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“We’re starting a restoration, a transformation of that block that we believe will revitalize downtown,” said Shvo, who said he’s also in talks to bring three public restaurants to the pyramid.

It will be Core’s third location after New York, where it is moving into another Shvo-owned building, and Milan, Italy.

“We’re very bullish on San Francisco and big cities generally, especially gateway cities,” said Jennie Enterprise, founder and chairman of Core, which opened in 2005. “We weren’t compelled to expand. It had to be an evolution that made sense. It’s about finding a city that’s internationally relevant and culturally vibrant.”

San Francisco is a center of innovation, culture and food, qualities that haven’t been dimmed by the pandemic, she said.

Core plans to create “several hundred new jobs” at the pyramid. The club will bring in chefs from around the world and plans numerous cultural events, including public ones at the adjacent Transamerica Redwood Park. Core’s New York location has hosted 200 events a year including talks with high-profile actors and artists such as James Franco and Jeff Koons.

It won’t be cheap to get in.

Core’s initiation fees range from $15,000 to $100,000 for a “founding membership,” which gives access to an entire family. Only 20 are available in San Francisco, with annual fees ranging from $15,000 to $18,000. A membership, which is invite-only, gives access to the San Francisco, New York and Milan locations. Food, drinks and other services cost extra.

Core currently has 1,500 members. Enterprise wouldn’t disclose any names, citing the club’s privacy policy, but the New York Post has reported that members have included former President Bill Clinton. Founding members in New York include billionaires like Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of the Blackstone Group, and real estate moguls Steven Roth of Vornado Realty Trust and Aby Rosen of RFR Holding, according to the New York Times.

Core signed a 20-year lease for 45,000 square feet at the Transamerica Pyramid last year, part of a burst of business activity that came despite San Francisco’s doldrums during the pandemic — office vacancy has more than tripled to around 20%. Shvo said he’s signed and renewed leases at the pyramid with multiple tenants, including Core, totaling over 100,000 square feet in the past year, with rents over $100 per square foot annually, some of the highest in the country. It’s a vindication, he said, of his strategy of buying only “super prime real estate.”

Shvo and his partners bought the pyramid and two nearby buildings in October 2020 for $650 million from Aegon, the parent of Transamerica Corp. It was the first time the building had been sold since it opened in 1972.

Shvo was born in Israel and owned a taxi fleet in New York before becoming a top real estate broker and launching his own eponymous firm in 2004, focusing on luxury condo projects around the world.

He pleaded guilty in 2018 to tax evasion tied to fine art, jewelry and a Ferrari purchase and settled for $3.5 million, avoiding prison time. New York prosecutors said, “Shvo’s brand of tax evasion was an art form unto itself.”

He has been one of the most active investors during the pandemic, scooping up the pyramid, along with 333 South Wabash in Chicago, a notable red building in the city’s skyline, and 530 Broadway in New York. Shvo’s partners include Deutsche Finance America and Bayerische Versorgungskammer, Germany’s biggest pension fund. He is also developing a 54-unit Mandarin Oriental luxury condo project in Beverly Hills, part of a West Coast expansion that has him hungry for more properties.

“COVID is a moment in time,” he said. “There was life before COVID. There will be life after COVID.”

He said he also plans to propose a new office building at 545 Sansome St. next to the pyramid, though no proposal has been finalized.

The pandemic has highlighted that in-person experiences and interactions are indispensable, another reason for Core to be expanding, Enterprise said.

“You can Zoom all you want,” she said. “There is no substitute for community.”

The city ordinance, passed in January 2019, prohibited property owners from increasing rents in amounts so large that they were clearly not intended to recoup the owner’s costs but were instead meant to displace the tenant, either voluntarily or by a suit for nonpayment of rent. In deciding whether the rent was being raised in bad faith, city officials were to consider whether the amounts were substantially above market rates and whether the increase was imposed within six months of an attempt to evict the tenant.

A lawsuit filed a month later by the San Francisco Apartment Association and other groups claimed San Francisco was effectively controlling rents, in violation of Costa-Hawkins. Superior Court Judge Charles Haines disagreed in 2020, and his ruling was upheld Monday by the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco.

“Costa-Hawkins does not protect a landlord’s right to use a pretextual rent increase to avoid lawfully imposed local eviction restrictions,” Justice Stuart Pollak said in the 3-0 ruling. He said the purpose of the ordinance was not to restrict lawful rent increases, but “to deter landlords from trying to attempt to avoid local eviction rules by imposing artificially high rents in bad faith.”

City Attorney David Chiu praised the ruling. “When a tenant’s rent is doubled or tripled, that is just an eviction by another name,” he said in a statement. “We cannot allow unscrupulous landlords to circumvent our local laws and unlawfully evict tenants.”

The decision was also welcomed by the sponsor of the 2019 ordinance, Supervisor Hillary Ronen. “Jacking up the rent to force a tenant to move is clearly harassment, and we are not about to tolerate that in San Francisco,” she said.

The owners’ organizations saw it differently.

The San Francisco ordinance “undermines Costa-Hawkins and puts landlords at the mercy of local regulation with respect to the setting of rents in an area where the Legislature expressly intended to preclude local regulation, said Christopher Skinnell, lawyer for the San Francisco Apartment Association, which could seek review in the state Supreme Court.

The local law is “over-protective,” said Curtis Dowling, attorney for the California Apartment Association. Doubling or tripling a tenant’s rent to secure an eviction would go too far, he said, but under the wording of the San Francisco law, “any increase on these units can get dragged into a litigation dragnet.”

“We’re starting a restoration, a transformation of that block that we believe will revitalize downtown,” said Shvo, who said he’s also in talks to bring three public restaurants to the Pyramid.

It will be Core’s third location after New York, where it is moving into another Shvo-owned building, and Milan, Italy.

“We’re very bullish on San Francisco and big cities generally, especially gateway cities,” said Jennie Enterprise, founder and chairman of Core, which opened in 2005. “We weren’t compelled to expand. It had to be an evolution that made sense. It’s about finding a city that’s internationally relevant and culturally vibrant.”

San Francisco is a center of innovation, culture and food, qualities that haven’t been dimmed by the pandemic, she said.

Core plans to create “several hundred new jobs” at the Pyramid. The club will bring in chefs from around the world and plans numerous cultural events, including public ones at the adjacent Redwood Park. Core’s New York location has hosted two hundred events a year including talks with high-profile actors and artists including James Franco and Jeff Koons.

It won’t be cheap to get in.

Core’s initiation fees range from $15,000 to $100,000 for a “founding membership,” which gives access to an entire family. Only 20 are available in San Francisco, with annual fees ranging from $15,000 to $18,000. A membership, which is invite-only, gives access to the San Francisco, New York and Milan locations. Food, drinks and other services cost extra.

Core currently has 1,500 members. Enterprise wouldn’t disclose any names, citing the club’s privacy policy, but the New York Post has reported that members have included former President Bill Clinton. Founding members in New York include billionaires like Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of the Blackstone Group, and real estate moguls Steven Roth of Vornado and Aby Rosen of RFR Holding, according to the New York Times.

Core signed a 20-year lease for 45,000 square feet at the Pyramid last year, part of a burst of business activity that came despite San Francisco’s doldrums during the pandemic — office vacancy has more than tripled to around 20%. Shvo said he’s signed and renewed leases at the Pyramid with multiple tenants, including Core, totaling over 100,000 square feet in the past year, with rents over $100 per square foot annually, some of the highest in the country. It’s a vindication, he said, of his strategy of buying only “super prime real estate.”

Shvo and his partners bought the pyramid and two nearby buildings in October 2020 for $650 million from Aegon, the parent of Transamerica Corp. It was the first time the building had been sold since it opened in 1972.

Shvo was born in Israel and owned a taxi fleet in New York before becoming a top real estate broker and launching his own eponymous firm in 2004, focusing on luxury condo projects around the world.

He pleaded guilty in 2018 to tax evasion tied to fine art, jewelry and a Ferrari purchase and settled for $3.5 million, avoiding prison time. New York prosecutors said “Shvo’s brand of tax evasion was an art form unto itself.”

He has been one of the most active investors during the pandemic, scooping up the Pyramid, along with 333 South Wabash in Chicago, a notable red building in the city’s skyline, and 530 Broadway in New York. Shvo’s partners include Deutsche Finance America and Bayerische Versorgungskammer, Germany’s biggest pension fund. He is also developing a 54-unit Mandarin Oriental luxury condo project in Beverly Hills, part of a West Coast expansion that has him hungry for more properties.

“COVID is a moment in time,” he said. “There was life before COVID. There will be life after COVID.”

He also plans to propose a new office building at 545 Sansome St. next to the Pyramid, though no proposal has been finalized.

The pandemic has highlighted that in-person experiences and interactions are indispensable, another reason for Core to be expanding, Enterprise said.

“You can Zoom all you want,” she said. “There is no substitute for community.”

There is widespread speculation that Aaron Rodgers walked off the Lambeau Field grass as a Packers player for the last time Saturday night. There are significant cap advantages for the Packers to trade Rodgers, who still is at the top of his game and may earn another MVP award in the coming weeks, and Rodgers may not want to remain a Packer if certain teammates like Davante Adams depart this offseason.

After the game Rodgers was asked about his future with the team, and though he didn’t offer specifics, he didn’t duck the questions.

When the many contract decisions facing the team was brought up, Rodgers said, “That’s a fair question, definitely one I’ve thought about. But there are a lot of decisions be made, and key players … so many guys’ contracts are up. I don’t want to be a part of a rebuild if I’m going to keep playing. A lot of decisions in the next couple months.”

The topic came up again when he was asked about his legacy as a Packer. He said he sees his legacy as the relationships and friendships he’s made in the locker room and in the organization, before adding, “I’m still super competitive, I know I can play at a high level, so it’s going to be a tough decision, a lot of things to weigh in the coming weeks.”

“I think this thing is going to look a lot different moving forward, but I’m thankful for this time, this team, and super bummed at how this played out tonight and how it ended.”

Before the season, words from Rodgers and others suggested that his feelings for general manager Brian Gutekunst were one of the biggest factors that could hasten his departure from the Packers. But things changed once camp began. “From the day I got back, I felt like there was an earnest decision on both sides to meet in the middle and communicate,” Rodgers said. “I’m very thankful to be a part of the conversations and felt like my opinions mattered. That was a special part of this season, to see that relationship grow. He deserves a lot of credit for some of the moves he made.”

Article source: https://theathletic.com/live-blogs/49ers-vs-packers-live-updates-live-nfc-divisional-round-news-start-time-tv-channel-analysis-odds-and-predictions/YiNuiefJmo4O/

Last week, a new report to federal financial regulators cites the North Bay family’s case in a review of how racial bias in home appraisals has evolved since last century’s explicitly discriminatory housing laws — and lays out a potential path to reform. Among the recommendations: changing the way appraisals are regulated, doing more to diversify the ranks of appraisers and releasing more federal appraisal data.

As it stands, local fair housing attorneys say the appraisal process can amount to “present-day redlining,” because of how non-white residents are still disproportionately locked out of the wealth that favorable home financing can provide. But it’s only in recent years, the report notes, that more cases like the North Bay family’s have made it to the courts and media.

“It’s not that the problems didn’t exist before,” said Peter Christensen, an attorney who contributed to the new report to appraisal regulators. “But the complaints that we’re hearing now — that’s the new phenomenon.”

Cases like the one brought by Paul Austin and Tenisha Tate-Austin in Marin City illustrate how high the financial stakes of appraisal issues can be in expensive housing markets like the Bay Area. The North Bay couple alleged in a federal fair housing lawsuit last year that their renovated home was unreasonably devalued by an appraiser initially hired during a refinancing.

That is, until the family ordered a second appraisal, swapped their own photos with a white friend’s and left their home during the follow-up visit.

“The Austins erased any evidence of their racial identities inside their house, even asking a white friend to pose as the homeowner during the inspection,” according to the lawsuit. “This different appraiser arrived at a value of $1,482,500 — nearly half a million dollars higher.”

Part of the challenge in addressing concerns like the Austin family’s is that appraisals are a technical and subjective business, which the new report notes is largely “self-regulated” and severely lacking non-white professionals. A private organization, The Appraisal Foundation, was authorized by Congress in 1989 to set most day-to-day standards. States have their own oversight agencies to clarify localized standards, like California’s Bureau of Real Estate Appraisers.

The new report was created for regulators on an Appraisal Subcommittee of the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, an interagency group with ties to agencies including the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The appraisal report was authored by the National Fair Housing Alliance and attorneys focused on fair housing and appraisals.

In addition to the appraisal industry’s unusual system for regulation, the new report explains how the process grew out of the country’s legacy of discriminatory housing policies that relied on an “unfounded association between race and risk.” One 1967 appraisal textbook quoted in the report noted that “values change when people who are different from those presently occupying an area advance into and infiltrate a neighborhood.”

Many state and federal laws have since barred racial discrimination in housing, and government bodies like the Federal Housing Financing Agency have specified in recent years that “racial and ethnic composition of the neighborhood should never be a factor that influences the value of a family’s home.” Industry groups including the Appraisal Foundation have also vowed to invest in rooting out bias. Still, the new report cites current examples of appraisers injecting racially coded language into reports, like one unspecified instance where a once “White-Only” neighborhood was also described as a “White-Flight Red-Zone” that is now mostly “Working-Class Black.”

It all comes with a high financial cost. The Brookings Institution estimates that owner-occupied homes in majority-Black U.S. neighborhoods are undervalued by some $156 billion. Freddie Mac has calculated a 5.2% “appraisal gap” between white and Black neighborhoods, where about 12.5% of properties in Black census tracts receive a lower appraised value than the contract price, compared to 7.4% of properties in white areas.

“The issue was not limited to just ‘a few bad apples,’” the new report noted. “Rather, the majority of appraisers reviewed were more likely to show an appraisal gap for properties in Black or Latino census tracts.”

Report contributor Christensen notes that frustration with appraisals has become widespread, transcending racial lines, during the surge in COVID-era bidding wars and low-interest refinancing. In busy markets like the Bay Area, it can take weeks to arrange an appraisal, and the results are often difficult for home buyers or owners to contest.

The report — the first of several expected to propose new reforms to regulators in the coming months — suggests several ways to both ease the pressure and increase equity. To lower barriers to entry to becoming an appraiser, the report suggests revising requirements for the number of hours would-be appraisers must work, and whether they must work under a supervisor already well-connected in the field.

The authors also propose ways to change the power structure of the governing Appraisal Foundation. Among the suggestions are repealing a requirement for financial donations to appoint board members, and adding consumer and civil rights advocates to the body. Christensen said policymakers could ultimately go farther.

“They’re like, ‘How is it that this private group of people over there is making all these rules and standards?’” Christensen said. “That is something that will really be looked at.”