Month: June 2011

  • For Sale?

    The financial troubles of the U.S. Postal Service have been covered in the Journal at some length.  Now USPS officials are saying that at least some of the main PO between Park Rd and Lorton Ave. will be put up for sale for around 5 mil.  There's a nice lawn and plenty of parking as well as room to sublet in the building itself–but don't we need a Post Office there?  Plus there are historic aspect to the building which mean changes to it may not be easy to make.

    Post office

    Envision a nice little bandstand right here:

    Post office lawn2

  • B’game Housing Update

    A local realtor I'm not familar with, Lenore Wilkas, had a nice fact-filled piece in the Sunday Examiner.  There's no link on the site, but here are some interesting factoids about our local market:

    • B'game has a total of 7218 homes.  B'game Hills has total of 421 homes.  That's 7639 possiblities for home ownership in the B'game area.
    • Currently there are 63 active listings in the City of B'game (.9%) and 7 in the Hills (1.7%).  She notes that that's a low number which is why the prices are up and have been up all year and she is not seeing a lot of distressed sales.
    • Median price of a B'game real estate is $1.135M and price per square foot is around $625.
    • Lots aren't huge in most areas, with 6,000 square feet the usual size in the Easton Addition, but closer to downtown in Burlingame Park, lots are over 7,000 square in size.

    Good update—thanks, Lenore.

  • Silver Tsunami in B’game

    There were two pieces in the Sunday SF Examiner about senior housing and new construction

    In response to a massive projected increase in the number of seniors in the county, a new. 97-bed assisted-living home for the elderly is being planned across from the new Mills-Peninsula Medical Center in Burlingame.

    The Peninsula Health Care District, owner of the 1-acre plot at 1600 Trousdale Ave. where the home would be built, approved the plan last week and identified Aegis Living as the developer and operator of the proposed facility, district CEO Cheryl Fama said.

    The second article noted some of the things that would need to happen first
    The district has yet to submit a proposal to the city, said Burlingame Planning Manager Maureen Brooks. The area is currently zoned for office or medical uses.

    “I’d really like to have people come together to have a thoughtful conversation about the best use for the property,” said Mayor Terry Nagel. “It’s a huge opportunity to do something that would really have value for our city.”

    If the site is used for senior housing, Nagel is concerned that it might not be within walking distance to amenities seniors need and said some kind of shuttle service would need to be provided.

    But I not following the mayor's concern.  1600 Trousdale is the one-story white building that is right across the street from the back of B'game Plaza and across Trousdale from the new hospital.  I can't think of a more central location with two grocery stores, a drugstore, a couple breakfast and lunch places along with many other service businesses.  Seems ideal to me.

    Bgame Plaza

  • High-cost Rail Part 54 Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

    Today's news as reported by the AP in the Daily Journal and elsewhere is the Assembly's move to reign in the High-cost Rail Authority.

    The Assembly voted 50-16 Friday to place the rail project under a new Department of High-Speed Trains within the existing Business, Transportation and Housing Agency…..Democratic Assemblywoman Cathleen Galgiani, of Livingston, said her AB145 would ensure sufficient oversight of the project, intended to link San Francisco with Los Angeles and Anaheim at speeds of up to 220 mph.

    Sounds good right, but then she goes on to respond to another Assemblywoman with

    “Don’t fool yourself that you are going to get money from the federal government” beyond the roughly $3.5 billion already awarded, said Harkey. “The private market is not going to come forward until a route is profitable.”

    The high-speed rail system in France runs with a profit margin of 25 percent and the one on Japan at 50 percent, Galgiani responded.

    Wrong.  Wrong, Wrong.  Not only is that ridiculous on its face, but check out this recent piece in The Economist where they note

    The sole reason why Shinkansen plying the Tokaido route make money is the sheer density—and affluence—of the customers they serve. All the other Shinkansen routes in Japan lose cart-loads of cash, as high-speed trains do elsewhere in the world. Only indirect subsidies, creative accounting, political patronage and national chest-thumping keep them rolling.

    Galgiani must know this, and if she doesn't, she's not doing her job!

     

  • School Construction Progress

    I noticed two local elementary school construction projects are flying right along.  There are new wings coming for both Lincoln School

    Lincoln School addition

    and McKinley School which you see here from the El Camino side of the campus.

    McKinley School addition

    This is quite a bit of new space which is driven by the increasing enrollment we noted here using John Horgan's figures.  I have to believe this new capacity will cause some redistricting at some point.  That's always a tough conversation since people rely on the school selection in purchasing homes.  All five of B'games elementary schools are excellent, but people have their expectations and may not like change.

  • Climate Fearmongering

    You may have seen a letter to the editor in the Mercury Times yesterday from Alan Talansky and Linda Asbury of the San Mateo Area Chamber of Commerce that reads

    We have strong concerns about the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission's proposed amendments to the Bay Plan on Climate Change. We recognize that global warming is expected to result in sea level rise in the bay of 16 inches by midcentury and 55 inches by 2100. By then, more than 213,000 acres of bayside communities will be vulnerable to sea rise.

    The San Mateo Chamber of Commerce encourages the BCDC to go back and adopt a strategy that will affirm local government authority on land-use decisions and the need to first assess sea level threats to bayside communities before adoption of new zoning controls and guidelines; as well as acknowledge the role private investment and development could play in providing protection solutions to threats posed by sea level rise-related flooding, storm surge and inundation.

    The letter is a synopsis of a much larger press release from a group called Protect Our Bayside Communities.  Their cover letter is signed by Asbury and William Nack of the local Building & Construction Trades Council and includes this little gem

    Few people would dispute that global warming is causing oceans and the San Francisco Bay to rise.  Some scientists even predict that we'll see a 55 inch rise in Bay waters before the end of the century.

    I guess these people aren't reading the news–"global warming" had to be recast as "climate change" since the data on warming is ever more suspect as the UN IPCC members' e-mails leak out and raise serious questions about scientists' integrity.  We will be following "Protect Our Bayside Communities" positions but right now it looks more like "Protect Our Special Interests" and fearmongering looks to be the main tactic.

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