View the San Francisco for Wednesday, August 21, 2024
Vice President Kamala Harris — seen speaking Monday during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago — became the Democratic presidential nominee Tuesday evening when Gov. Gavin Newsom delivered California’s delegates to her.
A pair of one-time San Francisco City Hall colleagues combined Tuesday to put the finishing touches on an unprecedented night in the nation’s history. At the United Center in Chicago, California Gov. Gavin Newsom — a former San Francisco mayor — formally delivered the state’s 482 delegates to Vice President Kamala Harris, The City’s ex-District Attorney, pushing her over the top to officially become the Democratic presidential nominee. With the act, Newsom made manifest a scenario few people would have thought possible even a few months ago: a San Francisco Democrat at the top of the presidential ticket. Lauding California as a land of “dreamers, doers and entrepreneurs,” Newsom touted the state’s diversity.Though he focused on the state, he might well have zeroed in on the city he once led. In a series of text messages, San Franciscans at the Democratic National Convention told The Examiner the night was the culmination of decades of progress in which “As a lifetime politico, I’ve been to many conventions and events,” said Heidi Sieck, a longtime local politico who is Democratic National Convention Committee deputy floor whip. “Never have I seen the joy, energy, creativity and excitement about the Democratic Party and our candidate. It’s an honor to be a San Franciscan and a longtime supporter of Kamala Harris, and I always cry when I think about her speaking on the biggest stage in politics. What a journey it has been. What a joy it is.” While Democrats have made joy a central theme of the convention — as it’s been for Harris since she became the presumptive nominee last month — San Francisco delegates indicated they are teeming with aHarris, an Oakland native who grew up in Berkeley, began her political career as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County in 1990. Eight years later, she became an assistant district attorney in San Francisco. In 2003, she was elected The City’s top prosecutor.“It’s amazing that our small town with a big city heart has this outsized impact,” said Sam Lauter, a longtime Harris supporter and an executive at Bay Area-based political firm BMWL. “We hit well above our weight,” he said, pointing to Harris, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Newsom, who has a national profile. “As a native-born-and-raised, I admit I’m biased. But I’m also correct,” Lauter said. “It’s been a wonderful couple of days and I’m looking forward to working towards victory in November.” It’s unclear how much Harris will trumpet her San Francisco ties in the coming three months before the election. She has, however, already hosted a fundraiser in The City. Earlier this month, shethat generated $13 million. It was both the first event in San Francisco of her presidential campaign and among her most lucrative fundraisers to date. Regardless of whether Harris plays up her city ties, locals at the DNC have made a concerted effort to showcase their strength, touting San Francisco as the launching pad for the Democratic presidential nominee’s career.Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris is seen on a video monitor after the roll call during the Democratic National Convention Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Chicago. “San Francisco showed up in full force to Chicago with energy, resources, and a plan of action to win this historic election.” said Chris Larsen, a San Francisco native and co-founder of the tech firm Ripple. “We know the Trump team is going to come after our great city to try and bring down our nominee, so we are standing up, proud and ready”, spoke to Bay Area reporters Tuesday, boasting that The City’s crime rate is at its lowest point in a decade and extolling its prominence as the artificial-intelligence capital of the world. “San Francisco is magic right now,” said Breed, who is in the middle of a tight election campaign of her own. To be sure, The City was already playing a prominent role in the election even before the party tabbed Harris as its nominee. Harris, of course, was up for reelection as vice president. But then Pelosi, a longtime San Francisco congressional representative who is now House speaker emerita, reportedly played a consequential role in convincing President Joe Biden to step aside., has publicly downplayed her role, many politicos have suggested Biden’s decision was another example of the power she continues Those on the ground at the United Center in Chicago argued San Francisco’s aura continues to hold a firm grip of the convention. “The energy here is palpable and you can feel it everywhere you go,” Sausalito City Councilor Melissa Blaustein said. “Bay Area Democrats are walking with a new swing in our steps, and we’re ready to do whatever it takes to get VP Harris elected as our next President.” Kimberly Ellis, director of the San Francisco Department of the Status of Women, called the event the most “historic DNC of our lifetime and California and San Francisco are front center.” “With San Francisco’s former District Attorney standing on the precipice of becoming America’s first woman President, the vibration here is all about love, freedom togetherness and joy. We’re about to do this!” Ellis said. Brian Brokaw, a longtime Harris advisor who managed her campaigns for California attorney general, said that while her nomination is “incredible,” it’s “not entirely surprising.” “Anyone who has known her since her early days in San Francisco has seen up close and in person her talent and drive to get things done,” he said. “And now the rest of the country gets to know Kamala as we do.”Nigel Hughes, senior Bay Area director of market analytics at CoStar Group: “It gives you a feeling as to how much pressure the owners are under.” While some San Francisco buildings have recently sold at fire-sale prices, private valuations of numerous other distressed properties in The City have plunged, according to real-estate market experts. “It gives you a feeling as to how much pressure the owners are under, in that because of the way the economy has moved, the value they have in these buildings has been seriously eroded,” said Nigel Hughes, senior Bay Area director of market analytics at real-estate information-services firm CoStar Group. The distress has been most acute in sectors reliant on traffic in downtown San Francisco, said Hughes, who did a recent survey of strained commercial mortgage-backed security loans in which the loan servicers asked for appraisals and found resulting valuations that had fallen between roughly 20% to 80%.{p dir=”ltr”}{span}A survey by Nigel Hughes, a {span}{span}senior director of market analytics at the real estate information services firm CoStar, documented how appraisals {/span}{/span}tied to distressed commercial mortgage-backed security loans documented valuations that had fallen between roughly 20% and 80%.{/span} {span} {/span} In terms of having a central business district in a severe slump following the COVID-19 pandemic, The City has been among the hardest hit in the nation, withThe resulting effects have slammed property owners stretched by burdensome debt obligations and buildings suffering occupancy declines, Hughes said. Hughes’ observations were echoed by data from KBRA Analytics, which tracks commercial property loans tied to investor securities down to the individual property performance level. Such debt represents a fraction of all existing commercial loans, but it serves as a proxy for understanding larger commercial real-estate market trends, said Patrick Czupryna, a KBRA managing director. Among major markets, the San Francisco metropolitan area had the third-highest percentage of distressed loans tied to commercial mortgage-backed securities, 35% of $21.9 billion, KBRA reported this month. Chicago and Denver had the top two positions, said the company, which includes loans in default as well as loans exhibiting other signs of stress. In dollar terms, Hughes said the largest single decline in appraised value — $930 million since 2016 — was recorded at the downtown mall and office complex now known as the Emporium Centre San Francisco, which wasReal-estate information-services firm CoStar Group estimated that the appraised value of Emporium San Francisco Centre has fallen by $930 million since 2016 — the largest single decline its research found. The borrowers, international mall operator Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield and Brookfield Asset Management, had a $558 million loan covering 794,521 square feet of retail and office space at the 1.4 million square-foot mall in June 2023, according to KBRA. KBRA in July concluded the value of the property covered by the defaulted loan was worth about $221.7 million, down from $1.22 billion in 2016. In addition to that retail sector pain, it is perhaps not surprising that Hughes said office properties make up most distressed loans, given that real-estate company CBRE reported that The City’s office vacancy rate hit a record high of 36.8% for the second quarter. Hughes said it will likely take years to reach peak loan delinquency.One Market Plaza, a 1.6 million square-foot, two-tower complex in the South Financial District pictured above, showed a 29% drop in value since the $975 million loan on the property was initiated, according to KBRA. One example in the office sector is One Market Plaza, a 1.6 million square-foot, two-tower complex in the Financial District that had a relatively high occupancy rate, but where Google has a lease for 22% of the space until April 2025 that the “A lot of tenants are either vacating their space, or maybe even just minimizing or reducing their space, or they’ll renew for the full space, but they’re looking for some kind of discount in their rent, whether short or long term, that is going to have a negative impact on cash flow,” said Mike Brotschol, a managing director at KBRA. A February appraisal showed a 29% drop in value at One Market Plaza since the $975 million loan on the property was initiated, KBRA said. Hughes put that number at $510 million. The loan was due in February, but owner Paramount Group said in a press release at the time that together with its joint-venture partner it had negotiated a loan modification and extension after paying down the balance by $125 million. The capital injection, which Paramount said showed its commitment to a quality asset, helped make the interest rate “viable,” Hughes said. Lenders typically do not want to take ownership and management responsibility for properties and will try to find ways to keep borrowers in place, with the hope of one day getting repaid, Hughes said. One office building that did go into receivership in anticipation of a potential foreclosure action was 600 California St., a 20-story building partly owned and half-leased by WeWork, which suspended lease payments in 2023 and then got a deal to pay less rent, according to KBRA. The firm said a February appraisal showed the building worth 64% less than when a $240 million loan on the property was issued in 2019.The Hilton San Francisco Union Square and the Parc 55 San Francisco are both also in receivership after the owner KBRA conservatively put the value of the two giant properties, which have nearly 2,945 rooms combined, at $553.1 million. That was 64.5% below the $1.56 billion appraised value in 2016. Owner Park Hotels & Resorts, a large lodging real-estate investment trust, had estimated the properties needed a combined investment of $200 million over five years to remain competitive, KBRA said. Instead, the company walked away, and a court-appointed receiver is now trying to sell the properties. Average occupancy, which did not recover after COVID-19 caused lengthy closures of both hotels, was 51% for the 12 months ending in May, compared with 93% in 2019, KBRA said. “There’s a lot less business travel in The City, and it’s been a real struggle for those properties to achieve occupancy rates that they were enjoying pre-pandemic,” said Maverick Force, a KBRA senior director.A June report from the city controller’s office said the city budget assumed refunds would eventually be paid for assessment appeals filed in this fiscal year and the following year, totaling $118.9 million and $136.1 million, respectively. The budget also assumed $2.5 billion of reductions in assessment values in each of the two budget years, which translates to approximately $14 million in annually refunded property-tax revenues.Mayor London Breed: “The current charter, with its layers of bureaucracy added over the years, has created inefficiency and diffused accountability across our governance structures.”The City’s chief executive on Tuesday ordered the city controller and city administrator to begin studying how to reformWhile the charter has been amended multiple times over the last few decades, it hasn’t been extensively revised since 1995. Those amendments have mucked up city government, Breed argued. “The current charter, with its layers of bureaucracy added over the years, has created inefficiency and diffused accountability across our governance structures,” Breed said in a press release. “The good news is that we can fix this by stepping back and reconsidering the Charter as a whole. That time is now.” Breed’s order directs the city controller and city administrator to reach out to good-governance experts and city officials to help identify which provisions of the charter can be removed. The mayor also asked them to establish an outreach and education process targeted at San Francisco residents, business and labor leaders and other key stakeholders.While that may sound like a long way off, Jeff Cretan, a spokesperson for Breed’s office, told The Examiner the scope of the legislation requires more than a two-year runway. Even a single alteration to the charter is full of complexities, Cretan noted, pointing to a pair of charter reforms that will behave introduced dueling measures that each aim to reduce the number of advisory committees and commissions in San Francisco but through different means.would explicitly cut the number of commissions from 130 to 65. It specifies 20 that the city would keep, 24 it would cut and would charge the task force with determining what to do with the remaining ones.wouldn’t set a strict limit on the number of commissions that would be cut. Instead, it would direct the task force to recommending which commissions to slash or merge with others.City Administrator Carmen Chu, City Controller Greg Wagner and Supervisor Rafael Mandelman are all backing Breed’s proposal to scrutinize the current charter. “It’s the right time to ensure that laws are keeping pace with our ever-evolving city,” Wagner said in a release. “Our office is looking forward to taking a fresh look at our Charter with the City Administrator and City Attorney. This project is a big undertaking with an important goal of ensuring the Charter is best set up to serve our residents.” Breed plans to have her office work closely with the longtime Bay Area think tank SPUR throughout the process. Her charter-revamp proposal comes less than a month after SPUR released its proposal for reforming the City Charter. In its proposal,the nonprofit laid out eight major recommendations for restructuring San Francisco’s government, including changing the role of the Office of the City Administrator, merging redundant departments, and reducing the number of commissions while better defining their purposes.“We think is a really valuable first step and look forward to supporting the work ahead,” Nicole Neditch, governance and economy policy director at SPUR, told The Examiner, adding that the organization is “excited to support the City in developing a plan to implement the recommendations in the report.” SPUR was involved in the last charter-reform process, which at the time was the first refresh of the document in 60 years. Since that effort, changes to the charter have reduced accountability in city government and undermined its ability to deliver services effectively, Neditch said. In revamping the charter again, city officials should rely on data and focus on the outcomes they want to achieve, she said. “To do this right, it will take time and commitment from both internal and external stakeholders, and a willingness to work together for the good of The City as a whole,” Neditch said.Click and hold your mouse button on the page to select the area you wish to save or print. You can click and drag the clipping box to move it or click and drag in the bottom right corner to resize it. When you're happy with your selection, click the checkmark icon next to the clipping area to continue.This is the name that will be displayed next to your photo for comments, blog posts, and more. Choose wisely!Create a password that only you will remember. If you forget it, you'll be able to recover it using your email address.Forgot Password An email message containing instructions on how to reset your password has been sent to the email address listed on your account.
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