Bay Area Land News - October 8, 2019
US / California / Bay Area News
Californians cite homelessness as top concern for first time ever, survey finds
East Bay Times
Californians are increasingly pessimistic about the future of the state and are more worried about housing and homelessness than ever before. And at least according to one major poll, they’re beginning to take it out on Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Democratic state Legislature. In new survey results released today, the Public Policy Institute of California found that more likely voters now disapprove of Newsom’s job performance than approve.
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Saving SF Bay may mean filling parts of it in, agency says
San Francisco Chronicle
The state agency created in 1965 to protect San Francisco Bay voted Thursday to do something that might seem counterintuitive — to prepare for the threat of sea level rise by making it easier to fill in portions of the bay. The unanimous vote by the Bay Conservation and Development Commission is part of a larger effort to create marshes and restore habitat that can serve as a buffer against rising sea levels. In some cases, this would mean filling what now are shallow waters so that native vegetation can take root and establish itself.
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Bay Area $100 billion transportation tax offers little new
The Mercury News
Bay Area business leaders are talking about raising $100 billion in new Bay Area taxes to fix the region’s broken transportation system. They are calling it Faster Bay Area. But what would this enormous outlay of transportation money actually accomplish? “We think the time is ripe to work for a world class, integrated transit system that is faster, more reliable, more affordable and more equitable,” said Jason Baker, a vice president for transportation at the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.
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California wineries, fearing recession, cut grape output. Farmers are worried
San Francisco Chronicle
Paul Johnson farms 450 acres of wine grapes in Monterey County for his family’s Johnson Vineyard Co. Normally, a range of local wineries, under multiyear contracts, buy his Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes. But after last year’s harvest, Johnson began to worry when no winery clients renewed their contracts. Now, the 2019 harvest season is well under way, and Johnson is facing a hard reality: As much as two-thirds of his crop may go unsold.
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San Francisco News
Market Street makeover — safe bike lanes and no cars — finally at hand
San Francisco Chronicle
So many attempts to revive Mid-Market Street have fizzled out over the years, and the area’s ills are so ingrained and bleak, that it’s easy to dismiss the idea a redesign can help spark its revival. But major changes are drawing near — including a ban on private automobiles once and for all — and they just may bring this troubled stretch of a troubled city what it so dearly needs: a fresh start.
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A decade in the making, car-free Market Street faces final approval
San Francisco Examiner
Market Street is on the cusp of becoming car-free. Three major milestones in October will result in the final city approval needed to break ground on the Better Market Street project, which will transform Market Street with wider sidewalks, pedestrian plazas, revitalize transit stops, and — perhaps most controversially — ban private vehicles from driving Market Street downtown. Cars, banished, will make way for more free-flowing Muni service to every neighborhood in San Francisco.
Feinstein, Harris ask for probe of EPA notice against SF
San Francisco Chronicle
California’s senators have asked the Environmental Protection Agency’s watchdog to investigate whether the agency abused its enforcement powers when it accused San Francisco of improperly dumping waste into the ocean. In a letter sent Thursday, first reported by The Chronicle, Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris asked the EPA’s inspector general to look into whether the White House was involved in the agency’s decision to issue a notice of violation accusing San Francisco of sending waste into the ocean and bay.
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Why District Five supervisor race matters for Mayor Breed — and SF
San Francisco Chronicle
It’s an off election year in San Francisco, and the campaign for the sole open seat on the Board of Supervisors has yet to capture much attention beyond City Hall insiders. But there’s a lot at stake. The outcome of the Nov. 5 election will not only influence the political makeup of the board, it will also determine whether Mayor London Breed will have another ally — or another adversary — in City Hall.
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SF Supervisor Fewer ‘90%’ sure she’s running for re-election in 2020
San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Supervisor Sandra Lee Fewer told The Chronicle that she is 90% sure she’ll run for re-election in 2020. Her comments allay months of speculation within City Hall about whether the District One supervisor — who represents the Richmond District and other surrounding neighborhoods — would seek another four-year term on the Board of Supervisors. Fewer said she is having the “final discussions” with her family about what another term would mean for their bucket lists.
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SF housing breaking ground on troubled Mid-Market block that housed strip club
San Francisco Chronicle
One of Mid-Market’s most glaring cavities is about to be filled. Three years after winning approvals to develop 193 rental apartments at 1028 Market St., developers Olympic Residential Group and Tidewater Capital will break ground this week. It’s a long-awaited housing complex that Mid-Market boosters hope will improve a block that has struggled with drug dealing and crime, even as much of the neighborhood has seen a big influx of investment.
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Powerful forces wanted freeways all over SF. Here’s how they were stopped
San Francisco Chronicle
In the 1950s, San Francisco was slated to be crisscrossed by a network of freeways. They would have moved traffic in and out of the city more efficiently, but they would also have obliterated hundreds of homes and businesses and altered the character of many neighborhoods. The previous Portals described how a coalition of politicians, businesspeople, newspapers and — most crucially — ordinary people created what is now known as the Freeway Revolt. Residents of two neighborhoods that stood to be torn apart by the freeways, Glen Park and the Sunset, led the resistance.
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Quiet payouts remove opposition to India Basin development
Curbed
In October 2018, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors batted down an appeal of a plan to create more than 1,500 new homes in India Basin, a small neighborhood south of Islais Creek. In response, Mikhail Brodsky, owner of the nearby Russian bathhouse Archimedes Banya, also sued in an effort to block developer Build Inc.’s plans. He argued that construction would pose an environmental threat to his spa patrons. Earlier this year, Brodsky and the developer quietly settled the matter out of court, keeping the terms of the agreement private.
South Bay News
Affordable home builder buys southwest San Jose site that’s home to guitar retailer
East Bay Times
Music lovers can rest easy: A guitar retailer will stay put despite the purchase of its southwest San Jose property by a builder of affordable homes. Affirmed Housing, a builder of affordable homes, bought the choice site in southwest San Jose, but a sale and leaseback arrangement will ensure the store will remain open at the site for the foreseeable future. Still, the purchase of the site by the residential builder could create tension between the goal of expanding affordable housing in the pricey Bay Area and San Jose’s fierce thirst for retail dollars to bolster the city’s finances.
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Pair of mixed-use projects near completion in downtown San Jose
Silicon Valley Business Journal
A pair of mixed-use projects under construction in downtown San Jose that would bring more than 300 residential units to the area are nearing completion, while another could join them before year's end. Construction of a seven-story residential building at 598 S. 1st St. called SparQ is expected to be completed by year's end, but preleasing of units has already begun, according to a website marketing the building for lease.
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Loma Prieta: The Earthquake That Built Santa Cruz
Silicon Valley Business Journal
The earthquake killed 63 people in the Bay Area, including three in downtown Santa Cruz, and injured thousands. Situated about nine miles from the quake’s epicenter, Santa Cruz bore much of the damage. But a group of private citizens and public officials banded together to rebuild and reimagine downtown, shaping the city center into what it is today. Given that more earthquakes on the scale of the one in 1989 are not a matter of “if,” but “when,” Santa Cruz may offer an essential roadmap for how a community can recover.
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Google scoops up Gilroy farmland — for a tree nursery
The Mercury News
Tech titan Google will have an opportunity to try out its green thumb following the company’s latest property purchase: Gilroy farmland. The search giant has bought 40 acres of land on the eastern side of Gilroy, but Google says its interest in the property is decidedly oriented toward horticulture rather than a new office park. A tree nursery is what Google has in mind for the property it bought southeast of the interchange of U.S. Highway 101 and State Route 152, a Google spokesperson said.
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Peninsula News
Caltrain moving forward with plan for BART-like service that could ease Peninsula traffic
The Mercury News
Caltrain will move forward with a plan to transform the commuter railroad over the next two decades by providing far more frequent service. The vision Caltrain leaders have laid out, which the agency’s board voted to adopt at a meeting Thursday, calls for offering as many as eight trains per hour in each direction between San Jose and San Francisco. Express “Baby Bullet” trains would run every 15 minutes, and the railroad would have more frequent service farther south to Gilroy.
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Another look for San Mateo General Plan
The Daily Journal
In an effort to clarify the original intent of pegging areas for further study as part of San Mateo’s General Plan update, city officials will review a proposal to remove one- and two-family residential properties from the study areas at a study session Monday. Initiated in 2017, the city’s 2040 General Plan update is aimed at setting a vision for the city and the policies guiding its growth in the next 20 years, and is expected to include discussions on housing, land use policy, circulation, open space, noise, safety and conservation. The effort to peg sections of the city for further study resulted in 11 proposed study areas approved at the City Council’s Aug. 19 meeting, after several community meetings and public hearings were held over the summer with residents to shape them.
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‘Place life over wealth’: Mountain View tenants rise up to save vanishing rent-controlled units
The Mercury News
After learning about a proposal to raze their 29 rent-controlled apartments to make room for a condominium building with 118 for-sale units, the Gamel Way tenants hired an attorney in a desperate bid to save their homes or find a way to continue living in the city even if their homes are demolished. “I’m a fighter,” said Ga?l Sisich, a Bay Area native who has been living in his studio apartment on Gamel Way for the past eight years, as he and others huddled in a circle, under dim lights, brainstorming about their next move.
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Mountain View leaders pressure Google for land over dollars in combating homelessness
San Francisco Business Journal
Google Inc. is putting millions of dollars toward new housing and combating homelessness in its hometown of Mountain View, but is rebuffing pressure from city officials to donate an empty parcel of land and former gym facility as shelter for homeless residents, the Mountain View Voice reports. The Alphabet Inc.-owned search giant has several large developments in progress around its Mountain View headquarters, totaling millions of square feet of new office space.
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Menlo Park to Facebook: Prioritize housing over offices in massive village development
The Mercury News
With the largest development in Menlo Park history looming, city officials are pushing Facebook to make housing a priority as the social media giant embarks on plans to build a massive village complete with office space, housing, retail, hotel rooms and a town square. At a Menlo Park Planning Commission meeting Tuesday night, commissioners and residents offered a wide range of input on Facebook’s proposed project plans for the redevelopment — dubbed Willow Village — and the items to consider in the project’s environmental impact report.
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Zuckerberg: Traffic, housing woes hindering Facebook’s growth in Bay Area
San Francisco Chronicle
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the social media company plans to expand offices more outside of the Bay Area than within it because of local infrastructure challenges like traffic and housing costs. “At this point, we’re growing primarily outside of the Bay Area. Obviously, we’re still going to be growing a bit here, but the infrastructure here is really, really tapped. You guys all see this,” Zuckerberg said Thursday at an internal company question-and-answer session that was broadcast online. “The housing prices are way up. The traffic is bad.”
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Facebook announces plan to fund new Belle Haven Library and community center
The Almanac
Facebook officials introduced plans to fully fund a "state-of-the-art" community center in Menlo Park's Belle Haven neighborhood during a community meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 2. During the Belle Haven Neighborhood Association meeting, officials from the Menlo Park-based tech company introduced a plan to fund the construction of a multi-story community center that would house the library, senior center and youth center, as well as a gym and multipurpose room, said John Tenanes, Facebook's vice president of global facilities and real estate.
Enrollment dip continues in local schools
The Almanac
Enrollment has dipped again this year in local elementary school districts, which is mostly attributable to families moving away from the area because they can't afford to live here, district officials say. The Woodside Elementary School District saw an enrollment decrease of about 6.8% — from 411 students this time last year to 376 students as of Sept. 19. "I think it's just really difficult to live here (on the Peninsula) right now," said Woodside Superintendent Steve Frank. "Quite a few families told me flat-out they can't afford to live here anymore, so they're moving."
New transportation chief looks to raise resident engagement
Palo Alto Online
For years, Palo Alto's elected leaders have talked about the need to expand the city's shuttle fleet, launch a bike- and scooter-share program and reform downtown's parking system, only to see their ambitious plans fizzle. Philip Kamhi, the city's newly hired chief transportation official, is hoping to change that.
New life for San Bruno hotel plans
The Daily Journal
Following a tumultuous stretch featuring failed development deals and legal hurdles, San Bruno officials are resurrecting a proposal to build a new hotel on a key piece of city property. The San Bruno City Council stands to select a development company interested in constructing a hotel on 1 1/2 acres of city land near the intersection of Interstate 380 and El Camino Real.
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East Bay News
East Bay tenants say they have to pay higher rent in ‘affordable’ apartment complex or leave
The Mercury News
Surrounded by paper piles and colorful empty bins stacked against her bedroom wall, retired preschool teacher Thelma Fields wonders when she will have to pack things up so her apartment complex can be converted to affordable housing. The renovation work was promised months earlier, but the 73-year-old former Head Start teacher is just relieved the new owner of Villa Medanos finally approved her application to continue living there, even though it will be less affordable since her rent was hiked significantly.
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Judge stops county’s sale of Coliseum share to A’s, for now
The Mercury News
A judge on Tuesday temporarily barred Alameda County from selling its ownership share of the Coliseum Complex to the Oakland A’s, in response to a city of Oakland lawsuit alleging the sale would be illegal. Alameda Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch issued a temporary restraining order against the sale and set a hearing Nov. 14 for the city to argue why the county should not be allowed to sell its share to the A’s as negotiated over the past six months. At that hearing, Roesch can either keep the restraining order in place or scrap it.
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