The Burlingame Voice

Millbrae Preservation Heroes

Here at the Voice we grab onto any positive preservation news we can find.  Yesterday's Daily Journal had a piece about the oldest home in Millbrae that fits the bill

Millbrae’s oldest house has new owners interested in preserving its historic charm, assuaging fears that the classic Victorian would be lost to redevelopment.  “We have got to give it the love and attention that a property of this vintage needs and deserves,” said Dean Woo, whose family closed on the house in late 2017.

The home at 1 Lewis Ave. was built in 1865 for former state assemblyman Alfred Green and put on the market last year without any protections requiring the structure to be maintained.  But Woo, 37, and his wife Helen said they fell in love with the home’s unique appeal, and are planning to maintain its original integrity and architecture.

Such a sentiment grants peace of mind to members of the Millbrae Historic Society, who worried while the home was up for sale that it would be purchased, razed and rebuilt like so many other classic homes along the Peninsula.

You can click through to the original article to read about how the Woo's intend to pull this off architecturally and financially, but here we'll just say "WooHoo"!  Nice job.

Burlingame Voice Blog is 15 Years Old Today!

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.

Some might say that Russ and I have frittered away more than a few hours on the Burlingame Voice, but it's our time to waste if we like and we find it cathartic.  We also get enough positive feedback from sources known (and unknown) that it feels worthwhile.  Ever since the days of the hard copy Voice hand-delivered to porches across town, he and I (along with various compatriots along the way) have provided an informed, vocal and intensely local opinion about events.  The move to on-line back on July 25, 2003 saved the time of designing and delivering the paper version and offered an opportunity to increase the reach and frequency and reduce costs.  The platform costs $14.99 a month which is much cheaper than a therapist!  You can check out those first few posts here.

The categories shown on the right hand frame have expanded over the years to 46 ways to find what you are interested in at the moment or relive some event or controversy of the past.  Try doing that on NextDoor, the newspapers or the City website!

When all is said and done, the Voice blog is a means for us to not suffer the fate Pink Floyd bemoans in Time

Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines

If one is to "scribble lines" they might as well be a full page worth!  Thank you, dear readers and commenters.  Onward to another 15 years!

H2O: Perhaps There is Hope

Members of the SM County Historical Society are being treated to a fantastic quarterly newsletter in the Spring issue focusing on "Water for San Francisco" which also means water for the rest of us on the Peninsula.  Two lengthy articles cover the history of the companies developing the dams, reservoirs and pipelines that form the complex system that ends at our faucets.  Society President Mitch Postell leads off with the early history noting that water was a concern as far back as 1850; causing competing companies to dam rivers, flood towns like Searsville and buy land around reservoirs to safeguard the surrounding watersheds.

Our local historical scribe, Joanne Garrison, follows with an article that delves into the contributions of William Bowers Bourn II who became the president and controlling shareholder of the Spring Valley Water Company in 1908.  Bourn was already wealthy and was able to upgrade facilities while simultaneously trying to sell the company to the City of EssEff; instead of the city building the Hetch Hetchy system.  SF bought the company in 1929 and built Hetch Hetchy--and has done very little since.

But today's SF Comicle article describes the partial funding for some long overdue upgrades to our water storage systems across the state.  Eight projects are listed as getting about half of what they need from Proposition 1 bond money.

Collectively, the projects would add about 4.3 million acre feet of water storage across the state, the equivalent of about a dozen of San Francisco’s Hetch Hetchy reservoirs.  “Getting the money is a greater step toward water reliability for the Bay Area region,” said Oliver Symonds, a spokesman for the Contra Costa Water District, which was allocated $459 million for the proposed $980 million expansion of Los Vaqueros Reservoir.  With its allocation, the Contra Costa Water District hopes to break ground in two years on raising the dam at Los Vaqueros Reservoir in the East Bay hills by 55 feet.  The district intends to share its additional supplies with other Bay Area providers, including the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and the East Bay Municipal Utility District. Those agencies are expected to help foot the balance of the project’s cost.

The Prop. 1 funding for water storage is the most the state has allocated since construction of the State Water Project, which consists of 21 dams and hundreds of miles of canals, built largely in the 1960s.

So it is a start, but just as it is wise to index things like wage increases or tax brackets to inflation, any water supply plans need to be indexed for population growth (as well as ensuring that agriculture and trees are not starved for water).  As Yosemite is being closed for the first time since 1990 due to a 37,000 acre wildfire and memories of the Santa Rosa fires are disturbingly fresh, we need to ask the question of whether or not Sacramento, San Mateo County and the City of B'game are really doing enough?  I think not.  In the meantime, do you have at least 15 gallons of water tucked away at your house?

  

Mural Mural on the Wall

When your family and friends come to visit B'game you now have a new destination spot to take them downtown.  And it's convenient while you wait for a table a one of the local revolving restaurants.  The Historical Society has been working diligently with the developer of the old Radio Shack building (Dewey Land Corp.) to incorporate a tile mural on Hatch Lane that enlivens a really boring space.  They have succeeded.  Wander down the alley and check out the newest addition to the B'game scene.  Here is a photo of the Historical Society board members at the Friday unveiling event that featured tasty bites from Cheese Please!, fun emcee commentary from my Voice colleague Russ Cohen who loves to give away raffle prizes (nice fedora) and about 75 of the movers and shakers in B'game.  #greetingsfromburlingame is the placeholder in the non-Voice social media, but why bother with that when you can see and discuss it here?

 

Avenue Woes

Austin Walsh at the Daily Journal has latched onto the concerns about rents and parking on "The Avenue" in this piece in today's paper.

The former homes to J. Crew, Anthropologie, Kara’s Cupcakes, Baby Couture, Aida Opera Candies and Gymboree are among the locations remaining unoccupied on the core commercial corridor.

Juan Loredo, president of the Downtown Business Improvement District, attributed the empty storefronts primarily to the inability or unwillingness of some companies to continue paying the high cost of doing business.

Juan makes the case for variety in the stores around the downtown and that certainly has been an issue as well.  The utter lack of any after-dinner entertainment is a glaring deficiency vis a vis Redwood City, Palo Alto and even San Carlos!   The ongoing parking issues also get mentioned but not analyzed (which is fine for a pure news piece) so we'll add some insight here.  Austin writes

Officials recognize parking constraints, and are planning to redevelop an existing surface lot into a garage offering 100 more spaces. On a neighboring lot, officials are seeking to construct an affordable housing development.

Business owners concerned about the loss of parking through the construction period have lobbied for the garage to be built before the housing development.

I'll bet there are more than a few business owners who also think adding a big chunk of new housing will only exacerbate the business-available parking.  They may be feeling the political-correctness pressure to not say so, but I bet they are thinking it.  With 220 California nearing completion and PAMF apparently pulling out of being the anchor tenant, we may see the impact of that under-parked monster building kick in long before any additional city parking even hits the drawing board.  We must also ask, "Where will the money come from?"

I felt that we had reached a tipping point when Anthropologie couldn't make it--and that pretty good, sizeable space is still available months later.  Keep the window paper handy.

SFO Runway Noise Response

We noted the two runway noise meetings being held by local activists on June 21st here.  Both meetings went off as planned and offered a lot of information and a plan to hopefully force SFO and its owner, the City of San Francisco, to investigate what has changed for the worse since 2015 --and maybe even do something about it.  One of the things I learned at the meeting are that the noise limits that are in place are purely voluntary by the pilots and there are little if any penalties for not following the guidance.  Some airlines are known to be worse offenders than others.  The standard is more than 40 years old and does not account for high and low frequencies.  Also, back in 2011 the County Grand Jury found that the Airport Roundtable was experiencing "diminishing effectiveness".  Given that the Airport Roundtable is the one body that local politicians and city staff have for interacting officially with airport officials, that "diminishing effectiveness" is of great concern.  It hasn't improved in the last seven years!

The airport has reacted like any bureaucracy would in response to legal inquiries about noise.  In a case mentioned during the meeting, they responded with 118,000 pages of "documentation".  We know from a commenter here at the Voice that certain changes in "engineered arresting materials" have been implemented and may be partially the cause of the nerve-wracking noise that we hear far too often.  Just try to find it in 118,000 pages.

The Plan:  The three women behind SFORunwaynoise.com have come up with a plan of attack based on a similar civil action that took place in B'game decades ago and worked.  By getting many B'game and H'borough people to file small claims against the City of SF, which they will naturally deny, residents can build up enough of a record to go to Small Claims court en masse.  It's worth a try.

In the meantime you can enroll at Flightware.com to see which noisy plane is disrupting your afternoon conversation in the yard or your attempt to get to sleep at 1:30 am.  The list of 1:30 am departures is very enlightening (see below).  Is there any reason why three flights to Taiwan or two to Hong Kong cannot leave at a decent hour?  I can't think of one.  Here's the form to fill out to join the effort--get one by emailing [email protected].

CAL3	B77W	Taiwan Taoyuan Int'l (TPE)	01:51a PDT		05:16a CST
EVA27	B77W	Taiwan Taoyuan Int'l (TPE)	01:46a PDT		04:59a CST
CMP383	B738	Tocumen Int'l (PTY)	01:38a PDT		10:24a EST
TAI561	A320	El Salvador Int'l (SAL)	01:36a PDT		07:59a CST
EVA17	B77W	Taiwan Taoyuan Int'l (TPE)	01:32a PDT		04:44a CST
SIA1	B77W	Hong Kong Int'l (HKG)	01:28a PDT		05:31a HKT
FJI871	A332	Nadi Int'l (NAN)	01:20a PDT		07:01a +12
CPA873	B77W	Hong Kong Int'l (HKG)	01:16a PDT		05:47a HKT
UAL2364	B752	Newark Liberty Intl (EWR)	01:12a PDT		09:12a EDT
UAL9	B788	Chengdu Shuangliu Int'l (CTU)	01:09a PDT		05:18a CST
UAL1197	B738	Houston Bush Int'ctl (IAH)	01:08a PDT		06:36a CDT

Four Thoughts for the Fourth

The Fourth of July has been a favorite holiday of mine since growing up in Pittsfield, Mass which is the home of a nationally famous parade, fair, firemens' muster and horse racing.  Taking time to reread the Declaration of Independence is something I do every Fourth.  Having married a Fourth of July birthday girl makes it even more special.  This year I'll add two other thoughts that came to mind as I was in San Bruno yesterday.  First, fireworks are illegal in B'game so please bear that in mind tonight.  I don't love the law, but I abide by it since it's the law.  Second, it is a fundamental principle of our form of government that local rules are just that--local.  So fireworks can be illegal in B'game but legal in San Bruno two towns north and it all works.  It feels like a bit of magic, and perhaps it is, but it's been working for 242 years so it has something going for it.  Happy Fourth of July!

  

Rec Center: The Glass Box Wins

Well folks, the Glass Box Rec Center design won out last night at City Council by a 5-0 vote. The theme of the council members' comments reflected some good points and some hand-waving. The good points were about natural light and views of the surrounding park and trees. We will have to see about that when the building is finished.  The idea that a tighter connection between the inside and outside is uniformly good is questionable.  If you live near the Glass Box you might disagree as one active local resident, Tom Paine, said last night.  Tom also characterized the architecture as looking like an insurance office.  The idea that staff are going to run around raising and lower shades to keep the light pollution down for the neighbors seems ambitious to me.  And the idea that seeing a yoga class in action might spur more people to take yoga, as Mayor Brownrigg suggested, ignores the fact that few people taking a yoga class want to do so in a fishbowl with spectators.  The estimate that all that glass would only be cleaned once per year doesn't hold water either.

I found the whole solar power, photo voltaic argument a little thin. The flatter, "butterfly" roof design of the Glass Box allows for more square footage of solar panels by about half (50% verses 75-80%), but square footage is not as important as actual light energy collected.  With the flatter profile, the Mission design might have a substantial advantage in the winter months.  I have some experience with "Low E" windows that keep out some of the heat--they are not perfect.  With this much glass the energy profile of the building needs to take into account heating and cooling usage not just the solar energy collected.  If you end up roasting inside in the summer you will know who to blame.

In the end, we get the Glass Box regardless of the reasons.  It was noted several times that this is a 50 year decision.  Let's hope it's not a gamble that turns out to be a 50 year mistake.  On the bright side, all of the original bad ideas like tearing up a huge swath of the park, moving the tennis courts and the Lion's Club, or putting "affordable housing" on the top floors fell by the wayside.  For that we should be thankful.