THE BAY AREA | Projects from San Francisco's Surrounding 8 Counties

[BTinSF]

Friday, February 13, 2009
Bay Area colleges halt major construction
Economic winter freezes state funding for projects
San Francisco Business Times - by Blanca Torres San Francisco Business Times

The State of California has frozen funding for major construction projects at Bay Area state-funded colleges after its bond revenue took a hit.

The standstill means millions in additional costs and hundreds of jobs lost associated with more than 130 projects on the 23 California State University campuses, 150 projects on California’s community college campuses and more than 70 projects on UC campuses.

San Francisco State University halted a $116 million renovation of its main student library and California State University-East Bay stalled work on a $44 million administration and student services building.

Other projects on hold include $80 million for new buildings at City College of San Francisco, $26 million in renovations on buildings at UC Berkeley, and $35 million for facilities and technology for outreach programs for underserved patients at UCSF.

Last December, the state decided to hold back funding about 2,000 projects ranging from schools and college campuses to road and park improvements.

The medical school plans to expand its class size by 10 percent and focus on training students with the most modern technology such as conducting doctor visits through video conferencing.

“Anytime you have a project of a maginitude on a campus like UCSF, the timeline has to be carefully managed,” said Doug Levy, an aide for USCF’s dean. “Our timeline is now thrown off.”

The new CSU-East Bay building was about two-thirds done when the state ordered work to stop. The project needed about $16 million to finish.

“It was enough that we could not afford to fund the rest,” said Shawn Bibb, vice president of administration and finance at CSU-East Bay. “I don’t have that kind of money lying around.”

CSU-East Bay had to pay the project’s contractor, Benicia-based Lathrop Construction, $3.5 million for work completed in November and December out of its own budget. Restarting the construction could add $1.5 million in costs.

It is unclear how long it will take to restart projects, CSU’s Bibb said. The state must first pass a budget, improve its bond rating, raise funds and give schools the green light — a process that could take several months.

SF State’s library was supposed to be complete by 2011. The project’s contractor, Barnhart Inc., had about 200 workers on the site before they had to halt work, said Leroy Morishita, vice president for administration and finance and chief financial officer at SF State.

“It’s only going to cost us more money,” he said.


Email Blanca Torres at btorres@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4960

Source: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/...ml?t=printable

[BTinSF]

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
FEBRUARY 18, 2009
The Light of Christ Abounds in Oakland's New Cathedral
By DAVID LITTLEJOHN

Oakland, Calif.

California is home to the three most imaginative and successful modern Roman Catholic cathedrals in the country. St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco (1971), designed by the Italian engineer/architect Pier Luigi Nervi, and José Rafael Moneo's Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, which opened in Los Angeles six years ago, have now been joined by Oakland's ingeniously designed and handsomely crafted Cathedral of Christ the Light.

The diocese of Oakland, which now includes more than half a million Catholics, was split off in 1962 from the archdiocese of San Francisco. When the 1893 neo-Gothic brick church the diocese was using as its episcopal seat was damaged by an earthquake in 1989, Bishop John Cummins decided to tear it down and replace it. In 2000, a design competition was held for a new cathedral complex to be built on the shore of Lake Merritt, a 155-acre estuary that serves as the breathing space for what is probably the most ethnically diverse city in the nation.

When the first architect chosen (Santiago Calatrava) withdrew from the project, the job was given to Craig Hartman, the current design star of the San Francisco office of Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM/SF). His round, luminous, multilayered new home for 1,300 congregants, the center of an elevated 2½-acre campus, opened to the public last fall, and has been a prime destination for worshipers and tourists ever since.

The cathedral is set atop a gray concrete podium (containing offices, parking, a conference center and a mausoleum) 17 feet above the city streets. Behind it rise pale, standard-issue office buildings. The plaza above the podium is aligned with and merged into the city grid, while the cathedral is angled to match the major axis of the lake and to track the course of the sun.

What appears to be a translucent, truncated cone 135 feet high, like a giant glass lampshade set on a curving concrete base, rises from the plaza. It is made of more than a thousand semiopaque windows set into an elegant steel grid. The upper ends of the vertical steel dividers continue into a crown of aspiring spikes that surround the flat roof.

From the plaza, it becomes clear that the outside walls of the cathedral are two separate, inward-bending segments of a hollowed cone, a pair of tilted arcs that never meet. Where these glass and steel walls stop, they are joined by two 90-foot-tall end walls -- each a layer of triangular aluminum panels inside a layer of glass -- shaped like folded Gothic arches. The southern wall, called the Alpha Window, serves as the entrance to the cathedral. From here, sunlight filters into the nave through slits between slices of silvery metal.

The Omega Window, at the opposite end of the church, contains a computerized enlargement of the benign stone carving of Christ in Majesty (c. 1040) from the Royal Portal of the Cathedral of Chartres. Digital wizards at SOM/SF figured out how to convert this 58-foot-high image into 94,000 punctured holes in the aluminum panels, whose varying diameters admit different degrees of light. The image was chosen by Bishop Allen Vigneron, who succeeded Bishop Cummins in 2003 and has just been named Archbishop of Detroit. In his farewell sermon, he declared, "The face of Christ, the light of Christ, the beauty of Christ are present wherever we go" -- which is certainly true inside the cathedral, thanks to this brilliant 21st-century interpretation of an 11th-century act of faith.

Once inside, facing this benevolent, pixellated image, you are in a totally different world, like the inside of a giant basket or barrel, where curving latticed walls admit constantly changing patterns of light. These interior walls are formed by 26 ribs 110 feet high, each pair filled in with 32 tilting, horizontal slats, like fixed Venetian blinds. All of these pieces are made of curved, laminated and polished beams formed from layers of light-colored, glowing Douglas fir. The interior effect changes from pure wood to pure light as the eye ascends.

Warm, welcoming and domestic, the long curving ribs are more like embracing arms than the stone verticals of the High Gothic and its concrete descendants. The filtered, constantly shifting sunlight is more natural than the jewel-like illumination of stained glass. The curving interior ribs are held in place by a steel tension ring at the top and buttressed by straight wooden beams and steel rods attached to the conical exterior walls. All of these come together around an almond-shaped skylight at the peak, through which daylight is directed toward the freestanding marble altar and the evanescent figure behind it.

I sat through three Sunday Masses, in English, Tagalog and Spanish, in part to share the experience of the friendly congregation, in part to sense the shifting play of light. Rows of luminous lozenges, created by the intersection of light from the vertically etched glass and the horizontal slats of wood, keep changing shape as they move across the walls and pews and the looming image of Christ.

During services held after sundown, electric lights atop the concrete base wall shine horizontally across the nave. Other lights from above shine down on the altar and the Omega Window. The effect from outside then becomes that of a lantern or beacon glowing from the north end of Lake Merritt. A ghostly Christ in Majesty beams over and blesses the city instead of the congregation.

Bishop Vigneron says that he hopes the Cathedral of Christ the Light "will bring a new infusion of ideas into church architecture." It already has, thanks to Craig Hartman and his talented, dedicated team at SOM/SF (notably chief engineer Mark Sarkisian), and to the amiable and productive meeting of the minds between T-square and cross.

Mr. Littlejohn writes for the Journal about West Coast cultural events.

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1234...rnal#printMode

Image gallery at http://www.som.com/content.cfm/cathe...rist_the_light

[BTinSF]

Friday, February 20, 2009
Five developers vie for Millbrae BART project
San Francisco Business Times - by J.K. Dineen San Francisco Business Times



Five development teams are in the running to build 240,000 square feet of office space on a surface parking lot next to the Millbrae BART station, a project that generated strong interest despite the sour economy.

The group of developers taking aim at the site includes TMG Partners, the Bay Area’s biggest developer. Other developers who submitted proposals by the Feb. 14 deadline are Los Angeles-based Barker Pacific Group, which built 100 First St. in San Francisco and Hamilton Landing in Marin; Justin Development LLC; Republic Urban Properties in a joint venture with Barry Swenson Builder; and Orange County-based Richman Group of California.

The project calls for office space on two parcels just east of the Millbrae station. One of the parcels is a 2.4-acre surface parking slated for a 180,000-square-foot building. The second is a 5.2-acre site that would allow only a smaller 65,000-square-feet building because it is within the San Francisco International Airport flight path and encumbered by overhead utility lines.

The two sites are the next phase in the redevelopment of a mixed-use neighborhood surrounding the Millbrae BART, a plan that includes 800 housing units, 1 million square feet of office space and 100,000 square feet of retail. Thus far, most of the development has been on the west side of the train tracks, where 370 units of housing has been developed. East of the railroad tracks is geared toward office development, because 60 percent of plane traffic in and out of SFO travels over the site.

“We didn’t zone it for residential,” said Ralph Petty, Millbrae’s director of community development. “You have too many planes, trains and automobiles over there.”

TMG Partners Managing Director David Cropper said “absolutely nothing pencils” in the current economic climate, but that the site has the advantage of being on two different commuter lines as well as next to the airport and Highway 101.

“Not only do you have BART, but you have Caltrain — that is really attractive to me,” he said. “You could as easily come from the East Bay as you could come from San Jose.”

As the recession drags on, TMG is looking to entitle property near public transit so the firm will have some shovel-ready projects when the economy recovers, Cropper said.

“We believe that all types of real estate close to transit are going to be more valuable in the future,” he said.

Michael Barker, principal of Barker Pacific, said “we are looking at the long-term view here.”

“Millbrae is not an address that is highly recognized in the corporate world, but given proximity to the airport we think the site deserves some serious attention.”

Petty said the credit crisis means any developer for the site will need a tenant as well as “patient money.”

Email J.K. Dineen at jkdineen@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4971

Source: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/...23/story9.html

[BTinSF]

Friday, February 27, 2009
Alta Bates unveils plan for 11-story Oakland hospital
San Francisco Business Times - by Chris Rauber and Blanca Torres San Francisco Business Times

Alta Bates Summit Medical Center’s plans for a 309-bed, 11-story acute-care tower at its Oakland campus are finally beginning to take shape.

The multi-campus hospital, with major sites in Berkeley and Oakland, filed a seismic upgrade and master plan with the Oakland City Planning Commission for environmental review last month. It calls for a 230,000-square-foot tower along with a 1,090-space, seven-story parking structure as the key elements of Phase 1 of its seismic upgrade and modernization project at its Summit campus.

Officials said the patient tower and parking structure will cost $350 million — a relative bargain because existing operating rooms, cardiac catheterization labs, imaging center and other high-tech units don’t need to be replaced. When such costs are included, hospital construction costs in California can top $2 million per bed.

Vic Meinke, the hospital’s vice president of planning and development, said Alta Bates Summit will also relocate its emergency room to the ground floor of the existing Merritt Pavilion’s south wing, which is considered earthquake-safe.

Work on the new tower and parking structure is slated for completion by January 2013, assuming Alta Bates Summit is able to gain required city and state regulatory approvals. To make room for the new structures, the existing six-story, 70,000-square-foot Samuel Merritt College building and several other buildings will be demolished.

The new tower will have fewer beds than the existing 345-bed hospital, but will include more private rooms for patients, and more room for modern equipment.

Longer-term projects include construction of two new medical office buildings, classrooms, and closure of a portion of Summit Street to create a new central campus plaza. The current 1.4 million-square-foot Summit campus resulted from the merger of several predecessor hospitals, and is a warren of buildings that Alta Bates Summit hopes to reconfigure into a more coherent whole.

A Feb. 18 city of Oakland staff report on Alta Bates Summit’s application notes that preparation of an environmental impact report is under way, and a draft EIR should be ready for public review “over the next several months.”

Scott Gregory, a city planner, said Alta Bates is in the early stages of securing its entitlements for the new buildings. Final approvals will probably take a year.

“(Alta Bates) and the city staff have a lot of work to do together,” he said.

The next steps in the EIR includes public input, which will likely happen this summer. Gregory said construction could start next spring, if the process moves along smoothly. That would give Alta Bates plenty of time to meet the state’s 2013 seismic compliance deadline.

Meinke agreed that the review process will likely take about a year, giving the hospital three years for construction.

Last September, the boards of parent company Sutter Health and Alta Bates Summit voted to spend up to $72 million to pay for architectural designs, navigating the regulatory review process and some elements of construction, officials said at the time. The hospital is led by President and CEO Warren Kirk; Shahrokh Sayadi is the rebuild’s project director.

Alta Bates Summit has spent years debating various plans to rebuild and expand its “Pill Hill” Summit facility. As recently as last spring, blueprints called for a $300 million inpatient tower of unspecified size. Earlier, officials considered a 350-bed tower, somewhat larger than the latest incarnation, or a full-on replacement of the entire facility.


Email Chris Rauber at crauber@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4946
Email Blanca Torres at btorres@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4960

Source: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/...02/story9.html

[BTinSF]

Friday, February 27, 2009
West Oakland's Mandela Transit Village project extended
San Francisco Business Times - by Blanca Torres San Francisco Business Times



The City of Oakland reinstated approvals for a transit-oriented development in West Oakland just blocks from one of the East Bay’s busiest BART stations.

The project, the Mandela Transit Village, will sit at 1357 Fifth St. It had been entitled from 2003 to 2007 by the Alliance for West Oakland Development, a community development group, which went back to the Planning Commission last November to ask for a second two-year approval.

The Mandela Transit Village is slated to contain up to 120 residential units in a six-story building with 38,500 square feet of commercial space and a 775-space parking garage. Oakland’s Planning Commission approved a height of 90 feet, above its 55-foot limit for the area.

The project stayed on paper the first time because the developer could not secure financing, said Thomas Casey, a consultant for the Alliance.

This time around, the Alliance plans to line up investors as well as apply for state dollars from Proposition 1C, a pool of $2.85 billion set aside for transit-oriented development, to start work on the parking garage and some of the commercial space. It is unclear if and when the residential component will be built.

“We may be making some alterations to the plan, if we’re unable to support the level of residential we had hoped to build,” Casey said.

The triangle-shaped site sits kitty-corner from the West Oakland BART station, where other developments and plans for other projects have sprung up in recent years.

In 2004, Bridge Housing built the Mandela Gateway, a 168-unit apartment and retail space development, bringing new housing stock to the neighborhood.

The Alliance was selected to develop BART-owned land surrounding the West Oakland station and had proposed a multi-family residential, office and retail mixed-used development, but that plan has since been scrapped. The developer is still negotiating with BART, which made a separate agreement with Aegis East Oakland Garage to build an 800-stall parking garage. Jeffrey Ordway, manager of property development for BART, said no activity has occurred lately with either agreement.

Kathy Kuhner, vice chair of the Oakland Builders Alliance and president of West Oakland-based Dogtown Development, said residents and business owners in the neighborhood want more development to bring new residents and new amenities, such as a grocery store. Nonetheless, while many proposals exist, it seems unlikely anything will be built anytime soon.

“It’s a fabulous area to redevelop, but … there’s no capital,” Kuhner said. “I can’t imagine anyone deciding to build anything right now, but I would love to be wrong.”

Regarding the entitlement process, the Oakland’s Planning Commission doesn’t consider a project’s finances, said Michael Colbruno, chairman of the commission.

“The developers said they feel confident they can build the project,” Colbruno said. “It’s good news. I’m encouraged by the number of people who want to move forward with projects in Oakland. … This Planning Commission is very excited about anything that’s near transit.”

Email Blanca Torres at btorres@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4960

Source: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/...2/story13.html

[San Frangelino]

Here is some interesting from the http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjo...176000^1793489

Big plans at Moffett Field
Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal

MOUNTAIN VIEW — An education and research center at Moffett Field proposed by a collaboration of major universities and NASA could be one of Silicon Valley’s major work-force generators of the future.

The University of California, Santa Cruz and the Foothill-De Anza Community College District are the driving forces behind the $1 billion project. The schools have formed a nonprofit organization called University Associates — Silicon Valley LLC and have signed a 99-year land lease with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at an undisclosed price. It’s envisioned as a “sustainable” project that will be powered largely by solar and wind technology, dramatically reduce water use and minimize driving among students, workers and residents.

The 75-acre, multiple-use project will include housing, academic classrooms and laboratories, and light-industrial space for cleantech firms. The campus is planned for a portion of the NASA Research Park on the former Moffett Field Naval Air Station near Mountain View. It’s situated just north of U.S. Highway 101, adjacent to the park’s Shenandoah Plaza historic district and soon-to-be-restored Hangar One, and it could be ready for occupancy as early as 2014.

It will be an “integrated community featuring state-of-the-art research and teaching laboratories, shared classrooms, housing, accommodations for industrial partners, and modern infrastructure,” according to UC Santa Cruz officials.

Santa Clara University and Carnegie Mellon University of Pittsburgh are expected to join the partnership in the near future. All four of the current and anticipated University Associates participants now have small cooperative educational programs at NASA Ames. In addition, UC Santa Cruz Chancellor George Blumenthal indicated a unnamed California State University campus is in negotiation to join the consortium.

Although the universities will fund the initial planning and design of the project, construction will be paid for with private financing through a yet-to-be-chosen “master developer” that will seek capital investment, according to University Associates. UC Santa Cruz officials said the center site, now a combination of open land and old buildings, will need about $100 million of infrastructure improvements.

“There is really nothing that comes close to this ‘meta-university’ anywhere,” said Steven Zornetzer, associate center director of NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field. “It will be a very sophisticated center of learning, from community college to post-doctoral education. It will serve as a pipeline for future employees not only for NASA, but for all of Silicon Valley.”

Zornetzer said the average age of the 3,000 employees and contract workers who presently work at NASA Ames Research Center, which conducts aeronautical, life science, space science and technology research, is 50.

“We have a lot of employees moving closer to retirement age, so having a pipeline to young talent is very important for NASA,” he said.

UC will make its mark

Blumenthal said the center will cement his school’s status as the “UC of Silicon Valley.”

“We already have a number of programs there (at NASA Ames Research Park), but this project associates us with very important partners, including our sister universities, which allows us to do things we wouldn’t be able to do otherwise,” Blumenthal said.

Blumenthal said he envisions doctoral and master’s degree programs being offered by UC Santa Cruz at the future campus, as well as development of a new school of management.

Martha Kanter, chancellor of the Foothill-De Anza district, said the project gives the educational institutions an opportunity to work together in new ways.

Blumenthal said in the current climate of recession and chronic state budget cuts, universities must rely on private funding to pay for such major development projects.

James Morris, dean of Carnegie Mellon’s Silicon Valley Campus at NASA Ames, said this is an opportunity to double the school’s current student capacity from 150 to 300.

“We are already attracting people from throughout the world who have heard of Carnegie Mellon and Silicon Valley, but a greatly expanded program will be that much more compelling,” he said.

Morris said his university’s existing local campus appeals to prospective students who realize they can combine a Carnegie Mellon education and a Silicon Valley setting.

“People are attracted to the better weather and close proximity to the high tech industry,” he said.

Santa Clara University is also involved with the four-school project, but administrators declined comment, saying it is “too early in the process.”

The proposed project must now go through the design process and be judged in compliance with provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act. Because the project is located on federal land, ultimate approval rests with NASA officials. Ellis Berns, Mountain View community development director, said his city’s officials have reviewed the early stages of the project but will have no official role in its planning process.

“It sounds like a terrific use for the property, and it’s wonderful to see the universities collaborating on this,” Berns said.

UC Santa Cruz’s Blumenthal would agree.

“Our vision is to seed innovation, entrepreneurship and sustainability through the creative reuse of an important public asset for regional benefit,” he said. “We aim to establish world-class programs and facilities dedicated to preparing the work force of the future and to conducting research at the forefront of science and technology.”

At-a-glance

NASA Research Park education and research center
What is it: Multi-use development with academic, office and residential components
Major players: NASA and University Associates — Silicon Valley LLC (UC Santa Cruz, Foothill-De Anza Community College District)
Projected cost: More than $1 billion
Size: 75 acres
Planned construction start: 2012
Planned initial occupancy: 2014

[San Frangelino]

I wonder if there are any height limits, due to air traffic or what not, imposed on that section of silicon valley. Does anyone know?

[peanut gallery]

I don't know anything official, but if this is positioned where it sounds like to me, it would be off to the side of the runways opposite the big hanger. So, I don't think being in a flight path would be a problem.

[leftopolis]

^
From the posted pic, it looks like there are several 10-15+ story buildings. At least it's within walking distance of light rail...that area will be fairly dense ultimately. Aside from the already exiting Yahoo HQ and others, there are the multiple 8 story Moffet Towers coming online.

Some more info:

Additional pics of future plans from NASA

Another pic and more info from the MV Voice

Rough conceptual plans include a futuristic research park with wind turbines, solar panels, high-rise buildings with green roofs and natural ventilation, shared plug-in hybrids and a light rail extension that loops around the 75-acre site, which is bordered by the Moffett historic district, Wescoat military housing, Highway 101 and the airfield.

The finished research park will total three million square feet of space, divided among several universities, private companies, retailers and 1,800 homes, said Foothill-De Anza trustee Bruce Swenson. The plan looks like a self-contained city, complete with a small Santana Row-style mixed use housing and retail development.

[San Frangelino]

Proposal Would Raise West Berkeley Skyline
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/i...rkeley-Skyline

Proposal Would Raise West Berkeley Skyline
By Richard Brenneman
Wednesday April 01, 2009

City planning staff have dropped a bombshell on anxious West Berkeley activists: a proposal that would double the height of new buildings and potentially open the area to office complexes.

The staff proposal, if enacted without changes, could mean a West Berkeley skyline studded with 90-foot-tall office towers—a host of buildings as tall as the area’s currently dominant high-rise, the Fantasy Records Building.

Even some of the more developer-friendly commissioners had questions after Assistant Planner Claudine Asbagh presented the concepts, which are the latest round of a City Council-mandated effort to ease development rules in the only part of the city zoned for light industry and manufacturing.

The area in question lies roughly between the city’s northern and southern boundaries and between the eastern side of San Pablo Avenue and Interstate 80. Development rules for the area were spelled out in the West Berkeley Plan, which was adopted by the city 16 years ago.

The council’s directive to ease zoning alarmed some of the area’s small manufacturers, who range from makers of scientific glassware to an assortment of green businesses, including the owners of Inkworks and Urban Ore.

Staff proposals target not only the handful of large sites specified in the 1993 plan, but would provide a new development procedure for all sites that are either three acres or more or comprise a full city block. The revised master use permit (MUP) process would allow developers to develop sites incrementally and alter use configurations as tenants change and expand.

UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have their sights set on West Berkeley as the home of startup labs and businesses generated by the inventions of their scientists, a focus backed by Mayor Tom Bates, who is promoting the area as part of the “Green Corridor” first proposed by UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau in a meeting of mayors at his official residence.

One powerful voice of support for more flexible zoning rules is Wareham Properties, the area’s largest developer and dominant landlord of high-tech facilities and landlord to UCB facilities in both Berkeley and Emeryville. Wareham is currently the owner of the Fantasy building.

Chris Barlow, a Wareham principal, has been a regular at Planning Commission meetings on West Berkeley, and was present again at the latest session, Wednesday, March 25, where staff put forth their latest and most controversial set of proposals.

Barlow is a strong advocate of the revised MUP, while members of West Berkeley Artisans and Industrial Companies (WEBAIC) say they have strong reservations.

WEBAIC members turned out in force Wednesday, March 25, to register their concerns at the latest staff proposal, one which could radically alter the shape, skyline and economics of the last area of the city to welcome their businesses and members of the city’s endangered arts community.

Bernard Marszalek of Inkworks, a West Berkeley printer that uses recycled paper and environmentally friendly inks, said the staff proposal to double the floor of lot area ratios for new construction would mean “millions of square feet” of additional development.

Another concern, he said was the notion of possible waivers of parking requirements for new construction.

“Traffic is a real issue, and so are greenhouse gasses,” Marszalek said. “Doubling the density of development the way they want is just ridiculous.”

Barlow said he also wants the city to reject any thought of drafting a regional environmental impact report (EIR) that would evaluate the cumulative impacts of new development on streets the city has already acknowledged could hit gridlock within the next decade.

But developers weren’t united in opposition to the regional review of traffic and air quality impacts of development. Darrel de Tienne, who spoke as a representative of Douglas Herst, owner of one of the area’s largest sites, said he favored the broader, “programmatic” EIR.

Mark Gorrell, of the Ecology Center, said “it was fascinating to hear how staff wants to protect West Berkeley by having people come in, cut it up and change it.”

The staff proposal would also allow developers to turn MUP properties into office parks, if the city’s Zoning Adjustments Board agreed—opening the area to a use specifically banned in the existing MUP.

“This would mean we’re rewriting the whole plan,” said commissioner Patti Dacey.

George Beier, who was sitting in for absent commissioner Harry Pollack, said he needed to see more information on possible sites as well as estimates of the impact of parking if waivers were granted. “I would like to see who the real winners and losers are in all this,” he said.

Commissioner Victoria Eisen asked if offices would be allowed only as part of manufacturing or industrial uses. “I would like that clarified,” she said.

“It’s discretionary,” Asbagh said. “It goes before ZAB and it’s appealable, but, yes, if ZAB approves 100 percent offices on the site, it’s a possibility.”

Another concern for some WEBAIC members came from a Barlow plea to the city to include “a workable but practical definition of artisan and artist” to apply to any protections given for artisan space in the regulations.

“We strongly believe this category should reflect those who earn their living from art and then any privileges should be tied to a requirement to regularly produce a portfolio of work that would be peer-reviewed.”

That notion drew eye rolls from one member of the audience and a scowl from Rick Auerbach, who is WEBAIC’s staff member.

Staff will report back to the commission with more details when the proposal comes before the commission in May, following an additional meeting with West Berkeley stakeholders.

[BTinSF]

90 ft!!

[peanut gallery]

I had to laugh at "90-foot-tall office tower."

[BTinSF]

Friday, April 17, 2009
Projects on ice
Developers gauge timing to hit market as economy begins to warm
San Francisco Business Times - by Vasanth Sridharan

The recession has had a few obvious effects on large-scale construction projects on the Peninsula as elsewhere — commercial tenants are harder to find as businesses downsize or shutter completely, which means that developers with big projects are having trouble filling them.

Now, developers watch economic indicators as closely as Ivy League professors, waiting to see when to start building so they can time the project’s completion with the recovery.

That is what’s happening with Phase II of the construction at Bay Meadows, the former racetrack in San Mateo. Developer Chris Meany, of Wilson Meany Sullivan, said that the company could have started construction on the project, which includes 1,200 homes, 750,000 square feet of office space, 18 acres of parks, and 100,000 square feet of retail, in early April. All the required entitlements are complete, and the various lawsuits filed to stop the project are in the past. But Meany said that it’s all about timing.

“When the market bottoms, you’re going to get a whole bunch of people coming out of the woodwork, saying, ‘I postponed buying a new home,’” he said, adding that because nobody has been building during the recession, there will be very little supply of new homes to meet the pent-up demand when recovery comes.

If the uptick happens in 2011, developers need to start building homes in 2010. And to start building the homes next year, they have to start on the infrastructure this year. So the big question, Meany said, becomes: “Do you start at the beginning of 2009, or the end of 2009?”

Meany said that his company could start on infrastructure this month.

But not all developers are on hold by choice. Jack Myers, who built the curvy Centennial Tower along Highway 101 in South San Francisco, has had to hold off on building the second phase of his project, the north tower, after he couldn’t get tenants for the completed Phase I, the south tower.

The 365,000-square-foot project is designed to draw technology and life sciences companies. But those companies are putting off getting new office space. Yet, Myers, like Meany, sees signs of a turnaround.

“I would say (we’re) more than cautiously optimistic, we’re flat-out optimistic,” Myers said. “There’s been virtually no velocity in the last several months. But now we’re seeing levels of activity and touring (of Phase I) that we haven’t seen in over a year.”

Myers said that companies can only put off moving for so long. Their existing leases will eventually expire, and they will inevitably outgrow their current space. He also said that state and federal efforts to repair the economy by working with businesses is helping to speed the recovery.

But for some projects that are looking to start now, the slow economy could be an asset.

The San Mateo Union High School District had $11 million worth of projects on hold because the state didn’t have the cash to fund the work through grants that had already been awarded. So the district issued general obligation bonds, and the funding became available about three weeks ago. Because costs associated with building and renovating have fallen, Deputy Superintendent Liz McManus said that it’s actually a good time to be building.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity to be doing these projects, because we’re going to get a lot more done for the scope of our dollars than we would have three years ago,” she said. Some of the projects include a building at Burlingame High School that will house arts, media and entertainment, as well as building trade and construction career pathways; an arts, media and entertainment building at Capuchino High School; a biotech building at San Mateo High School; an arts building dedicated to music at Hillsdale High School; and a building housing the arts, engineering and design at Aragon High School.

But McManus also said that the economy has delayed things somewhat. With many state workers on furlough once a week, getting the plans through the Department of State Architects slowed down. So the district couldn’t get the bidding done during the winter or early spring, and contractors won’t be able to start immediately when school lets out for the summer.


vsridharan@bizjournals.com

Source: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/...20/focus1.html

[BTinSF]

Friday, April 24, 2009
Oakland aims for dense downtown
San Francisco Business Times - by Blanca Torres

The City of Oakland is moving forward to approve new downtown ordinances to encourage taller and denser buildings.

Major changes to the zoning code include increased floor area ratios, which are used to determined the size of buildings. The revised code would also add height limits to some historic areas and remove a permitting requirement for ground-floor retail.

“The city wants a dense downtown,” said Eric Angstadt, interim deputy director of Oakland’s Community and Economic Development Agency. “The capacity of what can be built downtown has increased several fold (under the new regulations).”

The area in question is the Central Business District, which includes the downtown office clusters as well as residential neighborhoods such as Uptown, Lake Merritt, Old Oakland and Chinatown.

“We were comfortable with 95 percent of the proposed changes,” said Carlos Plazola, chairman of the Oakland Builders Alliance, a group of developers, engineers, architects and planners. “We don’t have enough residential development happening downtown looking 20 or 30 years down the road.”

One controversial element of the proposed changes is a height limit on areas near Lake Merritt where residents have pushed to keep buildings under 55 and 85 feet. Developers, however, argue the areas should be open to high-rise residential towers.

The city council will have the final say on the new codes when it votes on them in June. Even if the changes pass, two developers can proceed with high-rise buildings near Lake Merritt.

One of those developers, Mark Borsuk, wants to build a 37-story residential tower out of a three-story parking garage his family has owned since 1945. The other developer is David O’Keefe, who is proposing a 42-story condo building at 222 19th St. Both have submitted applications, but still have to go through the entitlement process.

“One component of new housing is low rises and high rises,” Borsuk said. “We’re optimistic, but it’s going to be a long process.”

Oakland’s zoning regulations were last updated in 1968. The general plan was updated in 1998 and called for more density in the city’s downtown.

The city started working on the zoning code update last year, bringing together city officials, planners, developers, historic preservationists and community members. The process included walking tours to examine the city parcel by parcel.

“We spent a lot of time trying to save the character of the city,” said Michael Colbruno, chair of Oakland’s planning commission. “We have a lot of historic buildings that we want to preserve, but we want to make it feasible to develop new buildings in a cost-effective way.”

btorres@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4960

Source: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/...ml?t=printable

[leftopolis]

Hotel group on track to finish Marriott amid industry decline

CAMPBELL — Despite the downturn walloping the hospitality industry, a hotel 10 years in the making is on track to open in Campbell in December.

Huntington Hotel Group is well aware of the industry’s double-digit declines in occupancy and room revenue, but the Irvington, Texas, developer still plans to open its seven-story, 162-room Marriott Courtyard on Creekside Way near the Hamilton Avenue exit of Highway 17.

Also:

Bohannon pushes $300M project

David Bohannon is pushing ahead on approvals for his $300 million Menlo Park hotel and office project with the hope that a looming city deficit will create more favorable development politics in the notoriously slow-growth region.

With the city facing a $2 million deficit, the Menlo Park City Council on April 14 established a development agreement process, a key step that should lead to a vote on project approvals early next year. Menlo Gateway would have a 206-room Marriott hotel and private health club Renaissance ClubSport as well as three mid-rise office buildings totaling 695,000 square feet. The development would take place on two lots totaling 15 acres of Bohannon Park. It would generate $1.5 million per year in tax revenue and be home to 2,300 full-time workers.

[San Frangelino]

from http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2009/0...egaproject.php

Redwood City's Megaproject

Wednesday, May 13, 2009, by Andy J. Wang
A battle's brewing down in Redwood City over a proposed 25-year-long project that would turn half of a 1,433-acre bay-front parcel into a kajillion condos and apartments. The developers, who are building ostensibly for the Silicon Valley set, argue that it's "smart growth versus no growth," or smart growth vs growth in Livermore or something. Opponents call fallacy, saying smart growth means building downtown, not "in salt ponds." Touché. Ready the pickets! [Merc]

http://www.mercurynews.com/localnews...es/ci_12354543

[leftopolis]

Originally Posted by San Frangelino

from http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2009/0...egaproject.php

http://www.mercurynews.com/localnews...es/ci_12354543

I've heard of this plan before, but couldn't remeber the specifics--beyond there already being contentious political issues.

First of all, I don't see where in DT R.C. one could build anywhere near this amount, without tearing down at least half of the existing DT and replacing it all w/ 10-20 story structures. That doesn't sound terribly practical. Secondly, my thoughts on the existing project idea were:

--If it's within a mile od DT/Caltrain...there should be a trolley(and the city could promote future density within that mile corridor).

--The development should be mixed use in order to mimimize trips in and out of it.

--There should be a portion of open-space remaining.

Based on the link by SF....they're more or less intending to include those exact features:

The project, which DMB will submit to the city Tuesday, includes a mixture of condominiums, apartments and attached housing on half the 1,433-acre site. There also would be 1 million square feet of office space, retail shops, a fire station, and a trolley system that would connect residents with downtown Redwood City and its Caltrain station, slightly less than a mile away across Highway 101.
The other half of the site would remain undeveloped. Roughly 440 acres would be converted back to tidal wetlands, and an additional 250 would become parks, baseball fields and soccer fields.

[San Frangelino]

I found the website for the redwood city project. http://www.rcsaltworks.com/

[BTinSF]

Friday, June 5, 2009
Berkeley’s building boom
Housing, retail projects bring density downtown
San Francisco Business Times - by Blanca Torres

Berkeley is undergoing a major building boom — major by Berkeley standards, that is. The city, known for keeping developers at bay, has hundreds of residential units and several commercial projects under construction with more in the pipeline.

The projects are part of Berkeley’s move toward creating density, said Michael Caplan, Berkeley’s economic development director. While residents ponder issues like global climate change and population growth, developers are moving forward to bring more housing near transportation centers and into its downtown core.

“I can’t think of a time when we’ve had so much construction going on,” Caplan said. “We’re seeing a number of genuinely urban mixed-used projects that can help activate districts and bring in more residents.”

Among the new projects, Hudson McDonald, a Berkeley-based developer, has crews working on a 148-unit apartment complex that will include a Trader Joe’s on its ground floor. The project, called the Old Grove, is at 1885 University Ave., near the core of Berkeley’s downtown area and close to SNK Realty’s Arpeggio, a 143-unit condominium tower comprised of nine stories that is also under construction.

“We provide a place to live, but where you really live is in the neighborhood,” said Chris Hudson, principal of Hudson McDonald, which has built more than 900 units in Berkeley in the last 25 years.

Also downtown, Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse, a performance venue specializing in folk and traditional music, is building a new 18,000-square-foot site that will make up part of Berkeley’s burgeoning arts district that also includes the Berkeley Repertory Theatre and the East Bay Media Center. Freight and Salvage expects to debut its new home this August.

Besides downtown, West Berkeley, the industrial part of town, is beginning to see new activity as well. Palo Alto-based Essex Property Trust is in the middle of constructing a 171-unit apartment building at the corner of Fourth Street and University Avenue near Interstate 80. The site, called 700 University, is close to an AC Transit hub and an Amtrak station as well as one of the city’s major retail strips along Fourth Street.

“Berkeley is underserved with new (housing) product,” said John Eudy, executive vice president of Essex. “And we’re building out (our project) when costs are down. The cost to build now is significantly lower than if we had built it two years ago.”

In addition to those projects, hoteliers have poured about $40 million into revamping numerous hotels, including Joie de Vivre’s Durant, which underwent a $9 million makeover, and Hotel Shattuck, a boutique hotel reopening this month after a $15 million upgrade.

Berkeley’s entitlement process remains notoriously tough and lengthy, generally taking three years or more. But the completion of area plans around the city has opened the door by officially identifying what the city would welcome and where it could take place.

Caplan said the new construction addresses several city needs: a growing population, its goal to decrease global warming, avoiding sprawl and providing housing for lower-income workers who commute into the city.

“Are we growing for the sake of growing? No,” he said. “A lot of people who grew up here can’t find places to live. A lot of people who live in the hills want to sell their homes and live downtown. ... Density can be good if it’s done right.”

Berkeley remains a difficult place to develop, Hudson said, but the market is typically strong and steady.

“You have to have faith in the underlying value of the projects,” he said. “You also have to build projects that make sense.”

btorres@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4960

Source: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/...ml?t=printable

[peanut gallery]

I wonder if that 700 University project is on the site of Brennans? Last time I was in that place I seem to recall it was going to close for some new development. It's been awhile since I've been over there though. Anyone happen to know? I bet the folks at Spengers will be happy to have more residents in the area.