Google Eyeing Mission Bay for San Francisco Move?

http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2013/11/13/google_eyeing_mission_bay_for_san_francisco_move.php

by blackjack48 • 13 years ago

37 73 13 years ago

sf.curbed.com

batbomb3• 13 years ago

Meanwhile SF supervisors have proposed a moratorium on the Ellis act.

If rent was ugly before, I can't imagine what if will be like now.

I get the feeling that the mayor and supervisors only care about displacement, not placement.

brandur3• 13 years ago

Indeed. This is one of the few things that could make the residential situation around here even worse. Provided we don't see another bust before then, it'll be interesting to see how bad it gets before even our municipality is forced to consider changes to policies like rent control. 2x NYC? 2x Manhattan? At what point do companies start looking for space elsewhere?

chrisabrams2• 13 years ago

That's why companies are opening offices in NYC..it's actually become cheaper in parts of NY than SF.

harryh2• 13 years ago

"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded." - Yogi Berra

njudah• 13 years ago

What is the source on supervisors proposing a moratorium on the Ellis act? That seems uncharacteristic and unlikely.

brandur3• 13 years ago

It's not a moratorium, but here's an article from today with an early description of proposed amendments:

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-politicians-Restri...

geebee3• 13 years ago

San Francisco is notorious for opposing development, and at least some of its reputation is deserved.

However, this problem can still be overstated. Plenty of new construction is taking place in SF.

http://www.spur.org/publications/library/article/san-francis...

diogenescynic• 13 years ago

More than 4,220 units of housing began construction in San Francisco in 2012 — following a year in which just 269 net units were added.

Is that enough additional housing to cover all the new residents? From 2010 to 2012, the population grew from 805,235 to 825,863: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06075.html

It seems like demand is outpacing the supply, driving prices up.

alexeisadeski34• 13 years ago

Plenty of new construction is taking place in SF

You've got to be kidding me.

This is what "plenty of new construction" looks like: http://rwrant.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/S%C3%A3o-Paul...

Sure, it's ugly. Sure, you don't want SF to look like that. But don't try to pretend that SF is addressing the issue.

williamcotton6• 13 years ago

Yeah, it's almost like the city is actually forced to listen to the demands of the people that live in it...

Maybe if we got rid of democracy then Mayor Ed Lee wouldn't haven't to cloud his pure ideology with such trivialities?

I mean, how else are we going to be truly free?

woah• 13 years ago

Only solution: Wall around SF. You have to pass the coolness test to get in. Only artisan puppeteers and activist breadmakers allowed. None of these dorky tech folks driving up the rents.

aliston• 13 years ago

For a number of reasons, the people voting in San Francisco are generally not representative of the people living in it.

popularopinion• 13 years ago

This article is currently linking to a link aggregator, the original link is here:

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2013/11/google-...

cylinder• 13 years ago

What does Google do at its Chicago office? I can never quite figure that city out.

minimax• 13 years ago

Google has a development office in Chicago but I don't think it's very big. The 600k sq ft of Chicago office space mentioned in this post is probably a reference to the new Motorola office space in the Merch Mart.

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20120726/BLOGS02/1207...

arasraj• 13 years ago

The new Google space will actually be in West Loop.

seiji2• 13 years ago

Google Code was running out of there for a while until they stagnated and let GitHub steal all the cookies.

astrodust• 13 years ago

It's not stealing if Google Code never had them in the first place.

GitHub is running circles around everyone.

k_wisniewski4• 13 years ago

As an European, I've never understand how is that possible that South Bay is such a bad place to live. Everything interesting like night life, public transport even groceries and restaurants are all either non-existent or so far away that you always have to drive. No wonder everyone wants to live in SF because there's nothing to do in the South Bay. What is the problem really? There's a lot of money in there, lots of potential customers, good geographical conditions, creativity and yet it's so badly planned and organized. This year I moved to London and there are lots of things to do in virtually every district. Public transport is amazing compared to the Bay area and you don't even need to own a car. That's completely impossible in the Valley and I have no idea why isn't there someone who tries to change that.

HaloZero• 13 years ago

You have to understand that after the 1950s in the United States, everyone thought cars were awesome. They allowed you to go farther than anywhere else before and they allowed a greater mobility in general than ever before. Combined with the dream of having a house and a yard, this allowed for sprawl.

So cities were planned around this. San Francisco itself even had a boom where it tried to utilize cars as much as possible. There were either freeways or plan to build more freeways cutting through the city to get to places. There was going to be a 2nd Bay Bridge to San Leandro, why? Because they wanted more traffic to get into the city and they didn't trust his new fangled thing called BART (the train system for those of you who don't know it).

I don't know what the situation was in England or other European countries when cars started taking off but I imagine there had to be something similar, maybe just not with the same momentum as the United States.

jweir2• 13 years ago

Loma Prieta, the earthquake, removed some freeways and opened up the Embarcadero, which was an industrial zoned ringed by a double decker freeway.

http://lostsf.wordpress.com/2010/11/07/the-elephant-obstruct...

k_wisniewski4• 13 years ago

There certainly were some attempts to introduce more cars to the city centers in Europe, tram lines used to be closed etc. but thankfully a lot of streets were too narrow to handle an ever-increasing traffic so they just had to give up. Not to mention that a good network of public transport has already been there, so people have always been accustomed to it. Nowadays most of my friends here don't use their cars in the cities, because it's way faster to get everywhere by bus/subway/tram or even bike.

jweir2• 13 years ago

It isn't going to take "someone" – it is going to take a large cultural shift.

Out of the top 10 largest cities in the US only three of them are livable without a car - NY, Philadelphia and Chicago. (San Francisco is not in the top 10 for size)

Real estate developers like to build cheap and fast. Urban planners do what the book tells them. Public transportation is politically unpopular. And American's love, just love, their cars – don't do anything to get in the way (bike lanes, dedicated bus lanes, congestion pricing).

I do think that younger American's are more urban and are looking for a change. So we shall see what the future offers.

toomuchtodo3• 13 years ago

I live in the Chicago suburbs. The CTA ("The El" and the bus lines) and the Metra (light rail to the suburbs) are just barely adequate to be called public transportation. I'm in SF often, and would say its easier to get around SF without a car than Chicago.

Just my two cents. Demo: 30, male, owns a car but hates it.

EDIT: Our bike lanes are coming along very well in downtown Chicago, and almost everyone loves the new Divvy bike sharing program.

tlrobinson• 13 years ago

It's not a "bad" place to live, it's simply suburban, thus younger people tend to prefer SF.

How would you "change" it? It's just not dense enough to support enough grocery stores/restaurants that everyone could walk everywhere. There are small downtown areas of each city where that may be possible but those areas are going to be expensive.

jseliger• 13 years ago

How would you "change" it? It's just not dense enough to support enough grocery stores/restaurants that everyone could walk everywhere.

Given the absurd cost of housing in the bay area (http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/04/11/san_francisco...), you'd generally just reduce or eliminate height restrictions, minimum building setbacks, and parking requirements. At that point developers will build structures that increase density and support grocery stores / restaurants.

k_wisniewski4• 13 years ago

Well I'd argue that suburban areas in Europe are sometimes even less dense, yet still there's much more places to go to. Maybe "bad" is a "bad" word here, but I think this is just a matter of urban planning. If you build a four-lane highway instead of one-lane street it discourages people from walking. Have there been a better public transport like buses, trams or subway, people wouldn't drive so much either. If they have to drive anyway, because there's no another option, they can drive further and thus don't care if the place they are going to is 5 miles away or 10. I guess the cities would have to make the first step and plan the new neighborhoods as more dense, more urban environments. Housing developers usually only care about earning money, so if it's cheaper to build everything the same way as before they'll do it no matter what. And people cannot even oppose it, because rents/house prices are already stellar in the Bay Area compared to other places even in the US. This makes it a vicious circle.

7Figures2Commas• 13 years ago

Everything interesting like night life, public transport even groceries and restaurants are all either non-existent or so far away that you always have to drive.

Nightlife, public transportation, grocery stores and restaurants are not non-existent in the Peninsula and South Bay. And if you live in one of the downtown areas, most of which are clean, safe and vibrant, all of these things are accessible by foot. Rents in these downtown areas are generally no more expensive than rents for comparable housing in desirable neighborhoods in San Francisco, and in many cases, the rents are meaningfully lower.

This said, it's worth considering that a lot of people prefer not to live in a dense, urban environment. One of the most attractive things about the greater Bay Area is that it offers different kinds of environments for different lifestyles within, by US standards, a relatively small geographic area, so there's something for just about everyone. What's wrong with that?

k_wisniewski4• 13 years ago

Well, maybe I've lived there for the period of time that has been simply too short to judge, but after being raised in an urban/suburban environment in Europe (Warsaw, Poland to be specific) it just felt like there's nothing to do in the Bay Area without a car. And believe me, Warsaw is certainly not the most exciting place in Europe. :) Maybe that was because of cultural shift I've experienced, but the fact is that distances are way larger than here in Europe. Yes, you have a relatively good network of bike lanes compared to for example Warsaw, but the distances between the places where you sleep and where you can spend time nicely (restaurants, pubs etc.) make it way harder to get there on the bike. It's not a big deal if there's a good public transport that gets you from point A to B quickly, but there hardly is any public transport in the cities like Santa Clara, Sunnyvale or even Mountain View. And there usually is just one main street where you can feel a bit of the city life and vast areas around where people just sleep or work. I don't question those cities are safe or that you can live in a more attractive neighborhood. I have also appreciated that those places are clean and close to the nature, but I've found myself feeling bad that I can't just cross the street and buy some food for the breakfast or cross another street and grab some coffee/beer/whatever with my friends. I guess this is because of cultural difference between America and Europe, set of things you're accustomed to, but I know quite a few people in London or London's sattelite cities who moved there from SF Bay Area and feel exactly the same: suddenly there's so much to do and everything is so much closer! Even when I visit my parents house on Warsaw's suburbs I feel I can get everywhere I want way faster than in for example Santa Clara.

mahyarm2• 13 years ago

Because engineers move down to the south bay to start their families. The reason why is SF's public schools are some of the worse in the entire nation, and private schools + mortgage is way more money down the drain than just a mortgage in the peninsula. If public schools were replaced with a voucher subsidy system, you would probably see more families up in SF, the city of singles.

Also being a city of singles and young people, it creates it's own sort of gravity well and you get this magnetic alignment effect. You get married families in the south bay, leading to boring suburbia and the young in SF, leading to all of the fun things up there.

geebee3• 13 years ago

For an urban school district, San Francisco isn't that bad.

http://www.greatschools.org/find-a-school/moving/slideshows/...

Amusingly (considering how unlikely SF is to implement libertarian ideas), reason magazine kind of liked SF's approach

http://reason.com/archives/2006/04/01/the-agony-of-american-...

alexeisadeski34• 13 years ago

Since when is SF called "The City"?

There is only one "The City", and it ain't in North America.

ek• 13 years ago

You must not be from the Bay Area. San Francisco is "The City", "San Francisco", or "SF" to anyone who lives or has ever lived in the Bay Area.

douglaswth• 13 years ago

As someone who is only familiar with calling San Francisco "The City", I am curious what city outside of North America you are referring to; please enlighten us.

alexeisadeski34• 13 years ago

The City of London. Its a nrifgb within London.

gojomo• 13 years ago

Americans would disagree! See:

http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_95....

Also, perhaps even moreso than other places in the US, "The City" (capitalized, with extra stress on each syllable) has long been an affectation in the Bay Area & Northern California to refer to San Francisco proper. See especially the columns of Herb Caen and regional anthems like Journey's "When The Lights Go Down (in The City)".

r00fus• 13 years ago

Sorry, "The City" is a local reference term. Just like "The Store". Trying to dereference without a local frame leads to confusion.

jonnathanson3• 13 years ago

Well, if they're going to move in a bigger way into SF, Mission Bay makes sense. It's basically a big ghost town. Lots of UCSF-owned medical facilities and lifeless condos. But plenty of space. And it's relatively close to the transit hubs in South Beach.

As a nearby resident and worker, though, I'm not looking forward to the traffic or the added residential real estate crunch. We've got the Giants, soon we'll have the Warriors, we'll have a few huge high rises going up, a huge Salesforce campus in the works, and maybe we'll have a Google office. Oy vey.

brandur3• 13 years ago

Agree on this sentiment; it's a quiet part of town compared to its surroundings, which is kind of nice. The coming boom in automobile traffic will compromise it as one of the relatively few peaceful places in the city to walk, run, and bike.

Small correction: according to the source article, Google is actually purchasing the land from Salesforce. So it may be one or the other.

rayiner6• 13 years ago

We've got the Giants, soon we'll have the Warriors, we'll have a few huge high rises going up, a huge Salesforce campus in the works, and maybe we'll have a Google office.

Sounds like a boon, not a burden!

Maybe Google should move to somewhere people would be grateful to have them. People here in Philadelphia would love to see some business and industry come their way.

w1ntermute2• 13 years ago

Yeah, it's absurd how many SF residents are reacting to all this economic activity. There are so many cities across the country that would love to be in the position SF is right now.

jonnathanson3• 13 years ago

It's an economic boon, and it brings in a lot of smart people, and it makes the neighborhood more lively. All of that is awesome. I live in SOMA and believe me, I love how vibrant it is today, especially as compared to what it used to be: essentially, a dead zone of warehouses and shipping containers.

I love SF's ability to reinvent itself, to adapt its spaces, and so forth. I don't think the city gets nearly enough credit for that.

The problems are housing inventory and traffic. The city has not yet figured out a fantastic way to address either of those issues. Personally speaking, I'd freaking love a Tokyo-style mega-city of uber-high rises and elevated catwalks. I'd love for SF to become the dense, futuristic wonderland that Star Trek envisions its becoming. But a lot of regulations are in place that seem to prevent that from happening. And there's also the issue of seismic stability to contend with. SF is not exactly the sturdiest ground on which to build skyscrapers. But we need more housing, and we need more intra-city transportation that doesn't rely on the roads (which, if you've ever experienced gameday or rush-hour traffic in SOMA, you know can become hellish nightmares).

Essentially, SF is a very small space that experiences high density and is not (currently) built to accommodate such density.

All said and done, this stuff is sort of a mixed bag for me. I appreciate it in many respects, but I feel the pain in a lot of day-to-day life. It's not a binary, net-good or net-bad situation.

rmason• 13 years ago

Lots of soon to be vacant land in the city of Detroit. Google could be the catalyst to remove blight and create a city within a city.

I bet the city would be wiling to even give them the land.

bsimpson• 13 years ago

Would that be a headquarters move, or just an SF office move? IIRC, they may have to move out of their present space above Palomino, which means they'd be looking for someplace to put their current SF employees.

Google Eyeing Mission Bay for San Francisco Move?

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