But it’s the tenants that aren’t listed — the ones with the stellar rooftop view — that have drawn a crowd of reporters on this sunny Tuesday afternoon.

This building, like 2,000 other spots in the Bay Area, is home to the bulky electrical equipment needed to send and receive cellphone signals.

For the privilege of housing their gear, phone companies pay thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars per month. In some cases, landlords make more from the towers on their roofs than they do from the tenants inside their building.

Because it’s so hard to get approval to build new towers, the same locations are often home to more than one carrier’s cell towers, and it has become commonplace to see towers from fierce rivals located right next to each other. And once one cell company makes its way in someplace, the others tend to follow.

This particular rooftop, for example, houses gear for Sprint, MetroPCS and ATT.

But it is a neighborhood in transition.

An area of peeled-away paint shows the spot that used to be home to gear from Sprint’s soon-to-be-shuttered Nextel network.

The newest arrival is a refrigererator-sized cabinet that houses Sprint’s 4G LTE gear as well as the systems needed to support older networks. Immediately adjacent is a slightly smaller box containing a backup system with enough battery capacity to power the network gear for four to eight hours.

The new gear, like other similar systems in San Francisco, have begun to bring LTE service to Sprint’s Bay Area customers, though it has yet to formally announce this area as one of its expanding network of markets with the high-speed wireless service.

Next to the new system is the one it is replacing. That unit, which handled fewer frequencies and managed fewer services, nonetheless occupied more than twice as much space. Though still up and running, that system will soon be dismantled, removed and recycled.

In addition to the cabinets, the roof is outfitted with a number of different antennas — several for each of the carriers, providing the maximum amount of coverage. The antennas also explain why it is no coincidence that the building has a sweeping panoramic view of the San Francisco Bay. In addition to being a breathtaking sight for the occasional repairman, the view means that the tower is also seen by a good part of the city — ensuring that the tower reaches a wide coverage area.

“Cell towers have the best view,” said Chris Brydon, Sprint’s area director for Northern California.

Of course, few people will ever see that view, given that it is home to vital and expensive computer gear. Plus, its radiation levels are high enough that the door leading to the roof is plastered with nearly a dozen warning signs.

The fact that this roof is already home to network gear means that the approval process to install LTE equipment is far simpler than trying to find a new location. As a result, many rooftops like this one are getting a makeover.

It’s a scene that has been playing out across America, as all the major carriers replace or augment their 3G systems with those capable of providing high-speed LTE service.

To help install all these new systems, Sprint calls upon a variety of other companies. Ericsson manages the installations and network operations, overseeing gear supplied by a trio of companies — Samsung, Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson’s hardware unit.

The race to build out LTE has created a shortage of a particular specialty of workers — those who climb poles for a living. (In addition to pole-climbing skills, such workers also have to be engineers with a specialty in radio frequency technology — a qualification that significantly thins the applicant pool.)

“It’s one of the most sought-after skills in the industry,” said Joe Meyer, the 21-year Sprint veteran who serves as vice president of network service management.

Sprint’s new 4G LTE network cabinet (foreground, with door open), followed by the Sprint gear it is replacing and, furthest away, a rival carrier’s gear.

Article source: http://allthingsd.com/20130612/a-view-to-a-cell-san-francisco-mobile-towers-get-prime-real-estate/

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A prominent San Francisco real estate broker could lose his license after the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit uncovered what his investors call a decade of deception.   The broker attracted more than a dozen investors to false promises of profit from prime real estate in a historic San Francisco neighborhood.  

Article source: http://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/WB-Coyle-208367411.html

The plan – still more of an idea backed by a handful of studies – would continue the transformation of a once-gritty area by creating a new neighborhood full of residences, offices, shops and restaurants, hotels, and entertainment establishments. But opening the area to development would mean major changes to the city’s transportation system and could affect plans for high-speed rail and for extending and electrifying Caltrain.

In addition to demolishing I-280 from 16th Street north and replacing it with an Embarcadero-style boulevard much like the Octavia Boulevard replacement of the Central Freeway, the plan envisions:

– Shrinking – and perhaps eventually eliminating – the Caltrain yard at Fourth and King streets.

– Eliminating the need for deep underpasses beneath a future high-speed rail line, one at 16th Street and one at what will one day be the Mission Bay Boulevard crossing.

— Possibly rerouting the long-planned, but still unfunded, Caltrain extension to the Transbay Transit Center, which would also carry high-speed trains when they arrive in the next decade.

Together, the 20-acre Caltrain rail yard and the massive concrete I-280 structure and right-of-way create a wall that isolates the growing Mission Bay neighborhood from downtown, and is an outmoded and inefficient use of what has become prime real estate, San Francisco officials argue.

‘Something really smart’

“We can do something really smart here,” said Gillian Gillett, Mayor Ed Lee’s transportation policy director and author of a six-page letter that lays out the city’s vision to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area’s transportation planning and financing agency.

But not everyone is on board. Caltrain officials are concerned that the city’s plans could stall or even stop plans to electrify the commuter railroad, a decades-long effort that moved close to reality only last summer when the state Legislature and the California High-Speed Rail Authority made it part of the new “blended” high-speed train project that will share the tracks, and gave it $700 million.

“We understand it’s a good thing to do, but we are concerned about the implications if we change” the rail yard, said Marian Lee, director of Caltrain’s modernization project.

High-speed trains are not likely to reach the Peninsula until 2026 at the earliest, but Caltrain wants its rails electrified by 2019. With electric power and lighter trains that can start and stop faster, Caltrain could add service, cut fuel costs and reduce emissions produced by its diesel locomotives. Electrification is a key part of the business plan for the financially struggling rail line.

The trouble is that Caltrain is in the midst of revising an environmental impact report for the electrification project. San Francisco officials want that update to include the possible downsizing or elimination of the Fourth and King rail yards. Caltrain officials fear that expanding the study, especially if it requires development of new train storage areas, would mire the project in red tape and possibly endanger the state funding.

“There is an urgency for Caltrain to get electrification in place with expediency,” said Jayme Ackemann, a Caltrain spokeswoman. “With electrification we significantly reduce our operating costs.”

Shrinking the rail yard could increase Caltrain’s operating costs if it needs to store trains farther from the Fourth and King station and bring them downtown to start service every morning, Ackemann said.

Working together

Caltrain and San Francisco have been squabbling over the environmental report and rail yard plans for months, but agreed recently to work together on a study to determine if there’s a simple way to include the city’s rail yard visions without slowing electrification. The study is expected to take about eight months.

“I think we’ve landed on a way of dealing with this that won’t slow the process,” Caltrain’s Lee said. “At the end of the study, we should have a good idea of all the trade-offs.”

Those trade-offs could include money from the development of the Caltrain yard, which might be used to help pay for the connection to the Transbay Transit Center. And if I-280 and the rail yard were to disappear, it could clear the way for a more direct, quicker and possibly cheaper route to the Transbay center.

“This is a golden opportunity,” said Supervisor Scott Wiener, who represents San Francisco on the regional transportation commission. “The rail yard served its purpose for many years, but it’s no longer the best use for that land.”

Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Razing-I-280-stub-only-part-of-vision-4227940.php

She also spends time making sure other people stay out.

“We don’t have open doors, ever. They’re always locked,” said Melchor, whose Gray Area Foundation for the Arts sits at the convergence of the Tenderloin and Mid-Market, two of the city’s most downtrodden neighborhoods. “We must see 100 crimes every week out of these windows, and although the city wants it to change, it hasn’t happened.”

The foundation’s arrival in 2009 was heralded as the start of a trend that would culminate in a unique creative hub along Market Street, one of San Francisco’s busiest thoroughfares, where the wide sidewalks are packed most days with tourists, street performers and employees from the nearby financial district.

Yet the five block stretch of prime real estate known as Mid-Market remains a sea of boarded-up storefronts and “For Lease” signs, and transients are the most visible occupants. The most common crimes in the area are drug deals and muggings, according to San Francisco Police Department data.

But a new crop of potential tenants — Twitter Inc., the American Conservatory Theater and the organizers of the annual Burning Man festival — and a recently announced Mid-Market tax incentive plan are renewing hope that a transformation is finally coming.

“I think the time is now and we’re going to see some bravery,” said Marian Goodell, director of business and communications for Burning Man, which held its first gathering in San Francisco in 1986 and has based its offices there ever since. “I’m really optimistic that some magic is going to happen.”

The tax proposal announced Feb. 7 by Mayor Edwin Lee and two city supervisors is an attempt to solve two pressing problems: the general reluctance to take a chance on Mid-Market and the threatened exodus of Twitter and other prized businesses from San Francisco to parts of the Bay area where real-estate costs are significantly lower.

“Keeping companies like Twitter helps us create jobs, boost our local economy and, in this case, can be a catalyst to transform our central Market Street area,” Lee said of the plan, which would offer a six-year payroll tax exemption for companies that relocate to the area. The plan must be approved by the Board of Supervisors.

Jennifer Matz, director of the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, described Twitter as “the big fish” the city hopes to lure with the new incentive, though it would be available to any for-profit business with a payroll above $250,000.

A spokesman for Twitter, which is quickly outgrowing its current headquarters three blocks south of Market Street, declined to comment on the city’s claim that it is considering leasing the massive former San Francisco Furniture Mart. The social networking service currently employs about 350 people, but has said it expects to expand to several thousand over the next five years, Lee said.

With or without Twitter, the positive effects of a Mid-Market tax exemption would ripple throughout the city, said Jim Lazarus, senior vice president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce

“San Francisco remains a very attractive place for people to live, and yet we’re losing jobs,” he said. “This will help bring the kind of employment density into the area that it desperately needs.”

The efforts to bring new blood to Mid-Market also are eliciting praise from groups in the neighboring Tenderloin — home to the city’s highest concentration of parolees but not a single full-service grocery store.

“We need an edge, because right now we just can’t compete with other neighborhoods on an even playing field,” said Randy Shaw, executive director of the nonprofit Tenderloin Housing Clinic. “Maybe with what’s going on in Mid-Market, businesses will think of moving here.”

Others caution that it’s still too soon to declare a Mid-Market renaissance. And the would-be tenants themselves acknowledge that nothing is set in stone.

The American Conservatory Theater, currently located a block from Union Square, is planning to expand into a $100 million Mid-Market arts complex that would include a 300-seat theater, housing for visiting artists and various other facilities. ACT has found the land — a 200,000-square-foot lot at the corner of Turk and Market streets — but is still seeking the partners and funding it would need to complete the deal.

“Either it’s going to happen or it’s not going to happen in the next six months,” said ACT executive director Ellen Richard.

Burning Man has narrowed its search to three Mid-Market sites, including the historic Warfield Building, but the organization remains uncertain it can afford the move, Goodell said.

In the meantime, Melchor is continuing to talk up the neighborhood’s potential while dealing with the harsh day-to-day realities of being a lonely pioneer.

“We’ve become this beacon in the area, but there’s no one else to help balance out what’s going on all around us,” she said on a recent afternoon, after politely turning away a man who knocked at the door asking for money. “We have a five-year lease. After that, we’ll have to see.”

Article source: http://www.nwfdailynews.com/articles/blighted-37981-real-downtown.html