Bay Area Land News - September 3, 2019
US / California / Bay Area News
State is about to raise the bar for Bay Area housing
San Francisco Business Journal
It appears now that Gov. Gavin Newsom is serious about adding 3.5 million homes in California over the next seven years. Firing a shot across the bows of California’s cities, counties and regions last week, his administration shocked Southern Californians by telling them they will be required to make plans for 1.3 million new homes in their midst over roughly the next decade. That was triple the number that local officials who control the Southern California Association of Governments had said they would support.
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Bidding wars plummet as Bay Area housing market cools
The Mercury News
The number of rabid bidding wars among Bay Area home buyers is sinking, with some of the steepest declines in the San Jose metro area, a new report says. But despite that, the Bay Area remains one of the nation’s most competitive housing markets. Just 13.3 percent of offers in the San Jose metro area last month faced bidding wars, compared to a whopping 80 percent during the same time last year, according to a report from the real estate brokerage Redfin. That was the steepest decline in the country. In the San Francisco metro area, which includes Oakland and Hayward, 35 percent of Redfin offers faced a bidding war in July compared to 72.4 percent a year ago.
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Bay Area exodus: Thousands more fleeing region than arriving from other states
The Mercury News
Even with its lucrative tech jobs and some of the best weather in the country, thousands more people have fled the Bay Area’s high housing costs and jammed roads than have moved into the region from other parts of the United States in recent years. According to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the five-county Bay Area lost a net total of nearly 35,400 people between 2013-17, not counting births and new arrivals from other countries.
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San Francisco News
Embarcadero homeless navigation center takes shape
Curbed San Francisco
Despite an effort to raise money and file a lawsuit to quash it, a homeless navigation center on a 2.3-acre South Beach parcel has started to take shape. A freshly solidified bed of cement holding several structural beams and a massive white tarp can be seen at the parking lot at Seawall Lot 330 near the Bay Bridge and Pier 30. Mayor London Breed tweeted a set of images detailing the new construction, saying, “Exciting to see the progress being made at the new SAFE navigation center, which will soon help 200 people at a time get off the streets and connected with housing and services.”
Elite private school to partner on luxury housing as more towers may be welcomed around Van Ness and Market
San Francisco Chronicle
A new French American International School with a 31-story, 345-apartment residential tower shooting up behind it on parking on near the intersection of Franklin and Market streets. A 610-unit, 520-foot condo high-rise at 30 Van Ness Ave. A 590-foot tower with nearly 1,000 housing units soaring from the site of the former Honda dealership at 10 South Van Ness. These are three of the developments that would be permitted as part of the rezoning of the Hub, an 84-acre area in and around the intersection of Van Ness and Market streets. While the rezoning is a lot smaller and less ambitious than some other recent neighborhood plans in San Francisco it would still lift heights on 18 properties, allowing for 9,710 new housing units. That is 1,640 more than the 8,070 allowed under the current zoning.
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No ‘magic pill,’ but parking lot for SF homeless living in vehicles one step closer to reality
San Francisco Chronicle
The San Francisco Planning Commission unanimously approved a plan Thursday to turn a parking lot near the Balboa Park BART Station into a “triage lot,” where homeless people living out of their vehicles can access showers, bathrooms and social workers. That means the site — located on a city-owned lot called the Upper Yard — is one step closer to being San Francisco’s first facility targeted toward those living out of their vehicles, a population that has risen significantly since 2017.
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Transportation troubles Chase Center ahead of opening
San Francisco Examiner
Directly across the street from Chase Center Arena, the new home of the Golden State Warriors, sits a massive 800-space parking garage owned by the University of California San Francisco. Not a single Warriors game attendee will be allowed to park there. Nor will most of the estimated 18,000 Chase Center Arena attendees of games or events be able to park in the 900-space parking garage at the arena itself.
East Bay News
East Bay tenants face eviction as developer converts units to affordable housing
San Francisco Chronicle
A San Francisco developer is turning apartments in the East Bay and North Bay into affordable housing that the area sorely needs. But as the company acquires the properties and renovates and readies the units, existing tenants whose income levels disqualify them for the new apartments are being pushed out. Reliant Group acquired properties in Hayward, Antioch, Hercules and Napa in March. The properties had a mix of market-rate units, rent-control apartments and affordable dwellings that in some cases were out of compliance. The developer entered into agreements with Antioch, Hercules and Hayward allowing it to move forward with its property conversions.
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South Bay News
Google widens Sunnyvale holdings with big property purchase
The Mercury News
Google has bought a big Sunnyvale parcel from NetApp, a deal that widens the search giant’s already vast holdings in Silicon Valley. The tech titan bought a parcel that’s part of a large city block in northern Sunnyvale, according to Santa Clara County property documents. Mountain View-based Google bought roughly 16 acres that represent approximately half of a 30-acre Sunnyvale parcel owned by NetApp, a cloud services and data management tech firm that’s based in Sunnyvale.
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What San Jose's business, civic leaders think about Google's Diridon framework
Silicon Valley Business Journal
Last week, Google unveiled the initial concept for what it would like develop on 60 acres of land it has assembled in San Jose's Diridon Station area for a future mixed-use campus. That vision includes 6.5 million square feet of office space spread out in mixed-height buildings that are interspersed between retail, arts and cultural spaces and 15 acres of parks, plazas and green spaces. The concept, which is still high-level and does not yet include building renderings or plans for specific parcels, has nonetheless drawn varied reaction from San Jose's business and civic leaders.
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Hunter Storm Receives Final Approval for Office, Residential and Retail Projects in Santa Clara
The Registry
With the Santa Clara City Council’s approval last month, Hunter Storm has received final approval for its office, residential and retail projects.
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After Years of Delay, San Jose’s Roosevelt Neighborhood Sees Stalled 400-Unit Mixed-Use Development Project Move Forward
The Registry
The Roosevelt Park neighborhood is situated just ten minutes from downtown San Jose.
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Peninsula News
202-unit San Carlos Transit Village nearing completion
The Daily Journal
With just a few more residential units to go before its apartments are fully leased, San Carlos’ Trestle Apartments is coming close to offering the 202 apartments and 26,000 square feet in commercial space it was proposed to provide at the city’s Caltrain station during its yearslong planning process. Construction of the project also known as the San Carlos Transit Village has been underway since the eight-building, mixed-use development was approved by the San Carlos City Council in November 2013. Crews are putting the finishing touches on the two commercial buildings offering some 26,000 square feet of retail and office space just north and south of the city’s historic train station building, with the international consulting firm Simon-Kucher & Partners to move employees into one of the office spaces as early as September, explained Jon Moss, executive vice president with the site’s developer Prometheus Real Estate Group.
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Hilton parking lot targeted for redevelopment
The Daily Journal
The long-term parking lot next to the Hilton Hotel in Burlingame is slated to be redeveloped, but not until city officials approve a zoning update for the Bayfront region, according to a company representative. In a presentation before the Burlingame Planning Commission, a senior real estate executive representing the hotel committed to rebuilding the adjacent parking lot at 620 Airport Blvd.
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Foster City aims to stem empty storefronts
The Daily Journal
Concerned with vacant or unkempt storefronts, Foster City officials are exploring policies to discourage both. At a meeting Monday, the City Council discussed a potential ordinance establishing a mandatory registration and inspection program for vacant commercial buildings and storefronts in the city. The prospect of a vacancy tax, similar to what is on the books in Oakland, also came up during the meeting. Vice Mayor Herb Perez said he came up with the idea to do something about vacant storefronts years ago after the owners of the Charter Square shopping center announced plans to redevelop the site.
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Can city's big plans for Ventura be saved?
Palo Alto Online
The once-industrial area is today a mishmash of decades-old homes, brand-new apartment buildings and startup workspaces. Instead of vibrancy, it's characterized by deficits of parkspace, attention from City Hall and joy. Part of the frustration has to do with the neighborhood's basic location and inaccessibility. The always-busy El Camino Real creates a boundary on one side of the neighborhood; Page Mill Road flanks it on another; and the Caltrain tracks hem in the neighborhood along a third side. In the middle, there is a commercial campus anchored by Fry's Electronics and several smaller businesses.
City plans to require most new commercial buildings to be all-electric
The Almanac
Every three years, California updates its building codes. While those codes have become increasingly stringent and focused on environmental sustainability, the state permits cities to adopt their own amendments to them, so long as those policies exceed the state's sustainability standards. The Menlo Park City Council on Aug. 27 decided to adopt several such amendments, called "reach codes," that will make the city one of the state's most pioneering jurisdictions in promoting greener buildings, requiring the vast majority of new nonresidential buildings to be all-electric. The decision is set to be finalized with a formal vote and first reading of the ordinance scheduled for the council's Sept. 10 meeting.
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Battle renews over one of the Bay Area's biggest sites
San Francisco Business Journal
For the second time, foes are facing off about what should land on the Redwood City salt ponds.
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Millbrae wrangles with rising interest for ‘granny flats’
San Francisco Business Journal
The Peninsula city is crafting guidelines for increasingly popular granny flats.
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