal as impossibly ambitious may be heartened to know that the team has a plan to stay in Oakland or Alameda County even if the new stadium doesn't fly.

In proposing a massive $400 million ballpark and redevelopment plan last week that could encompass 90 acres along Interstate 880 and even a new $100 million BART station, A's managing partner Lew Wolff said the team wants to play in a stadium surrounded by a bustling new residential and retail neighborhood. It would require razing an aging industrial strip and acquiring dozens of privately owned parcels between 66th Avenue and High Street.

But if that plan fails, Wolff said, the team still intends to stay in Oakland or Alameda County -- even if it requires a scaled-back project that would have the A's build its new ballpark on the site of the publicly owned Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum complex.

"We have alternatives," Wolff told commissioners of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority when making his first public presentation of the A's new ballpark proposal Aug. 12.

Though Wolff said the team is open to all possible alternative sites, the preferred one appears to involve a compact new A's stadium in the Coliseum's north parking lot, and a massive new parking facility on the south side of the Coliseum near Hegenberger Road.

One East Bay official at the center of the A's ballpark initiative said the site repeatedly comes up as the most logical Plan B for the stadium project.

"It's his fallback position," said Oakland City Councilman Larry Reid, who spoke with Wolff about the Coliseum scenario days before Wolff went public with the baseball team's grand Plan A to transform a tired swath of land along I-880 between 66th Avenue and High Street.

"Outside the overall plan that he is pushing, I think this is probably the most logical alternative," Reid said.

The idea of building on the Coliseum site is nothing new.

Last year, Wolff issued a lengthy report articulating the team's preference to stay near the Coliseum, saying that he loves the location right on Interstate 880 and next to an existing BART station. And public discussions before the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority and elsewhere this year have alluded specifically to a Coliseum-based ballpark project.

But Reid said two factors shifted the ballpark discussion away from that scenario in recent months.

One is the team's growing desire to locate its ballpark amid a thriving new pocket of Oakland.

"Everybody benefits," Wolff said, "when we take an older area and recast it to a nice, more modern activity."

The second issue involves worries about potential resistance to using the parking lot from other Coliseum tenants, especially the Oakland Raiders football team.

City and county leaders are already in tricky negotiations with the Raiders over how to resurrect their partnership, which has wilted in the face of lawsuits and about $150 million in unexpected public costs for stadium upgrades and other incentives that lured the Raiders back from Los Angeles in 1995.

"Any discussion (about a Coliseum project) would have elevated the whole issue of how much Raiders would be compensated and what would be done to provide replacement parking," Reid said. "With our relationship with the Raiders starting to get better, the most logical thing to do was to not have that conversation."

Reid says the Coliseum alternative could be revived, however, if the grander redevelopment proposal falls through. He says as much as 22 acres of land on the Coliseum's Hegenberger side, some already publicly owned, could be made available to offset parking lost by a Coliseum-based ballpark.

The land includes a former go-cart business on property owned by the city and county and a vacant home improvement store site that has not been successfully revitalized.

"There's much more you can do to improve that area and benefit the city and the team than just putting in a new ballpark," Reid said. "But at least we know he's exploring all options. The A's belong in Oakland, the team's legacy is in this city and I think Mr. Wolff understands that."

612bv3

August 21st, 2005, 12:32 AM

http://insidebayarea.com/ci_2951789
Kaiser plans big expansion
Hospital quietly has acquired many new properties in N. Oakland
By Cecily Burt, STAFF WRITER
http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site181/2005/0818/20050818_073319_0818kaiser1.jpg
http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site181/2005/0818/20050818_102342_0818kaisermod_big1.jpg
OAKLAND — For East Bay Kaiser members, it's good news indeed that the health care giant intends to transform its crowded North Oakland campus into a state-of-the-art medical center.

But those who reside in the shadow of Kaiser's planned reach are reacting with far less optimism and say the HMO has broken its promise to keep the community in the loop.

After quietly buying up property around its North Oakland headquarters at West MacArthur Boulevard and Howe Street, in April Kaiser unveiled an ambitious 10-year master plan that replaces its seismically unsafe hospital tower on Howe Street, creates a new cancer center and increases the square footage of its campus by nearly 53 percent, spread out over 21 acres.

The schedule calls for the environmental and planning documents to be approved this year and construction to start early next year. The construction will be done in phases and be completed by 2015.

The catalyst for the entire project is a state law requiring Kaiser to make extensive seismic upgrades to its Oakland facilities, including the 13-story hospital tower, by 2013.

Instead, Kaiser decided the aging 346-bed hospital building is no longer adequate. It doesn't have enough room to meet patient needs or accommodate updated technology or medical equipment. The HMO plans to replace it with a new 346-bed hospital, 1,600-car parking garage and 60,000-square-foot utility plant on West MacArthur Boulevard between Broadway, Piedmont Avenue and Interstate 580.

To accomplish that, the MacArthur Broadway Center, which Kaiser owns, as well as a 30-unit apartment building on Piedmont Avenue and a dry cleaners, barber college and other businesses on Broadway, will have to go.

Once the new hospital is completed, Kaiser will remove the upper three floors from its old hospital building on Howe Street, remodel the structure and use it for outpatient visits and medical offices.

It also plans to demolish the old Fabiola Building at the corner of West MacArthur and Broadway, Kaiser's first headquarters in Oakland. The building was damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and has not been occupied since.

"The thing to recognize about seismic safety laws, hospitals not only have to stay standing, but be fully functional, up to 2030 standards," said Debby Cunningham, Kaiser's Northern California vice president for strategy. "The hospital has to be life-safe and fully functional. It's an issue we are very concerned about. We don't want our members to think our buildings are not safe."

Although Kaiser officials refer to the project as a rebuild or replacement, not an expansion, the company's new footprint will cover a lot more ground in North Oakland and replace several longtime businesses with new medical facilities.

Cunningham said the entire plan is still fluid, that documents presented the Oakland Planning Commission in April could change once it gains more suggestions and input from residents, business owners and city officials during the environmental review.

Because of the size and potential impact of the project, the city has hired two additional consulting firms to do community outreach and collect suggestions that might be used to refine the hospital's designs. The first of such meetings with the community has been scheduled for 7 p.m. Aug. 25 at Mosswood Recreation Center.

For their part, residents and business owners say they are eager to give suggestions. But so far, they say, Kaiser has kept its distance.

Scary, blighted area

There are few people in North Oakland who would be sorry to see the architecturally bland MacArthur Broadway Center go. Neighbors said the often-vacant storefronts added a scary and blighted feeling to the area.

Less enthusiastic are the residents who live in cozy, single family houses on Manila Avenue between West MacArthur and 38th Street.

Kaiser has purchased the Honda dealership and nearly all of a row of small commercial businesses on Broadway that abut the neighbors' back yards and at least one side yard.

Kaiser intends to replace the low-lying structures the residents now hardly notice with a seven-level parking structure and a separate 75-foot tall cancer center. Cunningham said the new center will allow the HMO to consolidate all cancer services that are scattered around the hospital.

According to a June newsletter distributed to nearby residents, construction on the Honda site tentatively is scheduled to begin next year and be finished by mid-2007.

The newsletter provides no new details about the size of the new buildings on the Honda site, but Scott Gregory, a principal with Lamphier/Gregory who is serving as the city's planner for the project, said they will look at ways to reduce the size of the garage after neighbors said it was too tall.

"We'll be doing an analysis to find out where people park," he said. "We'll continue to study all of this. It's Kaiser's first proposal. They are projecting an 18 percent increase in patient visits per year."

Neighbors say they understand Kaiser needs to grow, they just want to ensure they don't get trampled in the process. They think Kaiser should build up the MB site but keep the Honda site smaller

612bv3

August 21st, 2005, 02:04 AM

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/12403110.htm
Stanford Stadium to be demolished
HISTORICAL VALUE WON'T SPARE FACILITY, PLANNERS DETERMINE

By Dan Stober

Mercury News

Coaching legend Pop Warner exhorted his football players there. Quarterbacks Jim Plunkett and John Elway thrilled fans with impossible comebacks.

But neither football lore nor the architectural design of the elliptical Stanford Stadium provide enough historical clout to spare the 1921 structure from the wrecking ball, according to county officials.

Planners at the Santa Clara County planning department have concluded that the stadium lacks enough historical significance to merit its preservation -- especially since the new stadium proposed by Stanford will maintain the same general shape and some of the original details.

The report by planner Rob Eastwood is welcome news for Stanford officials, who want to begin demolishing the aging 85,000-seat stadium as soon as the final whistle blows an end to the Notre Dame game on Nov. 26.

Stanford already has started reaching out to residents of surrounding neighborhoods who might be worried about late-night construction noise.

The eye-popping construction schedule calls for completion of a new, more intimate 50,000-seat stadium on the same site in nine months, weather permitting. The goal is to have the $85 million field ready for the first home game of the 2006 football season, a Sept. 9 opener against San Jose State.

To do so, the university -- and its unpaid, hard-charging project manager and lead donor, commercial real estate developer John Arrillaga -- will pay for two shifts of construction workers each day. The work will begin at 7 a.m. and not end until 11:30 p.m. Much of the night work will be illuminated by the existing stadium lights.

The work will be conducted with jack hammers, pavement breakers, excavators and an array of cranes, according to county planners.

The stadium is outside the city limits of Palo Alto, which frowns on late-night construction projects.

The nearest off-campus neighbors are Palo Alto High School and the Town and Country shopping center, both on El Camino Real. Jean McCown, the university's director of community relations, said she has met with some residents of the nearest neighborhoods, Southgate and College Terrace, to talk about the impact of noise and traffic, which she said will be minimal.

One College Terrace resident, who did not wish to be named, said most of her neighbors had no concerns about the stadium plan, though one expressed worries about construction traffic.

Stanford officials hope the empty seats that have plagued the stadium in recent years will become a thing of the past with the new stadium. Their plans are scheduled to go before the county's Architectural and Site Approval Committee next month.

612bv3

August 22nd, 2005, 06:24 PM

http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_2962319
Will residents swing at A's pitch?
100 property owners stand between team, new stadium

By Paul T. Rosynsky, STAFF WRITER
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OAKLAND — Andy Hall knows all too well what it's like to stand in the way of "progress."

Eleven years ago, his soap-making business was relocated by the state government from Wood Street in West Oakland to make way for Interstate 880.

Hall remembers it both fondly and with anxiety.

The move and the government payoff allowed Hall to rid himself of an asbestos-laden building and replace it with a larger, more convenient warehouse.

But it cost him thousands of dollars in lost profits and construction as he prepared the new site for his business.

Now Hall and about 100 other property owners in an industrial area near McAfee Coliseum are facing a similar fate.

Their land has been targeted by the Oakland A's as a future site for a new $300 million to $400 million ballpark and housing development.

If the A's get their wish, a bakery, flea market, furniture repair shops and Hall's business, among others, would be replaced by a flashy outdoor retail center, apartment buildings and the ballpark.

The land might look useless while speeding by on Interstate 880, but it is home to more than 100 jobs. It produces Colombo bread and refurbishes furniture. It's used for storage and to make soap for car washes.

It was once home to a drive-in theater and now offers residents a flea market six days a week.

Most importantly for the property owners, it generates income.

Whether those owners think they can generate that income in another location or be satisfied with a lump sum payment to vacate will determine if the Oakland A's get a new home and the city a new neighborhood.

For Hall and about a dozen other property owners contacted last week,the decision is largely based on dollars.

"I would love to be allowed to just stay here," Hall said as he described the convenience his warehouse brings to his business and customers. "But I'm willing to sell to them if they make it attractive to me."

What the property owners think is attractive and what the A's are willing to pay, if anything, remains to be seen.

Despite giving a detailed description of what the team wants to do with the land, managing partner Lewis Wolff has not answered critical questions regarding the potential development.

Who would pay for the land?

What would happen to a railroad tracks that run through the property? In what capacity will the city of Oakland and Alameda County help in the effort to secure the more than 100 acres?

"There are probably more questions than we have answers for right now," A's spokesman Jim Young said. "(Wolff) made it very clear in the presentation he was looking for the city to help acquire that land ... how that process is done, we are going to need a great deal of assistance from the city."

Whoever ends up buying the land, if the proposal moves forward, is going to need a lot of cash as well.

A review of the property records for each lot in the area shows the land would cost almost as much as the stadium.

The land and all the buildings on it have an assessed value of more than $109 million, records from the Alameda County Property Appraiser Office show. But that value is what is assessed. Typically the price is higher in terms of market value.

The cost would rise once business relocations are taken into consideration.

And judging by what a dozen current property owners in the area said, market value must be offered and business relocations made.

"I think Mr. Wolff is going to need to win the lottery to get that project done," said George Fernbacher, owner of 10,000-square-foot warehouse on Coliseum Way that is home to a furniture upholster. "If we are allowed to make some money, then we can look at it. But I don't think Mr. Wolff is going to be able to steam roll over us."

"I would not be real excited about selling the land and then having to try to find a new place," added Jim Olesnanik, owner of 20,000-square-foot warehouse on Kevin Court used to package honey.

For his part, Wolff appears to understand negotiations will work better than demands.

Wolff stressed during his presentation last week the team wants to avoid using the government's eminent domain power to grab the land. Under that law, which the U.S. Supreme Court made more powerful this year, the city can take land from private owners for "economic development."

"We understand and we want to assure that property owners in the area will need to be satisfied and treated fairly," Wolff wrote in a letter to Oakland and Alameda County last Monday. "We believe, under the right circumstances, a win-win-win outcome is possible if all involved parties have a willingness to advance the redevelopment of the suggested area."

At the same time, Wolff pointed to the fact that land is currently in a redevelopment area and is probably considered blight under city laws, the letter obtained by the Oakland Tribune said.

Wolff also cautions "claims of appreciation" related to the suggested venue location project cannot be a factor in considering the fair market value.

Only one City Council member, Larry Reid, has said the city would definitely use the eminent domain power to make the deal work.

Others were less convinced about not using it.

"It's just too early to tell right now," said Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente (Glenview-Fruitvale). "We have to do it right."

Nevertheless, property owners in the area are vehemently opposed to the use of eminent domain and promised to bring "bus loads" of attorneys to the area if the city begins using that power.

"We all would find very good lawyers at that point, I guarantee it," said an owner of a self storage yard on San Leandro Street who declined to be identified in this article.

For the property owners, the land is a livelihood.

Some of it is used to supplement retirement savings. Some is used for businesses shooed from other city locations. Other parcels are owned by the government or organizations for storage.

"I purchased these properties for my retirement. If the city takes it, my income goes in half or less," said Howard Robinson Jr., who leases a warehouse to a paint company. "I don't want to sell my property to someone who can make even more money on it."

612bv3

August 22nd, 2005, 06:32 PM

http://eastbay.bizjournals.com/eastbay/stories/2005/08/22/story1.html
Ballpark village plan designed to win allies, public funds
Wolff swings for the fence
Eric Lai

Oakland A's owner Lew Wolff may insist he's a businessman, not a politician. But by linking his desired new baseball stadium with an ambitious mixed-use redevelopment of a tatty industrial slice of East Oakland, he has shrewdly widened the political and popular support he needs for both projects to succeed.

Like a rider to a popular legislative bill that opponents are disinclined to oppose, the proposed 35,000 seat stadium is just a small section of Wolff's magnificent vision of a new "ballpark village" on a site as large as 140 acres, replete with thousands of condos, dozens of shops and restaurants and a hotel, that Oakland officials, including Mayor Jerry Brown, would not have dared dream of a week ago.

Correctly reading the mood of Oakland taxpayers still feeling burnt by the $150 million spent a decade ago to bring the Raiders back, Wolff's plan wisely avoids requiring the city to pay for any of the stadium's anticipated $400 million price tag.

Tying the development of sports facilities to larger redevelopment plans is a trend, said Rick Horrow, a Miami-based consultant who helps sports teams arrange stadium financing. He points to Washington D.C., where city leaders, including former Oakland city manager and current D.C. City Administrator Robert Bobb, hope to redevelop the area surrounding a planned baseball stadium.

Many issues remain in Oakland, including subsidies Wolff still wants the city and county to grant, and whether business and government groups can respond fast enough to meet Wolff's one-year deadline.

But Wolff is winning support from those in Oakland's business and political community aching to transform the once blue-collar port city into a middle-class technology-driven town.

Wolff, along with co-owner Gap Inc. heir John Fisher, has formed "a very powerful, capable group with a sense of vision," said Jim McMasters, vice president for Colliers International in Walnut Creek.

A long-time retail broker in Oakland, McMasters said even with this week's opening of a Wal-Mart nearby in Hegenberger Gateway Shopping Center, East Oakland remains "dramatically under-retailed." McMasters thinks an outlet-type mall as Wolff is proposing has a good chance of succeeding.

Revenue from mall store leases and sales, along with sales and rentals of condominiums and apartments, would help pay for the A's new stadium. But Wolff is still seeking millions of dollars in incentives and tax breaks for both the stadium and the mixed-use development.

In his Aug. 12 presentation to the Joint Powers Authority, an Oakland-Alameda County body that oversees the Coliseum, Wolff asked the city and county to consider waiving permit fees, charges, assessments and other costs pertaining to building a stadium. He also asked for a rebate of all real estate tax and sales tax.

That is a common practice, said Neil deMause, a sports business journalist.

"As public opposition raises to putting public cash into sports facilities, sports owners have said it's easier to say 'We'll spend on the stadium, but give us breaks on taxes and fees'," said deMause, co-author of "Field of Schemes," a book critical of publicly financed stadiums.

Another skeptic, Stanford University sports economist Roger Noll, argues, "If the redevelopment sans stadium is worth doing, it is more worth doing without the stadium."

How much Oakland can assist Wolff, whose firm Maritz, Wolff & Co. redeveloped large parts of San Jose's downtown, with redevelopment funds is also in question.

Oakland's director of redevelopment, Daniel Vanderpriem, who says that he has not met with the A's or Wolff about the proposed project, said the city already is involved in many redevelopment projects, some of them expensive. At the very most, the city could contribute about $27 million over the next several years to any new project by issuing bonds itself.

Any more money, Vanderpriem said, would involve "project-based revenue bonds" issued by the state and arranged by the city. Their size and repayment would be solely the developers' responsibility.

"If the bond payments cannot be met, the city won't backfill them with any money," he said, pointing to the $100 million project bond being issued to Forest City Development CA Inc. for the Uptown condominium project as an example.

Wolff's dream is much more ambitious and expensive. His proposed mixed-use development would take over a 140-acre area dominated by dozens of light industrial businesses - tire shops, lumber yards, warehouses and a flea market at an old drive-in movie theater - some of which have been around since the area was developed in the late 1960s, says Michael Barry, a longtime commercial real estate broker in the area.

Old-timers who own their property may resist leaving, especially because they would be hard-pressed to find cheap equivalent space nearby.

Take Bay Area Contract Carpets Inc., a successful carpet wholesaler in the area. Based on what Barry says is the going rate of $120 per square foot for buildings in that area, owner Ken Scott said he probably would not sell his 15,000-square-foot building for less than $2 million.

According to an East Bay Business Times analysis, acquiring all 107 parcels in the 140 acre area bordered by High Street to the north, Interstate 880 to the west, 66th Avenue to the south, and the Union Pacific railroad tracks to the east could cost as much $315 million, based on that rate.

Even if the city or A's officials were able to convince property owners that their buildings were tear-downs and they should accept something closer to $20 per square foot of land as compensation, the total bill would still come to nearly $123 million.

"It'd be a daunting task to get and buy it all," Barry said.

That excludes the $110 million that BART officials say it would take to build a station one mile north of McAfee Coliseum to serve the development and the new stadium.

Reached at his Los Angeles office Aug. 15, Wolff said, "What the BART station is, needs to be defined," implying that instead of a full train station, BART could consider a cheaper alternative: extending the planned two-mile monorail from Oakland International Airport to Coliseum BART all the way to the new stadium.

Problem is, the $260-million monorail is in limbo, having failed to get federal funding from the Department of Transportation in late June.

Wolff has set a one-year deadline for garnering the political and monetary support for his project. That assumes unrealistically quick cooperation from a wide range of government bureaucracies, critics say.

"Lew might have come up with something so big in order to see Oakland fail," said Zennie Abraham, a former Oakland mayoral adviser and sports business owner.

Having made his best effort, Wolff would then be free to negotiate moving the A's to a city such as Portland, Sacramento or Las Vegas, all of which are clamoring for a Major League Baseball franchise and willing to pony up more money than Oakland is.

612bv3

August 23rd, 2005, 06:59 AM

http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2005/08/22/story4.html
Downtown condo tower plan bumps into FAA's height ceiling

Andrew F. Hamm

Several airlines are unhappy about the proposed the 22-story condominium project next to the Hotel DeAnza, telling federal officials it threatens the safety of aircraft departing from Mineta San Jose International Airport.

Developers Spring Capital Group of Eugene, Ore., confirm that several unnamed airlines have complained to the Federal Aviation Administration that thir planes would have to take off with less than a full payload in order to safely clear the proposed 228-foot, 330-unit Almaden Towers building at Santa Clara and Notre Dame streets.

"I think we have proven to the FAA that they are mistaken," says Kevin Sauser, architect for the estimated $150 million project, also known as San Jose Condominiums. "There are other existing buildings that have an equal impact. It's not going to be our impact."

The building would sit on an 81-foot hill, making its actual height 309 feet above sea level, which is how the FAA determines building size.

Spring Capital Group already cut the buildings height down from the original 260 feet to meet FAA concerns, Mr. Sauser says. That 32-foot reduction eliminated about 30 units from the project, he says.

The new height makes Almaden Towers nearly the same height as the nearby Opus Center building and the Adobe Building, Mr. Sauser says. Neither building has posed any safety hazard to the airport, he says.

Aircraft at Mineta San Jose usually take off in a northerly direction away from the downtown area. But wind shifts require southern takeoffs about 20 percent of the time, airport officials say. The building's height apparently isn't a factor on landings at Mineta San Jose.

However, tenants at the building would experience very high noise levels during landings, says Ron Blake, a member of the Santa Clara County Airport Land-Use Commission. The commission is charged with issuing recommendations on property use around the three county airports and Mineta San Jose International. The ALUC ruled in November that the building exceeded safe height limits by a minimum of 54 feet.

"I understand the rooms would be soundproofed but what about the rest of the common areas?" Mr. Blake says.

The FAA has taken what spokesman Donn Walker says is "the unusual step" of seeking public comments on the project. The FAA refused Business Journal requests to review those public comments.

Airport spokesman Rich Dressler says Mineta San Jose officials are studying the project but would not comment further on the issue.

The Almaden Towers developer is taking advantage of the city's incentive program to bring residential units to downtown San Jose. That program includes bypassing affordable housing requirements. A 330-unit condominium would normally be required to make 66 units affordable, says John Weis, deputy executive director of the San Jose Redevelopment Agency.

However, that incentive expires June 30, 2006.

The 16-floor, 170-foot-tall City Heights at Pellier Park project on St. James Street now under construction was delayed for more than nine months by airport safety issues relating to its height. The San Jose City Council ultimately overruled an ALUC recommendation against construction after the FAA issued a ruling that the building would not be a safety hazard.

"I think losing that incentive would adversely affect (the Almaden Towers) project significantly," Mr. Weis says.

The Almaden Towers and City Heights projects are just two of as many as 10 high-rise condominium projects slated to be under construction by June, Mr. Weis says.

The housing projects, along with the new San Jose City Hall, are considered critical for the city's "Heart of the City" project, part of a larger downtown revitalization effort.

The 1.2-acre Almaden Towers project has been an intriguing site for developers for at least the past seven years. Originally slated to become an office tower, the property was also being considered for an Embassy Suites hotel before being purchased by a consortium of investors in 2002 to make it a condo tower. The units will be sized between 550 and 2,700 square feet. The condos are expected to start in the $450,000 range.

The project's height is not the only hurdle the project's developer has had to overcome. Historical preservationists were concerned over the demolition of a well-known club known in different times as the Palomar and the Tropicana. Developers have agreed to acknowledge the building with a display or mural onsite, Mr. Sauser says.

612bv3

August 25th, 2005, 02:58 AM

I don't know if I posted this before.

California Academy of Science
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It's scheduled to open in 2008.
Their website:http://www.calacademy.org/newacademy/index.php

612bv3

August 26th, 2005, 05:33 AM

http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2005/08/22/daily43.html
Ghirardelli owner unwraps hotel plan

Ghirardelli Square owner JMA Ventures announced plans for a hotel on the upper floors of the historic former chocolate factory turned shopping center.

The floors now house office space but would be converted to roughly 90 hotel rooms in a handful of buildings. The proposed change still needs approval from the San Francisco Planning Commission.

JMA also announced it plans to begin a seismic upgrade later this year of unreinforced masonry structures that are part of the complex.

The shopping mall will remain open for the duration of the seismic upgrades.

A spokesman for JMA said the plan is in the early stages and that JMA is still seeking an operator.

JMA reportedly paid close to $40 million for the square last year, acquiring it from Capital & Counties USA. JMA is based in San Francisco.

612bv3

September 5th, 2005, 09:08 PM

http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2005/09/05/story1.html
Jack Myers maps out $400M project
Developer wants to 'complete picture' in South San Francisco
Lizette Wilson

Jack is back.

Developer Jack Myers is planning a $400 million mixed-use development at the base of San Bruno Mountain, a massive complex that would create a new downtown for South San Francisco and further transform the view of The Industrial City's only dedicated open space. It would include four new towers of up to 21 stories.

The site is a 21.5-acre plot adjoining the sometimes-controversial Peninsula Mandalay he built in 2004. Myers said critics of the Mandalay -- who call the 180-foot tower too tall and out of character for its low-slung surroundings -- are working with an incomplete picture.

"Right now it's a big building on a hill with nothing else around it. There's no context," said Myers. "Terrabay -- the entire development with both phases -- will complete the thought."

So far, few residents and officials are voicing opinions about Myers' proposed addition.

Said the president of the South San Francisco Chamber of Commerce: "At this point because the project is still in the planning stages we prefer not to make a comment."

Terrabay's first phase would include:

-More than 250 condominiums clustered in four towers above ground-floor retail. The towers would vary in height and size, with the smallest containing just 15 condos and the largest containing 180 condos and stretching 21 stories. The Mandalay, the only major building at the base of the mountain, is 18 stories tall and contains 112 units. It is west of the proposed development.
-A 322,000-square-foot "lifestyle retail" center. This could mean tenants like Pottery Barn and Bed Bath and Beyond, a 10-12 screen movie theater and other uses that complement, rather than compete with the existing downtown several blocks away.
-Special amenities, including a 150-seat performing arts center, an outdoor performance venue and community gathering spot, water features, a children's play area, a history walk and a valley trail leading up the mountain. The seasonal creek which now runs through the area would be enhanced so it runs year-round.

Phase II will depend on the market. At the moment, a 260,000-square-foot office building with a 300-room hotel is the front runner.

"The prospects for leasing to major office tenants are solid given the trends currently under way on the Peninsula," said Myers.

If that demand isn't there, then Myers wants to build a 180-unit condo complex, which, like the condos in the first phase, will include some at below-market rate prices.

A final decision will likely be made in 2007, prior to tenants occupying the first phase.

The Terrabay site is zoned for 645,000 square feet of office space. Myers is requesting a general plan amendment, a zoning change and approval for his specific plan when he goes to the city's Planning Commission during September and October.

If approvals go smoothly, then the two-phase development designed by RTKL Associates could break ground as soon as spring of 2006, with the first phase finished by 2008. Myers owns the land -- he bought it and 150 other contiguous acres in 1999 -- and is searching for investors for the development now. Myers is also having discussions with general contractors and expects to select one in three or four months.

CB Richard Ellis's Phil Tippet and Bill Walsh will do the office leasing while Cushman & Wakefield's Kazuko Morgan will lease the retail space.

Myers began doing residential development projects in 1974 when he cofounded the company in Hawaii. Since then, Myers Development has expanded into the commercial market, building more than a half dozen high-rise office buildings, hotels and golf courses in Hawaii and the Bay Area, including the 55 Second St. and 101 Second St. towers in San Francisco.

612bv3

September 5th, 2005, 09:17 PM

http://insidebayarea.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/print_article.jsp?article=2988293
Oakland monorail looking like more of a challenge
Project to link train between Coliseum BART Station and airport now relying on private investors

By Paul T. Rosynsky and Sean Holstege, STAFF WRITERS
Inside Bay Area

OAKLAND — A vision to connect Oakland International Airport to the Coliseum BART Station with a monorail is beginning to look more like Neverland than Tomorrowland.

The Port of Oaklands constant tinkering with its airport expansion design, plus BARTs low-balling of monorail costs, has put the project in jeopardy, officials say.

As a result, survival of the popular airport connector idea hinges for the first time on private investors.

The only way it can be real is if there is private financing for it, said Steve Grossman, port aviation director. BART needs to go out there and find out if this project is feasible.

The elected BART board will know next month whether it can afford the monorail when Wall Street financiers present details explaining why private investment makes sense.

Meanwhile, the Port Commission will vote today on whether to spend an additional $500,000 to redesign the monorail, now listed as one of 10 endangered transportation projects in Alameda County. If it doesnt spend the money, says Grossman, the project could be dead. When county voters supported the connector in a 2000 sales tax measure, the 3.2-mile line was pegged at $232 million. BART, which has $211 million in pocket, now says it could cost $300 million to $330 million. The agency is turning to private developers for the difference.

BART blames repeated, major changes to the airport design. In particular, a port decision last year to scrap a planned airport parking garage sent the monorail idea into turmoil.

As originally proposed, the monorail would give passengers using BART a direct, 11.2-minute link to the airport. The project called for stations at both the BART Coliseum stop and in the proposed airport parking garage. Those stations would have been linked by 3.2 miles of monorail track along Hegenberger Road. It would carry 13,500 people a day, BART said. Local taxes have generated about $76 million for the project.

But in the years since, the port scaled down its airport construction plans by scraping the parking garage and suggesting a third terminal be built along Airport Drive.

That turned the monorail project upside down.

Nobody knew where an airport monorail station would go or whether the track should swing by the former United Airlines maintenance hangar, a possible international terminal.

We can get as far as the airport grounds. The question is, what happens once we get there? BART spokesman Linton Johnson said.

The rail district has completed preliminary engineering from the Coliseum Station to the airport boundary, but now must wait for airport plans as it buys land along the route.

BART hopes to seek bids for the project in 2007 and open service in 2011. A port memo says BART needs to reissue a request for proposals next spring, but in the same paragraph states: It is likely that it will take 1-2 years for the port to make any firm decisions on future construction of either a new terminal and/or garage.

If we wait for all the port planning to be done, the project will never go because plans are always changing, Grossman said.

This project has been in the bridesmaids position waiting on the doorstep for a long, long, long time, said Randy Rentschler, spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

Among problems plaguing the connector has been the lack of full-blown commitment.

Congress earmarked no money for the project in this years federal transportation bill, laden with a record-breaking $24 billion in pork, legislators pet projects.

The port lobbied Congress this year for dredging money, while BART wanted seismic money. Neither pushed for the connector.

There have been pointed questions about the commitment to this project on both sides said Dennis Fay, executive director of the Alameda County Congestion Management Authority (CMA).

The Authority ranks the connector among the countys top five transportation projects. Fay said uncertainties about the airport expansion are hurdles typical of big construction and can be overcome. He said private money could save the project.

Im more optimistic than I have been in a long time, given what Ive seen in BARTs financial plan. But if it doesnt work, this project will be in real trouble, Fay said.

At least one port commissioner feels it is not worth the risk.

At this point, it is a waste of money, said Port Commissioner Frank Kiang, a member of the commissions aviation committee. Right now, the airport master plan has not been finalized. We dont have a final plan, so how do we know exactly where everything is supposed to go? We dont have a location.

Caliguy2005

September 21st, 2005, 01:46 PM

http://www.capsweb.org/main.html

robertee

September 27th, 2005, 12:01 AM

One Rincon Hill (approved on August 4,2005):

One Rincon Hill South Tower 550 ft 54 stories
One Rincon Hill North Tower 450 ft 45 stories

http://63.240.68.115/FirmFiles/95/images/render%2Ejpg

Whiked918

September 27th, 2005, 06:16 AM

One Rincon Hill (approved on August 4,2005):

One Rincon Hill South Tower 550 ft 54 stories
One Rincon Hill North Tower 450 ft 45 stories

http://63.240.68.115/FirmFiles/95/images/render%2Ejpg

Looks cool!

612bv3

September 29th, 2005, 02:45 AM

You guys can check out its website. http://www.onerinconhill.com/

go mid east

September 30th, 2005, 01:59 AM

Looks great... sf has needed those for a long time

i like the skyline and buildings of sf best in the world i think, the hills make it even more attractive. and the fog, of course.

612bv3

October 3rd, 2005, 06:08 AM

The city has a chance to create a great neighborhood on Rincon Hill

John King
Thursday, September 29, 2005

http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2005/09/29/dd_place29001bw.jpg
http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2005/09/29/dd_place29.jpg

The clock tower atop Rincon Hill doesn't tell the time anymore, and by the end of November, there won't be a clock tower at all. A 50-year-old landmark will be taken down, and a pair of towers, 55 and 45 stories, will rise in its place.

I grew up in the East Bay and remember the clock tower standing in splendid isolation to greet me upon my arrival in the city, with downtown seemingly far away to the north, so it's strange to see backhoes and demolition crews chewing away at the tower. Yes, I know the past is gone -- the Union 76 banner was replaced by a bank logo in 1995 -- but that doesn't make the passage of time any less jarring.

That clock gone black is the most visible sign yet that a new Rincon Hill neighborhood is coming our way. Within two years, we'll start to see a new skyline, with thousands of residential units filling streamlined towers at least 10 stories higher than anything there today. In theory, it will be a place laced with urbane plazas and broad sidewalks, and marked by architecture that does more than just block views.

A place that will indicate whether San Francisco can still create great neighborhoods from scratch.

When the clock tower reached its present height of 183 feet in 1955, San Francisco was the unquestioned center of the Bay Area and, as far as many residents were concerned, the West Coast's only big city of note. The Financial District stopped at Market Street; "south of the slot" were flophouses and warehouses and a maze of ramps curling to and from the Bay Bridge.

Now most of those ramps are gone, the warehouses have been converted to lofts or office space, and the blocks south of Market Street near the water are indistinguishable from what's north. On Rincon Hill, midsize condo towers already crowd the doomed clock tower.

And not just the look of the city has changed. Many of today's residents -- the ones drawn by the climate or the lifestyle or the politics -- don't see San Francisco as a regional hub at all. They're focused on their own neighborhoods, their preferred cafes, their favorite outdoor destinations.

The funny thing is, the neighborhoods that work the best are the ones were got slapped together long ago. Space was at a premium, so houses were jammed close together; cars weren't that common, so commercial districts were pulled in close to transit lines.

These days, by contrast, development is shaped by process and politics -- with mixed results. Planning too often is nothing more than an attempt to satisfy the demands of every conceivable interest group. For most politicians, meanwhile, the long-term look and feel of San Francisco isn't nearly as important as making your most strident constituents happy.

At Rincon Hill, for example, activists from areas nearly a mile to the west jumped in after years of planning to complain that -- because they, too, were south of Market Street -- towers on Rincon Hill were bound to send waves of gentrification rippling their way. Supervisor Chris Daly happily endorsed this geographically dubious claim, boosted the fee on developers from $14 to $25 per square foot for a "community stabilization fund," and a majority of supervisors rubber-stamped the deal.

That vote on the final version of the Rincon Hill plan was on Aug. 8. Three days later, the project dubbed One Rincon Hill was approved by the Planning Commission. It includes 712 housing units in two slender shafts of 55 and 45 stories at First and Harrison streets. There will also be a $20 million contribution to the city's affordable-housing development fund.

For my taste, the towers are 10 stories too tall, but the design by Solomon Cordwell Buenz of Chicago is head and shoulders above any of the towers now in the area -- not just literally but figuratively. The look is clean and modern, with aluminum panels and plenty of glass; if developer Michael Kriozere of San Diego doesn't skimp on the details, the result should be a striking accent on the skyline.

And now that the planning and politics are behind us, the details are what count. Rosy visions aren't enough: If every possible tower gets shoved into place, or if what gets built looks crude and cheap, future generations will cringe.

The right tone is being set by interim Planning Director Dean Macris, who returned last winter to the post he held from 1981 to 1992.

During that time, San Francisco gained national attention (not all favorable) for its ambitious and extremely detailed downtown plan. Now, Macris says, he wants San Francisco to gain a reputation for something else: contemporary architecture of lasting merit.

"The day when you hired the architects to get through the process is over. A quality building will be what gets you through the process," Macris vows. Asked how he defines quality, Macris ticks off such basics as good proportions and high-quality materials -- but also innovation.

"People now are receptive to fresh ideas in architecture," Macris explains. "If we have the rules right, and developers bring in a good architect, let it go from there."

The rules are in place. And the money will be coming so that the public realm of pedestrian-friendly plazas and sidewalks can evolve.

Now comes the hard part.

It's easy to take down a clock tower; it's tough to create a community. Let's hope San Francisco is up to the task.

In other news: Rincon Hill's timepiece isn't the only thing fading away -- so is the San Francisco branch of Builders Booksource. While the Berkeley branch of this valued architectural resource will stay open, the Ghirardelli Square outpost closes at the end of October. Until then, all books will be 20 percent off, so shop early and often.

Also fading away -- but only temporarily! -- is this very column. Place will spend October on hiatus, as we literary types like to say. See you in November.

E-mail John King at jking@sfchronicle.com.

Page E - 1
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/09/29/DDGA1EUURN1.DTL

612bv3

October 3rd, 2005, 06:13 AM

Terminal dispute bound to be costly
By Emily Fancher
Staff Writer

A board that oversees the planned $4 billion Transbay Terminal project on Thursday recommended a $58 million settlement to a developer in a move that could eliminate a major legal hurdle and allow the proposal to move forward.

"With this, all of the potential problems go away," said Mike Nevin, chair of the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, which recommended approval of the settlement. "It's a major step toward the transit center."

The recommended settlement needs ultimate approval by the Board of Supervisors.

The new terminal would replace an aging, seismically unsafe bus terminal with a regional transit center at First and Mission streets that would serve AC Transit, Golden Gate Transit, Muni, SamTrans and Greyhound. The project also includes an extension of Caltrain to the financial district and the creation of a redevelopment area with 3,400 new homes, a hotel, retail and office space.

The Transbay Joint Powers Authority recommended paying $58 million to Myers Development Corp. Developer Jack Myers had planned to build a 48-story condo tower at 80 Natoma St. before the Board of Supervisors voted last year to condemn his property, after studies showed his tower would conflict with proposed tunnels for the transit terminal.

The payout settles a lawsuit by Myers as well as compensating him for the price of the land and his capital investment in the project. Myers could not be reached for comment before press time.

Greg Harper, a member of the Joint Powers Authority, said he did not believe the property was worth $58 million, but he voted to recommend the settlement so the project could move forward.

Supervisor Jake McGoldrick, who heads the San Francisco Transportation Authority commission, said he was unhappy with the unfolding deal, which is now costing double the early settlement estimates of about $32 million.

"This eminent domain proceeding for this particular developer has turned out to be a seriously misrepresented and misassessed adventure," he said.

McGoldrick said he has major concerns about the pace of spending so early in the massive project and wants to see an audit of the TJPA before it runs into other potentially costly roadblocks.

"I want to make sure that they have a program in place for eminent domain actions and that their expenditures are justifiable."

If approved, the settlement money will come from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Transportation Authority.

E-mail: efancher@examiner.com

Whose Homepage

October 3rd, 2005, 10:55 AM

^^ Let's get that real estate settlement over with, and fast and as cheaply as possible! :okay:

I'm all in favor of transportation $$$ being spent on public transit rather than on freeway widening & exits. So let's hurry up and GET MOVIN'!!!

Whose Homepage

October 3rd, 2005, 10:58 AM

robertee

October 4th, 2005, 03:31 AM

Residential:

City Heights
http://www.geocities.com/serve151/161143842366.jpg

City Front Square
http://www.geocities.com/serve151/cityfrontsquare.JPG

Central Place
http://www.geocities.com/serve151/centralplace.JPG

http://www.geocities.com/serve151/wrk_lrg_img_centralplace.jpg

The Heritage
http://www.geocities.com/serve151/theheritage.JPG

Park View
http://www.geocities.com/serve151/parkview.JPG

Office:

Almaden Plaza
http://www.geocities.com/serve151/ground_639.jpg

and more to come.... :)

612bv3

October 4th, 2005, 06:31 AM

You're amazing robertee!!! Thank you for sharing! Thoes building will be great addition to San Jose.

612bv3

October 4th, 2005, 07:19 AM

Since we're not going to get a new A's stadium very soon, I thought we could look at what could have been our new A's stadium in downtown Oakland. It looks very nice by the way. It could really have changed downtown Oakland.
http://www.oaklandfans.com/ballpark/revitalization/revitalization.jpg
http://www.oaklandfans.com/ballpark/revitalization/revitalization2.jpg
http://www.oaklandfans.com/ballpark/revitalization/revitalization3.jpg

Apoc

October 4th, 2005, 07:25 AM

Why did you say "what could have been our new A's stadium"? :cry:

612bv3

October 5th, 2005, 05:15 AM

^^Well, they already have plans to build the stadium next to the Oakland Colisuem. I would love to see the new A's ballpark in downtown Oakland, but right now it looks very unlikely. What caught my eye is that the Fox Theatre open.

Whose Homepage

October 5th, 2005, 08:53 AM

Yes! It *would* be nice to see the Fox Theater refurbished and open again! :)

And I guess a new ballpark in downtown Oakland wouldn't be bad, either. But, Masher, things being sort of tight and iffy all over, I think we should be happy if Oakland gets a new ballpark at all.

612bv3

October 6th, 2005, 01:43 AM

Mission condo project sparks debate
By Emily Fancher
Staff Writer

Upscale housing proposals a block from the 16th Street BART station have renewed battles against gentrification in the Mission, which was ground zero for the development wars of the dot-com days.

Mission Gardens is a 194-unit project proposed at 1880 Mission St. at 15th Street that the Planning Commission will consider Thursday. What makes this development battle a bit different is that the developer, Agustin Rosas-Maxemin, who reportedly grew up in the Mission, has won over some neighborhood groups.

The developer, who did not return calls seeking comment, has agreed to increase the number of affordable units to 20 percent of the total number — 8 percent more than The City's requirement — and to make the units bigger to accommodate families. In addition, he has agreed to work with Mission Hiring Hall to use local labor.

"This is a transformational project. It'll take the worst part of Mission Street and transform it to one of the best parts," said Philip Lesser, president of Mission Merchants Association.

Opponents, such as Mission Agenda and the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition, say the seven-story building will transform the area into a gated community.

"They may call it Mission Gardens, but certainly no fruit will fall for the poor," said Richard Marquez, a member of the Mission Agenda. "If anything, it'll be ‘Mission: Impossible' to get into the garden."

Marquez said he cannot support the project unless it offers units to those making less than $10,000 a year, because the area is one of the poorest in The City and he worries local residents will be displaced and excluded.

However, community organizations such as the Latino Steering Committee, the Mission Hiring Hall and Arriba Juntos have endorsed the project.

Planning Commissioner Christina Olague said she is generally concerned about upscale housing projects in the Mission that may continue to drive out the working poor, as well as people of color.

If the project is approved, it may not be the only condo project on the block. Developers hope to turn the Armory, a city landmark vacant for 30 years, into about 170 units. Lesser said the combination of the two projects will cut down on drug activity, vandalism and theft on the block.

"There are no eyes on the street there now," he said.

Judy Sorro, program coordinator for the Mission Hiring Hall, said the development will offer more housing and more job opportunities for the neighborhood. "Right now, it's a dead space," she said.

But Marquez said the threat of luxury housing should be monitored.

"In the post dot-com bust, gentrification and revitalization for the privileged is still very much alive," he said.

E-mail: efancher@examiner.com

612bv3

October 6th, 2005, 01:48 AM

Having the ballpark downtown would bring a lot of people to that area. Right now, there's nothing in downtown Oakland that can really attract people to go there and spend their money, that's why there's barely anyone there. I do agree with WH, it would be great if the A's would get a new ballpark whether it's in downtown or somewhere else in Oakland.

612bv3

October 6th, 2005, 01:55 AM

Oakland revs up housing on Auto Row
Ryan Tate

Housing developers are taking a chunk of Oakland's Auto Row neighborhood for a test drive that could include up to five new towers and 1,000 units of housing.

If one steps forward to buy the land, it will further accelerate the race-like pace of housing development in Oakland. The city has been flooded with development proposals in recent months, many for condos that would break new ground for height, density or location.

The latest offering has plenty of legroom. Located at 3093 Broadway, near the base of the "Pill Hill" medical district and next door to Summit Medical Center, it spreads over 150,000 square feet, or about two and a half football fields. Now home to the Oakland Auto Center, it is owned by two family trusts and was put up for sale earlier this month. Zoned for housing, it could hold up to 500 condos under current zoning -- and sell for more than $20 million, said one real estate source familiar with the offering.

But an adjacent property, now used for auto center parking and owned by former mayoral candidate Ted Dang, is also available. That 80,000-square-foot addition would increase the total size of the property to just over 5 acres, stretching from 30th Street to Hawthorne Avenue and flanked by Broadway and Webster Street.

With both parcels, the city would allow close to 850 units of housing on a plot that size under its General Plan, albeit with a use permit. Dang thinks the two parcels could have even more potential than that. He is in negotiations with several housing developers interested in his plan to put 550 units inside two housing towers -- and that's just on Dang's own, smaller parcel.

Dang said the two parcels together could accomodate five towers with well over 1,000 units of housing. Such a development would require a full entilement process with the city.

Dang has held discussions with two developers interested in combining the two parcels for housing and additional uses, but said that unit counts have not yet been discussed.

"I never imagined we would have so much interest from highrise developers," Dang said. "They are basically the last high-density sites on Broadway."

Dang, who acquired his parcel in July 2004, added that Target, Longs Drugs and Summit have all expressed interest in his site over the past three months. He believes the ideal use for his site and its neighbor is in a mixed-use project that would include housing, retail and office space.

The neighborhood is developing rapidly. Signature Properties of Pleasanton is now constructing 400 condos at the former Negherbon auto dealership near 24th Street and Broadway. Whole Foods is now building a new market -- its first in Oakland -- at 27th and Harrison streets.

The larger chunk of land went up for sale earlier this month. It has no special entitlements for condo developments, but planning and development officials said housing is allowed on the site under current zoning.

Among the developers who has examined the offering is Pulte Homes. Amir Massih, who heads the national developer's Oakland efforts, said he has only taken a preliminary look at the property.

Development could be a lengthy process: The auto center's lease on 3093 Broadway runs through 2010, and Dang's property is similarly encumbered.

The prospective land sales crest a wave of recent development activity in Oakland. Over the course of the summer, New York loft developer Andrew Brog acquired the Cathedral Building and 300 13th St. for condo conversion; developers Phil Tagami and Alex Hahn maneuvered to develop condos in a parking garage project next to the Paramount Theater; owners of the former Cochran and Celli auto dealership site offered a full city block and adjacent parcel for up to 860 condos; Essex Property Trust announced plans for a 22-story apartment tower at 100 Grand Ave.; and Pacific Thomas Capital prepared an environmental report for preliminary plans to build close to 900 housing units near the Fruitvale BART station.

"The activity over the last year has been more intense than I have ever seen before," Dang said. "I predicted it, but I thought it would take three or four (more) years."

Ryan Tate covers East Bay real estate for the San Francisco Business Times.