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Bay Area competes for business

Wed, 01 May 2013 19:30:49 +0000

When it comes to attracting Chinese tech companies to the Bay Area, San Francisco is giving Silicon Valley a run for its money.

“So far, we have seen about eight Chinese tech companies choose to set up a presence in San Francisco or are here already, with more in the pipeline,” said Zhang Xintong, a program manager for economic development with China SF, the go-to support organization created by the San Francisco mayor’s office dedicated to encouraging Chinese companies to take root in San Francisco.

“When talking about high-tech jobs, San Jose, with its more affordable cost of living, might be still considered as the Silicon Valley capital,” Zhang said. “But in recent years, San Francisco has been gaining on them.”

China’s Deputy Consul General Song Ru’an said: “The relative low cost of office space has always been an important factor for Chinese companies choosing Silicon Valley over San Francisco.”

This year, real estate in the Bay Area has seen price increases from an overall recovery in leasing and purchasing.

“My apartment in Silicon Valley’s Burlingame will cost me an increase of $300 a month this year,” said Liu Qiang, a Chinese IT engineer. “An equivalent apartment in San Francisco’s SoMa District has gone up only $150 a month.”

“Neither location has great deals,” Liu added. “But in SoMa, more things are within walking distance. I stumble upon lots of hidden treasures and funky urban charm exploring San Francisco on foot.”

As the hub of Google, Twitter and Zynga, SoMa (shorthand for South of Market) is a patchwork of warehouses, parks, shopping malls, upscale superarkets, loft apartments, and tenacious start-ups that survived the tech market meltdown.

Though San Francisco’s technology sector is much smaller than Silicon Valley’s, its tech employment market has come roaring back since the region’s economic recovery that began in late 2009.

Silicon Valley’s innovation engine may be driving a recovery that leads the nation, but, according to the 2012 Silicon Valley Index, the persistent public sector fiscal crisis and other factors continue to drag on widespread economic gains.

“San Francisco is catching up and may overtake San Jose,” Janice Shriver, a labor-market consultant at the Employment Development Department, told the Wall Street Journal in 2012. “San Jose had been in the lead for information jobs and software publishing and all that kind of activity for so long.”

“San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has been pushing for business friendly policies to lure and keep new tech companies, including Chinese companies,” Zhang Xintong said.

“And these companies, in turn, are a magnet to increasing numbers of young tech workers who enjoy the San Francisco lifestyle.”

UCWeb, a leading China-based developer of mobile Internet browsers with 400 million active users, set up its first US office in Silicon Valley’s Sunnyvale last year.

But Rick Chen, a director with UCWeb’s team in Sunnyvale, told China Daily he is already shopping for new office space in San Francisco. Why? He’s doing for the pool of young tech talent.

“The cost of office space is much higher in San Francisco,” Chen said. “But it’s an urban, thriving, dynamic city with a younger population, and young tech talent wants to live and play in the city.”

chenjia@chinadailyusa.com

Article source: http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2013-05/01/content_16465517.htm

San Francisco Mayor Signs Quake Retrofit Law

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 22:48:33 +0000

Tenant advocates and property managers in San Francisco’s hyperactive real estate market are fretting about new earthquake safety rules that will spike the cost of repairing older buildings and ultimately increase monthly rents.

On the anniversary of the 1906 earthquake that killed hundreds of people and leveled much of San Francisco, the city approved a new law Thursday requiring thousands of apartment buildings to be upgraded to better withstand tremors.

Owners of about 3,000 multi-unit residential buildings sprinkled throughout the city will have to shoulder the sizeable costs of the seismic retrofits but will be allowed to pass on those costs to tenants, although some may qualify for an exemption.

In a city where a one-bedroom apartment rents for nearly $2,200 per month, any increase to the already sky-high cost of housing prompts a conversation.

“Tenants are struggling already, so paying even an extra $50 on top of that is pretty hard for most people,” said Ted Gullicksen, the director of the nonprofit San Francisco Tenants’ Union. “The heftiest rent increases will be in the smaller buildings, just because there are fewer tenants to share the costs.”

Mayor Ed Lee signed the bill Thursday, saying the measure would better protect the nearly 60,000 people who live or work in those buildings from potential disaster.

“This mandatory seismic retrofit program will protect San Franciscans, protect our housing stock and ensure San Francisco can rapidly recover from the next earthquake,” Lee said in a statement. “We renew our commitment to making sure that disasters such as the 1906 earthquake and fire do not devastate our city again.”

The retrofitting legislation covers so-called soft-story multi-unit buildings built before building codes were changed in 1978 – that is, those with three or more stories that are wood-framed and have a garage or other similar opening on the ground floor.

Owners of suspected soft-story buildings will receive notices in the mail, which will give them a year to get an inspection to determine whether they need to retrofit.

Authorities estimate the upgrades could cost around $60,000 to $130,000 per building. Lee said banks are developing financing packages for owners to help pay for the work.

As part of a compromise with tenant advocates, the city also agreed to streamline its process for qualifying those who make less than $78,000 per year for a hardship exemption from the pass-through costs.

A separate, pending city ordinance would exempt single parents on welfare or senior citizens from the retrofitting-related rent increases.

While much of the city’s real estate market is soaring thanks to a tech boom that has attracted giants such as Twitter to the city’s downtown, many apartment owners are limited in what they can charge because most private units are rent controlled, said Charley Goss, government and community affairs coordinator of the San Francisco Apartment Association. That is often the case for owners of the buildings most likely to be affected in the Mission, Western Addition and Marina neighborhoods, he added.

“The owners that can best shoulder the costs probably would have rented their apartments recently, so would be getting their full market value,” he said. “Those who haven’t will likely have to get a refinance on their building or get a second mortgage or a loan.”

Robert Link, who owns a small property management firm, said he would have to spend about $70,000 to retrofit an Edwardian multi-unit building he owns in the inner Richmond.

“The ultimate beneficiary here is not the property owners but San Francisco tenants, because doing these upgrades will preserve rent-controlled buildings,” he said. “Really what this requires is managing tenants’ needs and expectations of the process, and giving them advance notice of as much as you can of the work to be done.”

San Francisco’s rents have been climbing in the last several years, leveling off only recently as experts say the market has approached saturation.

Rents average $2,175 for a one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment, according to RealFacts, a Novato consulting group that tracks apartment complexes with 50 or more units.

After the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, San Francisco mandated retrofitting of unreinforced masonry, or brick, buildings. But the effort to bolster soft-story apartment buildings was a tougher sell, and was opposed by owners and tenants rights advocates concerned over the rent increases.

Seismologists predict that a significant earthquake in the region – two to three times as strong as Loma Prieta – is likely to occur within the next 30 years.

“When an earthquake happens, these buildings will be vulnerable. If we’re going to be able to recover, this is a necessary step,” Goss said.

Copyright Associated Press

Article source: http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/San-Francisco-Mayor-Ed-Lee-Signs-Quake-Retrofit-Law-203827081.html

Proposition 8 same-sex marriage battle heads to Supreme Court: Bay Area …

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 12:55:42 +0000

From a cupcake bakery in Oakland and a Latino church in San Jose to the snowy steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, Bay Area residents are anxiously awaiting arguments to begin Tuesday in the contentious and historic same-sex marriage debate that began on the steps of San Francisco City Hall.

“It’s the civil rights issue of our time,” said Jordan Haedtler, of Oakland, who traveled to Washington and has been camping out in the wet snow in front of the Supreme Court for three days hoping to snag a seat for Tuesday’s arguments.

“We always said if it went all the way to the Supreme Court, we’d go,” said Haedtler, who is straight but wants his gay friends to gain the right to marry.

Whether they have a direct stake

in the issue or not, people across the Bay Area are closely following a case that challenges traditional notions of family, but one that many believe is a fundamental issue of equality. Tuesday, the justices will hear arguments over whether California’s voter-approved same-sex marriage ban, Proposition 8, is unconstitutional. On Wednesday, the court takes up the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which bars same-sex couples from receiving federal benefits.

The court’s decisions in the landmark cases are expected in June, more than nine years after San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom defied state law by allowing gay weddings at City Hall. California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who was San Francisco’s district attorney when the first gay

weddings were performed there, has a reserved seat in the courtroom.

So does San Franciscan Jean Podrasky, who is the first cousin of Chief Justice John Roberts and traveled to Washington this week with her lesbian partner. Despite his conservative reputation, Roberts sided with the majority last year upholding President Barack Obama’s health-care law and is considered unpredictable on same-sex marriage.

In an open letter she wrote for the National Center for Lesbian Rights published on Monday, Podrasky called Roberts “a good man” who is “wise enough to see that society is becoming more accepting of the humanity of same-sex couples.”

It is an issue, however, that still divides the state and country. But just as ?Obama’s position on same-sex marriage “evolved” since he first took office in 2009, many have changed their attitudes. While 52 percent of voters approved the Proposition 8 ban in the 2008 election, a Field Poll last month shows 61 percent of California voters approve of same-sex marriage now. Only 32 percent disapprove.

Nestor Morales, a pastor at Amor Agape church in South San Jose, is one of them. While he isn’t “crusading” against gay marriage, he hopes the court upholds Proposition 8.

“We love gay people, and Jesus loves them, too. But we are just going to maintain our ground that marriage is sacred, and is between a man and a woman,” Morales said. “We are not judges; God will judge. God is the highest authority, and he is going to judge even the judges.”

Henry Heller, 85, lives in an assisted living facility in Gilroy and said the same-sex marriage debate is one more sign that the “Democrats’ war on religion is paying off.”

Marriage, he said, should remain between a man and a woman. “If two women want to live together or two guys, all right, fine,” he said, “but I don’t think they should be considered man and wife.”

Angella ?Tai, a 34-year-old real estate agent from Los Altos, says she hopes people will change their minds like her conservative Chinese mother did.

“It took me years with my mother, but she has changed her point of view and absolutely adores my fiancée,” said Tai, 34, who plans to wed her partner next summer. “We would like it to be legal. In our hearts we really want that.”

But the case is bigger than that, she said. “We have the opportunity to become a better nation, a nation of equality and a nation of fairness.”

It’s an ideal shared by Dashiel Ridolfi-Starr, the 17-year-old son of Linda Starr and Cookie Ridolfi of San Jose, who have been a couple for 25 years. The high school senior and his older sister were conceived through artificial insemination. While his mothers have no immediate plans to marry, the whole family is fixated on the case.

“It would allow my family to have the same opportunities that every other family has and to be perceived as every other family is,” Ridolfi-Starr said, “not just some makeshift collection of relatives.”

In Oakland, Janet Appel has seen firsthand the power of marriage among same-sex couples. She performed the first gay marriage ceremony in Alameda County in 2008 during the five months gay marriage was legal in California before Proposition 8 banned it.

“For them to have lost that right is just gut-wrenching,” said Appel, a volunteer deputy marriage commissioner for the county clerk-recorder’s office. “When they bury Prop. 8, please dear God, it will be redemption for most of us that believe that all people are equal.”

Kevin Bell is 36, a veteran raised in Livermore and living in Manteca who calls the whole debate “silly.”

“I think we’re going to look back in 20 years and say ‘Why were we still arguing about this stuff?’ ” said Bell, who is married with three children and runs That Takes The Cake bakery in Oakland. “I don’t have a huge stake in the whole thing. It doesn’t affect me directly. But it just seems … why shouldn’t we allow people to be who they want to be with and have the same rights as everyone else?”

Staff writers Katy Murphy and Mike Rosenberg contributed to this report.

Article source: http://www.insidebayarea.com/breaking-news/ci_22866977/same-sex-marriage-battle-heads-supreme-court-bay.html

Gay marriage: The long road to Supreme Court

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 00:30:28 +0000

Click photo to enlarge

A little over nine years ago, when then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom decided to flout California law and hand out marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples, it provoked such a local and national furor that even his own political party and his Catholic neighborhood base wanted to tar and feather him.

At the time, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry couldn’t distance himself enough from Newsom’s gay rights stunt. No state had yet to legalize gay marriage. Opinion polls firmly and consistently showed the majority of Americans, including in California, opposed same-sex marriage. There was not a civil rights lawyer in the country ready to challenge gay marriage in a conservative U.S. Supreme Court.

But now, as the Supreme Court this week takes on gay marriage for the first time in history, attitudes on this generation’s most contentious civil rights issue have shifted dramatically since couples lined up at San Francisco City Hall to take part in Newsom’s short-lived wedding ceremonies.

“I thought perhaps it would happen in my lifetime,” Newsom, California’s lieutenant governor, said of the Supreme Court deciding gay marriage. “But I never imagined it would happen within a decade.”

Shifting views

No doubt, the nine justices who will hear the legal challenge to California’s Proposition 8 on Tuesday and the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act the following day are well aware of

the pace of events on same-sex marriage. The president now supports gay marriage. Opinion polls show a significant majority of Americans now endorse it, as well.

Dozens of prominent conservative Republicans have lined up against gay marriage bans, as well as hundreds of the nation’s most powerful businesses, including Apple and Google. And gay marriage is now legal in nine states.

But despite the apparent momentum, the real question looming over this week’s proceedings is whether this is the right time in history for the Supreme Court to end the legal debate. Has the societal shift finished its arc? As gay marriage foes are quick to emphasize, 37 states outlaw same-sex marriage, still a vast majority.

Indeed, as civil rights struggles go, this one has arguably simmered for less time than the battles over school integration and interracial marriage when they reached the high court decades ago. By the time the Supreme Court declared laws against interracial marriage unconstitutional in 1967 in Loving v. Virginia, only about a dozen states still banned the unions, although public sentiment remained against such marriages.

Jim Campbell, a lawyer for Alliance Defending Freedom, which backs Proposition 8, stresses the political battle over gay marriage is “at some point in the middle. … The Supreme Court should resist demands to prematurely end the national debate.”

Legal experts agree the Supreme Court has always been reluctant to get too far in front on social issues, and that will weigh heavily on how far they will go in the same-sex marriage cases.

“Given the moving picture, my hunch is that they are going to move incrementally, not dramatically,” said Jane Shachter, a Stanford University law professor.

California’s moment

On Tuesday, the court will first consider California’s epic struggle over same-sex marriage rights, which has reached a crucial point in the larger battle over whether any state can forbid gay and lesbian couples to wed.

The Supreme Court is reviewing a federal appeals court’s decision last year declaring California’s 2008 voter-approved ban unconstitutional because it stripped away a previous right to marry for gay and lesbian couples. In May 2008, the California Supreme Court struck down the laws barring same-sex marriage, allowing more than 18,000 couples to wed before voters approved Proposition 8 the following November.

Before same-sex marriage supporters took their fight to the federal courts, the state Supreme Court rejected a challenge to Proposition 8. The court found voters’ decision to amend the state constitution trumped its authority to interfere. Only Justice Carlos Moreno dissented.

Backed by a powerhouse legal team led by former Republican U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson and trial lawyer David Boies, two same-sex couples triggered the Supreme Court case by challenging Proposition 8 in the federal courts. Berkeley’s Kristin Perry and Sandy Stier were one of those couples.

“We felt (turning to the courts) was a better approach because it would be a permanent solution,” Stier said in an interview last week. “People were voting on our rights at the ballot box.”

At that time, not everyone in the gay rights movement agreed with the strategy, expressing concern Olson and Boies had moved too quickly to push the issue into the federal courts and toward the U.S. Supreme Court. Even in 2008, just a trickle of states were moving to legalize gay marriage, politicians were against it and opinion polls, while shifting, remained unfavorable.

“I think many of us did have concerns,” said Jon Davidson, legal director for Lambda Legal, a leading gay rights group. “I don’t think anybody thought we’d see quite the progress we’ve made and the number of advances we’ve made since the (Proposition case has been pending.”

Added Therese Stewart, a San Francisco chief assistant city attorney: “Have we been anxious a little bit? Of course.”

So far, the lawsuit has won at every turn. Former San Francisco Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker struck down Proposition 8 in 2010, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed last year, although in a much narrower ruling that, if endorsed by the Supreme Court, would limit the impact only to California’s marriage laws.

Just last month, the Obama administration threw its weight behind same-sex couples, calling Proposition 8 unconstitutional and for the first time standing against a state’s right to ban same-sex marriage.

Proposition 8 supporters, however, have continued to defend traditional marriage, arguing states can restrict licenses to heterosexual couples. In briefs to the Supreme Court, they argue government has a compelling interest in banning gay marriage — crucial under anti-discrimination law — because of the importance of procreation and child-rearing to the institution.

Twenty states have sided with that argument, although 13 aligned with same-sex couples. Conservatives believe it will be hard for the Supreme Court to ignore the 37 states that retain gay marriage bans.

“You’re talking about a rather dramatic decision,” said John Eastman, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage and a law professor.

Moreno, now retired from the state Supreme Court, believes the time is right for the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the law. He hopes his reasoning, that Proposition 8 violates same-sex couples’ equal protection rights, will be vindicated.

“I think it’s not a big leap in terms of the law,” said Moreno, also a former federal judge. “But,” he cautions, “the idea it should remain with the states, let the people decide, that also will resonate with a number of the justices.”

The issue of benefits

The challenge to the federal gay marriage restrictions, known as the Defense of Marriage Act, is considered a more straightforward opportunity for the justices to jump into the legal fray. It may not carry the broader implications of taking on state laws that dot the country from Alabama to Idaho.

In the case to be heard Wednesday, the justices will review a federal appeals court’s ruling that found it unconstitutional to deny federal benefits to married same-sex couples. The case involves Edith Windsor, a New York woman who was forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal estate taxes when her spouse died because federal officials would not recognize their marriage rights.

At its core, the issue is whether the federal government can deny benefits, which range from tax exemptions to Social Security, to couples who marry in states such as New York that have legalized same-sex marriage.

The Obama administration has sided with Windsor and other similar challenges to the federal law around the country, including a case involving San Francisco couple Karen Golinski and Amy Cunninghis who married before Proposition 8 was passed. There is high anxiety now that the issue has reached the grandest legal stage. The Supreme Court could issue a ruling at the end of June that amounts to a summer blockbuster on same-sex marriage rights, or decide history is not ready and let the fight over gay marriage percolate further.

In both the federal and Proposition 8 cases, the justices do not even have to address the broader legal questions surrounding same-sex marriage. The Supreme Court must first resolve whether Proposition 8′s backers can defend the law when the governor and attorney general refuse to do so, and the same uncertainty has clouded House Republicans’ right to challenge the Defense of Marriage Act in place of the executive branch.

If the Supreme Court finds those gay marriage opponents can’t defend the laws on their own, the two cases could end without any historic proclamations on same-sex marriage rights from the nation’s high court.

But for Golinski and others watching the legal and political conflict over same-sex marriage accelerate, the hope is that the Supreme Court resolves the issue once and for all.

“There is a lot of uncertainty,” Golinski said, preparing to head to Washington, D.C., to attend the arguments. “And most people don’t like to live their personal lives with this level of uncertainty. I still find it all somewhat stressful.”

Howard Mintz covers legal affairs. Contact him at 408-286-0236. Follow him at Twitter.com/hmintz.

Article source: http://www.insidebayarea.com/breaking-news/ci_22853888/gay-marriage-long-road-supreme-court

San Francisco, San Jose team up to keep tech companies

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 05:32:07 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO — For years, as they’ve jockeyed for tech jobs and the cachet that comes with them, San Francisco has touted its cosmopolitan allure, while San Jose has countered with its vast supply of land.

Now, in an effort to add a weapon to his city’s arsenal, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has proposed reshaping a 30-acre stretch of freeway and rail yards into high-density housing, shops, restaurants and more than 2 million square feet of high-rise office space.

But rather than a new stage in a Bay Area arms race, Lee’s plans are being hailed as a sign of a new, cooperative sentiment sweeping the region. “Mayor Lee wants to see how to promote the Bay Area,” said his spokeswoman, Chrisine Falvey. “There will

be widespread benefits if companies relocate or expand to San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland or nearby areas.”

Added San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, whose city long has billed itself as Silicon Valley’s capital: “I’m worried about Texas,” not San Francisco. “We’ve got much bigger competition for companies that are expanding to other states and countries instead of keeping their growth in Silicon Valley.”

Enrico Moretti, a professor of economics at UC Berkeley who has studied the region’s history of innovation, said traditional rivalries have yielded to the reality of a fast-shifting business landscape.

“It used to be the case that tech companies were either in the South Bay or San Francisco. Now they are in both locations,” he

said. “And workers are much more mobile.”

At the same time, Moretti said, Lee’s proposal to knock down Interstate 280 north of 16th Street and relocate a Caltrain storage yard near ATT Park is an aggressive move for the business-friendly mayor, who has worked to keep startups in town as they grow.

Lee already has cut tax deals with such startups as Twitter in exchange for help revitalizing rundown areas, and he persuaded city voters in the fall to eliminate a payroll tax the mayor and others insisted punished companies for growth.

“Knocking down the 280 extension makes a lot of sense,” Moretti said. “It will free up a lot of land to attract companies and create jobs.”

Lee, in fact, said razing the overpass and rail yard is the city’s last, best hope to create the kind of corporate campuses that San Jose and other cities long have used to woo companies that have outgrown San Francisco’s South of Market area. The neighborhood is home to companies such as Zynga and Yelp and also includes the Mission Bay area, where city officials have already targeted expansion zones for tech firms.

But

some say the area already is so filled up there’s little room for growth.

“When you go to lunch in SoMa, you have to get out of the office before noon or you’re going to be standing in line,” said Jason Johnson, co-founder of startup accelerator Founders Den, which sits near the Caltrain yard in Lee’s sights and offers startups shared office space and other resources.

“At certain times, companies have to leave because of their size, or because of tax incentives elsewhere,” Johnson said. “San Francisco has lost a lot of companies over the years.”

To be sure, Lee’s plan won’t give San Francisco anywhere near the amount of office space San Jose boasts. The 30 acres the mayor thinks can be freed up is about the size of a single corporate campus on San Jose’s North First Street. And Reed and other San Jose officials are making plans of their own to add millions of square feet to that area, accommodating as many as 20,000 new jobs.

Rather than view Lee’s plan as a possible threat, Reed sees it as another piece of the region’s real estate portfolio.

“It’s important that we have options in the Bay Area,” Reed said. “North San Jose’s got one kind of development potential. We’ve got Coyote Valley with another kind of development potential. We’re trying to provide lots of different kinds of environments for companies to work in. Those that want to be in a San Francisco high-rise will choose that.”

Lee’s proposal isn’t without its sharp critics. Some

commuters worry it will slow traffic in and out of the city.

Caltrain officials, too, say they need the rail yard to house trains, especially with plans afoot to electrify the line as part of the state’s high-speed rail project. The city is paying for Caltrain to conduct an eight-month study weighing the plan’s potential impacts, according to Santa Clara County Supervisor Ken Yeager, who heads the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board that owns and operates the commuter line.

Still, Yeager acknowledged, despite Caltrain’s concerns, Lee’s plan “would be a tremendous boon” for San Francisco and the rest of the region.

Ultimately, economic forces that are far stronger than the ambitions of the mayors of San Jose and San Francisco are likely to carry the day, said UC Berkeley’s Moretti, who wrote the 2012 book “The New Geography of Jobs.”

“The labor markets in the Bay Area are getting increasingly integrated,” Moretti said. “This is very good for the region, very good for high tech and very good for the Bay Area economy.”

Contact George Avalos at 408-373-3556 or 925-977-8477. Follow him at Twitter.com/george_avalos. Contact Peter Delevett at 408-271-3638. Follow him at Twitter.com/mercwiretap.

Article source: http://www.insidebayarea.com/business/ci_22831780/san-francisco-san-jose-team-up-keep-tech-280-development

SF Civic Center sustainability moves slow

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 18:55:24 +0000

In 2008, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom laid out a bold plan for turning the Civic Center into a global model for sustainability, with visions of solar panels on City Hall, a garden on the roof of the main library and a rainwater collection system in the plaza.

“What better way to educate the world on sustainability than by transforming that heart of our city government to showcase how we can use water more efficiently, promote food security, and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels,” Newsom wrote in a Huffington Post column announcing the city’s partnership with the Clinton Global Initiative.

But four years later, the flashy changes Newsom promised still don’t exist. An artist’s rendering of plans for the Civic Center show a plaza surrounded by waterways with abundant greenery, yet the space in front of City Hall remains as gray as ever.

Behind the scenes, however, the city’s Public Utilities Commission says it is on a slow but steady path to realizing Newsom’s goals. Last year, the commission embarked on a $1.6 million planning project, with $970,000 in federal funding, for a sustainable plan that would “provide environmental benefits by reducing the water, wastewater and power demands.”

The federal funds will go toward retrofitting 675 toilets and sinks in Civic Center buildings so that they use less water, with the rest of the money going toward more sustainability planning.

“We are continuing to move forward with a long-term sustainability plan for the Civic Center,” said PUC Deputy General Manager Michael Carlin in a statement. “Our water conservation projects are a concrete step toward this larger vision.”

Though the agency said the new fixtures are an important move and that the $1.6 million would never fund all of the changes Newsom wanted, one activist is frustrated. Jim Haas, a lawyer who has advocated the Civic Center improvements, said he is disappointed that the city has been dragging its feet on the sustainability project and is settling for more pedestrian goals.

“Mayor Newsom never had in his mind that a good deal of the money would go to retrofitting sinks and toilets,” said Haas, who said he is trying to develop a new plan for the Civic Center with the Recreation and Park department. “It was a much grander, visionary kind of thing.”

In addition to the toilet and sink upgrades that are expected to be completed by the spring, the PUC points to the opening of its “greenest building in the nation” headquarters at 525 Golden Gate Ave., the establishment of a community garden at McAllister and Larkin streets and upgrades and renovations at the United Nations building as evidence that the plaza is evolving.

Last month, Lee announced that eight Civic Center buildings in would apply for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification.

“San Francisco is pioneering sustainability for the rest of the world by demonstrating how cities can transform historic areas like our own Civic Center into sustainable resource districts through the use of advanced energy efficiency and water conservation technologies,” said Lee at the U.S. Green Building Council Greenbuild International Conference and Expo.

“This investment in the first-of-its-kind Civic Center Sustainability District will create a model for the nation in building greener cities.”

John Updike, the city’s real estate director, said he understands the frustration of advocates who are still waiting for the solar panels and living roofs – fixtures that Newsom said would be “initial projects.” But Updike said he believes the water conservation upgrades are a good use of federal funds and that there are bigger things to come.

“I can understand that from a private citizen perspective, it looks slow,” he said. “But it’s a piece of a larger effort.”

Neal J. Riley is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: nriley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @realdealneal

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SF-Civic-Center-sustainability-moves-slow-4158919.php

For bold ideas on crime, look to S.F., not Oakland

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 08:53:53 +0000

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee stepped out on a limb at a meeting with Chronicle editors last week when he floated the idea of adopting a stop-and-frisk policy as a way of removing guns from the streets of the city.

Lee’s no dummy. He knows there’s little, if any, chance such a policy would pass political muster in San Francisco. But that was never the point. He was planting a seed.

“It’s controversial. I will be tagged – as the minority mayor of this city – for racial profiling,” Lee, a former civil rights attorney, said at the meeting. “But I’m going to let everybody know that if it works … I’m going to do something in that direction.”

In his first term, Lee’s displaying the characteristics of real leadership. His decision to boldly go where no San Francisco mayor has gone before underscores both his confidence and control. He’s the captain of this vessel.

That the mere mention of Lee’s plan has made San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr and some members of the Board of Supervisors nervous means he may be on to something.

Across the bay, Oakland residents desperately need a mayor with as much resolve.

Whenever Oakland Mayor Jean Quan hears the word “controversial,” she starts moving in the other direction, away from the potential danger. Luckily for Quan, her travel plans have often coincided with controversy at City Hall.

Because otherwise some people might have gotten the false impression that Quan was unwilling – or worse, afraid – to tackle issues head-on, especially when they involve violent crime. When controversy struck last week, Quan cracked like a walnut at a squirrel party.

At a press conference she held to reaffirm the credibility of a crime reduction plan based on bad statistical data, Quan was soon fending off questions about whether she is really committed to fighting crime.

A reporter brought up Quan’s reluctance last year to support gang injunctions and curfews, and the mayor – true to form – revised history. “I’d actually support a curfew that was aimed at hot-spot areas and not a citywide curfew, because I don’t think we have the resources for a citywide curfew,” Quan said.

Really? Because last year, Quan dismissed a proposal from former Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts, who wanted the city to impose a curfew for underage teens. She outright rejected the idea of using gang injunctions to reduce crime before a court approved their use in two Oakland neighborhoods. A few months later, Batts resigned, saying City Hall was making it difficult to do his job.

In San Francisco, Lee knows he’ll never get the political support needed to enact a stop-and-frisk policy, but he just might get a modified, lesser version that can be used as an effective law enforcement tool.

He has started a buzz, fired a hot potato in the air and opened the door to a public debate about further law enforcement remedies.

It doesn’t matter whether they’re mashed, boiled or french-fried and served with onions, Lee has made it clear that come dinnertime, he expects to see some kind of potatoes on his plate. Period.

Quan has shown none of the same political strength or individual courage needed to do the job of taking on one of the toughest urban crime problems in the nation.

It’ll take the kinds of radical steps proposed by Lee, and used in other cities, for Oakland to get results and achieve a respectable level of safety on its meanest streets. It will also take leadership, which has been the rarity instead of the rule in the Oakland mayor’s office.

Chip Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. His column appears on Tuesday and Friday. E-mail: chjohnson@sfchronicle.com

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/johnson/article/For-bold-ideas-on-crime-look-to-S-F-not-Oakland-3680370.php

Obama back to Bay Area for more campaign cash – Enterprise

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 06:35:38 +0000

President Barack Obama returned to the Bay Area on Wednesday to treat himself to a second helping of campaign cash.

Spending a little more than four hours on the ground, the president mingled with officials and supporters at San Francisco International Airport, sped to campaign events in the city that generated hundreds of thousands of dollars and then was back at the airport to leave for other re-election activities in Southern California.

Obama arrived at SFO aboard Air Force One at 11:36 a.m., just two weeks after his swing through Silicon Valley. He left at 3:42 p.m.

At the airport, he was met by San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and about a dozen female campaign volunteers. Obama gave them all a handshake and a hug.

“Events like this kind of pumped you up and keep you going,” said Oakland resident Nanci Clifton, one of those dozen campaign workers. She said meeting and hugging the president was an amazing and exciting experience.

Another one of the dozen was Regina Davis, who said she was a longtime Obama supporter who attended the president’s inauguration. “This is one of the most important elections we’re going to witness,” she said.

Obama jogged over to a fenced off area where he was greeted by several dozen other supporters, some wearing “Obama 2012″ T-shirts. He then got into the back of a black Cadillac limousine and left for his campaign appearances.

Obama was scheduled to attend

two events in the Financial District of San Francisco. First up was a luncheon at the Julia Morgan Ballroom at the Merchants Exchange on 465 California St.

The very elegant wood paneled Julia Morgan Ballroom, considered a neoclassic architectural gem in the historic Merchants Exchange building, was filled with 27 tables of 10 guests each.

The White House official count was 250, but organizers said the demand for the event — sold out — was big and they wanted to squeeze in a few

more. The majority of those paid $5,000 each to attend, but tickets went up to $7,500 for photo to $50,000 for “table captain.”

Diners enjoyed a menu of summer salad (Upland cress and red frilly mustard with plum vinaigrette); salmon with sea beans, purple artichokes and lemon caper sauce, and assorted desserts.

In addition to Gov Jerry Brown, Newsom was in attendance, as was Richard Blum, husband of U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, and Democratic party chair John Burton.

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee welcomed the audience.

President Obama ‘has been thinking the same things that we’ve been doing in San Francisco,” he said. “We’re creating jobs…we’re using our innovation locally to do that..and this is exactly the same page that President Obama has had.”

San Francisco Giants and baseball Hall of Famer Willie Mays, wearing a Giants cap, introduced Obama.

He said he had “a great, great pride” in Obama. “It’s just a wonderful feeling that I have in my heart,” he said. “He’s the man that we need to be in the White House.”

Obama himself was greeted with cheers and a standing ovation in the ballroom.

The president stood in front of a U.S. flag and a California flag before a backdrop of velvet curtains in the wood paneled dining room.

“It is true that they provide me with this really nice plane in this job..but as cool as Air Force One is, it is much cooler when Willie Mays is with you on the plane,” he said.

Obama acknowledged the historic landmark that his election, but added “we don’t make that history unless there are folks like Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays” to pave the way.”

The president launched into stump speech, and said that the idea that “everybody has a piece..in this exceptional, extraordinary country..was slipping away from too many people.”

“The American people are tough, and the tougher the times, the tougher they get,” he said. “Because of the extra talents and gifts and the resilience of the American people,” the administration has been able to create 4.3 million new jobs.

“We’ve been able to stabilize the situation, but we also understand” that folks are still hurting out there, he said.

And that’s why in some ways, “2012 is even more important than 2008…we’ve got to finish what we started,” he said to applause.

He said in 2008 he was running against “a guy…he believed in climate change, he believed in campaign finance reform, he believed in immigration reform,” he said, but added that today the fundamentals of the GOP “have shifted.”

In 2012, “we are going to be facing a fundamental choice,” he said. “I’ve been pretty clear about what I believe.”

“If somebody asks you, you tell them it’s still about hope and change,” he said of the 2012 election.

In one of the biggest applause lines, he spoke of women’s health and said, “We’re not getting rid of Planned Parenthood.”

Some diners on hand dismissed criticism of Obama’s trips to CA to pick up campaign cash and said that they understood Obama’s frequent fundraising in California.

“My reaction is the other candidates’ travel schedule is no more oriented to the masses. I wish we had a system where this kind of fundraising isn’t necessary,” said Martin Checov, (CQ) a San Francisco attorney who attended the event.

Outside the Merchant Exchange building, there was a variety of vocal protesters, what looked to be a few hundred. They included about 50 from the Bay Area Tea Party Patriots, and another group some protesting Obama’s crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries, and anti-circumcision protesters.

And there were another two dozen from the Center for Biological Diversity — some dressed as polar bears, protesting Shell Oil’s drilling in the Arctic.

Obama is due back at SFO to fly out to Los Angeles this afternoon for three more events after spending just over 3½ hours in the Bay Area. His campaign reportedly expects to raise more than $5 million in California today.

The president’s Bay Area visit is not public, so unless you catch a glimpse of the black whir of a motorcade whizzing by — or get stuck in traffic because some roads were closed to make way for it — you won’t even known he’s here.

On May 23, Obama arrived at Moffett Air Field in Mountain View to attend pricey fundraisers where he raised millions of dollars in Atherton, Redwood City and the Fairmont San Jose hotel downtown. He stayed overnight in San Jose, and left Moffett the morning of May 24 to cap a 20-hour visit.

His latest visit comes just a day after voters in the Bay Area and around Californian cast ballots for Obama as the Democratic nominee for president. He ran unopposed and figures to win California in a landslide in November, but like Republican opponent Mitt Romney, Obama has been visiting the Golden State to raise tens of millions of dollars for nationwide campaigning.

Contact Mike Rosenberg at 408-920-5705. Follow him at twitter.com/rosenberg17.

Article source: http://www.chicoer.com/news/ci_20795155/obama-coming-back-bay-area-more-campaign-cash

Tech firms clamor for space in bubbly SF market

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 10:29:02 +0000

By Therese Poletti, MarketWatch

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — The commercial real estate market is on fire in San Francisco, driven by both large and small tech companies looking for more office space to keep up with their growth.

Earlier this month, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee’s office touted the fact that eight tech companies signed leases for over one million square feet of office space in January and February, companies ranging from big companies like Macy’s.com

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, Salesforce.com

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, LinkedIn Corp.

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+6.47%

and the smaller StumbleUpon.

“We have a market that is red hot,” said Frank Fudem, a senior vice president at Cassidy Turley, a commercial real estate firm in San Francisco. “We will probably see single-digit vacancy next quarter.”

With the end of the first calendar quarter approaching, local realtors say that so far, there are a few indicators that the city could see absorption levels — meaning the rate at which the amount of available space is leased — not seen since the first quarter of 2005, when 1.12 million square feet of available office space was absorbed.

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Inside Google: An exclusive look at its NYC office

Water towers in the café. A fire hydrant in the hallway. Google’s New York City office has gone on a hiring binge, and has tricked out its offices so that new employees know they’re working in New York. WSJ’s Andy Jordan takes an exclusive look inside Google’s Chelsea office in Manhattan.

The deals by some of the bigger tech companies, mostly in software, may also make it harder for startups to find office space, as big companies are leasing large swaths of offices, and in turn pushing up the rents. Those factors are making it harder for young companies to find space in the most desirable areas, such as the trendy South of Market (SOMA) area.

Frustration and innovation

Indeed, these issues with the commercial real estate market helped fuel a new company, called 42 Floors, which is based in Redwood City, Calif., until it can find a space in San Francisco.

“We created our company out of our frustration with the technology,” said Jason Freedman, co-founder of the nascent five-employee firm. “It’s very hard to get access to the listings to see what’s out there, especially in the Bay Area where everything is just on fire.”

Freedman and his co-founders created a website, which is still in beta, for commercial real estate listings with lots of photos and details, akin to what both Trulia and Zillow.com

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have done for the residential real estate market with their comprehensive listings.

“Everyone has a dream if they are a tech company,” said Freedman, who got his broker’s license as a way of doing homework on his initial idea. “They will be in SOMA with outstanding light, with a one-year term, at an outstanding price. I just say pick two, you can’t get all three or four.”

Roman Stanek, founder and CEO of GoodData, a developer of cloud-based software that helps companies analyze customer data, said his company will have to eventually expand. Founded in 2007, GoodData currently is in the financial district, but has grown to 150 employees, from 40 a year ago. Half its employees are in Prague. “For us, when we move, we will have to look for non-conventional spaces,” Stanek said.

Unconventional office spaces could become popular among this generation of startups, which are more frugal than the famously decadent, mad-money-spending dot-com startups of the late 1990s.

Therese Poletti/MarketWatch

Once shuttered, St. Joseph’s church is being restored and converted to office space.

Construction has begun on an empty but iconic 1925 skyscraper known locally as the Telephone Building, in the South Financial District, where its owners Wilson Meany Sullivan were inspired by the improved office market to begin work on their $50 million rehabilitation project. The building, previously owned by ATT Inc.

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, was sold in its post-merger consolidation and has been empty for nearly six years.
Read more about plans for 140 New Montgomery (subscription required).

Micro-blogging star Twitter is blazing a trail and later this year will be moving into three floors of a 1937 Art Deco building that was originally a furniture mart and showroom, in a sketchy area of San Francisco called Mid-Market or central Market. Just as necessity has led to new tools to help deal with the real estate problem, there are also hopes that this real estate boom or bubble, along with some tax benefits from the city, could help revive the most blighted area of San Francisco.
Read previous column about Twitter’s move.

KWP

Rendering of a proposal to convert the 99-year-old St. Joseph’s church into office space.

Last month, two former altar boys got city approval to convert St. Joseph’s, a long-shuttered 99-year-old Romanesque church into an open office. The location several blocks away from where Twitter will be moving. Chris Foley of the Polaris Group bought the church a few years ago and is working with Brian Spiers Development. They plan to restore the church to its former grandeur as a unique 22,000 square feet of office space. Financing is lined up, pending the signing of a lease and the $15 million to $18 million renovation and seismic upgrade project is expected to begin this summer.

“We got all the pigeons out and then boarded it up and cleaned it up,” Foley said. The church has to be kept boarded up and the doors bolted tight to prevent homeless people and drug addicts from breaking in and doing further damage to the church. It was closed and eventually sold by the Archdiocese of San Francisco after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. “They weren’t the benign, low-grade homeless. They were cooking meth,” Foley said.

When asked if they are nervous about the unpredictable nature of tech startup companies and how the last real estate and dot-com bubbles ended, the developers said they were confident that things have changed. New, more sustainable businesses associated with smartphones, tablets, software applications and cloud computing have been created this time around.

“It’s a totally different world than 1999,” Spiers said. “There have been lessons learned here.”

But if you are trying to buy a house in San Francisco or in areas of Silicon Valley, especially houses with close proximity to shuttle stops for the commuter buses that go to Google

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, Apple

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or many other companies, you are probably cursing the market, just as the companies are that are looking for more space.

“I’m not suggesting that the companies are reminiscent of the bubble, but in terms of real estate, it is,” said Fudem. “We are seeing multiple offers in some cases and a very steep escalation in rents.”

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M

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CRM

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Z

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AAPL

Therese Poletti is a senior columnist for MarketWatch in San Francisco.

Article source: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/tech-firms-clamor-for-space-in-bubbly-sf-market-2012-03-22

A Tax Policy With San Francisco Roots

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 04:21:42 +0000

Henry George, the 19th-century political economist, spent his seminal years in San Francisco. He is no longer a household name, and his “land-value taxation” theory is probably among the few radical ideas for government financial reform that haven’t gotten a hearing in Washington in recent weeks.

But his ideas, in their way, are remarkably relevant now.

George proposed a simple taxation system in which land, but not the value of any buildings or improvements, would be taxed at a rate so high that it would satisfy all of government’s revenue needs. No complicated income tax code. No dog’s breakfast of special fees and gimmicks to balance government budgets. Just a confiscatory tax on land. “Georgism,” as its single-tax principle is known, would be devastating for real estate speculators and large landowners, but proponents say it would be painless for most everyone else.

Here in California, a state that has bled itself dry by radically reducing property taxes, it’s easy to forget that just a few decades ago Georgism had an avid following. None less than Willie L. Brown Jr., the former San Francisco mayor and State Assembly speaker, championed Georgist policies, sometimes with the support of John Burton, the longtime Democratic power broker.

Mr. Brown twice introduced state legislation to create a Georgist land-tax regime. “I was badly defeated with that legislation both times,” he wrote a fellow Georgist in 1973. “But I am still convinced that land-value taxation should be given a try.”

A few years later, voters opted instead to slash property taxes via Proposition 13. Mr. Brown moved on, first to an enormously successful (and centrist) political career, and then to his current gig as a high-powered lawyer who counts major real estate developers and corporate landowners among his clients.

But Mr. Brown was certainly in good company as a Georgist. Devotees over the years have included Leo Tolstoy, Winston Churchill, Sun Yat-Sen, and the inventor of the board game that would become Monopoly.

“Henry George was called the Prophet of San Francisco,” said Joshua Vincent, a Georgist and the executive director of the Center for the Study of Economics in Philadelphia. “He led a mass movement, a pre-socialist labor movement.”

George later moved to New York City and was a candidate for mayor when he died of a stroke four days before the 1897 election.

It’s easy to see why George’s theories and his most-famous book, “Progress and Poverty,” published in 1879, appealed to the young Mr. Brown. The grandson of slaves, Mr. Brown grew up poor in segregated Mineola, Tex., and came to San Francisco in 1951 as a teenager with little education and less money. He is an entirely self-made man.

“Willie Brown was one of the few who had the courage to speak up for this reform and actually introduce land-value tax legislation,” said Cathy Orloff, who in the 1970s ran the Henry George School in San Francisco, which offered classes in Georgism to hundreds of students. “People in the school greatly admired him for that.”

Mr. Brown did not respond to inquiries about his Georgist past, and he’s clearly not preparing to take up the flag again.

But Joseph E. Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning Columbia University economist, is stepping into the breach. In December, Mr. Stiglitz called for the adoption of “Henry George Principles” as part of his prescription to resuscitate the American economy. “Land does not disappear when it is taxed,” Mr. Stiglitz wrote in “Principles and Guidelines for Deficit Reduction,” a working paper for the progressive Roosevelt Institute. “Henry George, a great progressive of the late nineteenth century, argued, partly on this basis, for a land tax.”

Would California have fared better if Mr. Brown’s Georgist land-value tax had won widespread adoption? It’s almost impossible to contemplate, given how the economic structure of the state has been determined by private land development. Instituting land-value taxation in one fell swoop would cause the value of real estate to plummet, an outcome few would applaud.

But governments at every level are being forced to get creative as they seek new ways to finance basic public services, and if anything good is to come of the current catfight in Washington, it may be a renewed openness to all manner of budget-cutting, tax-reforming ideas.

The Prophet of San Francisco could yet have his day.

estevens@baycitizen.org

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/us/31bcstevens.html