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- April 24, 2013
San Francisco Passes Landmark Earthquake Retrofit Law
By Sarah Karlinsky, Deputy Director
Last Thursday, on the 107th anniversary of the 1906 Earthquake, SF Mayor Ed Lee signed the mandatory soft-story retrofit program into law. SPUR has long advocated for this legislation, which will help make San Francisco more resilient in a major earthquake.
Soft-story buildings are those with large openings for storefront windows or garages, which cause the ground floor to be weak, leaving it vulnerable to damage or even collapse in an earthquake. The legislation focuses on wood-frame apartment buildings with three or more stories and five or more units that were built before modern code changes adopted in 1978. San Francisco’s Community Action Plan for Seismic Safety (CAPSS) estimates that at least 2,800 of these buildings have a soft-story condition. Combined they are home to roughly 58,000 people and 2,000 businesses.
Currently, these buildings pose a significant threat to San Francisco’s ability to recover from a disaster. The city estimates that between 43 and 85 percent of the 2,800 soft-story buildings would be tagged as “unsafe” after a magnitude 7.2 earthquake on the San Andreas fault, and a quarter of those would be expected to collapse. If these buildings are retrofitted, however, the people living in them will be much less likely to risk being killed, injured or displaced by a disaster.
The new law requires that buildings with potential soft-story conditions be screened and evaluated. Those determined to have soft-story conditions will then need to complete upgrades over a period of several years.
SPUR has written several reports about the role that the existing housing stock can play in enhancing or undermining the city’s resilience. Resilience — the ability to respond to an earthquake emergency and to recover without lasting disruption — can be measured by the speed and completeness with which essential functions, and eventually routine operations, are restored. We identified a goal that 95 percent of San Francisco’s housing should be strong enough that people can stay in their homes after a magnitude 7.2 earthquake. One of our key recommendations to achieve this goal was the development of a mandatory soft-story retrofit program for wood-frame multifamily housing.
Estimates show that only 75 percent of the city’s current housing stock will provide adequate shelter for residents after a major earthquake. This means that San Francisco is at risk of losing its most important asset — its people. This new law helps to greatly increase the amount of housing that will be safe enough for people to inhabit after the next earthquake.
We thank the mayor and the SF Board of Supervisors, as well as the earthquake safety implementation team including Patrick Otellini, Laurence Kornfield and Micah Hilt, for their leadership on this important issue. - April 2, 2013
Three State Bills Worth Watching: Urban Ag, Farm Protection and a Soda Tax
by Eli Zigas, Food Systems and Urban Agriculture Program Manager
Of the many food and agriculture bills California legislators have introduced this year, three stand out for their potential impact on the Bay Area’s food system: a tax incentive to promote the use of private land for urban agriculture; a change to CEQA to require agricultural land preservation for certain projects; and a statewide sugary-beverage tax. Here’s a closer look at these bills, which we will be tracking this year.
Urban Agriculture Incentive Zone Act (AB 551)
Introduced by San Francisco’s recently elected assembly member Phil Ting, this legislation would incentivize the use of private land for urban agriculture by reducing the property tax assesment on qualifying parcels dedicated to city farming. The bill would permit counties to pass ordinances establishing “Urban Agriculture Incentive Zones” within their boundaries. In these incentive zones, private property owners would be eligible to apply to enter a contract with the county restricting their undeveloped property to urban agricultural use in exchange for a revised tax assessment based on the agricultural use of the land. The program is loosely modeled after the Williamson Act and, as with that legislation, counties could opt into the program but will not be required to do so. Similarly, private landowner participation would be completely voluntary.
One of the biggest obstacles to expanding urban agriculture within California is access to land. This legislation provides an incentive to private landowners to make more land available for urban agriculture, while at the same time enabling them to do so at a lowered cost, which is especially critical for the viability of commercial urban farms.
California Farmland Protection Act (AB 823)
According to the American Farmland Trust (AFT), each year an average of 30,000 acres of farmland is converted to non-agricultural use in California. The California Farmland Protection Act, supported by AFT, the California Climate and Agriculture Network and the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, aims to address this. The bill would require developers to either 1) permanently protect an acre of farmland for every acre they develop as part of the mitigation process in the California Environmental Quality Act or 2) build more densely. Developers could protect agricultural land through either direct purchase of a conservation easement or payment of a fee to a public or private agricultural land conservancy to purchase a conservation easement. For projects that develop farmland within city limits, the developers could also meet the requirements by demonstrating that the development achieves a density at least twice that of the statewide average. The legislation recognizes that agricultural land preservation complements infill development as a smart-growth land use strategy and attempts to permanently preserve agricultural land while also increasing the cost of sprawl.
Sweetened Beverage Tax Law (SB 622)
Though proposals for city-level taxes on sugary drinks in Richmond and El Monte failed at the ballot box in November 2012, momentum continues building for public health legislation targeting sodas and similar drinks. The Sweetened Beverage Tax Law would require distributors to pay a one-cent tax for every fluid ounce of bottled sweetened beverage or concentrate they distribute. The revenue from the tax, estimated to be more than $1.5 billion annually, would go toward a Children’s Heath Promotion Fund. The fund would then distribute 65 percent of the money through the state Department of Public Health for childhood obesity prevention efforts and childhood dental programs, run by the department, community groups and medical providers. The remaining 35 percent would go to school districts for public health initiatives that improve childhood nutrition and physical activity.
As the bills have only recently been introduced, SPUR has not yet taken a position on any of them. Though the fate of each of these bills in the legislature is unclear, each illustrates that California continues to be at the forefront of developing food and agriculture policy that intersects with the areas of land-use, economic development and public health.
Read Earth Island Journal's article about the Urban Agriculture Incentive Zone legislation >>
- March 25, 2013
Bay Area Bike Sharing Moves Closer to Reality
By Molly Schremmer
After a number of delays, the wheels are finally turning on a bike-sharing program for the Bay Area. Earlier this month, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) signed a contract with Alta Bike Share, which runs successful programs in Washington, D.C., and Boston. A Bay Area pilot program will launch this summer for two years of testing with 700 bikes at 70 locations from San Jose to San Francisco.
Bike sharing allows anyone to rent a bicycle from a self-serve kiosk and drop it off at another location, providing guaranteed bike access without worries about damage, theft or maintenance. Programs have been geared toward tourists in cities like Paris, but they also have great potential to help locals solve the “last mile” problem — the difficulty of getting commuters from a transit hub to their final destination.
The Bay Area’s pilot will be the first regional program in the country — a detail that created complications and delayed the program, originally expected to begin in 2012. Structured around Caltrain, it will put an estimated 50 locations in downtown San Francisco and about two dozen more near Caltrain stations in Redwood City, Palo Alto, Mountain View and San Jose. BAAQMD is seeking sponsorships to expand the system. Meanwhile, SF Supervisor Scott Wiener is lobbying to extend the dowtown San Francisco part of the pilot across the city. A successful bikesharing program requires a strong business model and considers: close proximity to increased population and job densities; an optimal distribution of bikes (ideally around 50 percent bikes to 50 percent open docks); locations no more than one-half mile apart; and affordable and strategic pricing that promotes ridership.
Locating the bike sharing stations around Caltrain has the potential to change the state of commuting in the Bay Area. As we noted in our report The Urban Future of Work, 80 percent of office buildings in the Bay Area are within three miles of regional transit, but only 11 percent of commuters take transit to work. The option to add a short bike ride to the end of a trip could turn rail commuting into a viable option for a much greater number of people. Though it’s focused on Caltrain stations, the program’s concentration of downtown SF locations could also make it useful to BART riders, who are not yet allowed to bring bicycles on trains during rush hour. We look forward to testing the possibilities this summer.
- March 22, 2013
Good Government Awards: How Ted Egan Fixed the Business Tax
SPUR’s 33rd annual Good Government Awards, held March 19, 2013, honored City of San Francisco employees who have performed exceptionally, becoming models for other agencies and cities around the country.
Ted Egan was a key player in the effort to reform the payroll tax system in San Francisco. His work culminated in Proposition E, the fall 2012 ballot measure that created a tiered gross receipts tax. Prop. E’s passage, which ended a decade of attempts to devise a tax structure that supports business growth, is the result of more than six months of outreach and negotiations with businesses of all shapes and sizes by the Controller’s Office. Ted has served as the chief economist for the Controller’s Office for five years and is a trusted voice for good government in San Francisco.
Watch our video on Ted’s work:
Tags: good government - March 22, 2013
Good Government Awards: How Jaime Flores-Lovo Modernized SF Public Works
SPUR’s 33rd annual Good Government Awards, held March 19, 2013, honored City of San Francisco employees who have performed exceptionally, becoming models for other agencies and cities around the country.
Jaime Flores-Lovo was honored for his vision and leadership in the development of enterprise-level technology projects for the Department of Public Works, most significantly in the system migration for the department’s contract automation. This represented a major departure from the legacy contract processing systems, introducing integrated document management and better collaboration, workflows and web functionality to enhance teamwork, transparency and accountability. Jaime’s leadership in building a team led to successful development of these software applications, automating the department’s contracts and saving $17 million.
Watch our video on Jaime’s work:
Tags: good government - March 22, 2013
Good Government Awards: How Lea Militello Tamed the Streets of San Francisco
SPUR’s 33rd annual Good Government Awards, held March 19, 2013, honored City of San Francisco employees who have performed exceptionally, becoming models for other agencies and cities around the country.
Lea Militello was honored for her critical leadership in building a security plan for San Francisco streets, especially during public events. Her accomplishments over the October 2012 “busiest weekend in San Francisco” — when more than 1 million people converged to stress the city’s street infrastructure to maximum capacity with events including America’s Cup/Fleet Week, the Castro Street Fair, the Italian Heritage Parade, Giants and 49ers games, the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival and the Double Ten Parade — exemplify her ingenuity and creativity. Her skills in staff management and resource allocation help to create world-class venues that generate visibility and income for the city. Lea implemented the federal government’s Incident Command System, which is now the model for San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s management of special events.
Watch our video on Lea’s work:
- March 22, 2013
Good Government Awards: How Michelle Ruggels Helps San Franciscans Get the Health Care They Need
SPUR’s 33rd annual Good Government Awards, held March 19, 2013, honored City of San Francisco employees who have performed exceptionally, becoming models for other agencies and cities around the country.
Michelle Ruggels was honored for her leadership in overseeing $490 million in annual contracts to 200 community-based organizations that provide community health services to San Franciscans. An employee of the Department of Public Health since 1997, Michelle led the Mental Health Medi-Cal Revenue Enhancement Project in 2011, creating a certification process that allows local agencies to use federal funds instead of local general funds to support their services. The department expects this effort to save $550,000 in fiscal year 2014 alone.
Watch our video on Michelle’s work:
Tags: good government - March 22, 2013
Good Government Awards: How the Crime Data Warehouse Team Made SF Safer
SPUR’s 33rd annual Good Government Awards, held March 19, 2013, honored City of San Francisco employees who have performed exceptionally, becoming models for other agencies and cities around the country.
The Crime Data Warehouse Team was honored for building a web-based, real-time, searchable database of criminal reports that police officers can access on the ground. Susan Giffin, with the support of visionary team members Rodrigo Castillo, Alan Honniball and Leo Solomon, put together a professional technical team to digitize police records, freeing up sworn personnel formerly assigned to deskwork to be in the field. This key transition for the SF Police Department resulted in a real-time search engine to help combat crime and terrorism.
Watch our video on the crime data team’s work:
Tags: good government - March 11, 2013
Making Better Places: Urban Design Lessons Along the Peninsula
By Benjamin Grant, Public Realm and Urban Design Program Manager
How do we create the kinds of compact, walkable environments that can have a real impact on car use and carbon emissions? SPUR San Jose’s Urban Design Task Force is working to foster well-designed new development that will support the city’s 2040 General Plan goals of a more walkable, livable and transit-friendly built environment. To understand the current state of development practice, we spent a recent Saturday visiting projects up and down the peninsula, focusing on large, multi-building developments that aim to introduce a more urban land use pattern. Each project we saw has its strengths and weaknesses, and each holds lessons for San Jose — and all growing cities — about the challenges of retrofitting suburbia into more sustainable communities.
See site plans for the projects on the tour >>
Stop 1: Mission Bay, San Francisco
Developer: Catellus, Alexandria
6,000 residential units, 1,800+ affordable
43-acre, 2.3 million sf UCSF campus
280,000 sf retail
4.4 million sf office/biotech
49 acres of public parks and open spaceThe use of redevelopment tools (which California eliminated last year) and the location of UCSF's biomedical research campus were key elements driving development at Mission Bay, a new San Francisco neighborhood on the former Southern Pacific railyards. The campus has successfully attracted a cluster of private biotech firms, a boon to the city’s economy and to the economics of Mission Bay land.
The development plan for the site stipulated not only uses and densities, but also the location, design, and phasing of public realm improvements like parks, plazas and promenades. These standards mean that developers’ obligations are clear to everyone and the design framework is non-negotiable. Parks and open space must be built out before private buildings, and parking must be placed away from street fronts. One of the great successes of Mission Bay is the integration of new construction with the public realm, which is not San Francisco's strong suit in general. The promenade along Mission Creek Channel is an under-appreciated gem, offering a model of truly integrated public space and private development.
Stop 2: Bay Meadows, San Mateo
Phase 1
Developer: Stockbridge Capital
87-acre former stable area and practice track
735 residential units
272,000 sf office and retail, including a Whole Foods Grocery
Kaiser Medical Center
Phase 2 (under construction)
Developer: Wilson Meany
1,250,000 sf office
1,250 residential units
150,000 sf retail
15 acres of public parksBay Meadows, the site of a former racetrack adjacent to the Hillsdale Caltrain station in San Mateo, has recently begun construction on the second phase of its conversion to a mixed-use, transit-oriented neighborhood. Our visit to the first phase, completed by Stockbridge in 2011, revealed some of the key ingredients of good urban design. Office, retail, health care and housing are in close proximity, organized around a clear framework of streets, pedestrian pathways, parks and plazas. This phase is some distance from Caltrain, making it more internally oriented than transit oriented, but it represents a significant improvement over typical suburban development projects.
At phase 2, Wilson Meany has recently initiated construction on two parcels of an ambitious and considerably more urban project, which clusters office space, housing, retail, and public parks around the Caltrain Station. Office uses are nearest the station, flanked by a retail street that connects to several types of housing, at densities that increase as they get closer the station. An independent school holds one major site and the developer has opted to pay for the largest park up front, rather than await the city process.
Although no redevelopment powers were used at Bay Meadows, the project benefited from the large single parcel of land and from a tightly worded specific plan and development agreement with the city of San Mateo, including schematic-level architectural designs. This creates an unusual degree of clarity and certainty, drawing recession-weary builders to participate. As the master developer, Wilson Meany is the steward of this more urban vision, and the firm is the first line of review for any changes.
Stop 3: Sunnyvale Town Center, Sunnyvale
In Downtown Sunnyvale, land around the Caltrain station is in the process of redevelopment from a midcentury auto-oriented retail center into a dense mix of office, housing, and urban retail. The Sunnyvale Town Center project has been stalled for about two years in litigation resulting from the bankruptcy of the original developers after the 2008 economic collapse. With elements of the project half built, it awaits resolution by the courts before a new developer can step in and complete it.
In spite of its challenges, the City of Sunnyvale has stuck to its vision and implemented those portions that could move forward. A public plaza with an underground garage connects Caltrain to office buildings that meet the street. Both Apple and Nokia have occupied buildings recently, proving that tech has a life beyond the sealed suburban campus. Significant multifamily housing projects are under construction. A Target store that predates the lawsuit sits above ground-floor parking that is lined with small retail bays, awaiting future tenants and suggesting a compelling approach to the challenges of urban big-box retail. And Murphy Avenue — a historic block of small-scale retail — thrives, hosting a farmer’s market among the half-built hulks of a future held hostage by legal wrangling.
Stop 4: Brocade /@First, San Jose
Developer: Hunter-Storm
36.3 acres
73,000 sf shopping center
170-room hotel
880,000 sf tech office (Brocade HQ)The @First project combines the headquarters of Brocade Networks with a hotel, Target store and additional retail. The 36-acre site lies on North First Street in a relatively suburban context. Market forces in North San Jose have picked up sufficiently to support high quality multistory commercial buildings, structured parking, and hotel towers, on the same site as significant retail – many of the ingredients of good urban places.
Horizontal mixed-use projects (in which complementary land uses are placed in different buildings) like Brocade are a key opportunity to provide walkable amenities in less dense settings where vertical mixture (where uses are mixed within a single building) remains challenging. But doing so requires a strong site-planning framework that integrates the different elements into one cohesive and accessible place. At Brocade, the constraints of securing the deal’s components — the sight lines and surface parking required by retailers, the security needs of a tech headquarters — predominate. While pedestrian walkways exist, the site plan is organized around auto access. Buildings line the streets, but they open to an interior parking lot, not to the sidewalk. Having proven that North San Jose’s market can support the ingredients of good urban places, the next step is to ensure that strong site planning can organize them into walkable and transit-supportive environments.
Stop 5: Crescent Village, San Jose
Developer: Irvine
1,750 rental apartments
10,000 sf retail
5-acre public parkCrescent Village is a multi-building rental project that will eventually include 1,750 units in wood buildings above parking podiums. Its developer, the Irvine Company, owns and manages it housing, which gives them a greater incentive to invest in placemaking and amenities. The buildings frame a five-acre park; concentrated around it are ground-floor retail and “placeholder” uses (like game rooms and a leasing office) that could eventually become leasable. Parking is in ground-level podiums, which are carefully placed to limit their impact.
The project’s architecture has the uniformity one might expect of this kind of instant neighborhood, but the construction quality is high and building details support the pedestrian experience. The biggest urban design challenge here is the inward orientation. Although the park is public, it feels like it belongs to the project, and the buildings connect more successfully to the village’s interior streets than to the surrounding streets of the neighborhood. In future projects, a portion of the open space fees might be well spent on better pedestrian connections to transit and other nearby amenities.
Stop 6: Cahill Park, San Jose
Developer: Avalon, Brooks St
Our final stop was Cahill Park, a residential neighborhood just behind San Jose’s Diridon Station combining streetfront retail, adaptive reuse of a former cannery, and housing of several types around a park that connects to the train station.
Of interest here is the way the development projects respond to the adjacent neighborhood while increasing overall densities. An excellent retail frontage meets the Alameda — a historic commercial street — separated by a narrow band of parking from four stories of housing above a parking podium. One edge of this project includes bungalows that back onto the podium, providing a familiar face to the neighborhood, while the other edge faces six stories of housing in a repurposed cannery. These buildings, plus two townhouse projects, are organized around a small park. Although the park is oddly shaped and a bit featureless, it is redeemed by being tightly enclosed by the surrounding buildings, creating an “urban room” that connects directly to the adjacent Caltrain station. One might wish for higher densities at this location (especially given that it will eventually be a high-speed rail stop), but overall, Cahill Park is a supremely livable setting with a lot to teach us.
See site plans for the projects >>
See more photos of the tour >>
Many thanks to our generous hosts:
Kelley Kahn, former project director, Office of Mayor Edwin Lee, City of San Francisco
Janice Thacher, partner, Wilson Meany
Hanson Hom, community development director, City of Sunnyvale
Joe Horwedel, director of Planning, Building,and Code Enforcement, City of San Jose
Kim Walesh, chief strategist, City of San JoseTags: community planning - March 6, 2013
Sacramento County Approves New Sprawl, Rejects the Sustainable Communities Strategy
By Egon Terplan and Ethan LavineThe Sacramento County Board of Supervisors is facing heavy criticism and a lawsuit for its decision to approve the Cordova Hills subdivision, a new development for 25,000 residents on what is now rolling hills and ranch land 22 miles east of downtown Sacramento. The development would add thousands of new homes far from the region’s center, violating the Sustainable Communities Strategy that every city and county in the region agreed upon last year. As the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) observes, the approval goes against decades of smart growth planning in the greater Sacramento area.
Senate Bill 375, the 2008 statewide law to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, requires each region in California to develop a coordinated plan — called a Sustainable Communities Strategy — to guide its long-term land use decisions and transportation investments. When the California Legislature approved SB 375 in 2008, many planners thought the law might be a strong tool to limit sprawling development. This action by Sacramento County shows that tougher rules might be necessary to ensure counties don't return to their old ways.
SPUR blogged about the Sacramento region's Sustainable Communities Strategy a few weeks after its approval last May. With that plan, the 22 cities and six counties in the region decided where development can and cannot occur in the decades to come. The Cordova Hills subdivision would add 8,000 residential units, in addition to retail and office space, on 2,419 acres of what is currently rural open space — an area not intended for development under the Sustainable Communities Strategy.
Of course, the only way that SB 375 can be effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions will be if the cities and counties involved in joint planning efforts stick to their agreements. In doing so, California will be able to accommodate millions of new residents in walkable, bikable communities served by public transportation. If more development along the lines of Cordova Hills is in our future, however, we'll fail to meet our climate change goals. This type of development is part of what led to our current land use patterns, where too many Californians must depend on their cars almost any time they leave home.
Sacramento County is making a mistake by approving the Cordova Hills subdivision — it's a “body blow for smart planning,” as the Sacramento Bee’s editorial page puts it. We hope the backlash to the decision will cause the Board of Supervisors to reconsider its position.
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