The Burlingame Voice

Rating Architecture

In a crowd-sourced world people can rate just about anything.  Los Altos has gone out in front by having residents rate which buildings they like and dislike.  The Daily Post covers the professional survey that offered residents the chance to rate seven new buildings in town.

Skipping the local Los Altos detail, the piece notes that satisfaction with their downtown is up 14% from three years ago.  I would bet we would find the same after the Avenew renewal.  But parking convenience is way down.  Again, probably the same in B'game.  And 51% said more office space downtown would be a bad thing vs. 39% in favor.  Again, probably the same but unless the city council decides to do some thing similar we won't know for sure.

Electric Bounce

The electricity went out twice this morning for short periods causing a bit of havoc for contractors and work at home information workers.  The automated phone calls from PG&E were somewhat helpful--at least you know they know.  

Movin' on up

It's 11:30pm on a Monday and I have just returned from a Burlingame Planning Commission meeting. Before attending the meeting I was generally pleased with the scrutiny most of the commission members were giving the projects that came before them, until tonight, it seemed to me they were throwing in the towel on the notion of neighborhood consistency. 

I made some comments that I was concerned about second story additions being approved in neighborhoods where none existed. My contention is that there isn't anyway a monster house can fit into the consistency of a street where no monster houses exist. The answer was kind of a shrug of the collective shoulders by the commission. Paraphrasing here, "Well everyone has a right to build what they want as long as they are doing it within the rules." Well isn't one of the rules "neighborhood consistency?"

To be clear, I am not against growth or building second stories. I am against poor design. The photo attached is an example of a home that was approved tonight, one block from my house. Nothing really wrong with it, but nothing really right with it either. Same old, same old. Does it add value to the hood? Some might say it actually deters from the hood. I would be amongst the "some."

I have much more to say on the subject, but this post is rambling as it is.

Simply out, the debate will continue. As one commissioner said tonight, paraphrasing again, "Until we reduce the FAR, we're going to be approving these second story additions throughout town, no matter what the neighborhood looks or feels like.

So much for neighborhood consistency.

Downtown Eats: Going and Coming

I'm catching up after a busy week of business travel where I mused about Ocean Beach.  But it's always great to get back to B'game and check out what is changing.  Aside from the widespread consternation about the massive over-development that may subsume the south and east sides of town, the typical churn of downtown restaurants also proceeds apace.

People are wondering which way Which Wich went as it left town.  I must say, having only eaten at one of them that was in San Diego, I am not surprised.  We have many better alternatives from Sam's and CJ's to Bonne Sante which has expanded to San Mateo as well.

The next establishment to take a shot on the Avenew is Rangoon Ruby going in where a few have had moderate success before.  That is not a comment on the location since two doors down, Mingalaba continues to have lines out the door at its smaller space.  Good luck, RR.

And yet we still have no regular music venue on the Avenew.  It's pretty sad.

Lions Cars in the Park: Another Success

The 2015 Cars in the Park car show put on by the B'game Lions was another rousing success.  Chilly early morning weather cleared nicely and the crowds saw some fantastic cars from mostly local owners, but with a few visitors from afar.  The lovely setting in Washington Park is ensuring repeat exhibitors including a few of my favorites like GTOs, Jag XKEs, Z-cars and hot rods like this one with its Bonneville Salt Flats sticker on the windshield.

High-Cost Rail - Part 113 Oxford on "Megaprojects"

I enjoyed a little squib in the Wall Street Journal this past week about large public or public-private projects.  They wrote

One of the most enlightening recent guides to modern politics is a study of such politicial "megaprojects."  Think California's "bullet train".  According to Bent Flyvbjerg of Oxford University, the world is increasingly addicted to such boondoggles, which annually consume between 6% and 9% of global GDP. ...These projects operate on the principle of of bombastic exaggeration.  Mr. Flyvbjerg calls it "survival of the unfittest"--a politicized selection process that rewards those promoters who are most shameless in overstating benefits and understating costs.

Bingo.  And he even used my favorite term for these - Boondoggle.  We have known this for at least four years as people dug into the numbers.  In the meantime the bulldozers continue to generate CO2 that will never be recouped and burn tax dollars that are both spent illegally and wastefully.

 

Musings on Ocean Beach (OB, San Diego)

My global travels often set me to thinking about B'game.  Call it homesickness perhaps.  I made the latest post about noise at SFO while I was in Tokyo a couple of weeks ago.  Tonight I am wrapping up a week in San Diego which is my second visit in six weeks.  I found a great restaurant in the Ocean Beach neighborhood of San Diego during the last visit and I just took a party of 25 back there tonight (sounding a bit like Bruce Dickinson, I know).

What struck me about the evening was not the restaurant, good as it was.  Ocean Beach (  "OB"  ) is every bit as desirable as B'game.  Arguably it is more desirable since it is on the beach, but it is also 20 minutes out of downtown San Diego (like B'game), filled with cute bungalows that cost $1.4M+ (like B'game) and in a region that is growing via the 3rd wave Internet boom, biotech and the like (like B'game).

So why are there no ugly, Hong Kong-style glass block offices, chain stores, or McMansions encroaching on the ambiance of OB?  Why are there local restaurants, clubs that actually host live bands, and antique stores and other local businesses apparently surviving just fine?  Do they have smarter City Council members who take the "long view" as espoused by Linda Lees Dwyer on this post?  Are their citizens and voters more engaged than B'game voters?  Do they have higher IQs?  Better General Plans?  I'm puzzled.  OB feels like Old Burlingame, yet it survives in 2015.  Why is that and what can we do about it?

Revving Up in B'game

If you were on the Avenew early this morning, you got a free sneak preview of tomorrow's Hillsborough Concours d'Elegance.  The Ferrari count was way up there and this Shelby Cobra caught my eye.  Don't forget the annual Lion's Club car show is next Saturday in Washington Park.

Animal Shelter Upgrade

From the Daily Journal we read that

The county will start looking for qualified builders to construct a new $20 million animal shelter on Airport Boulevard to replace its antiquated facility at Coyote Point.  The project at 12 Airport Blvd. is expected to be completed in October 2017, according to Porter’s report.

San Mateo County contracts with the Peninsula Humane Society for its animal control and sheltering services. Animals are processed at the current location at Airport Boulevard and, if or when deemed ready for adoption, moved to the Tom Lantos Center for Compassion, the donor-funded facility that opened in 2011 on Burlingame’s Rollins Road.

Here is the Rollins Rd. facility if you haven't had a chance to go by and see the adoptable pets.

SFO Noise Survey

Rep. Anna Eschoo has a web survey out to gather her constituents' opinions on SFO noise which we find problematic in B'game especially during stormy weather.  It asks about things like noise frequency, the times of day, duration and the like.  I'm sure SFO could provide her with all sorts of detail about it, but this is good politics if nothing else.  Apparently Eschoo and our Rep. Jackie Speier have created the "Quiet Skies Caucus".

For reference, the SFO Noise Abatement page is here.  Even more interesting is this take-off and landing map that I found on paloaltoonline.com.  They have a bit of news about the NextGen flight program that started in March 2015, but that is mostly about landing paths.  My sense is that take-offs are the main B'game noise issue.  The purple SFO take-off patterns in the chart show four of five routes shooting engine noise right over B'game and the fifth one is mostly for the "heavies" like 777's that take off low and slow (and loud) right over South City.  Not sure there is much that can be done about this.  Just another chapter in the love-hate relationship with SFO.