"S.F.’s Fifth Street Center of Development Plans"

San Francisco Chronicle | November 23, 2011

More tranSFormation is coming to San Francisco’s South of Market district, this time in the form of a university campus. University of the Pacific just closed a $47 million deal to buy the former Wells Fargo building at 155 Fifth St. and turn it into a spanking new location for its Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry.

The seven-story, 395,000-square-foot building, across the street from The Chronicle, is to be completely renovated, both inside and out, to make way for the dental school’s classrooms, labs, research space, patient care and future university programs.The top two floors of the building will be leased separately as office space.

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"Area Roads Among Most Congested"

San Francisco Chronicle | November 17, 2011

Bay Area roads are some of the most congested in the country, according to a new study from the Texas Transportation Institute.

The study, which ranks specific traffic corridors based on overall congestion, unpredictable congestion and “reliable unreliability,” says a half-dozen highways in the Bay Area are gridlocked, logjammed, bumper-t0-bumper, packed like sardines … well, you get the idea.

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"2011: The year of (almost) no new housing in San Francisco"

San Francisco Business Times | November 11, 2011

Every year around this time the editorial staff at the San Francisco Business Times begins soliciting nominations for our annual Real Estate Deals of the Year (which publishes in March the following year).

But as we look across the cityscape of what was completed in 2011, we are coming to a startling conclusion: Not one market rate housing project of more than 30 units opened this year.

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"San Francisco Renters: SOL until 2014?"

Curbed | November 9, 2011

For new renters, or people looking to move to a new rental, we have not such great news. None of which should come as a surprise. According to the San Francisco Business Times, the rental vacancy rate in town is at 3.2% and rents are up 9%.

Despite reports that California is losing population, the nine Bay Area counties are expected to add 30/35K new residents this year.

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"$200M San Francisco Rental Project to Break Ground"

San Francisco Business Times | November 4, 2011

Swinerton Builders has received the green light to start work on a long-stalled 749-unit apartment complex at 10th and Market streets in San Francisco.

The $200 million project, being developed by Miami-based Crescent Heights , is a central piece of the city’s plan to bring new activity and investment into the Mid-Market neighborhood. The development, originally for-sale condos, was shelved before the recession started in 2008; it was redesigned as apartments last year.

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"San Francisco apartment vacancies sink to 3.2 percent"

San Francisco Business Times | November 4, 2011

In San Francisco proper the vacancy rate is an ever lower 3.2 percent, and demand has pushed rents up 9 percent in the past year to an average of $2,568 per month. San Mateo County also has a 3.2 percent vacancy and rents have climbed 11 percent to an average of $1,934.

Yet just 1,400 new Bay Area rental housing units came online in 2010, about half of the rental housing production the area saw between 2005 and 2009, according to Cassidy Turley.

 

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"It’s the Parking, Stupid: One Transportation Consultant’s Tough Love Approach"

The Atlantic Cities | October 20, 2011

Transportation consultant Jeffrey Tumlin figures that you’ve got to be colorful when you’re talking about the intractable problems of urban parking infrastructure. As such, he describes what he does this way: “Our business operates like a methadone clinic to get cities off their parking addictions,” he says. “And each addict goes through a different route.”

Tumlin, a principle with transportation planning consultancy Nelson/Nygaard in San Francisco, has worked with cities on the East and West Coast to build more transit-oriented development and fewer parking garage behemoths.

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"S.F.’s South of Market a tech magnet"

San Francisco Chronicle | October 14, 2011

Forty technology companies are looking for close to 2 million square feet of office space in San Francisco, most of it South of Market, according to a report by real estate firm Colliers International.

That, as was pointed out in the course of yet another tech office opening attended by Mayor Ed Lee on Thursday, is the “equivalent of nearly four Transamerica Pyramids.” Add that to the 1.6 million square feet of net new office space leased so far this year in the city – the highest number in the past four years, according to Colliers.

The mayor was on hand to welcome one of the more recent newcomers to the area, a social-gaming company called Idle Games, which designs games for Facebook, one of which is called “Idle Worship,” “the world’s first polytheistic god game with exploding bunnies.”

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"L.A. investor buying into Mid-Market renaissance"

San Francisco Business Times | September 16, 2011

Los Angeles-based Laurus Corp. is the latest investor to reach for a piece of the promising Mid-Market renaissance, paying $27 million for the current PUC headquarters building at 1145-1155 Market St.

The $193 million-a-square-foot investment comes at a time when private capital is flocking to the Mid-Market neighborhood. Earlier this year, Shorenstein Properties paid $110 million for 1355 Market St.

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"‘Twitter effect’ takes hold of San Francisco’s mid-Market area"

The Examiner | September 4, 2011

If the four decades of sluggish revitalization progress in The City’s mid-Market Street neighborhood are any indication, it will take more than street murals to fix the heart of San Francisco. 

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