By Matt LaFever :sfgate – excerpt (excerpt) audio

After nearly five years of legal battles, a Grocery Outlet is finally coming to Fort Bragg, a remote outpost on California’s rugged North Coast. First proposed in 2019, the project ignited a small-town showdown: working-class residents pushing for an affordable food source, an elusive business interests group fighting it in court over concerns about coastal views and traffic congestion. After years of heated debate over everything from the project’s potential impact on wildlife and air pollution to what its exterior stone facade might look like, last week, a San Francisco judge dismissed the final legal challenge, paving the way for construction to begin.

The 16,157-square-foot store is slated to replace the deteriorating Old Social Services Building on a 1.63-acre lot at South Franklin Street, located between South Street and North Harbor Drive. Plans include a 53-space parking lot, perimeter sidewalks, stormwater drainage, and landscaping to manage runoff, according to documents presented to the California Coastal Commission. The store plans to operate seven days a week and employ 25 full-time and 10 part-time workers.…(more)

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER and LINDSAY WHITEHURST : sfgate – excerpt (audio)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Thursday to temporarily lift a three-week funding freeze that has shut down U.S. aid and development work worldwide, citing the sweeping damage that the sudden shutdown has done to the nonprofits and other organizations that help carry out U.S. assistance overseas… (more)

By Ben Metcalf : sfchronicle – excerpt (audio track)

Rebuilding after the Los Angeles fires is going to be time-consuming and expensive. Accordingly, much attention has been given to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent executive actions to speed up the process and cut red tape, including by waiving environmental reviews, sidestepping Coastal Commission oversight and providing additional state resources to city and county planning and building officials

However, a different and little-noticed idea from the governor, included as part of his budget proposal to the Legislature early in January, also has the potential to be impactful. A small paragraph teases a big vision for housing: a new California housing and homelessness agency.

This proposed agency — which would replace the Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency that oversees a kitchen sink of other state functions (such as horse racing and cannabis regulation) — promises instead a “more integrated and effective” administrative framework for addressing the state’s housing and homelessness challenges. It would oversee all of the existing housing entities and be tasked with leading the state’s response on aligning housing policies with transportation, climate and community planning… (more)

We need to look into the process for creating and dissolving state agencies because that is what Newsom is suggesting. What happens to the staff? We might want to talk to them.

What is the connection between an agency that oversees Business, Consumer Services and Housing and one that oversees Housing and Homelessness issues. Are they eliminating state oversight of Business and Consumer Services, combing them with other agency, or setting up a new oversight agency?

The new agency just adds climate and community planning to housing and transportation. How does combining “housing policies with transportation, climate and community planning” solve homelessness? Is this a ploy to circumvent CEQA more than they already have?

This makes no sense unless it is a power play. Once again the state wants to force change on us and is eliminating some basic services and oversight we need in the process.

Once again our state representatives are trying to control us while eliminating the basic services and oversight we need.

‘NO THANK YOU’ Elon Musk offered more than $97 billion to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Its CEO, Sam Altman, offered a three-word response…

I think he made a counter offer, but, who knows what goes on among the clouds. Maybe taking on the role of Cloud control went to some heads and they think they are really in control of Mother Nature?

Unionbuiltmatters

A developer tries to cut costs, a contractor hires non-union, and together they create a deadly, tilting money pit in New York City

It matters who you hire.

The most experienced, best quality work crews in New York City belong to its best-in-the-world construction unions. Developers who shun them do so at their own peril. Here’s just one more very expensive case study to prove that point: The Seaside Condominiums, also known as “The Leaning Tower of Pizzarotti.”

The 58-story high-rise condominium at 161 Maiden Lane in New York’s seaport district, and which is being put up by general contractor Pizzarotti IBC, LLC, is leaning to the north.

Buildings aren’t supposed to lean.

Pizzarotti has sued the developer on the project, Fortis Property Group, who they say caused the lean because they cut costs on a “soil improvement” method, which they say is now causing problems with the building’s structural integrity, facade, waterproofing and elevators. Fortis counters that it was the work of the concrete crews hired by Pizzarotti that is causing the lean.

The non-union project, which started in March 2016, and is well into its fourth year of work, is now delayed yet again.

But the lean is just the latest problem at the site now haunting developer Fortis and contractor Pizzarotti.

Here’s the laundry list of mistakes that could have been avoided had they gone union: … (more)

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By Ben Metcalf :sfchronicle – excerpt (audio track)

Rebuilding after the Los Angeles fires is going to be time-consuming and expensive. Accordingly, much attention has been given to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent executive actions to speed up the process and cut red tape, including by waiving environmental reviews, sidestepping Coastal Commission oversight and providing additional state resources to city and county planning and building officials

However, a different and little-noticed idea from the governor, included as part of his budget proposal to the Legislature early in January, also has the potential to be impactful. A small paragraph teases a big vision for housing: a new California housing and homelessness agency.

This proposed agency — which would replace the Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency that oversees a kitchen sink of other state functions (such as horse racing and cannabis regulation) — promises instead a “more integrated and effective” administrative framework for addressing the state’s housing and homelessness challenges. It would oversee all of the existing housing entities and be tasked with leading the state’s response on aligning housing policies with transportation, climate and community planning… (more)

We need to look into the process for creating and dissolving state agencies because that is what Newsom is suggesting. What happens to the staff? We might want to talk to them.

What is the connection between an agency that oversees Business, Consumer Services and Housing and one that oversees Housing and Homelessness issues. Are they eliminating state oversight of Business and Consumer Services, combing them with other agency, or setting up a new oversight agency?

The new agency just adds climate and community planning to housing and transportation. How does combining “housing policies with transportation, climate and community planning” solve homelessness? Is this a ploy to circumvent CEQA more than they already have?

This makes no sense unless it is a power play. Once again the state wants to force change on us and is eliminating some basic services and oversight we need in the process.

Once again our state representatives are trying to control us while eliminating the basic services and oversight we need.

By Woody LaBounty: sfheritage – excerpt

Work first began on identifying and designating a North Beach historic district in the early 1980s. Some of the most accomplished architectural historians in San Francisco have put in hours on the project over 40 years, including Michael Corbett and the late Anne Bloomfield. They knew that the neighborhood between Telegraph and Russian hills along the spine of Columbus Avenue was particularly special. Every San Franciscan and every visitor knows.

Not only does North Beach possess stylistic uniformity and an intact architectural integrity dating from just after San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake and fire, but its social and ethnic associations are highly significant: Italian-American and Chinese-American history, Bohemian artists, Beat writers, early LGBTQIA+ spaces.

After city adoption of a highly praised 269-page North Beach Historic Context Statement in 2022, and with funding from the Northeast San Francisco Conservancy, architectural historian Katherine Petrin (who is also a board member of San Francisco Heritage) completed the long-anticipated historic district nomination in 2024. It was submitted in June to the California Office of Historic Preservation for review. After consideration and possible recommendation by the State Historical Resources Commission (SHRC), which meets quarterly, the nomination’s ultimate arbiter would be the Keeper of the National Register in Washington, D.C.

The North Beach National Register Historic District was included on the SHRC agenda for its February 7, 2025 meeting. On January 27, the last day possible to pull the item, new San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie requested it be removed to allow more time for his office to conduct “due diligence.”… (more)

There are so many places in North Beach that deserve recognition that it is hard to choose one to illustrate this story. We will come back with a number of photos and invite the readers to share what they have as well. It you can write letter and express you feelings about the importance of capturing a bit of history that matter most to you. What part of San Francisco do you want to keep?

By Cape Canneday : sfgate – excerpt

Columnist Cade Cannedy argues that everyone is missing the real power player in housing: DWIMBYs

YIMBYs and NIMBYs, a tale far less old and far more annoying than Cain and Abel, is a perfect fit for a post-pandemic, cyberurbanized California.

For those unaware, a NIMBY is an aging white couple in a coastal community using racially coded arguments to oppose an affordable housing project that threatens to bring in “ruckus.” A YIMBY, on the other hand, is someone on Twitter yelling indecipherably about how legalizing 5-over-1 single staircases is the only way your children will avoid homelessness in California.

The thing they have in common: You’ve never really met either.

Surely, cartoonishly racist NIMBYs exist, as do YIMBYs who would tolerate a firing range in their backyard if it kept them feeling smugly superior to their narrow-minded neighbors. But in reality, the vast majority of people fall somewhere in between, in a category called the DWIMBY: Depends What’s in My Backyard.

While DWIMBY decidedly lacks panache, it is the most accurate way to describe approximately 80% of people yelling about Bay Area housing on Twitter. Take the notorious Sunset-dwelling NIMBY: The very neighbors disgusted by the Sloat Tower, a 50-story phallus built over reclaimed sand dunes in a veritable transit desert, were the same folks who came together two years ago to support 135 units of affordable teacher housing, just a few blocks away…(more)

It is a rare day when a writer understand the complexities that go into making up the housing attitudes in a meaningful way. Cape gets it and does a great job of explaining it to just about anyone who can read. People consider housing in terms of their personal needs and experiences, and that translates into many shades of gray. All housing is not created equally in all neighborhoods.

There is a huge difference between the 50-story Sloat Tower and the 135 units of affordable teacher housing. No amount of lipstick on a Tower on the beach is going to make it as palatable as affordable teacher housing.

Looking at the maps that were developed to express the election results around the city, it is easy to see which neighborhoods accept change more easily that others. Those neighborhoods that have seen the least change and up-zoning voted overwhelmingly against prop K and for a more responsive government. They look at the effects of the changes in the downtown and other up-zoned areas with trepidation.

People want to retain the stable lifestyles they enjoy. Understanding this could go along way toward uniting the city around housing and transportation goals. Safety and security in our city is dependent on understandting the dynamics of the neighborhoods and allowing them to construct their own paths into the future…(more)