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A growing percentage of Bay Area residents are worried about the future of the region, citing housing and traffic woes among their main concerns.

In a five-county poll released Wednesday, 67% of respondents said they are “unhappy or worried about changes happening in the Bay Area,” up 10% from 2016. And 53% said they felt things in the region “have gotten pretty seriously off on the wrong track,” up from 45% three years ago.

The poll, funded by the San Francisco Foundation, highlights the downsides of living in one of the country’s most beautiful and sought-after locales and the threat the festering issues of housing affordability, homelessness and traffic congestion pose to the region’s future.

“There’s concern — and we’ve been seeing this in a lot of other polling as well — that residents are feeling kind of pessimistic, just generally. I think the cost of housing and traffic and all these other issues are causing people to feel unhappy,” said Ruth Bernstein, president and CEO of EMC Research, the national consulting firm that conducted the poll.

Wednesday’s survey data comes from 800 residents in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties — the five counties that make up the San Francisco Foundation’s primary coverage area. Santa Clara County was not included. The foundation, which provides funding for local causes from housing and homelessness to racial equity, first conducted a similar survey in 2016 as a way to gauge the main crises affecting its community.

This year’s poll was conducted online during an eight-day period in October.

Respondents ranked traffic, the cost of living, housing costs and homelessness as the four worst things about living in the Bay Area. Making housing more affordable was at the top of their list of concerns, with 79% ranking it as a priority.

“They are speaking to the need for action,” said Judith Bell, chief impact officer of the San Francisco Foundation. “For me, that data really suggests we need to deal with this crisis because it is a threat to our future.”

Wednesday’s results confirm an ongoing trend. In a poll released earlier this year by this news organization and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, nearly two-thirds of Bay Area residents said the quality of life here has gotten worse over the last five years. And 44% of respondents said they are likely to move out of the Bay Area in the next few years.

“The Bay Area’s housing and traffic crises are the existential threats to a strong economy and a vibrant quality of life,” said Carl Guardino, president and CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.

Residents who responded to the San Francisco Foundation survey placed the most faith in government and elected officials to fix the housing crisis, over nonprofits, investors and the business and tech community.

The majority of residents also expressed concern about diversity in the Bay Area — 65% of respondents said protecting the racial and cultural diversity of the region’s neighborhoods is a priority. And 77% of respondents agreed with this statement: “There should be affordable places to live for all people whether white, black or brown in my neighborhood.”

Fewer than half of respondents said they are excited about the Bay Area’s future — 46%, down from 54% three years ago. And more than half of people polled said they are worried about finding an affordable place to live.

“No region can sustain itself with this level of discord among its residents,” Matt Regan, senior vice president of public policy for the Bay Area Council, wrote in an email. “We have to make housing more affordable for everyone, and that can only be done by a massive increase in building.”

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Article source: http://www.mercurynews.com/residents-increasingly-are-unhappy-with-bay-area-life-new-poll-finds

Developer and winemaker Dave Phinney imagines that Vallejo’s Mare Island will one day have as much bustle and busyness as it did during World War II.

At its peak during World War II, 300 buses a day carried thousands of shipyard workers to Mare Island, a 3.5-mile long peninsula at the confluence of the Napa River and San Pablo Bay. The island was humming — it was home to a 452-bed hospital as well as dry docks that could accommodate up to six large Navy ships at a time. As many as 50,000 employees worked on the island.

Phinney, a partner in the Nimitz Group, which is charged with redeveloping Mare Island, envisions an island with “tens of thousands” of new housing units and upward of 1,000 businesses. There will be schools — possibly a college campus — and copious waterfront parkland. As many as 60 historic buildings will be lovingly restored. It will be bike- and pedestrian-friendly. Water taxis and ferries — the island already has ferry service — will whisk residents and workers to San Francisco and elsewhere.

Though the aspirations are still in the early planning phases, Phinney’s vision of a mixed-use village came closer to realization this month when his company, a partnership that also includes billionaire Memphis investor Gaylon Lawrence Jr., closed on the acquisition of 500 acres of Mare Island land from the giant home builder Lennar.

The Nimitz Group owns over 800 acres on the island — a collection of parcels more than twice the size of Treasure Island, another former Bay Area Navy facility where 8,000 units are planned. In addition to the Lennar property, Nimitz controls 157 acres on North Mare Island and the 170-acre golf course.

Phinney said that he wants to create a “heterogeneous community,” rather than a “mono-culture.” The goal is to “create a community that’s sustainable at multiple levels, not just environmentally sustainable.” He said the development would be half housing, half other uses.

“It needs to be economically sustainable and socially sustainable,” he said “We want to create synergies. A new tech company? They’ll need housing. An educational institute? They’ll need housing and gyms and cafeterias.”

In the short-term, the land deal makes the Nimitz Group landlord to over 110 businesses employing about 3,000 people, including the modular housing manufacturer Factory OS. The group controls 3.6 million square feet of leased commercial, light industrial, manufacturing and office space.

The purchase of the Lennar site “signals the next evolutionary phase in the revival of Mare Island,” said Vallejo City Manager Greg Nyhoff.

“Combining the north and south parts of the island under a single private developer … will accelerate the growth and expansion of commercial opportunities on Mare Island,” he said.

Unlike Lennar, which has a long history of planning and building housing on former military or industrial sites, Nimitz Group is new to big redevelopment projects. Phinney created and sold two high-profile wine brands — the Prisoner and Orin Swift — each for hundreds of millions of dollars. He currently owns the distillery Savage and Cooke, which occupies a restored historic building on Mare Island. Lawrence has invested in a range of businesses that include wineries, banking and real estate.

It’s unclear when the group’s first foray into housing development will start — Nimitz Chief Operating Officer Nathan Bergeron said it could be anywhere within “12 to 24 months.” The land the Nimitz Group bought from Lennar is entitled for 1,400 housing units, 350 of which have been built.

While the 1999 plan for the Lennar property was split evenly between single-family homes and multifamily buildings, Nimitz is focused on denser development. Bergeron said that the relatively low-density Lennar plan is not something his company would have proposed. But the plan allows them some leeway to redesign the project and replace a portion of the unbuilt single-family homes with apartments.

“When that plan was conceived of, we were so far from understanding that there would be a real housing crisis in the Bay Area,” Bergeron said. “Lennar was creating almost a commuter island, whereas our long-term vision is more of a live-work situation.”

Bergeron said the first order of business is the completion of the environmental cleanup of contaminated soils. Lennar had completed remediation on most of the island — out of 854 parcels, just 10 still need to be cleaned up. He hopes to have the cleanup completed and signed off on by regulatory agencies by late next year.

Mare Island has a history of being used for filmmaking, which is something Nimitz is hoping to expand on. The late actor Robin Williams made several movies there, including “Jack” and “Patch Adams.” More recently the series about teen suicide, “13 Reasons Why,” was filmed there.

Phinney said he is focused on creating a place that attracts the movie industry.

“How do you make it so we have the best studios, with cutting-edge technologies, but also the best accommodations and restaurants?” he said. “If you could wave your magic wand, what would make it the best place in America to film?”

The federal government has also designated the island as an “opportunity zone,” a 2017 program designed to bring investment to economically distressed neighborhoods. The program, which was part of President Trump’s 2017 tax overhaul, allows investors to get a reduction in the capital gains tax if those gains are invested into low-income neighborhoods.

Phinney said opportunity fund investors have shown interest. He said “some of the biggest names in Wall Street have identified Mare Island as the No. 1 opportunity zone in America.”

Slater Matzke, Vallejo’s top economic development adviser, said the Nimitz plan will position Mare Island as “Vallejo’s economic driver for the next 150 years.”

“Mare Island has always been the economic engine of Vallejo, but when the Navy left there was a lot of work to do,” said Matzke.

The housing crisis has helped put the island’s potential into focus, he said.

“All these companies are asking the question, ‘Where are my employees going to live? Where can we put housing and jobs so that they don’t have to spend four hours a day sitting in traffic?’”

Mare Island has advantages that other former military properties around the Bay Area lack. It’s already got a vibrant business community and dozens of historic brick buildings that could be used for hotels, residential lofts or other kinds of uses, Matzke said.

“You are not starting with a brown field and trying to turn it into a gold field,” said Matzke.

J.K. Dineen and Janelle Bitker are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com, janelle.bitker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen, @janellebitker

Article source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Economic-engine-Vallejo-s-Mare-Island-14862416.php

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In a decade highlighted by some of the world’s largest companies gobbling up unprecedented amounts of space, a few leases in Bay Area commercial real estate stand out from the rest.

Depending on market capitalizations at a given moment, the Bay Area is home to two or three of the world’s largest companies, each of which are well-represented on a list of the decade’s biggest leases in the area.

Though its development of Apple Park in Cupertino may have received more attention, Apple’s lease of Jay Paul Co.‘s Central Wolfe building in neighboring Sunnyvale holds its own, even drawing comparisons to the company’s HQ.

In addition to spending hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire and develop Bay Area property, Google has also entered into its fair share of leases, most notably in Jay Paul’s Moffett Park projects in Sunnyvale. 

As for Facebook, the oft-maligned social network’s staggering growth rate has led to equally staggering office absorption, like when it leased all of Burlingame Point. 

Even so, a handful of other companies made waves with leases in the Bay Area’s decade of growth.

Dropbox‘s Lease at The Exchange

In 2017, Dropbox signed a 15-year lease for all 736K SF of office space at Kilroy Realty‘s The Exchange on 16th in what was then the largest lease signed in the history of San Francisco. 

At a development cost of $570M, Dropbox’s new Mission Bay headquarters also likely ranks as one of the city’s most expensive office projects. Designed by Rios Clementi Hale Studios, the LEED Platinum office project includes public plazas, retail and other amenities from its location a stone’s throw away from both Oracle Park and Chase Center.

For Dropbox, its massive deal with Kilroy had a short reign. Two months after going public the next year, Facebook and developer John Buck Co. had it beat.

Facebook’s Lease of Park Tower

Facebook’s deal with developer John Buck Co. to lease all of its 755K SF high-rise in San Francisco’s Transbay still stands as the city’s biggest lease ever. 

With the deal and its lease of 181 Fremont St. the year prior, Facebook became one of the city’s biggest commercial tenants seemingly overnight, even after having essentially no footprint in the city as recently as early 2017. 

As it turns out, Park Tower’s official delivery earlier this year might represent the zenith of the Menlo Park-based company’s growth in the Bay Area. Facebook is now “growing primarily outside of the Bay Area,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said publicly in October.

Facebook’s Lease of Burlingame Point

Topping even its deal for Park Tower, Facebook’s lease of developer Kylli‘s Burlingame Point in January made history of its own as one of the entire Peninsula’s largest-ever office leases.

Located nearly midway between Park Tower and the company’s Menlo Park HQ, Burlingame Point comes in at 803K SF feet, with Facebook signed on to take about 770K SF of it to use as the home of its Oculus virtual reality division. It had brokerage JLL representing it in negotiations, with Cushman Wakefield marketing the campus for Kylli, a subsidiary of China-based Genzon Investment Group Co.

Facebook’s Burlingame campus will have one eight-story building, one seven-story building, two five-story buildings and a two-story amenity building, and it is expected to finish construction in 2020.

Salesforce‘s Lease at Salesforce Tower

As the western United States’ second-tallest building, Salesforce Tower stands out for a few reasons, including the large-scale lease signed by its namesake.

In what amounted to San Francisco’s then-largest-ever lease before Dropbox and Facebook crashed the party, Salesforce took the name and half the space of Transbay Tower in 2014. 

San Francisco’s largest employer went on to make its total presence 881K SF across 36 floors within Boston Properties‘ and Hines‘ skyscraper, which officially opened last May at 100% leased.

Verizon‘s Lease at Coleman Highline

In the other half of the decade and on the other end of the Bay Area, Verizon recently signed a lease for 640K SF of Coleman Highline, a complex being developed by Cupertino-based Hunter Storm near the San Jose International Airport.

The telecommunications company expects its part of Hunter Storm’s megaproject to wrap up in 2021 and to move about 2,400 of its Verizon Media employees currently working in Sunnyvale to the Gensler-designed space, which broke ground in late October.

There, Verizon’s employees will have access to amenities like a fitness center and a cafeteria, and they will neighbor the employees of another company that signed on to Hunter Storm’s plans in a big way.

Roku‘s Lease at Coleman Highline

Fresh off expanding its commitment to Coleman Highline, streaming device company Roku has reportedly already started moving into the 730K SF its leasing at the project.

From its Los Gatos headquarters, the company originally committed to 472K SF at Coleman Highline in a deal arranged by Newmark Knight Frank‘s Phil Mahoney, Jeffrey Rodgers and Andy Hueser for Roku and CBRE‘s Jeff Houston and Mike Benevento for Hunter Storm.

Then, last November, it tacked on another 100K SF to its lease before expanding it again by another 162K SF. In all, both Roku and Verizon account for a large chunk of the 1.75M SF of office Hunter Storm envisions for the site.

Micron Technology‘s Lease in North San Jose

As Roku prepared its pen for unfinished Coleman Highline, across town chipmaker Micron Technology grabbed a finished product. 

In 2018, Micron leased about 604K SF at North San Jose’s 110-130 Holger Way, giving the Idaho-based semiconductor company great proximity to the adjacent VTA light rail, BART, Caltrain and the many Silicon Valley companies that rely on its products.

The campus’ accessibility to the rest of Silicon Valley’s red-hot commercial growth has also made it a hot commodity for investors. It has traded hands twice in the last two years: first, in December 2017, when Lane Partners acquired it for $225.5M from Brocade Communications Systems, and then in March, when Mori Trust took it over Lane Partners’ hands for $429M, according to the Silicon Valley Business Journal. 

Apple’s Lease of Central Wolfe

A recap of the decade’s biggest Bay Area leases wouldn’t be complete without healthy mention of Sunnyvale, which has outperformed its midsized peers in having added 7.3M SF of office inventory since 2014, according to CommercialCafé.

Central to Sunnyvale’s explosive office production and absorption is Central Wolfe, leased in its 770K SF entirety by Apple in 2015. Jay Paul Co. closed on the entitled site in for $177.5M in late 2015, after the iPhone-maker had already pre-leased the HOK-designed building. 

Though Apple’s foray outside of its hometown Cupertino was big, some deals in north Sunnyvale had it beat during the decade. 

Google’s Lease of Technology Corners

In one of the largest Bay Area leases of the decade (and a sign of the search giant’s voracious appetite for real estate to come), Google signed a lease in 2014 for about 950K SF in Sunnyvale’s Technology Corners, developed by Jay Paul Co. 

That complex, near others in the Moffett Park area still being developed by Jay Paul, both before and after leases by Google and other tech behemoths of Jay Paul-developed space in north Sunnyvale.

Google’s Lease of Moffett Gateway

A couple of miles from its Tech Corners campus and a couple of years later, Google signed a lease for about 612K SF at Moffett Gateway, a two-building Jay Paul development in the Moffett Park area.

Phil Mahoney of Newmark Cornish Carey led leasing efforts of Moffett Gateway for Jay Paul, which started construction on the site at 1225 Crossman Ave. without a tenant secured.

Facebook’s Lease at Moffett Towers II

Signed last year, Facebook’s deal for 1.05M SF in Jay Paul’s underway Moffett Towers II project topped even its deals up the Peninsula in Burlingame and Transbay. 

The social media giant claimed three eight-story buildings and has already begun moving into at least one of them, with the other two expected to come online in 2021. 

Amazon, in a less gigantic but still notable deal, will take much of the remainder of Moffett Towers II, Jay Paul’s latest big campus sprouting in Sunnyvale.

Related Topics: Boston Properties, CBRE, Hines, JLL, Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, Amazon, Salesforce, Dropbox, Salesforce Tower, Facebook, Park Tower, Verizon, Mission Bay, Mark Zuckerberg, Lane Partners, Moffett Towers, Moffett Park, Brocade Communications Systems, Rios Clementi Hale Studios, Hunter Storm, Burlingame Point, Moffett Gateway, Coleman Highline, Apple Park, Jay Paul Co., The John Buck Co., Roku, Micron Technology, Kilroy Realty Corp.

Article source: https://www.bisnow.com/san-francisco/news/office/10-of-the-decades-biggest-bay-area-leases-102326

When he became the mayor of San Francisco in January 2011, Ed Lee presented himself as a compromise figure, one who could build consensus among the ever-warring factions of the city’s Democratic party. “I present myself to you as a mayor for everyone,” he said at the time. “A mayor for neighborhoods, a mayor for downtown, for business, for labor, for the powerless and the powerful, for the left, the right, and everyone in between — for everyone.”

In 2010, during the trough of the Great Recession, the regional unemployment rate reached 10.5%. So the next year Lee and the Board of Supervisors (San Francisco’s name for its city council) passed what became known as the Twitter tax break, an exemption on payroll taxes for new employees for six years. At the time it was estimated the legislation would save the company $22 million, in exchange for which it abandoned a threat to leave town for the valley, and moved to the offices it still occupies today, a stately building on the corner of Market and 10th streets.

For a moment, the Twitter tax break seemed as if it would make good on Lee’s promise to bring the city together.

The deal united members of the moderate wing of San Francisco’s Democratic Party with the progressives. It lured not just Twitter but several other tech companies, including customer service software maker Zendesk, to locate in a seedy part of San Francisco, better known for drug dealers than disruptors. When he unexpectedly ran for reelection in 2011, Lee’s allies cut a deeply goofy, but not unfunny campaign video featuring Facebook’s Sean Parker, Twitter’s Biz Stone, and Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer, Giants pitcher Brian Wilson, and rapper MC Hammer.

Lee won in a rout, but the era of good feelings was short-lived.

In October 2012, San Francisco magazine ran a story by Salon founder David Talbot that posed the question that would dominate the rest of the decade. The title of the story said it all: “How Much Tech Can One City Take?”

Talbot’s answer: as little as possible.

“The unique urban features that have made San Francisco so appealing to a new generation of digital workers — its artistic ferment, its social diversity, its trailblazing progressive consciousness — are deteriorating, driven out of the city by the tech boom itself, and the rising real estate prices that go with it,” he wrote, adding, “And it’s not just about housing. Many San Franciscans don’t feel as if they’re benefiting from the boom in any way. While 23-year-olds are becoming instant millionaires and the rest of the digital technocracy seek out gourmet restaurants and artisanal bars, a good portion of the city watches from the sidelines, feeling left out and irrelevant.”

The progressive narrative hardened from there: Lee, desperate to attract businesses, had sold out the city to high-tech, throwing open the gates to every “Stanford asshole” (as Talbot would later put it) with a pulse and a business plan. Enter stock options, exit the soul of the city.

It was only a little more than a year later, in December 2013, that the next front in the local war against tech would open — this one covered in vomit.

Article source: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/scottlucas/san-francisco-spent-a-decade-being-rich-important-and

WALNUT CREEK (KPIX) — Tenant advocates said they’re seeing a spike in eviction and rent increase notices before the new year. They believed some property management companies and landlords are trying beat a new statewide rent control law — Assembly Bill 1482 — before it goes into effect on Jan. 1.

All 14 units at an apartment complex on Lacassie Avenue in Walnut Creek received an eviction notice last month. Cait Hudson said the notice was taped to her door two days before Thanksgiving.

“I was shocked it was that amount, shocked,” said Hudson, whose six-month lease expires at the end of the year.

The notice said she can move out by Dec. 31 or pay $500 more a month for rent to move to another unit.

“So from $1,850 to $2,350 — same unit, same size and same upgrades. So it’s crazy, it’s a crazy amount,” said a frustrated Hudson.

The city of Walnut Creek does not have rent control. The city has been referring tenants like Hudson to ECHO Housing, a non-profit that advocates for tenants in Alameda, Contra Costa and Monterey Counties.

“[Property management companies and landlords] want them out so they can charge what they’d consider fair-market value or rate,” said Jonathan Torres, a housing programs coordinator for ECHO Housing.

ECHO Housing tries to negotiate with the landlord in a dispute before contacting a real estate attorney.

“Every day we’re hearing calls from tenants who are being served with either illegal rent increases that are extremely high or the notice of termination,” said Torres.

He said management companies and landlords across the state are trying do those two things before AB 1482 goes into effect next month. In fact, the problem is so bad that about 50 cities and counties in the state have already implemented AB 1482 to prevent mass evictions.

The statewide rent-control law doesn’t affect cities like San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland since they already having existing rent control.

As for Cait Hudson, she received an early Christmas gift: a new apartment.

“My application just got accepted this morning. So I’m so excited. I’m going to sign my lease after this (interview) and move in on the 30th,” said Hudson.

The property management company of the complex, Savvy Real Estate Services, declined to comment. The owner of the property is on vacation in Europe. A friend, who is house sitting for the property owner, said she’ll be back January 5 from her vacation.

Article source: https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/12/19/walnut-creek-apartments-evictions-rent-control/