Bay Area Land News - April 2, 2019
US / California / Bay Area News
Opinion - Joe Mathews: Why the governor has his doubts about high-speed rail
San Francisco Chronicle
How will California ever finish high-speed rail when it can’t finish San Francisco’s Downtown Rail Extension?
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From the editor: What voters think about new business taxes (Spoiler alert: They're not fans)
Silicon Valley Business Journal
New polling suggests cities thinking of following Mountain View, East Palo Alto and San Francisco's lead on taxes based on a company's employee size may want to tread carefully.
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Small Salinas Valley towns are looking at big housing developments
Silicon Valley Business Journal
Soledad and Gonzales could join roster of Silicon Valley's most distant bedroom communities.
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Effort begins to put sales tax for Caltrain on ballots of counties it serves
Silicon Valley Business Journal
The Silicon Valley Leadership Group, which usually takes the lead in campaigning for big transportation funding efforts, thinks next March for California’s presidential primary would be the best time for getting the tax proposal on the ballot.
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Gov. Gavin Newsom’s agenda gets high marks in new California poll
San Francisco Chronicle
Gov. Gavin Newsom and his plans for California have solid support from voters looking to see if he can deal with the state’s long-standing problems, according to a new poll by the Public Policy Institute of California.
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Which Cities in California Have the Most Young People?
The New York Times
Demographic statistics about populations can’t explain everything about why our communities are the way they are: What motivates someone to move to a new city, or to start a family or not, differs from one person to the next. But they’re helpful for spotting trends and exploring larger economic forces.
Bay Area home prices edge up as IPO anticipation builds
San Francisco Chronicle
Bay Area home prices edged up in February and sales slowed as buyers and sellers wait to see what impact an onslaught of initial public offerings will have on the real estate market.
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Housing prices drop in tech-heavy Bay Area counties
The Mercury News
Runaway Bay Area housing prices — fueled by strong employment and scarce inventory — have started stalling in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, hinting that even well-salaried professionals have had enough.
Bay Area tech salaries outpaced by rent hikes in some cities
The Mercury News
During the last three years, rent increases in the San Jose metro area have outpaced stagnant tech employee salaries, according to a new study by Rent Cafe.
Housing crisis pushing quintuplet family out of Bay Area
The Mercury News
Unlike the Herculean task of bringing healthy quintuplets into the world, Chad and Amy Kempel are now grappling with a much more common but still formidable foe: the Bay Area’s eye-popping housing market.
Assemblymember Chiu pins Bay Area's economic fate to solving housing crisis
Silicon Valley Business Journal
Chiu: “Our lack of will to treat this (housing) crisis like a crisis and work together to jump out of the pot could end the vitality of the region as we know it.”
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Wiener’s housing density legislation faces hometown opposition
San Francisco Examiner
State Sen. Scott Wiener’s second attempt to pass legislation increasing housing density near transit is meeting with renewed resistance at home in San Francisco as it heads toward its first committee hearing.
Insight: We need a plan to care for aging Californians
San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco has become better known for rising housing costs and homelessness than the innovation, beauty and diversity that make it special to those of us who call it home. Nearly every Bay Area community is feeling these challenges.
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Bay Area homes sales hit 11-month low in February
Mountain View Voice
Over the course of February in the Bay Area, 4,354 new and existing homes and condominiums were sold, up nearly 13 percent from the previous month, but the year-over-year trajectory is trending downward, according to a report issued Thursday by CoreLogic, a housing research firm.
San Francisco News
Open Forum: Trickle-down housing won’t solve our affordability crisis
San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco has the highest income gap, one of the fastest-growing wealth gaps, and some of the highest housing costs in the world. This isn’t news, but it bears repeating as we consider how best to address our affordability crisis.
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Open Forum: San Francisco should reject Treasure Island marina plan
San Francisco Chronicle
The Treasure Island luxury marina project now winding its way through the city of San Francisco approvals process is a boondoggle-in-the-making.
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SF wants to get a handle on how large residential buildings use energy
San Francisco Chronicle
In an effort to keep shrinking San Francisco’s carbon footprint, the city’s Department of the Environment wants to keep a closer eye on energy consumption at large residential buildings.
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SF Transbay Transit Center contractors challenge accusation they botched inspections
San Francisco Chronicle
The contractors that built and installed the cracked steel girders that have kept the Transbay Transit Center closed for the past six months say they’re wrongly being blamed for failing to conduct proper inspections that could have prevented the fractures.
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San Francisco’s tech workforce is still growing, outpacing other metro areas
San Francisco Chronicle
It’s a complicated time to work in tech, with Wall Street getting jittery at every new earnings report and a growing political backlash, or “techlash,” making headlines.
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First electric, plug-in buses coming to San Francisco — but they won’t be Muni’s
San Francisco Examiner
The City of San Francisco’s first plug-in, electric buses will arrive by summer, the San Francisco Examiner has learned.
Editorial: San Francisco’s escalating war on cars
San Francisco Chronicle
Gas prices are bouncing up. So are bridge tolls. San Francisco’s car insurance rates, parking charges and auto break-ins are infamously high. If there was a further inducement not to drive, here’s another: congestion pricing.
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Dueling campaigns raise money to support, oppose SF’s Embarcadero Navigation Center
San Francisco Chronicle
A online fundraiser pooling money to support Mayor London Breed’s proposal to bring a 200-bed Navigation Center to the Embarcadero brought in over $82,000 in just over 24 hours.
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S.F. supervisors come out swinging at state bill to increase housing near transit
San Francisco Business Times
State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) is making a second pass at legislation aimed at easing California’s housing crisis by encouraging denser and taller buildings near transit — but San Francisco politicians aren't on board.
Groundbreaking anti-displacement legislation to preserve affordable housing and protect tenants
San Francisco Examiner
A groundbreaking bill that tackles San Francisco’s displacement crisis will be heard at the Budget and Finance Committee of the Board of Supervisors this week. The Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, or COPA, will allow nonprofit housing organizations to buy an apartment building before it goes on the open market, thereby protecting tenants from displacement and preserving their homes as permanently affordable.
Marc Benioff and Jeff Lawson have jumped into a fight over a rich San Francisco neighborhood's efforts to block a homeless shelter from being built on a parking lot
SF Gate
These execs are trying to stop a wealthy San Francisco neighborhood from preventing a new homeless shelter from being built on a nearby parking lot. An oh-so-San Francisco battle is going on right now that involves the city's massive homeless population, rich property owners, even richer tech executives, crowdsourced funding and an empty parking lot.
South Bay News
New downtown San Jose hotel near Google transit village is bought
The Mercury News
Downtown San Jose’s newest hotel has been bought by a New York real estate company, an indicator of ongoing confidence in the urban core of the Bay Area’s largest city.
Big facelift planned for downtown San Jose historic Lido night club site
The Mercury News
The site of the former Lido night club in downtown San Jose is headed for a major facelift that would preserve the property’s key historic elements and add offices, retail, a restaurant and a new fountain, according to preliminary documents on file with city officials.
Hotel tower eyed for big residential project proposed for downtown San Jose
The Mercury News
A hotel tower would join a big residential project proposed for downtown San Jose’s increasingly busy neighborhood in the city’s urban core, according to new plans being pondered by municipal planners.
Silicon Valley tech pours another $10 million into housing crisis
The Mercury News
The Silicon Valley tech industry is ponying up another $10 million to fix the region’s housing shortage, this time with a contribution from Sunnyvale-based NetApp.
Peninsula News
East Palo Alto to block rush-hour traffic through the city
Palo Alto Online
Fed up with relentless traffic jams caused by Palo Alto and Menlo Park employees, East Palo Alto officials plan to construct border barriers at key intersections during peak commute times to force vehicles onto U.S. Highway 101 and Willow Road and away from its city core.
Jay Paul chops a third off 1.3 million-square-foot Redwood City office plan
San Francisco Business Times
San Francisco developer Jay Paul Co. has cut the size of its massive office proposal in Redwood City by about a third after the city council pushed back on the size of the development last month.
Flintstone House is drawing worldwide attention
Daily Post
“The Flintstones” was such a popular show that it was translated into numerous languages and shown on TV around the world. And like the original series, the lawsuit over the Flintstone House in Hillsborough is attracting international attention.
Freewheeling Flintstones fun offends rock-ribbed rich folks
San Francisco Chronicle
There are many facets of Bay Area life circa 2019 that rightly cause stress, anger and frustration. If an octogenarian’s choice in lawn ornaments in her own backyard is what’s got you in a tizzy, consider yourself lucky. Or maybe take up a hobby.
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Exclusive: Mountain View officials to master plan North Bayshore 'gateway' site after Google, developer hit impasse
Silicon Valley Business Journal
Google and SyWest Development have debated the fate of the 30-acre gateway property since 2016, but admitted late last year they’d hit an impasse.
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Peninsula cities prepare for battle over contentious housing bill
Palo Alto Online
With political battle lines forming over the best ways to solve California's persistent housing crisis, opponents of the most ambitious state proposal — Senate Bill 50 — came to Palo Alto on St. Patrick's Day in search of recruits.
Council takes hard look at eastern Menlo Park plan
The Almanac
Two years in, Menlo Park's plan to convert the city's former light-industrial and warehouse district into a high-density office, housing and biotech hub is hitting some snags.
Once again, Council OKs razing rentals for new rowhouses
Mountain View Voice
Aside from the one developer in the room, nobody in the City Council Chambers seemed pleased with a proposal to raze 34 cheap-to-rent apartments in order to build a smaller number of million-dollar rowhouses.
Planned Churchill closure for rail redesign drives traffic fears
Palo Alto Online
As Palo Alto moves closer to picking a new design for its four rail crossings, residents are warning that one of the more promising solutions — the closure of Churchill Avenue to cars — may create traffic jams in nearby neighborhoods.
Bay Meadows affordable housing breaks ground
The Daily Jounal
Nonprofit BRIDGE Housing and its public- and private-sector partners on Thursday broke ground on its Bay Meadows affordable housing development that will feature 68 one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments at 2775 S. Delaware St. in San Mateo.
Menlo Park council dedicates $6.7M loan for 140-unit affordable housing project
The Almanac
The Menlo Park City Council on Tuesday, March 26, voted unanimously to make a $6.7 million loan to MidPen Housing, a nonprofit housing developer, to build 140 below-market-rate apartments on the 1300 block of Willow Road and replace the 82 units that are there now.
Despite protests, commission upholds removal of redwoods
The Almanac
Seven prominent redwood trees near the intersection of El Camino Real and Ravenswood Avenue in Menlo Park are closer to facing the ax after a city commission voted March 27 to uphold a decision that permits the property owner to cut them down.
Mixed-use development hub in North Fair Oaks taking shape
The Daily Journal
A plan to build a mixed-use development providing more than 100 units of affordable housing is starting to take shape in North Fair Oaks as a developer and county officials set their sights on gathering community input on a project aimed at housing residents near a cluster of neighborhood services.
New South San Francisco tax could help solve traffic congestion, commute woes
San Francisco Business Times
Major local stakeholders like Genentech are working with the city to fund new infrastructure improvements that will become more necessary as the population grows.
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Real Estate Deals of the Year: Kilroy Oyster Point boosts South S.F. biotech
San Francisco Business Times
Phase one will include three buildings totaling 630,000 square feet across 10 acres. Kilroy is focusing on building out food and beverage amenities in the first phase.
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Real Estate Deals of the Year: Inside Facebook’s big Burlingame bet
San Francisco Business Times
It was a surprise after meetings with dozens of the region’s top tech and biotech companies when one household name stepped up to claim the entire space: Facebook.
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Millbrae station project design mostly approved
The Daily Journal
Following hours of heated back and forth at a March 26 meeting, the Millbrae City Council signed off on the architecture and design of every building in the Gateway at Millbrae Station development except the hotel.
Affordable housing stock grows in Redwood City
The Daily Journal
Redwood City has far exceeded its state-issued goals for approving market-rate housing, but is far from achieving its affordable housing goals despite an uptick in below-market-rate development within the last year that is expected to continue, according to the city’s annual housing progress report.
New housing, offices in the works in San Mateo
The Daily Journal
Plans to build a five-story, mixed-use development offering 44 apartment units and ground-floor office just north of Borel Plaza in San Mateo are expected to boost the city’s housing stock should they gain traction with residents and city officials in the coming months.
East Bay News
A home run? Not quite. Lots of hurdles before the A’s new ballpark rises at Howard Terminal
The Mercury News
There is no Coliseum BART train, no walkway over Damon Slough, no parking or tailgating in A Lot or B Lot. The new path to catch Oakland A’s games is a short walk along a place called “Athletics’ Way” to Howard Terminal.
Economic growth eludes East Oakland, and business owners ask city for more help
San Francisco Chronicle
Every morning, Howard Oliver walks a few steps from the front door of his East Oakland home to get to his office. His garage — once used by his father to entertain his golf buddies — is now the base for Oliver’s environmental services business.
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East Bay critics blast area emergency housing plan
The Mercury News
More than 120 people at a town hall meeting Thursday night heard criticism of Bay Area emergency policies to address the housing crisis — known as the CASA Compact — that speakers maintained could lead to higher-density housing structures, alter the city’s population and semi-rural character, and take local control out of the hands of city officials.