franciscans that was trying to explain to people why we should not invest in the mid market area. i want to thank all of you for coming together as a city, as a village to say that we are -- [inaudible] example of 21st century development in san francisco, of microphone systems that will work steadily, of making sure that we are bringing not just 21st century companies that reflect the very best of innovation here in san francisco, not just the very best of creativity represented by an organization and theater organization, and [inaudible] but what are the diversity that is san francisco. i want to thank you for being part of that. thank you for working together. thank you for moving this city forward. thank you for being here, and let's get some burgers. [applause] >> we had a few more speakers that i think it is important to hear from here when we think about doing public safety in this challenging neighborhood

that it has resisted a lot of changes over the years, we are incredibly lucky to have the leadership and the knowledge and long-term understanding of the police chief, and i would like to ask him to say a few words. [applause] >> i certainly do not want to take a lot of everybody's time because i have ever on order. when i came to the police department, right across the street was the tenderloin section of the tender station, and that was might be. i can tell you that the area has changed so much over the last 30 years duty all the things the prior speakers spoke to. i wish there had been a burger place like this done because i would probably weigh about 30 more pounds. we are committed. we have signed the lease. there will be more officers. the neighborhood is changing daily.

we are absolutely committed to making the mid-market corridor a safer place. i can tell you firsthand, having been a cop in a baby station, how critical the program was to our success in making the third street corridor a safer place. without further ado, i will give it back. cheers to sylvia and pearl's. >> redevelopment efforts on sixth street have been intense for years. without redevelopment efforts, pearl's would not be here today, i think it is safe to say. like to recognize redevelopment and have tiffany, the director, say a few words. [applause] >> thank you, jennifer. the opening of pearl's here at the corner of sixth and market st. marks a major milestone as the mayor and our community partners have indicated.

what was once a vacant and blighted corner is now this incredible, beautiful store where we can all enjoy burgers and then some. that history dates back many years. since 2003, the redevelopment and the city have invested in this area. more than 30 businesses and tenants, ranging from great community partners -- they are all here due to our sixth street economic revitalization loan program. without the partnership of folks like urban solutions, and jenny mcnulty is here -- we would not have been able to achieve the success, even though we had the strong backing of our mayor and our chief. we are excited that this is just one of many great changes that are happening here, and we look forward to many more on sixth street. so thank you all for coming. [applause]

>> i would like to invite adrian to say a few words about the community ambassador program and the commitment he made to expanding the program here at central market. >> thank you, everyone. i want to say that when the mayor comes to you and says, "please start a safety program and we do not have money and no resources to hire a new staff, and you will just have to make it work" -- it is amazing. we got so much from the mayor's office, from the board of supervisors, and you see the result of our efforts. our community ambassadors program is a street smart safety program. not only do we keep the peace out in the streets, but we also educate the public. everyone deserves safe and clean streets, and that is including our employers, our businesses, our workers, our visitors, and every resident of san francisco.

thank you so much. we look forward to working with our businesses and community in the area. [applause] >> i would also like to invite jenny to say a couple of words. we need private sector partners to help with technical assistance, and also give us a little kick in the pants. >> this is a great day for central market. i would like to thank and acknowledge the staff of urban solutions and in particular, tracey were all the work she did to bring pearl's select burgers. they did everything from reaching out to the owners to tell them about the opportunity to handling the lease negotiations to helping secure financing and managing

construction of the restaurants. sylvia ann young are amazing people and amazing business operators, and we are thrilled that they are here, and they have created 16 jobs with health insurance right here in the neighborhood. [applause] >> and by far the most important speaker today is sylvia, and i would like to invite cilia to say a few words and said afterwards, we are going to do a ribbon cutting, so i would like to invite everyone to come outside, and we will come back in for burgers after soviet is done speaking. -- after sylvia is done speaking. >> i want to start by saying that we're particularly excited to be on this corner because i am a san francisco native and i grew up in the tenderloin and my aunt and uncle used to have efficient chips placed but he appeared my sister and i used to run this neighborhood all the time.

for me being here, it is kind of like coming home. the project could not have been possible without the financial help from the mayor's office and the san francisco redevelopment agency. we are forever thankful for all of your help and for urban solutions, who held our hand through every step of the way and still continues to be a huge help to us here. finally, the community here. i cannot tell you how welcoming sixth street and central market have been. everyone from the merchant and the neighbors -- we tried to have a soft open last week. had lines out the door. i just want to encourage other merchants out there to come on down. change is not going to happen here. it is here. it is happening now. if you take the risk, i tell you, you are going to have lines out the door. thank you, everyone, for coming today. [applause]

them all right, everyone. outside. because we have a great waste water system here in san francisco, we do about 80 million gallons of waste water here in san francisco, which means we basically fill up 120 olympic sized swimming pools each and every day here in the city. we protect public health and safety and environment because we are discharging into the bay

and into the ocean. this is essentially the first treatment here at our waste water treatment facility. what we do is slow down the water so that things either settle to the bottom or float to the top. you see we have a nice selection of things floating around there, things from bubble gum wrappers, toilet paper, whatever you dump down the toilet, whatever gets into our storm drains, that's what gets into our waste water treatment and we have to clean. >> see these chains here, this keeps scum from building up. >> on this end in the liquid end basically we're just trying to produce a good water product that doesn't negatively impact the receiving water so that we have recreation and no bad impact on fish and aquatic life.

solids is what's happening. . >> by sludge, what exactly do you mean? is that the actual technical term? . >> it's a technical term and it's used in a lot of different ways, but this is organic sewage sludge. basically what it is is, oh, maybe things that come out of your garbage disposal, things that are fecal in nature. it's sludge left in the water after the primary treatment, then we blend those two over and send them over to digestion. this building is built to replace tanks here that were so odoriferous they would curl your hair. we built this as an interim process. >> is there a coagulant introduced somewhere in the

middle of this? . >> this coagulant brings solids together and lets the water run through. that gives us more time in the digestion process, more time to reduce the amount of solids. these are the biggest ones in the world, like we always like to do in san francisco. they are 4 meter, there's none like it in the world. >> really? wow. >> three meters, usually. we got the biggest, if not the best. so here we are. look at that baby hum. river of sludge. >> one of the things is we use bacteria that's common in our own guts to create this reduction. it's like an extra digestion. one of the things we have to do to facilitate that is heat that sludge up and keep it at the temperature our body likes, 98.6 degrees. >> so what we have here is the heat exchanger for digester no.

6. these clog up with debris and we're coming in to -- next wet weather season so we always come through here, clean them out, make sure that we get maximum heat exchange during the colder wet weather. sludge season. >> rubber glove. >> right here. >> rubber glove, excellent. all right, guys. >> thank you. >> good luck. >> this is the full on hazmat. . >> residual liquid. we're taking it time to let it drain. we don't want to get sludge on it necessarily. take your time. stand on the side of it. . >> should we let it release for

a while? . >> let it release. >> is that the technical term? . >> this is the most important bolt on the whole thing. this is the locking bolt. it locks this thing right in place. so now. >> take your hammer and what we want to do, we get rag build up right in here. the hot water recirculates right in here, the sludge recirculates in here. the sludge sometimes has rags in it. all we want to do is go around the clean the rags. let me show you how. take the slide hammer, go all the way through the back, go around. >> got you. >> during the real rainy season, how does that change the way dealing with this job? is it a lot more stuff in there? .

>> what we do, charles, we do this quarterly. every four months we go around and clean all the heat exchangers so we don't have a large build up. . >> go around? . >> yeah. (sound of hammering). >> what i'm trying to do, charles, is always pull it out on the low stroke. >> right. so you are not, like, flying out. now talk about clean up.

. >> then where does this stuff get deposited? . >> we're going to dump it in a debris box and it will go back to the plant. >> if you think back, the romans came up with a system of plumbing that allowed us it use water to transport waste away from the hub of civilization, which enabled cities to grow. . >> you have a large bowl, a drive motor and another motor with a planetary gearbox with differential pressure inside there. the large mass up there spinning separating the solids from the liquid. we have to prevent about once a month, we go in there grease those, change the oil, check the vibration levels. the operators can tell just by the hum of that machine that

it's a harmonic noise emitted that it's out of balance and the machine needs to be cleaned. it will start vibrating and we have vibration analysis machines that will come over here and check the levels. so it's kind of an on-going thing that you have to stay on top of on a daily basis. >> handled properly, you take organic residuals, as we call them, that are leftovers of our society and turn them back into some energy. and we have another ability to take that sludge and get a nutrient value for crops there. we actually are running a kind of composting energy recovery system. >> well, this is a dirty job. we try to do it safely and we try to do it without imposing too much on the public. people want to flush their toilets and have things go away

and not be bothersome again. we do a lot to try to accomplish that. i'd like to invite you to come back any time you want. once you got this in your blood, you are not going to be able to stay away. the raging waters are fun and when we do digester cleaning i really hope you can come back. that's quite a sight. >> yeah, that sounds interesting. >> i really appreciate you coming by and it was a >> thank you for joining us. i'm katherine sharp. we are very excited today to have a press release from the mayor and have him join us. this has been an amazing experience for those of us from the very beginning. we look forward to sharing that

story with you. without further ado, mayor lee. >> thank you, katherine. thank you very much for being here. i wanted to join this great moment of celebration for fibrogen, which is more than a serial. that was what i first thought when i saw that name. i want to congratulate fibrogen and all the companies that have spouted up. i had -- the creation of this experiment with bioand life sciences here in mission bay. now a few years later, it really began in 2009 where there were five companies that started in this building. today, there are 23 of these microbusinesses that are doing biotechnology research, clinical

laboratory research as well as applications for that. right here, the three areas of work that they're doing. they told me they're here because of the talent, the graduates coming out of berkley and stanford and the school systems are really feeding the kind of talent that they're wanting to have in their companies and the industries are growing, and they're growing from different kinds of bio research to clean tech research. so our formula that began there, and again, i want to publicly thank former mayor newsom for this, as he had that vision. now as of today, mission bay is 64% built out. as you can see right across the street. the hospital is almost halfway

there. more than halfway there. under $1.5 billion build of the medical center. that is another attraction and it's attracting the microbusinesses that come here. their square footage tenfolded right in that very same time. i think the companies here, from what i can interview, they're very excited to be here. they really feel the cross fertilization of talent that's coming in within the building. that, again, reflects not on the consistent policy we've had here about technology companies as well as bio, life science, and clean tech industries starting here, staying here, and growing here all at the same time.

one of the reasons they can continue to grow is they do have a lot of openness to their interaction between the different companies so they get that kind of innovation going on. that's why we call it the mission bay center. i'm glad to announce this today and announce this has been a huge milestone thanks to all of you for consistently being here. i know tom is going to say a few words here. but i know the city has done right, and you can evidence it right here. we started with good business sense, whether it was attracting fibrogen or q.v.c. and then started saying we can attract other businesses here. we've done the right messaging here. redevelopment has built the infrastructure, and now we see our future tax dollars

contributing to the verticalness of these buildings and then the companies have come here in a very open and welcome way. and the talent is still continuing to be here. i exchanged my views that we need to keep our school systems very strong. because if they can continue graduating our kids with strong science backgrounds and they do end up getting into great schools, not all of them will get into stanford and berkley, but if they can get their science now, they'll still be recruited by the companies, where the research that they need, the laboratory work that they need, and the clinical applications are happening here. so i'm very excited to announce this milestone here and to join all of you here with congratulations, and we're still in one of the most beautiful areas that -- this is why it's getting built right here. you can see b.a.e. from our port. they're here trying to do more cruise ship right next door. behind me, you'll see the future campus. they'll be filling in.

all very exciting and we'll build out 100% of mission bay. and then we've got hunter's point and candle stick that will start a focus on clean tech. so the formulas we've had, the tax and business approach we've had not only have been inviting, i think they evidence the success we've seen today and we'll continue doing that with you and enjoy more and i hope not to wait for another 2 1/2 years to get the other tenfold. i think it's going to probably go faster now. so thank you for being here. [applause] >> thank you, mayor lee. i'd like to introduce our boss, c.e.o. and founder of fibrogen, tom neff. [applause]

>> thappings, katherine. let me start by thanking mayor lee for coming. welcoming steve richardson. alexander realty, who is now the owner of these buildings. steve has played a hand in many parts of what's gone on in mission barke not just here, but elsewhere. those that know him know he's had a major role in the leadership and the vision of what's going on and where we're going overall. i'd also like to mention and thank the innovation centers of the bay area and fizer for coming. nectar as well. those are companies that are nearby now in mission bay. also, the micros and the minis here, they are now, i guess by my count, 25.

mayor lee 23. there's a couple that are up in the office area, the fibrogen building that are probably -- i'm counting that he wasn't. there have been 35 total over time. some have gotten bigger and moved into larger quarters. some have venture owners that want them out of the city of san francisco and down the peninsula. some had to downsize. couldn't raise more money. so the picture has been one that's very dynamic. we would expect about 50% growth year over year. in the number of companies. internally, i would guess that a third of the companies would grow in the space they have inside the building. so it's burgeoning. it's not just doing ok or getting by. it's a place where we reached an

equilibrium. it's a turnover and a huge amount of demand out there for the resource. i would also like to mention 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 hallwa