The Burlingame Voice

B'game Rating: #38

The wizards at the San Francisco magazine have rated all 101 cities and towns in the Bay Area and we came out at number 38.  By combining scores for Education, Diversity, Health, Transit, Affordability, Public Safety, Culture and their own fudge factor "Editors' Rank", they arrive at Albany being the best place to live in the Bay Area.  Six years ago we were labelled as a sort of Utopia by the same magazine, so let's dig in a bit deeper.  Here are the scores

I get the good scores for Education and Transit.  Our public schools are quite good in spite of occasional issues with administrators at BIS and BHS and there are a lot of residents with bachelor's degrees or higher.  I also get how we land near the bottom in Affordability since we have always been an expensive place to live--it is more a result of the other criteria than an input on its own.  But how is B'game in the bottom half on Health?  They use physicians per capita, air quality scores and percentage of residents without health insurance.  With a major hospital in town and doctor's offices surrounding it, we must rate pretty high on the first one.  I hear at the meetings on the SFO runway noise that some residents also smell jet fuel fumes, but I doubt our air quality is below the median.

The real head-scratchers are Public Safety on the downside and Culture on the upside.  B'game has recently returned to "full strength" with 40 sworn officers and crime rates (aside from car break-ins mostly at Bayfront hotels) are pretty low.  Oakland ranked just ahead of us at 57!  And they do mean Oakland, California!!  There must be some spreadsheet error somewhere at the magazine.

I also cannot fathom how we got to number 15 in the whole Bay Area on Culture when the critieria are artistic venues per capita (we've got none other than the tiny art museum on the north end), the number of residents who list their occupation as "artist" (on Open Studio weekends we have a couple), and liquor licenses per capita.  I guess if one considers drinking with muzak playing "culture" we do OK.  While #38 isn't bad, I can't take much heart in the overall subjective nature of it all.  You won't catch many B'gamers moving to Colma (#18) or Pacifica (#22) or Belmont (#24).  I bet we just stay put.   
 

More Avenue Woes: Books Inc. Closing

You can't chat with any local B'gamer for very long before you hear two things:  "I'm going to miss Orchard Supply in Millbrae" and "I wish the Avenue would stay more local" or words to that effect like "it's just an outdoor mall" or "why can't we have more non-chain stores" or "how many hair and nail salons does this town need"?  Here is news from the DJ about the closing of another chapter in the Avenue's story

After almost two decades of enduring a changing industry and local marketplace, independent bookstore Books Inc. announced it will be shuttering its location on Burlingame Avenue.   Though the parent company continues to thrive despite the threat to retailers posed by the trend toward online sales, (President Michael) Tucker said the decision to close had more to do with the transition taking place in downtown Burlingame.  “It’s just the reality of what goes on, that a low-margin business like books cannot compete for occupancy with the big boys, the national brands,” said Tucker, nodding to the corporations such as Apple, Lululemon or Pottery Barn which also occupy nearby storefronts.

You can click through to read the full story including kind words about Karim Salma (the landlord) and more of the DBID president's thoughts

Juan Loredo, president of the downtown business improvement district, said the company’s decision to leave is similar to the other tough choices faced by other local retailers.  “The internet kind of paved the way for these smaller places and retail shops to leave because everyone is online shopping,” he said.

And this is welcome news also

Tucker took time to note though that the company plans to preserve its connection with local schools and organizations in Burlingame which the company has partnered with over the years.

Maybe this is an opening for some bookseller to find space in a less expensive part of B'game to make another run at it.  I still miss the Feldman's that was a block north of B'way before consolidating down to the Menlo Park main store.

 

Drive-in Reality on the Bayfront

I suppose it is appropriate that the old Burlingame Drive-in, home to many a night of virtual reality viewing through car windshields, would become the home of the Facebook Oculus virtual reality (VR) business unit.  The Daily Journal is following up on the SF Business Times' piece and television newscasts with a story today about the proposed lease

Mayor Michael Brownrigg expressed his enthusiasm over the social media titan’s announcement.  “No more ‘Boring-game,’” declared Brownrigg, who said the decision is further indication of the city’s viability as a hub of industry.

Under terms of the agreement approved by the commission, Facebook will be the sole occupant of the 767,000 square feet to be spread across two five-story buildings, one seven-story building, one eight-story building and a two-story amenities building.

Furthering that transformation will be other developments in the area east of Highway 101, where adjacent to that site, interest has been expressed in developing property owned by the State Lands Commission into a hotel. North of the proposed site, sports entertainment enterprise Topgolf is slated to move into the city’s driving range.

A proposal has also been filed to build the SFO Technology Center, slated to house more than 239,000 square feet of office space, about 11,000 square feet for a restaurant and more than 8,000 square feet of retail space at the former Hyatt Cinema site.

You should click through to read the fine print about traffic and the usual platitudes about "alternative modes of transportation".  Pardon me for not being quite so enthusiastic about a million plus new square feet of Bayfront development without a traffic plan already in place.  And exactly what are the alternatives?  The Broadway overpass is done and functional at the current load, but probably not much more.  Any Anza access is years away.  Facebook better try to put a pier in for ferry service!

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.

Drive-in Update: More jobs, more expensive housing and water

If you have not been out to the Bayfront lately here is a photo of the big 301 Airport Blvd. project's progress.  Suffice it to say it is rolling along.  With B'game real estate prices up more than 25% year-over-year and rents up about 14% (see the post directly below this one) it would appear that forces are in place to keep us on that trajectory.  Here is the next big demand driver.

Of course there are no new water sources for any of this and, in fact, the Chronicle just reported

Water bills in San Francisco are set to rise steadily over the next four years, after the approval of a rate schedule by the city’s Public Utilities Commission.  The city’s combined bill for water and sewer services will climb by an average of 8.4 percent, or around $10, each year through 2022, according to the commission.

So you know we are not far behind since we all feed off of Hetch Hetchy which they control.  Build it into your family budget now.

Housing by the Numbers

In preparation for the Housing Forum on Saturday, here are a couple of statistics about housing costs in the Bay Area and B'game.  Today's Chronicle piece addresses real estate prices by noting

The median Bay Area home price surged to an all-time high of $820,000 in March, up 9.3 percent from February and up 14.7 percent from March of last year, research firm CoreLogic reported Tuesday.  For the fourth consecutive month, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties showed the steepest year over year gains: 33.6 and 25.7 percent, respectively.

People “are trying to desperately buy something before it becomes completely unaffordable,” said Scott Anderson, chief economist with Bank of the West. “Six months, a year from now, you will see more of the downside from rising rates.”

While Zumper has provided this B'game-specific information to the Voice

-Burlingame ranked as the 7th most expensive city in the Bay Area to rent this month.

-The price of one bedroom units grew 4.4% to a median of $2,620, while two bedrooms jumped 5% to $3,390.

If you click through to the Zumper blog post and view the Yearly 1 Bedroom Rent Evolution chart you will see they find a 14% YoY increase--which is more than 45% less than the real estate price increase noted above for San Mateo County.  I'm guessing B'game is at the upper end of the County increases, so rents are increasing much slower than residential prices.  Food for thought before there is another run at rent control.

Recycling on Steroids?

The second of our two environmental posts today has to do with what the City requires, or in B'game's case, what the City doesn't require of the scrapers who teardown houses in town.  Some cities have requirements that a certain percentage of the demolished material from a major remodel or a teardown gets recycled, preferably by another direct user.  I recently got a set of French doors off of Craigslist.  They were in Palo Alto and while picking them up from a homeowner doing a major remodel, I also signed a city form stating that I was taking the doors (that weighed about x pounds) for my project.  Other cities require salvage companies to be alerted and offered first crack before the claw arrives.  Seems like a great idea and likely to have more positive impact than many of the so-called green initiatives that are so popular today.  Here is a local teardown that is just happening and a shot of some very cool windows that don't appear to be headed for reuse (not the broken panes).  This would seem to be simple and effective.

Development Bookends

Today's Daily Journal covers our bookends -- San Mateo and Millbrae going a bit nuts.  The Millbrae piece reports

Following hours of detailed analysis and passionate discussion, (Millbrae) officials ultimately accepted the proposal to build 444 housing units, more than 270,000 square feet of offices and up to approximately 30,000 square feet of retail space in three towers up to 10 stories near the BART and Caltrain station.

Well, the analysis couldn't have been that "detailed" or it would have noted the mess this will make of Millbrae Ave. (which is already a bit of a mess) and it would address where the water is supposed to come from.  It would appear the EIR process is a joke in Millbrae.  On our southern exposure, San Mateo just can't seem to get enough as the DJ reports here

How a 935-unit residential development proposed to replace the Concar Shopping Center in San Mateo will affect the services and stores members of neighboring communities use was among the concerns residents aired at the Planning Commission’s Tuesday study session.

Though the project, dubbed the Passage at San Mateo, is set to retain a Trader Joe’s and 7-Eleven on site and also provide a dining hall, park space and a transit hub open to residents of nearby communities, Sunnybrae resident Barbara Niss found the loss or relocation of well-used amenities like Rite Aid, Trader Joe’s and the nonprofit Peninsula Ballet Theatre to be disheartening.  For Niss, new projects like the 12-acre Station Park Green project — which will add 599 housing units, 2 acres of parks and open space, as well as 25,000 square feet of commercial space and 10,000 square feet of office space across the street from the project — already promise to affect the area.

An just for kicks the hacks at the SF Chronicle editorial page try to take to task all of the candidates to replace Jerry Brown as governor for not supporting the abusive SB827

The leading candidates have plenty of proposals to ramp up government spending on housing for the needy. What they generally oppose is any threat to sacrosanct “local control” over what may be built. And the fact is that local control caused the housing crisis and will perpetuate it in the absence of courageous leadership.

Since when did local control deserve to be in quotes?  Only in the mind of socialists and myopic thinkers.  At least the gubernatorial candidates appear to have some sense of right, wrong and responsibility.  Let's hope it stays that way.

"Housing Advocates" Please Go Away

I am thoroughly sick and tired of the so-called housing advocates trying to pressure every City decision to add more housing.  In yesterday's Daily Journal we get two more examples.  First, the piece on redeveloping a piece of Bayfront land that is sitting mostly idle is on the docket for a meeting tonight with the State Lands Commission and the city and residents

State officials received an application from H&Q Asia Pacific in 2016 to develop a new hotel and park at the site, prompting a neighbor of the property to offer an alternative proposal to preserve the land as open space.

SPHERE Institute, a public policy research firm headquartered in the area east of Highway 101 along the city’s Bayfront, expressed an interest in leading the financing campaign to preserve the wetlands which exist on the property.

Housing advocates have also called for the site to be built into a residential development.

Really?  These clowns have no idea what it would take in city time, energy and expense to support ANY housing on the Bayfront.  There is no school, no police patrol to speak of (I know, I've done a drive-along with BPD), fire/ambulance coverage takes a lot of effort and will never be great without a new station that will never happen, and the weather sucks for the most part.  Just stop already!  Then this little gem of an idea pops up in the Rec Center article in the same edition

Under the direction from councilmembers, the architect will craft new designs and bring the issue back for further consideration in June.

While design revisions were considered, housing advocates suggested developing some residential units on top of the facility as a means of combating the city’s affordability crisis.

Stop already.  It's a Rec Center, not public housing.  The whole community is wondering where the heck the parking is going to come from for the recreation part and these clowns want to add housing?  Unbelievable.  We have a huge amount of housing already "in the dirt".  That's enough until all the other support services figure out how to handle the influx that has already been approved.   Oh, and just for good measure, we are back in a drought situation regardless of how much rain we get this week. 

Growth by the numbers

This Saturday, the Burlingame City Council will hold a study session where discussions regarding Burlingame's housing concerns will be on the table. According to the city's own estimates, housing projects that have been approved and some that are in the pipeline will add more than 500 units to our current housing stock. All of these units are in multi-dwelling buildings. If you have never been to one of these meetings, I guarantee you will find it interesting. It's a bit less formal than a council meeting, but not much, but you will hopefully hear the council opine in a more open environment.

The question imho, is this growth "smart growth" or just "growth to meet the state's mandatory numbers?" Another question is regarding affordable housing. Is this a response to those who claim we need it or is there some science behind it?

The session begins at 9am and will be held in the Lane Room at the Burlingame Library. The agenda is here.