can look a little bit like supervisor kim and get in for free, how about that? >> this is an incredible chuck, thank you for that enter did yousing, and i will be very brief because what i really feel today and in this particular ground breaking is a lot of sweat, a lot of good, hard, work, from chuck, from the board of directors and from robert and randy fisher. i want to thank you for your wonderful leadership and you have to raise an incredible amount of money for this to happen and it was for a great cause and i go back to our first lunch in, chuck that we had where you explained a little bit about our history to me and i did for you and we both talked about the old friendships that we had and you expressed your friendship with

don back and that this what ises partly in honor of that. well i want to also express the city's official thank you to doris and don and fisher, collection and the fisher family for your wonderful contribution for our city. and it is with that recognition that we do this ground breaking, plus a big huge thanks for the new fire station as well. but, as i will look forward to speaking to the graduating class at lowell high school this afternoon, i am going to talk about this because it is part of what we do in san francisco. it is for our youth, but it is also future looking, and it is about what we all do for our great city and that is what i feel about the fisher family, that you have contributed to our city. and you know, culturally, based tourism is now at about 2 billion dollars of income for

the city. and it employs almost 20,000 people and this is what our city does, it celebrates culture and that is what draws so many people to this, and now i think, supervisor kim was so proud of these institutions that are coming into our district and that she and i have joined in so many ground breakings and we celebrate this with a very serious recognition of a people that have done this for us. and so, on behalf of the city and county, and with all of our hearts and gratitude, i want to thank robert and randy, i want to thank, doris and don fisher, the whole fisher family for the great, great contributions to our city. this is a gift that will keep on giving, and with this announcement for the youth to come in for free when the 10 million dollar endowment, i love anonymous gifts. one of these days i will try to do that myself. but, this is incredible time

for our city, but it is one that i think that this is another example why we take the opportunity to celebrate and to thank the people who have led this effort to do so and to just have everyone appreciate life in san francisco is very special. and this is one of the reasons why. thank you very much. maus plause [ applause ] >> thank you, mayor lee, i would just like to second chuck's remarks earlier that the support that we received from the city, from the mayor on down, has been nothing short of extraordinary, i have to say that it is probably unprecedented in the history of san francisco that we have had, universal unanimous support from staoet and to all of our processes and everything that we asked for it has all happened and it is credit to you and your amazing team. >> you know, about three years ago, we formed chuck and i

together formed a committee of our board and staff. to search for an architect for this ex-sxantion what we were looking for was an architectural firm through the work and the attitude through the work through the resume of experience, would express the values that this museum holds and that we want to address going forward, values of openness and generosity and sharing and welcome and transparency. and we also want to have a great building and obviously that would show all of our collections off to the best possible advantage and great public spaces and we have a really exciting search and on the last day, of our last tour of duty, traveling around we were in oslow and we met with craig and his partner and at the end of that day, we knew and there was... we knew in no uncertain terms that this was the firm that we wanted to work

with and i can only say that as i welcome craig up to the podium the last three thought and it actually does,

this is followed by a creative phase, and the creative phase is really the fun part, and then there is the pass that will move along. somehow this is a case of construction. and we will deliver this child. happily, at the end of this, there is the miracle of birth, when the doors open and there is hopefully plenty of hugs and smiles when our guests enter the new sf moment and as of this great day, the building will mature slowly at first and will experience many challenges in its life alongside the days of joy and celebration >> while this metaphor was pretty good there is a difference that i would like to point out. unlike many marriages and

births, the making of the building is not a monogomous relationship, it is a poly amorous relationship because there is a great deal of partners in this effort and we know how sticky that can be. >> there are a number of partner to consider along the way and each of these has a wedding ring so to speak and i have the privilege of representing this group of lovers here at the podium and the architects often receive a great deal of attention and that is important but it is also tremendously large team that we represent, so i wanted to share with you rather quickly the names of our partners in this relationship and it is a wonderfully rich list representing groups from california and the united states and the interests abroad and here it goes in alphabetical order, we are going to start with afp and they are going to install the sprinklers and arab engineers are working with the av and the

lighting. there is csi, group, and our friends, don and terry young were the managers who keep this ball around and rolling as the consulting group and the partners, and the architects and some of them are here in the audience today and the great partner to work with and closed and the hoert culture and we work with the green wall and jw, and the local projects and mka engineers and san anderson architects you are here too so some of us are here today and my great friends and team members, some of you may have met. graphic design, tailor engineering and i suppose that the winner of the most apt name in this group is the fire consultants can anybody guess what job they have? and there is technology and finally the friends at web core are building this project and this is just a partial list, to give you some idea of the complexity that this project

represents and the enormous amount of teamwork that goes into making it, all of these people are working together to create a museum for modern art that will be without equal. its collection is exceptional and the mission is generous and it is a gift for the youth of our future and its walls will signal a new direction for now we as the audience interacts with great works of art and with each other and how artists interact with museums and 2016, standing where we are right now we would have to look up 200 feet above us, twice the height of that parking garage, before we could see the top of the new sf mona, there will be over 160,000 square feet of space that is dedicated to experiences connected to art. that is more than triple just this area between mina and tona that we are standing in. all of these places are designed with the standard of lighting and environmental control coupled with a bold

sense of planning to protect the environment and signaled by a 50-foot high and 150-foot long green wall that we planted on the side of this parking garage adjacent to us. the museum will be, which was once intraverted will be open f

helps us appreciate the sublime and the meaningful moments of our existence. we have been driven by the vision of so many here in san francisco, to make this happen. and we look forward to the next stage of our work together with you. a sincere thank you to neo, and ruth and the board and the members of the planning committee that are here today and the city officials that have brought us altogether to make this possible. thank you from the design and construction planning team. [ applause ] >> the board and the staff leadership and team and the key community leaders and actually have the ground breaking. so i would like to begin with brooks walker and we are going to make our way down to like hollywood down the red carpet, brooks was the ground breaking, 20 years ago and brooks was our chair at that time and led the effort to get us to the third

street. >> bob fisher who is our board president and the partner in this project and dennis wo ng and the trustee of the oversight committee. and january kim, the district six supervisor who has been such a great supporter and partner in this project and then i also would like to introduce special members that we like to serve into the enhanced education programs. the class of third graders from carmichael school here in the neighborhood. >> as a member of the board

since 2003 and the board president for the last three years, i am incredibly excited to be able to kick off this ground breaking. on a personal note, kie not be more pleased that our families, art collection has found a home at sfmoma. and i would now like to

introduce... thank you. >> i would now like to introduce a partner who has been with us every step of the way in leading this transformation, district six supervisor jane kim. >> thank you, bob. >> i just asked craig if he was looking forward to working on his next non-controversial project here in the city and county of san francisco? >> i always like to say this, that i do represent one of the oldest parts of the city. but in many ways it feels like the newest neighborhood and the newest kid on the block here in the city, but i think that we take for granted the neighborhood that exists now and what it was like over 20 years ago and actually one of the first tenants that helped

to transform the city wassan francisco mona and we are so glad that you took the chance to invest in the neighborhood and you helped with so many of our partners that are here today to transform it into what it is. >> it is particularly important for us to be here today to celebrate the moma for what it is and will continue to be in the future. i was dedicated to public education and i am warmed that sf mona has made an incredible announcement that it is going to be opening the museum to those that are 18 and under for free. having grown up in a different city that had so many cultural and arts institution, new york, i actually grew up going to museums as part of my life as a school child and how important that cultural experience was to my development and as we continue to cut arts in particular, in our public schools, this will be such an

important part of their curriculum in their lives, so i am excited that we can welcome another tenant of the south of market here as well and that is our betsy car michael k-8 elementary school that is here today. [ applause ] >> so i believe that it is a principal here today? >> lauren? well have a first grade class that will be representing the south of market community. so are you guys ready? >> are you ready for the count down? >> all right, so we are going to get our shovels and then we are going to begin.

>> 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. >> plause [ applause ]

>> for those of us on the board, i know many of us have young ben was in the city. i know a ton of my friends have left the city. one thing that the strike me as we have a ton of data, but it is a different places. this year, we will call for those constituents to come together to understand the issue better and, going forward, enacting policies to extend that period . of all the places i have been, this is my favorite. i am a born and raised san franciscan. more important, i represent district 2. i grew up in the marina district close to the palace of fine arts. my parents still live in the same set of plants that i live in. i went to grammar school here. i went to st. ignatius here. i am a proud wild cat.

i went to college at loyola- marymount university in los angeles. i had a scholarship to play baseball. i remember coming down here to christie field, when my dad was in the military, seeing how the beaches have transformed into but we have today. you cannot beat the views, of course. it just holds summoning memories and i can come here with our kids, our family. i ended up going to ireland to get a master's degree at the university college of dublin. i went back to the states and went to law school at university of pennsylvania. then i came back, and choosing to live in san francisco was natural to me. when you are a child, you do not realize what you had until you leave home. i had the opportunity to live in los angeles, abroad in ireland, and there is no place

like home, when you are from san francisco. i have been a corporate attorney at palo -- in palo alto. i became an >> i worked in the finance industry about 5 1/2 years. in the summer of 2009 i joined a venture capital firm with two other partners. >> we are all excited about the americas cup here in district two but one thing if you think about it everyone knows what fleet week is like here in the marina. this is fleet week on steroids. think about fort mason, these will be the most brings taken places to watch the americas cup. what we're working on and working to continue to work on and want your input on, how do we make it a positive experience for the people that live here. >> i'm happily married and my life and -- wife and i live around laurel village. we have two children, five around they.

we are proud parents and now just excited to be here on the board. i think i'm in the middle. i'm a moderate person. fiscal fiscally conservative and that is the way i intend to practice what i preach here. in terms of getting into politics, i think for me it was really that reasons. first being from here, i think that was part of my own motivation, feeling a sense of roots in san francisco. also raising our children here. i think we went through as a young family the discussion and dialogue that many young families go through. should we move to the suburbs? away decided to stick around and we are very happy we did. once you stick around i think it was a turning point to say we are here for good. what can we do to make this place better? there were a lot of lessons to be learned in running a race in san francisco. a few that stick out, money does matter. raising money. that is a simple, somewhat

unfortunate fact if you want to be candidate. most importantly, one thing i drew out of it is hard work and utter determination is the thing that will, i think, allow to succeed more than anything else. i came from the private sector and looking at honestly answering the question did i have something different to offer that i thought would be valuable it san francisco right now and i think a hrrpbl part of our -- large part of problems are financial and with my background i think i can add a lot of value and that is why i decided to bet in the race. >> it means there might be some small profit if you run it correctly but not always. that is something we really need to keep in mind in our city government. from my point of view is that. we have to figure out what is it lake -- like to be a business person in the city and what we can do to not only have full restaurants and bars but making sure it is worth it to continue

to open successful places that make our community that much better. >> we have a huge unemployment rate in san francisco. it is about 9.6%. the fact that we have not done much about that in city hall i think has it change. that certainly is something i will be focused on in the beginning here in city hall. putting people back to work. it is an individual issue but it is a family issue and we've a lot of families still struggling and i think people have lost sight of that. hopefully we will be getting out of the recession soon but we need to do a lot to accelerate getting out of that recession, making sure families are back at work and children are provided for. to me that is my biggest priority. i think that we do lose a lot of sight in the past district supervisors lost sight of the fact that we do represent san francisco as a whole and we need to make sure in city hall we are enacting policies, laws and legislation that move the city forward as a whole.

these are the neighborhoods i grew up in, so for me it is fun to be in them to really understand what is going on and be able it fundamentals some of the thinking and some of the people that are making decisions. >> right here we played football. flag football right here every year. we hung out right in the gym. directors looked after us. parents used to check in but not only one parent, they checked on all the kids. that is what is great about this district, the community. the family base of everything. >> exactly. and look how you turned out. you are doing ok. >> doing all right. two local city guys. >> there you go.