Category: Safeway

  • 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.

  • Transit Taxes: Beware the head fakes

    If it were not so sad, it would be humorous to follow the discussion at the SF Comicle about the forthcoming transit taxes for BART, et al and the SMART train up in Marin. The catalyst was a letter to the editor titled “If we’re willing to pay billions to maintain highways, why not fund BART?” I’m betting the author knows a half-dozen reasons why, but is playing the faux equity game to push the new taxes. Y’all come to this blog to see the onion get peeled, so let’s assess the “community value” of our “highways” and our city streets, such as they are, compared to BART, VTA, SMART, Caltrain, etc.

    Which bits of infrastructure enable police response? Fire response? Ambulance response? Utility (electric, gas, phone, internet) response? I am always impressed when the Safeway 18-wheeler makes the sweeping right turn at Howard, maneuvers the extra-long trailer into the parking lot and manages to back the thing into the loading dock. If you have never seen it, you’re missing out. And if we don’t see it every couple of days we will be missing out. Let’s not forget the Walgreen’s semi that got shoo’ed away from the big El Camino Project groundbreaking because it was noisy and inconvenient to the proceedings. You want your antibiotic? It ain’t coming on Caltrain or BART.

    Is a commuter rail line a good thing? Sure. Should it cover its costs at the fare box? No. But let’s dispense with the faux argument that transit can hold a candle to the streets and freeways that keep this whole show on the road. I’m not saying vote “no” on the tax–yet, but San Mateo County appears to be the tail that isn’t wagging the dog once again as the monies flow elsewhere.

  • Two views of the Fourth of July

    As we celebrate the 249th Fourth of July and ponder the Semiquincentennial next year, more commentators are looking back to the origins of the day.  The WSJ had a column whose perspective was sobering:

    Despite having done films on the Civil War and Vietnam, Ken Burns told me he was taken aback by the Revolution’s brutality. One of every three deaths was by bayonet. Warriors were often teenagers and the violence deeply personal, as when a young Vermont loyalist killed his best friend in hand-to-hand combat at the Battle of Bennington in 1777. Per capita there were more deaths in the Revolution than during the Civil War. Yet out of the carnage emerged the world’s first continent-spanning democracy.

    Americans who want to dig deeper need not wait for November. There are many new books on the Revolutionary War that are well worth the read. The best are from Pulitzer-Prize winning military historian Rick Atkinson, who crafted a trilogy on the war for America.

    He provides amazing detail and masterful staging. You’re in the action, seeing the violence that bitterly divided neighbors and families and understanding how close-run the war was. The vivid details, the intimacy, the sense of immediacy are a result of studious research. Like Mr. Burns, Mr. Atkinson mined the vast corpus of memoirs, letters, diaries and dispatches of the surprisingly literate combatants.

    Being a Massachusetts native from the city 50 miles south of Bennington that has traditionally hosted a massive Fourth parade that dates back to 1801 and is often featured on national TV, I've enjoyed many firemens musters, marching bands, car shows and cook-outs on the day.  My Fourth of July birthday girl wife gets tired of my reminiscing about going to the local farm and getting a Baker's Dozen ears of corn for a buck in the '60s.  I was thrilled that our newly remodeled Safeway ran a special that beat the old price!  7 cent corn flew off the shelves yesterday.  I hope you got some.  Have a happy and pensive Fourth.

    Safeway 7c corn

  • Safeway – Part 75: The Grand Re-opening

    Yesterday was the grand re-opening of the newly refreshed Safeway that was last re-opened in 2011.  It's been a six-month project, and I would say it's better, but not any sort of total game changer.  The biggest difference is probably energy efficiency as a lot more refrigerated items are behind doors instead of in open shelving.  It all looks bright and shiny.

    I didn't realize it was the re-opening, I just needed groceries, but the balloons, a DJ, food sample tables all over the store, a Burlingame ice carving (I missed whatever was being served) and the local street names on each aisle's signage made for a festive occasion.  Everybody got a Safeway scratcher ($2, $5, $10, etc) and we now have a B'game Concierge!  Kathleen B was near the front door doing conciergy stuff.  The mailer that went out to nearby residents has her email:  Burlingame.Concierge@safeway.com.  That could come in handy.  Here's the scene

    Safeway balloons

    Safeway ice carving

  • “Compact” parking spaces: Nobody is watching

    We love parking anomalies here at the Voice.  The more difficult the maneuver the better as we saw here on Broadway.  Or headscratchers like this wrong way, parallel in an angled spot trick.  And then there are the imaginary spaces that get taken like here.  But the myth of the "compact" space is the most common parking irritant.  Safeway is aptly doing some random parking enforcement against people poaching spaces to shop elsewhere.  In a perfect world, the agents would also be able to ticket full-sized (or even bigger) vehicles in the little spaces.  Safeway put in plenty of them to slip through the full parking requirement back in 2011.  Check out this special "compact edition" of a RAM 2500 Powermaster.  The rear view camera must be pretty good as he has about 5 inches to spare on either side.  You better be pretty skinny to park in either adjacent space.

    RAM 2500 Powermaster

  • Safeway: Rooftop fatality

    The only place I saw any news about this was deep down in John Horgan's column where he wrote:

    A TRAGEDY IN BURLINGAME: Law enforcement authorities have been investigating why a 34-year-old San Francisco man apparently jumped (or fell) off the top of the multistory Safeway Store on Howard Avenue in Burlingame early in April. He somehow survived the approximate 30-foot plunge. But, sadly, he later died of his traumatic injuries at Stanford Medical Center. The Santa Clara County Medical Examiner’s office had not provided a definitive cause for the tragedy on its website as of noon Monday.

    I park up there off and on–more "on" as the on-going refresh of the store continues–and it's hard to see how one could fall off.  Let's hope there's no criminal activity involved.

  • Plastic bags: “Thank you for your service”

    The Sacramento Stupidity was on full display this week as Newsom signed yet another law aimed at restricting use of plastic.  The last plastic grocery bag ban had a "loophole" that still allowed the heavier "reusable" bags but, guess what, not enough people are reusing them so they must be outlawed.  Who could possibly have foreseen that?  "Once plastic bags are outlawed, only outlaws will have plastic bags".  Coupled with Bonta's idiotic suit against ExxonMobil for making something that is a necessity in life.  As the WSJ notes:

    The company’s alleged deception supposedly caused California lawmakers in 1989 to pass legislation forcing cities to set up recycling programs “that required mandatory participation by all residents.”

    In other words, it is Exxon’s fault that Californians must place plastic waste into separate trash containers even though most of it doesn’t actually get recycled. Mr. Bonta claims that Exxon has “wrongly convinced consumers that plastics separated for recycling would actually be recycled,” though, notably, the state hasn’t repealed that law.

    Nor has Sacramento repealed the CRV.  Duping lawmakers seems pretty easy.  Plastic bags bon voyage
    The memorial to thicker plastic bags will live on in my car's trunk for years.  "Thank you for your service".

  • Election 2024: The action is in the initiatives

    Dan Walters at Calmatters.org has distilled the upcoming election for us noting that the candidate-based voting is a forgone conclusion, but the numerous initiatives is where the action will take place.  I grew up in "Taxachusetts" but my home state has nothing on California.  Squeezing more blood from the middle-class stone is on-going and the question is will this be the election where the backlash arrives?  As Walters writes

    The scale of the conflicts is most evident in an initiative, sponsored by the Business Roundtable and anti-tax groups, that would make state and local tax increases markedly more difficult to enact.  It hits Democrats and their allied public employee unions where they live and they have mounted a two-pronged effort to block passage: a lawsuit, now pending in the state Supreme Court, to strike the measure from the ballot, and a competing proposition that would impose a higher and potentially prohibitive vote threshold on the tax measure.

    On crime, he notes the ballot will include an "initiative that would modify Proposition 47, a 2014 ballot measure that reduced penalties for many crimes."  I think of it as the "Walgreen's initiative" after hearing multiple instances of people walking out of the store on B'way with a garbage bag full of stuff.  You want shampoo?  Call a clerk to unlock it.  Today's Comicle has a piece about some Safeway taking out the self-check kiosks and it ain't because they want to hire more checkers.  Walters expects the backlash initiative to qualify.  Further down the ballot:

    Other high-profile measures either qualified or likely to qualify include a business-sponsored initiative that would repeal the Private Attorneys General Act, a two-decade-old union-sponsored law that makes class action lawsuits against employers relatively easy to file. Others include a third effort to make it easier for local governments to enact rent control, a boost in income taxes on high-income Californians to finance pandemic prevention, and an increase in the state’s minimum wage.

    Talk about dumb and dumber.  Let's mess up the rental market, the entry-level job market and kill the Golden Goose all in one fell swoop.  There are five months to go.  We shall see if the voters have had enough or if we get more of the same.  Stay tuned.

  • Earth Day Special: When “green” isn’t

    Happy Earth Day, everyone.  Per Wikipedia

    Earth Day is an annual event on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally by EARTHDAY.ORG (formerly Earth Day Network) including 1 billion people in more than 193 countries.  The official theme for 2024 is "Planet vs. Plastics."

    That's a meritorious goal that is harder to accomplish than it seems.  The unspoken recycling scam I profiled four years ago of very little stuff that goes into the system getting recycled (9%!) should get a lot more attention than it does.

    The whole process gets even more complex when packagers mistakenly make it even harder to recycle in the name of going green.  I won't call this local example "greenwashing" because I'm guessing they really think they are helping.  They just misjudge human behavior and don't understand what happens as a result.  I'm no expert either, but I know whom to ask–the team at Ridwell as profiled here.  I recall from interviewing them that "film" plastic–the thin stuff–isn't recyclable by the Recologies of the world–hence Ridwell.  So, when I saw the new package tops of salads and spinach at Safeway, I smelled a rat in the recycling.  "34% Less Plastic Than Previous Plastic Lid".  Yeah, but.  People have to know to peel the new lid and the strip it sticks to off the container before they recycle it.  I'm guessing next to nobody knows or does it because the font on the message to remove it is tiny and printed in white ink. 

    Net result from the experts:  My guess is the most common occurrence is the entire package is included in PET bales as contamination.  PET is what the base of it is.  The worst fate would be if this pushes the contamination rate to such a high level that nothing can be done with the bales.  PET is usually very recyclable so that would be a shame.

    Once again, the Law of Unintended Consequences strikes.  How long before we see the hard plastic lids return?  Soon I hope.  Happy Earth Day………

    Salad container
     

  • Ka-chingleBells, Ka-chingleBells

    I stopped short in my one-horse open sleigh entering Safeway this week and I was not laughing all the way.  My spirits were notably less bright as I perused this three-foot-high tree for the new Inflation Production Act price of $46.99 + tax.  Wasn't it just a year or two ago that these little tabletop trees were twenty bucks?  I'm not blaming Safeway.  I'm pretty sure this isn't a brazen grab of any extra sawbuck or two, but as the bad fiscal policies of the last three years ripple through the economy, expect more shocks.  It's a delayed feedback loop and the loop is tightening.

    Few people know the third verse:

    A day or two ago,
    The story I must tell
    I went out on the snow,
    And on my back I fell;
    A gent was riding by
    In a one-horse open sleigh,
    He laughed as there I sprawling lie,
    But quickly drove away. Ah!

    It might have been Gavin in the sleigh, but looked it more like that "other Joe".  Santa is facing the same cost pressures as eveyone else so be sure to buy some Toys for Tots this year.  Too bad Talbot's is gone after 66 years.  Nice work, San Mateo.  I haven't checked yet, but the B'game Fire Department (ie. Central County) is probably collecting new, unwrapped toys as usual.

    Three foot tree

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