The Burlingame Voice

Calectrifying Caltrain

The Caltrain electrification saga took another turn per this Daily Journal piece

Caltrain is a step closer to becoming electrified after releasing a draft of its environmental impact report Friday that indicates it could need to acquire up to 1.5 acres outside of its right-of-way for substations and 18 acres for an electrical buffer zone along 51 miles of its tracks.

The public will have until April 29 to submit written comments and attend meetings before the draft EIR is voted on by the Joint Powers Board in the fall, according to Caltrain officials.

Deeper in the story comes the bad news including:

There are 19,000 trees in the Caltrain right-of-way and it may need to remove or prune up to 5,800 of them, according to the draft.  “When we get to trees, it’s going to be a hard discussion to have with folks,” Lee said.

especially the 239 trees in B'game, and

it’s going to pave the way for high-speed rail to operate on this corridor once they have completed their EIR process. 

That is totally dependent on High-cost rail getting another dime of dough from anywhere which is suspect.  Better to start looking for independent electro-funding now.  I hope the two new palm trees are not on the list of 239.

 

$300M for Open Space?

The SM County Times did a preview piece on tonight's vote by the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District on whether or not to put a bond measure on the June ballot.  You should click through to read the whole thing since it is nicely fact-filled.  Here are a couple of them:

To date, it has acquired 62,167 acres, an area twice the size of the city of San Francisco.

But because so much of the agency's money went to buy land, and to service debt on those purchases, it hasn't had enough to hire sufficient rangers, planners and other staff to open all the lands to the public or build a network of trails connecting its lands. Currently, only 54 percent of its acreage is open to the public, with major properties padlocked, including much of the land around Mount Umunhum south of San Jose, the Bear Creek Redwoods property near Los Gatos on the site of the former Alma College, and Miramontes Ridge, between Half Moon Bay and Skyline Drive.

Let's just set aside the issue of whether "south of San Jose" is the midpeninsula and go on to note

The Peninsula Open Space Trust, in Palo Alto, has hired a campaign manager and will spend roughly $1 million on a campaign with direct mail and radio ads to advocate for yes votes.

Not sure about this one.  I love "open space" but the buying may be getting ahead of the maintaining.  Here's a real midpeninsula view.

Holocaust Educator

If you are not attending B'game Historical Society quarterly meetings you are missing some great events like this and this.  Yesterday's meeting was no exception as a local Holocaust survivor, author and educator spoke to the Society in the Lane Room.

Helen Farkas moved to B'game in 1962 and is still residing in the Mills Estates home that she and her late husband bought new.  Her journey here is a long and painful one starting in Transylvania as it vascillated between being Romanian and Hungarian.  Helen was able to describe how the slow descent towards the Holocaust began with anti-Semitic posters, confiscated radios (so they would not listen to Voice of America), wearing the yellow Star of David, etc.  She was taken to Auschwitz with her family, separated from all but her sister, and eventually escaped during the Death March to Czechoslovakia.

Helen took some questions and offered her book for sale (Remember the Holocaust, 1995) that is offered in conjunction with Mercy High School (in SF) where the Farkas Center is located.  Reading about the Holocaust is one thing, hearing about it as we did (and as 400 students at BHS did last week) is quite another.  Here is Helen.

Safeway Buy-out?

After all of those years following Safeway including posts up to Part 74 on the new building it's almost reflexive to post on any news that is Safeway-related.  It appears from news reports that Safeway is about to be taken private by Cerberus.  The stock has done OK over the last year (NYSE: SWY, low about $22, currently about $37-38), but there must still be some meat on the bone for the private equity guys.  There are a couple of PE bloggers who read the Voice--any thoughts?

I'm glad we got the new store done when we did two and half years ago.

Rec Center Studies Continue

The Daily Journal has a piece about the on-going Rec Center scoping sessions that notes

The city has said the current building is not seismically sound. It is looking at a variety of options, including three possible locations for a new building, all of which would still be east of the Burlingame Avenue Caltrain Station on the residential stretch of Burlingame Avenue. The first would be a 30,200-square-foot building closer to Caltrain, the second would be the popular 35,500-square-foot building located where the current community center is and the last would be a 41,900-square-foot structure a little farther down the street. The current structure is 25,000 square feet.

Eagle-eye blogger Lorne notes on our post from last October that

I didn't realize one possibility is a new rec center combined with a new city hall building (i.e., civic center)- with an estimated price tag of $56 million, per this list on the city's website:

http://www.burlingame.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=913

And sure enough on the top of page 4 that idea is broached.  If I recall, the idea would be to sell the current City Hall site to raise part of the nut.  It will be interesting to see how any of this pencils out financially with or without underground parking.

B'game Real Estate Trends

Courtesy of the Green Banker this time, we read that there were 256 home sold in B'game in 2013.  That number appears to be down just a bit from 2012 when 270 were sold plus whatever sold in "Ingold Millsdale" i.e. Rollins north of B'way where the 2012 data was missing, but also probably very small.  210 of the 256 (82%) sold in 30 days or less.  Today's Wall Street Journal notes that

one widely tracked measure of housing costs is the average national home price divided by the average rent.  That ratio stood at 14 in the third quarter...that is above the average ratio of 12 between 1989 and 2003, which is considered a 'normal,' preboom home market.  Some major cities are looking even more out of whack.  San Francisco has a price/rent ratio of 32 compared with its average of 28 between 1989 and 2003.

The Journal notes that EssEff saw appreciation above 20% and we recall that The Times had a chart showing the May 2013 real estate figures of note. B'game's median price was $1.433 million, up 39.7% on 38 transacted properties.  So will B'game cool off or will the tech wave keep the buyers coming?

More Musings on Asia

I had to hop over to Tokyo and back in 72 hours this week-- 72.5 to be exact-- and I don't recommend it.  But as usual, it does give one time to think about B'game similarities and differences like my visit to Singapore in 2011.  This Tokyo trip was my first time using Haneda airport which is much closer to the city center than Narita--not as close as B'game is to SFO but close.  We travelers from B'game are spoiled--12 minutes to curbside is a luxury that our friends from Orinda or Palo Alto can just dream about.  I did read about upcoming SFO issues that may make for a long summer

The San Francisco International Airport announced plans to temporarily close two runways during the summer of 2014 to complete the final phase of multi-year, federally mandated Runway Safety Area (RSA) construction project.

The project, required by federal statute to be completed by the end of 2015, will reconfigure Runways 1L and 1R to provide additional thresholds to safely slow an aircraft should it overshoot a runway.  Construction is scheduled to begin on May 17, 2014 and is planned to last through September 2014.

The other notable thing about the Tokyo-B'game musings is that we really do have pretty good sushi here.  The Japanese eat a variety of styles beside sushi, but everytime I have it there I am reminded how comparable ours is at Sakae, Barracuda, Isobune, Tomokazu and the bargain spot Yamo Yamo (on the San Mateo side of Peninsula Ave.)  We're very lucky.

Presidents' Day Blossoms

This New Englander's neverending fascination with California flora and fauna brings you a photo of (correction: fruiting plum) blossoms taken here in B'game five minutes ago!

The current temperature in my hometown is 19 degrees.  The Washington, D.C. cherry blossom festival is still a month away!  Enjoy.

Sunrise....Still....Not....Moving Ahead?

The Daily Journal has a piece on one of the longest running issues in the north end.  You can read the tale of woe here and here.

Frustration is mounting with an unfinished senior housing building at the corner of Trousdale and Ogden drives in Burlingame and the City Council is even considering a lawsuit against Sunrise Senior Living, the company that intends to build on the site.

The four-story, 79-unit project at 1818 Trousdale Drive was originally approved by the Planning Commission in 2006, but ran into bumps due to the 2008 economic downturn, the company said. Potential litigation was a closed session agenda item for the City Council Friday afternoon, but there was no action reported out of the meeting, City Attorney Kathleen Kane said in an email.

I won't bother to repost the photo from August of 2009 that you see in the link above--you all know what it looks like to this day...........

Gas Meter Upgrade Magic

We were out of town last week and I got home to discover a PG&E Service Report that showed PG&E had come by and installed a new gas meter all on their own initiative.  I guess that is good.  If PG&E thinks it needs changing, then I definitely want it changed!  The open question is how they did it and figured out to restart my water heater and whatever else needed starting without me being here?  I'm not sure since my old house has two meters from back in the days of WW2 when it was a duplex, but I like it.  The new meter also has the smart meter attached as before.  That smart meter accuracy debate seems to have quieted down.