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S.F. district raises charter school rent

Sat, 16 Feb 2013 17:41:55 +0000

Imagine renting a 1,000-square-foot San Francisco apartment for $950 – a year.

It may seem impossible in one of the least-affordable real estate markets in the country. Except for city charter schools.

For the past 10 years, the alternative public schools have paid a relative pittance to rent space from the school district.

At 95 cents per square foot annually, the district was nearly $2 below Oakland’s charter school rental rate, $5 shy of Los Angeles and nearly $8 less than Berkeley, which has only one charter school that rents space.

To rent on the retail market would cost a school around 15 times what San Francisco Unified charges charters.

San Francisco district officials, who hadn’t raised charter school rent in five years, realized this year that they could charge more under state law and decided to triple the rent to $2.79, phasing in the increase over two years.

Eight charter schools will be hit with the increase, generating an additional $500,000 a year for the district. But charter schools and their advocates say any rent increase will have an impact on what happens in the classroom.

“For example, a school with a 20,000-square-foot facility would incur an increase of $34,400 per year for facilities expenses,” said Hilary Harmssen, the Bay Area regional director for the state charter association. “California Charter Schools Association schools would likely need to divert funds that are currently invested in the classroom for teachers, books and other learning materials.”

Rent parameters

Districts are allowed to charge charter schools what they spend per square foot to maintain buildings and grounds, costs that include security, maintenance, trash removal, gardening and custodial services.

In 2011, the district surveyed other Bay Area districts and found the wide discrepancy. Most charged between $2 and $4 per square foot, said district spokeswoman Gentle Blythe.

“This decision was reached after carefully reviewing similar practices in other districts, many of which we learned charge higher rates based on a different methodology than SFUSD had previously been using,” Blythe said.

San Francisco school board members said they were surprised to learn the district, for years, has been charging charters far less than other cities, where land isn’t worth nearly as much.

Charter schools have until May 1 to let the districts know whether they will stay or go.

District officials, however, were largely unsympathetic to the impacts on the city’s charter schools.

Fiscal responsibility

“Our budget has been slashed every year,” said school board member Jill Wynns. “There’s a lot of political pressure to just be nice to (charter schools). There’s nice and there’s bordering on fiscally irresponsible.”

At Gateway Public Schools, which has operated a charter high school in the city for 15 years and a middle school, officials were trying to figure out how to cover a $100,000 rent increase each of the next two school years.

“On the one hand I understand (the district’s) perspective,” said Sharon Olken, the executive director of the schools, which serve about 600 students. “They have a financial responsibility just as we do.”

And it was a bit of a wake-up call when Olken went looking for space in the retail world and found that commercial space costs $1.25 per square foot – per month.

“It was a sobering statistic,” she said. At the same time, “no one expects their rent to triple in two years. We budget an increase each year to account for inflation. That’s obviously not 200 percent.”

The increase over two years is the equivalent of about three teachers, Olken said.

“What I said to the district is from our perspective what we assumed was a fixed cost tripled,” she said. “Regardless what it started at, we are talking about real dollars that affect every student in our school.”

Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jtucker@sfchronicle.com

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-district-raises-charter-school-rent-4283891.php

Corner Bakery kicks off Bay Area expansion

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 12:02:44 +0000

The Bay Area’s first Corner Bakery Cafe opened in Pleasanton.

Renée Frojo
Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

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Corner Bakery Cafe is rising in the Bay Area.

The first of 32 planned restaurants opened in Pleasanton last week. The group has another lease singed in Pleasant Hill and hopes to open that restaurant by spring of next year.

Buon Hospitality, a segment of Pacific Convenience Fuels — which operates more than 500 fuel, restaurant and convenience business around the country — is running the franchise operation. The company signed an agreement last year with the Dallas-based chain to open 32 bakeries in seven years, bringing about 2,000 jobs to the area.

However, the timing is flexible. “Our timeframe is based more on finding great locations in the Bay Area than it is about watching the calendar,” said John Sweeney, general manager for restaurant operations and a former regional director for Corner Bakery Cafe. “There is no shortage of great real estate here. It’s finding great real estate that’s available.”

The franchise, which is popular on the East Coast, will be going up against Panera Bread, the industry leader in the fast-causal bakery segment. Panera already has more than a dozen locations in the Bay Area and annual sales of over $3 billion in 2011.

Sweeney said Corner Bakery will compete with its “open flame and real kitchens,” that serve up every meal item to order.

On the West Coast, Corner Bakery currently has a number of company-owned restaurants in Southern California and a few franchises in Arizona, Utah and Colorado.

Sweeney said Buon Hospitality is scouting locations from Santa Cruz to Santa Rosa on both sides of the San Francisco Bay to open other eateries.

Renée Frojo covers hospitality, restaurants, retail and nonprofits for the San Francisco Business Times.

Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2012/12/17/corner-bakery-kicks-off-bay-area.html

Corner Bakery kicks off Bay Area expansion – San Francisco Business Times

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 11:42:29 +0000