some fibrogen people. i've had to make a list. pardon me. jenny kosor. rod ferman. rod stanley. katherine sharp. all people that work on this project every day all the time. the part i can attest to is that katherine has kept me calmed down at various times about this project, and that's her job in part, which is no fun. i think that pat kontraneo, our v.p. of finance, has been a leader and facilitator across the entire spectrum of activities, and pat is very self-afacing and doesn't seek to credit himself. but i know what he does and he does a lot to make sure things get done right in this program. so thank you, pat.

when we started, we came from south san francisco, and we came here because amgen, who competes with us in the markets, and jenentech were fighting over space there. there was a period of time when the rents in san francisco were higher than the rent here. the total cost here was still higher, but that one moment, i knew only happened once every couple decades. and so we jumped on it. we got our board to agree to let us come peer. the shorensteen family built this building. they did a very, very good job, but when we got here, we were alone and it was an economic crisis, a period of time. and we had this idea that if we had a quality building and $100 million of improvements, that there would be a lot of young companies that would prefer this environment to the alternative,

which might be a garage and clean tech. or might be a lousy building in south city somewhere. this is a tricky issue. we thought what we had would be valued. it turned out that we were right and it turned out we were wrong. we were right in the sense that a lot of u.c.f. demand came -- we had many venture firms support us and say this is a great idea, because people have hit the ground running at a time when they're normally very inefficient. we can avoid the capital outlays that go with small facilities. so we had those things. what we didn't get right was that demand was much greater. so it's turned out that it'sage about 40%, 35% of the total demand spectrum. and for me, one of the big surprises has been the really wide variety of spaces people want, which has made it much

easier for us in that we are a growing company and we have to allocate space, and especially labs, very carefully. but we've been able to fit people in in a way that might surprise you in terms of the leaseholds, the terms of agreement, the kinds of resources they're using out of our facilities, and so on. so it's been very flexible. the other point i'd make is that the citizenship has been good. all our friends, when they heard this, said you're going to regret this. you're going to have g.n.p. violations, people are going to steal your stuff, i.p., blah blah blah. it turned out not that way at all. so i don't know of a company that's been disciplined. i know of a couple of places where we had to tell people not to put their bicycles in the hallway and stuff like that to obey code. but not much at all in that regard. and in fact, i just sort of think of it as a lot of very good citizens, what the experience has been for

fibrogen. imming that part of it is important to see because we take certain risks in making the space available. today we have not been exposed or had to pay for taking those risks. in terms of the economic package, we assumed that a fully operating building, where our costs for the space they have are pushed through directly with no mark-up. it would be attractive compared to the alternative of having to build an entire leasehold at 2,000 square feet and build another one at 8,000 and build another one at 20,000, and that indeed has been the case. so people don't object about the economics and we stayed on this path of passing through the cash costs that we incur as the basis for renting out space.

the last two weeks i was in china. the cities are competing against each other for our factory in china so the back drop there is we have the first oral anemia drug, which addresses an unmet medical need throughout the world, where people cannot get therapy, it's too expressive, they can't get to hospitals, things like that. in china, there's about 20 million people that are desperately anemic by the u.s. standard. they're more anemic than the worst cases in the u.s. they're medically urgent cases. so we're the first to do this. what we'll require is you build a factory here to make the medicine, but we'll allow you to

move forward on that path. so in the course of events, i met many chinese government officials all over china. in the past two weeks, i got five different comments from different people about this program here. government officials expressing their appreciation for the fact that we would be willing to do this as a sign of how we might be as a business partner this china. and to me, that's very surprising. we do have one chinese tenant, who is an affiliate of the government. china medical city. i don't know if they're here today. what i've learned is that a lot of people outside of the bay area are watching what we're doing with a rot of interest, -- lot of interest, because how to create the starting point for companies other than just say go

find money on your own. has been difficult. particularly in life science where is a lot of infrastructures needed to be effective. so with that, thank you very much. we get the one week of the year where the weather is fantastic, or the one month, so enjoy it. it's not like this all the time. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, tom. now i'd like to introduce eric cher. eric has r.n.d. for solaria. solaria has been with us a little over two years, one of the companies that tom referred to earlier that they've had significant organic growth. >> thank you. >> solaria technology started 2 1/2 years ago. at that time, we were down the

peninsula. we were two people, hadn't raised money yet. the idea was try to take on big oil and replace petroleum derived chemicals, replace those with a cleaner source. that's no small order, as i'm sure you're aware. at that time, we knew that we'd have to combine together a bunch of fields that hadn't been used previously. it was about that time that we learned about fibrogen and setting up this new space. i believe we were the first or second tenant in here as a micro company. we've decided we've been able to grow both the technology, the funding, so we recently announced we closed an additional $20 million, which is an investment we're bringing

into the city, and used it to grow from two people to create about 30 jobs right now, all located in san francisco. all because of the support that we've had both from the city through mayor lee, previously mayor newsom, and todd ruffo, as well as through fibrogen. i'd like to thank tom and katherine and jenny for fully supporting our organic group. we continue to grow and develop this innovation in partnership with the fibrogen incubator exunety here. >> so now we've heard from the clean tech side. now we'd like to welcome the c.e.o. of lexus. >> we are genetically energying

a mouse for human therapeutic antibodies. they have proven to be one of the richest sources of innovative breakthrough drugs to treat human disease. a little company down the road has been built entirely on its breakthrough drugs to treat cancer and auto immune diseases. to license this mouse to companies doing antibody drug discovery so they can use it to discover the next generation of breakthrough drugs. we've licensed our platform to five of the world's top 15 pharmaceutical companies. we believe this provides a very strong vote of confidence in what we're doing.

lexus was founded in 2009. originally we were located in pasadena. i wanted to relocate the company to san francisco. i looked at a number of places in the bay area. after looking at places in the east bay and the peninsula, i realized the company should be right here in the mission bay innovation center. why? we were always going to remain small. i wanted to be a capital efficient company, and the opportunities to maintain cost control were huge by relocating the company here. being in san francisco, we are also ideally located to recruit top talent, and we've done so. we're goiming to -- going to remain small. my standards for hiring top employees, very high.

we found good employees and they've relocated from other cities in california and the east coast to work here. so we've brought new, talented people into the company. we also have people who commute in from the peninsula. i think that's another strong selling point that people in mission bay don't realize. we're at the center of a transit hub and that's very important for not only environmental reasons, but allowing people to come into the city and work efficiently. so we have employees who ride cal train. we also have employees who walk. so we're very proud to be calling fibrogen our home. and as a vote of confidence of the future here, we have extended our lease to stay here, and i'd like to thank katherine and jenny and tom for their

support in making this such a great place in which to have a biotech company. thank you. >> when this plan initially started, it came out of mayor lee's office. and the idea was presented to us by todd ruffo by the office of economic development. we talked about the micros as partners and the various innovation centers. one of our biggest partners in this has been ucsf. with that, i'd like to introduce you to douglas crawford. >> this is a experiment that was begun maybe 1, 15 years ago.

in the long term, the vitality of mission bay will depend on the small companies that come to make this home as well. it's that integration between small and large companies that made this so attractive for bay area in part to come here. so that is something that we don't often take credit for or give credit to in the mayor's office deserves credit for making that happen. at the end of the day, what will make this a community will be people that -- people are network hubs for making this happen and qb3 is one. katherine has proven to be one of the important network hubs, and she deserves our thanks for that. so congratulations.

>> i think with that, that concludes the scheduled speakers. but now i'm going to open this up to any questions that we might have from the press. ok. with that, i would invite you to either stay out here and special outside or join us inside. i believe we do have some treats in there. and fairly shortly after a few minutes, we are going to take the mayor on a tour of a couple of the labs and give him an idea of what this really looks like. thank you all for coming. [applause]

supervisor kim: good afternoon and welcome to rules committee. i will be chairing today's committee. we want to enologist at -- acknowledge the staff at sfgov tv. madame clerk, are there any announcements? >> the items recommended will go to the full board on tuesday, november 15 unless otherwise indicated. item number one, hearing to consider appointing to members for january 31, 2013 s january 31, 2014. supervisor kim: unhook all the applicants are here today. we will be asking the same for the four of you to talk about your background briefly and your

interest in serving on this commission. >> afternoon. thank you for your time and consideration. i am a san francisco native, my birthday is november 11, this friday. i have lived in annapolis, maryland. i was on staff at the u.s. naval academy where i attended school years ago. i enlisted in the navy after high school and have the opportunity to go to the naval academy. my military service and to my staff has been very useful to me throughout my career. now i will be 52.

my wife and i returned to san francisco this last year and are excited to be back in the community. we made the decision that we wanted to get more active in our community and do things that we thought were, leverage the benefits and experiences we have had in our life to the benefit of those that have not necessarily been so privileged. i have seen that with the veterans that i know. others have struggled for various reasons with the simulation -- but with assimilation back to the world. health care and substance abuse issues, lots of things like that. i learned of this commission and immediately turned in my application. i am excited about the opportunity, i think this is an interesting group. i appreciate that the board of supervisors and the mayor take

this kind of council from folks that come from different perspectives. supervisor kim: think you for your interest and also in getting real engaged with the san francisco community. what are some of your interests? have you attended any of the meetings? >> i have not. as i looked through their web page, i have primary interests. i am a development officer at st. mary's college. we have 31 veterans, and many did check on that today. one is career services. i have seen a lot of my friends come out and have trouble leveraging their experiences and communicating the value of their experiences to the civilian world. and the second is education.

i had the benefit of the gi bill that allowed me to get my master's degree, but i have seen others struggle with that. it is not as simple as having those benefits available. how do you take advantage of that, how do you deal with family life and work life and to stay committed to that cause? there were hot to specific areas where i have not been helped. >> you said you applied a year ago? >> as soon as i came back. >> there was an open seat a year ago, but this is the first contact have had with the city. supervisor kim: jordan towers. >> good afternoon, a supervisor. i am in the iraq war veteran. i served in the united states

marine corps in the infantry. i returned home and moved to the bay area, started a veterans group at the city college of san francisco and became the most successful program in the country. the only school the offers a program just for veterans. it was the first school in the country to bring in on campus to serve veterans. we also built a state of the arctic veteran center specifically for the needs of returning veterans. i have always been a part of veterans activities within the city. i am also the founder of returning veterans in san francisco, a couple months ago the board of supervisors unanimously passed support of a job fair, that is strong. i was contacted to get this

started and i contacted the other vets that i know, high net worked with veterans from all of the campuses in the bay area. and we were able to make that happen. i am also a veteran advocate of the organization that has been helping out veterans since 1974. i work on the institute for veteran policy and under the resources and development, there i have been for the ring emission and helping out veterans. i hope to do that here. one question, have you attended any previous meetings? i have been active in the community and i have attended meetings and lent a helping hand wherever possible.

>supervisor kim: what are your interests have your wanting to pursue as commissioner? >> one way that my generation communicates is on line. i would like to establish whether three. shows that we can establish about reached of veterans. second is jobs, jobs, jobs. veterans are desperately struggling and i believe in setting up a data base within the city to give veterans employed. supervisor kim: thank you. next is dorothy guy. jou tseng cannot make it today. >> i move in to sentences go for -- and i moved to san

francisco in june of 2007. in 2003, i went to iraq as military police to serve in baghdad. i would love to be part of this commission, because i feel with the amount of debt coming back -- vets coming back, there are no issues that are unique, like unemployment and women's care. we have a good understanding of how to treat these issues. supervisor kim: same question that i asked to the other applicants, did you attend meetings and you already mentioned that you want to outreach to the current generation of veterans. are there specific goals he would like to accomplish as commissioner? >> i have not attended the meetings as of yet, but i am very interested. my goal, this war was the first

time that women was owere ont the front lines. i want them not only to survive but overcome everything we have gone through. supervisor kim: i am seeing no further questions, thank you for your time. at this time, i will be opening up for public comment. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i have a commissioner on the veterans affairs commission serving as secretary. i am here today to advocate for two of the candidates. jordan tower who has come to several of our commission meetings and advocated strongly

in support of some of the issues that we have advocated to the city government. particularly, i am speaking about the issue of veterans courts, which are successful in some parts of the state, and we wrote a resolution and passed it on to the mayor and the board of supervisors in support of legislation currently before the state legislature to establish some veterans courts. i believe the governor vetoed that on the basis of fiscal problems, but we would like to see it pushed and reestablished. jordan has been familiar with the plight of some of the veterans in san francisco, and some of them have gotten in trouble and have been working with the sheriff's department to try to even in formally established some set aside understanding for the special

problems that some of the veterans -- younger veterans, particularly -- are going through. not a free ticket for them, but a hand up. he has led his experience and expertise, even as a guest, before the commission and in several previous meetings. i know he will be a jewel in addition to the commission if he is seated. thank you. i look forward to working with him. supervisor kim: did i miss here? i thought you said you would be speaking on behalf of two? >> if i could take another moment. the other one would be the young lady that just spoke. we have had a lot of trouble and gone to a lot of work recruiting female veterans for this commission. we absolutely agree with the push that was made by the board of supervisors about two years ago to add specific seats to the commission designated for female veterans and also at the same time, while it was not

written into the mandate, it was completely understood that what we were looking for was more representation -- what you were looking for was more representation by the post-9/11 veterans, the younger veterans because those are the ones whose problems we will be dealing with in great numbers in san francisco over the next few years. i just got an e-mail a little while ago yesterday from someone who essentially withdrew her name from nomination -- supervisor kim: she has not withdrawn. she just got a job. it was her first day. >> right. she just got a job, but she did say she would advocate in favor of ms. guy herself because she believes she will be going back east to graduate school and would not have much time to serve if appointed, she said please pass on that she would be happy to see ms. guy seated on

the commission as well. those are the two candidates are would support. supervisor kim: another quick follow-up -- out of the 17 members, how many represent younger veterans? >> now? i believe -- supervisor kim: roth is fine. >> about five. supervisor kim: how many do you have serving? >> 3, currently. supervisor kim: which is our minimum. >> out of 17 members, yes. supervisor kim: thank you. >> good afternoon. this is my second time having the pleasure of speaking this year.