Category: Design Review

  • San Mateo Safeway: Going Big

    The SF Comicle and the Daily Journal both had articles about the proposed redevelopment of the San Mateo Safeway into an EssEff-like commercial-residential hybrid like the one near Oracle Park. From the Chron:

    A Safeway store along El Camino Real in San Mateo is slated for a dramatic transformation, with a San Francisco developer pitching to replace the low-rise building with a dense housing complex.

    Align Real Estate on Tuesday filed an application to bring 396 new homes to 1655 S. El Camino Real, a nearly 3-acre site close to the Hayward Park Caltrain Station. The proposal involves razing the existing grocery store at the site and replacing it with a larger Safeway, topped by the planned housing, in a building that would rise seven stories. Roughly 55 of the proposed units will be income-restricted, and secured parking for both future residents and shoppers will be added to the site. 

    The piece rehashes the controversy over the giant Safeway store proposed in the Marina and refers to the state laws that are effectively gutting local control over development, but here is the real kicker in bold text

    Unlike some of the San Francisco neighborhoods targeted by Align, San Mateo has seen a notable uptick in housing development in recent years, driven largely by transit‑oriented infill and a push to address the region’s housing shortage — though affordability remains a major challenge. The most significant completed project is the Bay Meadows master plan, which has transformed the former racetrack into a mixed‑use neighborhood with about 1,100 new homes alongside offices, retail and parks, centered on access to Caltrain.

    That’s right. 1,100 new homes at the racetrack site near “access to Caltrain” and affordability is still considered “unaffordable” in San Mateo.  The fiction that we can outbuild the demand to live on the mid-Peninsula lives on. In the meantime, cities up and down the Peninsula approve more tech/biotech office space. Then they wonder why residential redevelopment doesn’t do what they thought it would do. And the infrastructure and school costs continue to spiral.

  • Single Family housing: Still popular with the kids

    During an on-line interview with San Jose mayor Matt Mahan as part of his run for governor, GFC‘s David Crane passed along an interesting anecdotal statistic from the class he teaches at Stanford. The context was a discussion of in-fill development and “green-fill development” or building on bare land further outside the suburbs. Mahan walked the fine line of sounding like he saw a need for both.

    But the interesting factoid that Crane provided was that he asked his Stanford class if they had a goal of owning their own home. 100% of hands went up. It sounds like the “you will own nothing and be happy” concept that originated from a 2016 essay by Danish politician Ida Auken that was published by the World Economic Forum doesn’t hold water with Stanfordites when it comes to their biggest future purchase.

    But wait. There’s more. The real kicker was when Crane asked the class how many of them wanted detached single family residential homes. 85% of the class raised their hands. No stack and pack for them. Developers take note. The YIMBY’s might have 15% of the market mindshare, but the next generation of buyers looks a lot like the last four generations.

    Here is a related update from the SF Standard piece on Steve Hilton’s gubernatorial campaign. Great question and an even better answer. I wish more candidates would take this approach and tell the YIMBYs where to get off instead of demanding quality of life killing in-fill.

  • Cut housing regulations? Start here.

    Politicians across the political spectrum rail against excessive regulations on building housing. CEQA is being gutted and onerous quotas are being foisted on cities and towns all over the state. Very few cities are trying to maintain some sense of order and quality of life since they know just pushing housing without all the other infrastructure is insane. The Merc sizes the problem in a piece about San Mateo County, Half Moon Bay, Belvedere and Clayton not having state-approved plans yet.

    In total, the Bay Area’s 110 local governments are responsible for adding 441,000 new homes between 2023 and 2031, up from 187,990 in the previous eight-year cycle. So far, the region is far behind schedule in meeting the ambitious new goal, in part because of high interest rates and other market forces.

    Despite the threat of stricter penalties, housing advocates say the few remaining municipalities without completed housing elements appear to lack a sense of urgency in obtaining the state’s sign-off.

    “They’re mostly small and wealthy jurisdictions that probably feel they don’t have any obligation and that they can hire enough lawyers to get out of whatever obligation the state imposes on them,” said Matt Regan, a housing policy expert with the Bay Area Council, a pro-business group.

    I keep waiting for some “small wealthy jurisdictions” to lead the legal way out of this mess. We don’t need a lot of lawyers, just a couple of really good ones. 441,000 new units over the next six years? It just not sustainable. Not even close. Here in the County the Merc notes

    On the Peninsula, San Mateo County received a similar letter from the accountability unit in September. County officials said they are working as “expeditiously as possible” to finish their required rezoning process by the middle of next year, attributing the delay to “difficulties of navigating the many new housing laws” passed in recent years. They said the county had not received a builder’s remedy application.

    There’s quite a bit of County land “up the hill” from the Easton Addition in B’game. What if the County decides easy access to 280 and a fairly well-run water system make for a good target location? Will they be funding and building another water tank, sewer line, school and sheriff sub-station. I doubt it.

    For all the talk of authoritarianism spilling out of Sacramento, this top-down issuance of quotas and heavy-handed penalties merits a long look in the mirror. The RHNA numbers are where the next cut should come from.

  • Don’t “Miami” Burlingame

    I feel for the people on the west side of EssEff. The (over)development pressure from various state laws and codes has them on edge. Close the Great Highway? Sure. Let the voters on the east side disrupt your daily life. Miami styled high rises blocking the sunset in the Sunset? Too bad. Now with Scott Weiner’s SB79 signed into law, we are all at risk of being Miami-ized. SB 79 does this:

    • Overriding local limits: SB 79 supersedes certain local zoning restrictions to permit greater density and building height for housing projects located within a half-mile of qualifying transit stops.
    • Target areas: It primarily applies to urban counties with significant transit infrastructure, such as those in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and Sacramento.
    • Affordability: The law includes requirements for a portion of the new units to be set aside for lower-income households.
    • Local flexibility: Local governments can adopt alternative development plans that must be approved by the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD).

    The bill looked like it was headed to defeat, but the Sacramento sausage-making took center stage as

    The chair, Sen. Aisha Wahab of Fremont, opposed the bill on the grounds that it tilted too heavily toward developers without requiring enough affordable housing. In Sacramento, a chair’s word usually decides a bill’s fate. But Weiner went above Wahab’s head, calling Senate Pro Tem Mike McGuire, the Dem. Majority leader, asking him to give the other Senators on the committee to vote against the chair, a maneuver known in the Capitol as “rolling the chair” and is often seen as a breach of decorum and defiance of leadership.

    There was more sausage-making to come including

    Amendments made in the 11th hour got the bill through the State Building and Construction Trades Council, when the bill was amended to require union labor on any building taller than 85 feet, and tenant groups got some protections for low-income neighorhoods. In the end, Wahab and Durazo flipped to support the bill.”  Lucky for Newsom, the bill’s reach was narrowed to counties with over 15 major passenger rail stations, leaving out Contra Costa, and Marin, where Newsom recently purchased a mansion in Kentfield for $9 million.

    How nice. Marin gets the status quo while EssEff, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties get the intense development pressure. With B’game’s central location between the city and Silicon Valley and the lovely amenities, schools and weather, I’m feeling a bit like the bullseye on the developers’ dartboard. Will our council get creative? Will they muster support from other similarly situated Peninsula cities? Or even go farther afield like Huntington Beach? I’m not seeing that sort of backbone. Will the parking lot across ECR from Walgreen’s be the Miami beachhead in town?

  • Historic ECR buildings: “Mogies” make the cut

    As we wait for The LIttle Big Dig to start on El Camino it's worth delving into one of the useful things Caltrans did during the planning phase.  They had to commission an historic inventory report on the buildings along the historic thoroughfare–at least the ones that are left after the teardown trend of the last 20 -30 years.  All the way at the south end of town there are two distinctive buildings across from each other at the five-way, St. Catherine's intersection.  They are known as "Mogies" after architect Mogens Mogensen who did a number of projects on the Peninsula as described here:

    Mogen Mogensen (1920-1997) Was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. He graduated in 1942 in Architecture from the Technical School of Copenhagen. Between 1942 and 1946 he worked in architectural offices in Denmark and Sweden.  Mogensen had early success, winning awards for designs for a school in Malmo, Sweden in 1945, and a City Hall in Ulricehamn, Sweden a year later. He arrived in the U.S. in 1946 with the help of a great uncle and aunt who ran a dairy near San Luis Obispo. He quickly found a job with Wurster, Bernardi, Emmons in San Francisco, leaving them in 1947 for a two-year position as a designer with the David D. Bohannon Organization in San Mateo.

    During this time, he became a licensed architect in California. From 1950 to 1952 he worked in several architectural offices in San Francisco and on the peninsula. In 1952 he returned as chief architect for David Bohannon. He opened his own office in 1956. His Bay Area practice consisted primarily of apartment buildings and condominiums although he also built private homes. Mogensen was also involved in master planning, office buildings, and commercial projects.

    If you click through on the link you can see he designed the Adeline Apartments in Burlingame, the Ambassador Apartments in San Mateo, the Belmont Executive Center, and for the Bohannon Corp, the Hillsdale housing development and shopping center in San Mateo.

    Here on the South end, the Mogie at 90 El Camino has been deemed historic in the report which is timely since the building has also gone up for sale for the first time that I can remember in the 34 years I have lived a block away.  Disen Cai has the listing and it pops up on-line for $2.8M.  We will revisit the other "Mogie" across the street–an angular apartment building–at another time. Here's the little Mogie gem:

    Mogie office

  • Pushing back on the YIMBYs

    From the "broken clock is right twice a day" file comes this Letter to the Editor of the SF Comicle.  Somehow the editors let this one slip through the cracks and into print.  I don't know the woman or the organization, but she hits pretty much every button right on the nose:

    YIMBY housing fantasies won’t work in California. Here’s the reality

    Regarding “There’s no protecting California values without building more housing” (Open Forum, SFChronicle.com, Dec 13): The steady drumbeat of op-ed pieces from SPUR and YIMBY housing advocates is tiresome. Many Californians disagree with them.  Urban density and infill housing are supposed to remedy suburban sprawl. But urban density, in practice, simply creates overcrowded streets, with motorists circling in search of rare parking.   Infill comes at the expense of historic buildings and districts, which are often demolished. A classic example is the enormous apartment buildings planned for the former California College of the Arts campus in Oakland.

    Transit-oriented development? This fantasy assumes that public transportation is a fixed utility. Many bus lines that once served our communities have been cut.  How many voters will oppose a tax to support BART because of the agency’s plans to put apartments in its parking lots? How many people have quit taking BART because there is no secure place to park near the stations?

    The SPUR and YIMBY people want Soviet-style apartment blocks wherever they can be crammed in, extinguishing every vestige of charm from neighborhoods.  It’s time for the state to stop forcing draconian “density bonus” and “builder’s remedy” laws on neighborhoods that want to retain some breathing room.

    Amelia Marshall

    Board member, Oakland Heritage Alliance

    Amen, Amelia.  Look no further than our latest Cellblock at One Adrian Ct.  It may not extinguish any charm in the neighborhood since it sits next to a Public Storage business, but you can bet it will raise traffic thru the Worst Intersection in the State and put pressure on all sorts of public services.  Did the grid get any major upgrade?  School capacity?  Did we hire another police officer for traffic enforcement?  Anything thing else listed here?  Keep up the good work, Ms. Marshall.  You are far from alone.

  • Poll: 70% say Bay Area quality of life has declined

    When I read headlines like 7 in 10 residents say the region’s quality of life is getting worse, I think about how bad the roads have become (looking at you, El Camino), how poorly many government agencies are being run, how much traffic there is, how we are losing control of our local voting and zoning, and public safety.  School quality, water security, utility costs—the list is long.  Having spent years in market research, I know a poll can be tweaked in any number of ways from who gets polled to how the questions and multiple-choice answers are phrased to who does the analysis of the results.  The Merc reported on the latest public sentiment here.  It notes

    According to the poll, 70% of registered voters said the Bay Area’s quality of life has worsened over the past five years, while just 13% said it has improved. Seventeen percent said it’s stayed the same.

    A whopping 46% of respondents said they were likely to leave the Bay Area in the next few years, with two-thirds of those citing high housing costs as the main reason to consider a move. During the pandemic, people fleeing the region contributed to a 3% population drop, though that exodus has since slowed.  When asked to select ways the region might best be improved, respondents’ top choice at 39% was building more affordable housing.

    Of course, that means 61% chose something other than to jam more people into the Bay Area.  See how the reporting can spin the story?  If the other choices had overlap to split the responses, 39% starts to look big.

    Homeowners in the poll (note, that percentage is not revealed) also said the state’s home insurance meltdown is hitting their finances. Fifty-two percent said their home insurance premiums have increased significantly, 22% said they have avoided using their home insurance policy out of fear of cancellation or rising rates, 12% said they’ve had a difficult time finding an insurer to write them a policy and 8% said an insurer had canceled a policy.

    Insurance has been slipping down a slippery slope for years with no real solution from the state. And many renters don't realize their rent is tied to the insurance on their apartment.  Then there is this bit of Sacramental hand-waving following on the heels of even more restrictions on drilling.  When you leave the state the gas prices are almost unreal—unreal low.

    To prevent spikes in gas prices, state lawmakers are now considering a plan from Gov. Gavin Newsom to force oil refiners to keep minimum fuel reserves, though doing so likely wouldn’t lower overall prices at the pump.

    The piece finishes off by describing some people who think Silicon Valley giants are "villains" who have "lost their moral compass".  I can't understand where that is coming from or what it has to do with the quality of life in the Bay Area.  At least the piece noted huge support for Prop. 36 to get the organized theft back under control and remove the locked plastic doors protecting shampoo and deodorant.  The big question remains how many people we should jam into the Peninsula?  The RHNA requirements are nonsense, but they are driving down the quality of life for long-time residents who look at things like this on the north end and wonder "why"?  That's the B'game police building in the front.

    Monster building over PD

  • New Category: Sacramento Stupidity….on story poles

    I have been meaning to add a "Sacramento Stupidity" category for some time.  One could argue that it is overlap with what goes into a few other existing categories like "State level issues", "High Speed Rail", etc.  But somethings are just so stupid they need a category of their own and I have finally found the one to take the proverbial cake.  The Merc is reporting:

    Los Gatos eases story pole restrictions for new developments

    Story poles may help Los Gatos residents get a sense of how much space new developments will occupy, but the state told town officials that requiring the poles may keep new housing from being built in town.

    After receiving word from the state’s department of Housing and Community Development that the town’s story pole policy “poses a constraint to the construction of new housing” and could therefore impede approval of its Housing Element, the Los Gatos Town Council in a split vote approved easing the requirements.  Poles won’t be required for projects over 55 feet tall, and signage will be allowed in lieu of story poles for certain residential projects.

    Outcry from residents who saw story poles go up on the North 40 property led to the developers filing a lawsuit in 2016 after council rejected plans for the first phase of the development in East Los Gatos.

    This could easily be an April Fool's Day post, but it isn't.  In a recent email, the GovernforCalifornia.org team discussed the mind-boggling budget deficit the state has just one year after having a massive surplus, by noting the state should:

    Reduce the number of Executive Branch employees, which has risen under Mr. Newsom to 252,000, or 6.47 employees per 1000 population, from 212,000, or 5.37 employees per 1000 population, in Governor Brown's last year of office. Matching Mr. Brown's number of employees per 1000 population would eliminate 43,000 positions.

    If you are wondering how the state has time to chase after towns about their story-pole policies, there is your answer.  Welcome to the new Sacramento Stupidity category–I fear it will be a busy one.

  • Connecting the Density Dots

    Sometimes connecting the dots is hard–other times it's pretty easy.  Last week's connection was pretty easy.  The Chronicle ran two pieces on density, but no one there connected the dots so let's do it here.  The front page piece was "Density" cited in canceled policies".  It noted property insurers consider two flavors of density–how closely packed together houses are and how many policies any one insurer has in an area.  Both are causing the insurance crisis in California to spiral up.  Insurers don't like the risk of a fire in one house jumping to its neighbors.  And they realize multi-family means multi-kitchen, etc.  So "you're canceled".

    Two pages later there was a headline "Court rules lawmakers can override local housing limits"–to force more, you got it, density.

    Limits on housing density approved by local voters can be overridden by lawmakers, a California appeals court ruled, upholding legislation that was intended to encourage construction of small apartment buildings.  The law, SB10 by state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, allows city and county governments to authorize new housing with up to 10 units in some urban areas, including those near transit, without conducting environmental studies.

    “The housing shortage is a matter of statewide concern,” and SB10 is “reasonably related to addressing that concern,” Justice Brian Hoffstadt said in Thursday’ 3-0 ruling, which upheld a judge’s decision.Hoffstadt cited previous legislation aimed at addressing the shortage of affordable housing, starting with a 1965 law that required local governments to adopt long-term plans to promote adequate housing.

    You read that right.  This has been an issue since 1965.  Why?  Because it's always going to be an issue.  You cannot outbuild the global demand to live in the Bay Area–unless you make it notably less livable vis a vis water, traffic, grid stability, crime, street parking, et al.  Those are symptoms of density.  Some stupid judge can't change that, and neither can the legislature.  If you live next to a project that is building three, four or five units on a 5,000 square foot lot and you lose your insurance coverage, will you have a cause of action?  Against whom?  The state?  Good luck with that.

    And if you are thinking insurers can't or won't cancel you, think again.  No explanation required.  They could easily use housing density as the deciding factor in where to reduce their policy density.  The Law of Unintended Consequences will not be denied.

    Desnity cancels you

  • Five Units on a Five Thousand Foot Lot

    As I type this, the city council is going into closed session for two issues:

    1. CLOSED SESSION
    1. Conference with Labor Negotiators Government Code Section 54957.6
      City Designated Representatives: Human Resources Director Maria Saguisag-Sid, City Manager Lisa K. Goldman, City Attorney Michael Guina, Chief of Police Michael Matteucci, Timothy L. Davis Attorney, Finance Director Helen Yu-Scott
      Employee Organizations: AFSCME and Teamsters
    2. Conference with Legal Counsel – Existing LItigation (Government Code Section 54956.9(d)(1))

    Yes In My Backyard v. City of Burlingame, San Mateo County Superior Court Case No. 23-CIV-00519

    The YIMBYs are filing lawsuits all over the Bay Area and the state because, well, the state has handed them a cudgel and why not use it?  The Sunday Chronicle added some color that you can read about here.  I'll just grab the start and then some B'game specific bits:

    Los Altos Hills resident Sasha Zbrozek is the first to admit that he is not a real estate developer.  “I’m just some random homeowner dude,” he said. “I’m not qualified to develop much.”  Yet, over the past few days, Zbrozek has become the face of the “builder’s remedy,” a fledgling movement that over the next year could transform the way housing development is approved across the Bay Area.

    The builder’s remedy allows property owners to bypass most local planning and zoning rules if that city or county has failed to complete certification of a state-mandated eight-year housing plan known as a “housing element.” So far, the Bay Area is not doing too well: Only five of 109 jurisdictions had their housing plans approved by the state by the Jan. 31 deadline.

    Currently, the property has a house and a pool on it, but Zbrozek has submitted two alternatives for redevelopment. One would add five townhomes and retain his current house and swimming pool. The other would require razing his house and pool and putting a 15-unit apartment building along with the five townhomes. If the larger project is approved, he will sell to an experienced builder and move.

    It's nice that Mr. Zbrozek knows he's not a builder but is pretty confident he can find one to buy him out once he sets it all up.  Now onto the local comments

    So far there are dozens of property owners looking at invoking the builder’s remedy, but only a few have pulled the trigger, according to Sonja Trauss, executive director of YIMBY Law, which has sued several cities for not having compliant housing elements.

    Trauss said she knows of property owners in Burlingame, Fairfax, Oakland, Sausalito and Palo Alto who are likely to file applications, but that many are hesitant given that the builder’s remedy has been in effect for only two weeks.  Trauss predicted that the “sweet spot” for builder’s remedy projects will be five units on a 5,000-square-foot lot, which is the most common lot size in California. That is the scale of the projects in Burlingame and Sausalito that she expects to be filed in the coming days.

    More than a year ago I suggested that the City start building a legal reserve to counter all of this destruction of R1 zoning.  It was excellent advice since it appears we are a juicier target than say Palo Alto

    Meanwhile, wealthy towns such as Belvedere, in Marin, or Palo Alto have the financial resources to fight developments in court.  “The places that are most legally vulnerable are also the places where you are likely to face the longest slog in getting the project approved,” he said. “Maybe you are likely to prevail in Palo Alto, but Palo Alto is going to give you hell for a half dozen years along the way.”

    I'd love to be a fly on the wall of that closed session.  There was also a piece in the DJ recently that quoted a different YIMBY attorney as saying he was living on an air mattress in an attic because he couldn't afford anything else.  Don't the YIMBY's want to pay a living wage?  If that claim is accurate, it's hard to see how he was talking about His Backyard.

The Burlingame Voice

Dedicated to Empowering and Informing the Burlingame Community

RECENT COMMENTS

RECENT POSTS

CATEGORIES

ABOUT THE VOICE

The Burlingame Voice is dedicated to informing and empowering the Burlingame community.  Our blog is a public forum for the discussion of issues that relate to Burlingame, California.  Opinions posted on the Burlingame Voice are those of the poster and commenter and not necessarily the opinion of the Editorial Board.  Comments are subject to the Terms of Use.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

All content subject to Copyright 2003-2026