Bay Area Land News - November 26, 2019
US / California / Bay Area News
Bay Area exodus is accelerating as California adopts ‘harsh new policies’
San Francisco Business Times
About 660 California companies have moved 765 facilities out of state since the start of 2018 — and the Bay Area is among the biggest losers, according to a report by site selection consulting firm Spectrum Location Solutions. The report follows an earlier one that showed California had 1,800 relocations out of the state, or so-called “disinvestment events,” in 2016, marking a record high going back to 2008. About 13,000 companies left California between 2008 and 2016, according to Spectrum, which says disinvestments include headquarters relocations or choosing to open operations in another city rather than expand in California.
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California is approving more housing permits
The Mercury News
After months of limited and in some cases nonexistent growth, California saw a sharp rise in the number of building permits for new homes in September. According to new figures released this week by the state’s Department of Finance, approval of housing permits surged nearly 22 percent from August to September, a more than 41 percent increase from last year.
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Primary factor creating wildfire risk is land use
The Mercury News
As still more wildfires hit California this fall, we remain in denial about the primary cause of our disastrous wildfire risks. Climate change contributes to wildfire now and will grow even further in importance, but it is not currently the primary risk factor and not subject to denial here in climate-conscious California. Similarly, there’s no denial of the need for certain helpful actions, using different building materials and setting prescribed fires to burn out fuel loads before they get out of control. These acknowledged issues also are not the primary drivers of wildfire risks, although they dominate the discussion and potential actions by government agencies.
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Lots of baby boomers will sell their Bay Area homes — here’s when that might affect the market
The Mercury News
A flood of houses for sale could be headed toward desperate Bay Area homebuyers. But don’t hold your breath — baby boomers won’t be leaving their roosts in earnest for at least another decade, according to a new Zillow survey. The real estate site expects a 25 percent turnover in Bay Area home ownership by the faraway year of 2037, as aging boomers downsize, move or die. In the meantime, Zillow expects the region’s housing choices to remain limited as older and newer residents continue to compete for homes.
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Is California’s most controversial new housing production law working?
The Mercury News
Time was running out for All Souls Episcopal Parish. The congregation had spent months on its plan to build an apartment building for low-income seniors on its property in Berkeley, but all that work threatened to unravel late last year when a group of neighbors appealed a key zoning approval. With just a month to go until a major funding deadline — and $5 million at stake — the church couldn’t afford to wait out the appeal. Instead, All Souls invoked a new and controversial state housing law — Senate Bill 35 — that put its project on the fast-track and allowed it to bypass hurdles like zoning appeals. Now the 37-unit project is set to break ground in June.
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California’s new renters’ protection act reflects tenants’ power
San Francisco Chronicle
In a historic victory for renters and tenants, California will soon become the third state in the country to implement a statewide rent cap. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation capping rent increases at 5% after inflation for the next 10 years. With attempts at similar legislation in California defeated as recently as 2018, the landmark win would not have been possible without the dedicated efforts of tenant organizers.
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Worried about homeless, Californians say they’d support a law mandating more shelters
Sacramento Bee
Most Californians are concerned about homelessness in their community, and a majority supports the concept of a law that would require cities to build more shelters, according to a new statewide survey. A poll from the Public Policy Institute of California found that 85 percent of respondents are concerned about the state’s estimated 130,000 homeless people, with 58 percent reporting being “very concerned.” That concern transcended political affiliation and region.
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Chasing Amazon, retailers are in a never-ending arms race
San Francisco Business Times
Retailers are trying everything they can to keep up with Amazon. Macy’s offers same-day delivery and in-store returns for online purchases. Black Friday deals are already starting at Kohl’s. And craft cocktails are served in the women’s shoe department at Nordstrom. By one measure, these strategies are working. After years when it seemed as if Amazon was swallowing the industry, many large old-school chains like Kohl’s and Macy’s have largely stabilized their lagging sales.
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San Francisco News
S.F.'s housing numbers don't lie — it's not pretty
San Francisco Business Times
If San Francisco’s battle against its housing crisis was a boxing match, the referee would probably have stopped it by now to save the city from getting flattened repeatedly. Indeed, when it comes to housing, San Francisco has gone down, and it is having trouble getting back up. The indicators on housing are pointed in the wrong direction, and there seems to be little prospect of reversing this alarming trajectory anytime soon.
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SF ‘vacancy tax’ to fight empty storefronts headed to March ballot
San Francisco Chronicle
Should San Francisco tax landlords with empty storefronts in the city’s beloved shopping districts? That’s a question heading to voters on the March ballot. The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Thursday to put the measure in front of voters. Since it was a special meeting before the Thanksgiving break, only eight supervisors were able to attend — but it was still enough to place the tax on the ballot.
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Judge deals another blow to Navigation Center foes
San Francisco Chronicle
Despite all the effort and money spent by a group of San Franciscans to prevent a 200-bed homeless shelter from opening on the Embarcadero, a judge has ruled that the construction may continue. The ruling, handed down Friday, closes another chapter in what’s become a months-long saga over the fate of the Embarcadero Navigation Center — a homeless shelter with intensive, on-site resources — and paves the way for the facility to open by the end of the year.
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Schwab is moving its headquarters. Will other S.F. companies follow its lead?
San Francisco Business Times
Local business and economic leaders say Charles Schwab Corp.'s plan to move its headquarters to Dallas highlights a deepening disquiet among San Francisco businesses about taxes and costs, the political and business climate here and a failure to tackle issues like homelessness and housing. “I think it says something about what people perceive as the political environment in California," said Ken Rosen, chairman of the Fisher Center for Real Estate & Urban Economics at UC Berkeley.
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Downtown community benefit district forming to alleviate traffic, address homelessness
San Francisco Examiner
A new community benefit district proposed for the Financial District would pay for traffic control officers on busy city streets and increased patrols to combat panhandling or public urination. Plans for the Downtown Community Benefit District, which were presented to the Board of Supervisors Government Audit and Oversight Committee Thursday, say it will generate around $3.8 million through fees collected from property owners at a rate of $0.10 per building square foot per year.
Timber! SF’s next architectural trend could be eco-friendly buildings made of wood
San Francisco Chronicle
The large panel of wood that hovered in the air above a De Haro Street construction site last Friday was something never seen before in the city. It’s formed from seven layers of black spruce grown in Quebec, 24 feet long and 8 feet wide, each layer glued one-to-the-next and then pressed together like a panini. A crane slowly lowered it into place atop thick wooden columns and beams — the first of hundreds of panels that will be an integral part of the structural frame of a four-story, 60-foot-high commercial building.
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Oceanwide Holdings Puts U.S. Megaprojects On Market
Bisnow
The Beijing developer is now looking to sell a portfolio of U.S. projects that includes Oceanwide Center in San Francisco and Oceanwide Plaza in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Business Times reports, citing anonymous sources familiar with the offering. The report comes about one month after Oceanwide suspended construction on part of its San Francisco project, which is slated to include the city's second-tallest building, and approximately eight months after it reportedly resumed construction on its once-stalled, $1B LA megadevelopment.
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South Bay News
Affordable homes eyed in downtown San Jose near proposed Google village
The Mercury News
A development of affordable homes is moving closer to reality in downtown San Jose and would rise a few blocks from a transit village that Google intends to build near the Diridon train station. The proposed residential project would add 130 apartments to a site near the corner of Auzerais Avenue and Delmas Avenue near the interchange of Interstate 280 and State Route 87.
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Jay Paul sees downtown San Jose as potential tech mega hub
East Bay Times
In early November, veteran development company Jay Paul Co. launched the first speculative office tower in downtown San Jose in a decade, a project dubbed 200 Park that will sprout at the corner of Park Avenue and South Almaden Boulevard. Across the street from what will be an 875,000-square-foot tower, Jay Paul has proposed a tech mega-campus that could accommodate 3.8 million square feet and multiple office towers. Besides these two redevelopment sites, Jay Paul Co. has also bought two other prominent downtown San Jose properties: a historic building that the company is renovating at North First and West Santa Clara streets, and the iconic 50 W. San Fernando St. office tower.
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Peninsula News
Young Menlo Park couple could face fines of $500 per day for living in driveway RV
The Almanac
Arlena Bain and her boyfriend, Alex Mulholland, both 27, might be the young people any great-grandmother would hope could move nearby. Given the area's housing costs, their relatively meager joint income made living on the Peninsula difficult, but they thought they'd found a workable workaround. For months, they've been living quietly in an RV parked in the driveway of Bain's great-grandmother's house on Madera Avenue in the Belle Haven neighborhood of Menlo Park, a setup that offers them some privacy while still being close enough to be of support to the 93-year-old homeowner.
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Menlo Park: Mayor, county supervisor to explore RV safe parking program
The Almanac
With much of the U.S. Geological Survey departing from its Menlo Park headquarters to Mountain View, the Menlo Park City Council has been talking about what can be done with the federally-owned property.
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Signatures submitted in last-ditch effort to overturn Mountain View’s RV ban
The Mercury News
Residents and housing advocates fighting Mountain View’s decision to ban RV dwellers from parking their vehicles on most city streets can finally breathe a sigh of relief. After a month of knocking on doors and standing outside of supermarkets, the Mountain View Housing Justice Coalition — with the help of nearly 100 volunteers — on Friday submitted petitions with more than 4,900 signatures to the city to place a referendum on the November 2020 ballot asking voters to overturn the ban.
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City approves four-story downtown office project
Mountain View Voice
Right across from Mountain View's main transit center, a new four-story office building is being slated for development. At its Monday, Nov. 18 meeting, the City Council gave unanimous approval to plans by the San Francisco-based firm Marwood to build a new 28,000-square-foot office complex in the heart of downtown. Located at the corner of West Evelyn Avenue and Hope Street, the lot where the new office building would go is currently occupied by a Subway franchise and low-density commercial space.
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County supervisors extend renter protections to unincorporated area residents
The Almanac
After hearing more than 25 impassioned pleas from renters, activists and landlords pushing for and against a proposed emergency ordinance to enact a statewide renter protection law early, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 on Nov. 19 to pass the ordinance and protect renters in unincorporated county areas. The ordinance mirrors the one passed Nov. 12 in Menlo Park. A number of other jurisdictions in the county have passed such ordinances, including Redwood City and San Mateo.
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Foster City gets key approval for flood prevention project
The Daily Journal
Foster City’s levee improvement project reached a milestone last week when it received unanimous approval for a required permit from BCDC. “I’m extremely excited,” said Mayor Sam Hindi. “It’s been a lengthy process, but we’re excited to be at this phase and we’re looking forward to doing what we said we would do to protect our community from sea level rise 2050 and beyond. Hopefully it’ll be smooth sailing from here.”
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125,000 SQFT Central Station Paves Way for Tech Expansion Near Downtown Sunnyvale
The Registry
Sunnyvale is considered a top market for growing technology companies with massive office parks such as CityLine and Peery Park in the northern part of the city. The result has been not only compressed vacancy rates, but a unique tech cluster that continues to attract growing firms. However, the downtown Sunnyvale submarket is starting to make a name for itself, as seen in the current construction of Central Station, a four-story 125,000 square foot tech-oriented office development. According to a leasing brochure recently released by Colliers International, property owners SteelWave and Principal Real Estate Investors are now looking for tenants for the project.
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How Silicon Valley is rising to climate challenge
The Mercury News
Long before Silicon Valley counties declared a climate emergency, we knew that we were facing a climate crisis. For half a century, scientists warned of the looming threat. Yet, the collective legacy of climate action leadership has been far too slow, tepid and cautious. Policy makers have too often tinkered around the edges of the market economy hoping it would somehow respond with miraculous solutions, despite the fact that market forces in the energy sector, a system dependent and premised upon abundant and cheap fossil fuel, was a basic root cause of the problem.
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East Bay News
Amazon gobbles up vast building in Livermore, widening tech titan’s Bay Area holdings
The Mercury News
Amazon, in a quiet yet stunning new expansion of its Bay Area operations, has leased a huge industrial building near Interstate 580 in Livermore. The e-commerce and video streaming behemoth leased a 612,000-square-foot building at 400 Longfellow Court that is owned by an affiliate of veteran developer Orchard Partners, according to multiple sources familiar with the transaction. Orchard managing partner Tyler Higgins declined to comment.
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Ken Rosen: Oakland's housing boom is too much too fast
San Francisco Business Times
Ken Rosen, one of the Bay Area’s most well-known economists, said Oakland’s housing market is oversupplied with new units. The influx of new apartments will benefit renters with more competitive prices and a broader selection of homes, Rosen said as he presented his annual forecast on the region’s economy Monday in San Francisco. But landlords could take financial hits if they have to offer discounts to lure tenants or charge lower rents than they originally planned when they started construction.
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‘Economic engine’: Vallejo’s Mare Island megaproject envisions thousands of new homes
San Francisco Chronicle
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.
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Massive office building for cancer research approved near Oakland airport
The Mercury News
A building that will provide enough space for up to 900 people to research a cure for cancer has been approved for the Harbor Bay Business Park near Oakland International Airport. Life sciences company Exelixis, which develops cancer treatments, moved to Alameda last year after 20 years in San Francisco and currently occupies five buildings at the business park. Constructing the approximately 220,000-square-foot building will allow the company to expand, plus the new building will help foster an overall feeling of a campus for its offices, despite the buildings being on separate parcels.
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Mayfair project site for El Cerrito housing being prepared
East Bay Times
Site preparation has started on the largest and most long-awaited residential project being built under the city’s San Pablo Avenue Specific Plan. The Mayfair project, on a city block adjacent to the El Cerrito Del Norte BART station, may also be the most innovative. The property at 11600 through 11690 San Pablo Ave., known as the Mayfair block for a supermarket that once stood on the site, has been vacant since its acquisition by the El Cerrito Redevelopment Agency in 1987.
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