figuring things out on the planning side. i would like to say thanks to john for the contribution as well along with mary and supervisors kim and others, not only did we use the monies as opportunities to begin this and get workers back on track on getting good jobs, but we also figured out for the five other buildings with tax increment financing so our general fund would not be burdened with additional taxes for the streets. in fact we are standing on trestles right now that are built temporarily. you just came across a bridge in order to get this project going, in order to have the machinery to stand next to the construction site. as maria said very clearly. we have the

water penetration controls because this is right at the edge of the historic water. so we have to do all of these things to plan well. i want to say thank you to president obama, leader pelosi, the entire delegation because they have been very sensitive to our vision and they in fact embraced the vision and we've become models for the rest of the country to use the infrastructure and recover from the economy and attract investments. that's the way the city has to work this way. they must work this way. this is going to be the future and it's the grand central for many many reasons. this transit center will become a critical anchor for economic development and jobs. after the thousands of jobs that the construction workers will have, there will

be 27,000 permanent jobs attached to this transbay transit center on going, sustained. that's why this transit district plan was so important and it got a unanimous adoption by the board of supervisors because of the way everybody presented the plan and the vision, united everyone around it with a vision of the 21 -century downtown. downtown has been a focus for many years. we knew this center would improve. we literally added 3,000 jobs in san francisco. that enhances those jobs and even more. look what's coming. 181 fremont began demolition last week, 54

stories of space, mission street, already 100 percent lease by sales force. 535 mission, another 27 story building, 505 howard street, another lead and 22nd street. lead certified with another 26 stories. these have shops and restaurants and in a few short years, the best public transportation center in the region. all of these new buildings and the transit center means good paying jobs. 27,000 jobs, we already announced as part of this, but

also 6 million square feet of new office space, 4500 new housing units. 1200 of those housing units are going to be affordable because of the financing. financing is just as important as transportation in our city. a hundred thousand square feet of new retail space. a thousand new hotel rooms and for all you open spacen enthusiast, 11 new acres of parks downtown open space. [ applause ] i said earlier, the financing of this doesn't always get a lot of publicity because the finance people are always working within their confines, but no burden to their general fund means that more of our members of our board and the mayor can work together to get

the social programs that we need and make sure that our funds are utilized to get those quality like programs working in the city. i want to give again a special thanks to the men and women in the labor force, mike terio and the construction trades, the workers union, the building trade are all here. thank you for keeping this job safe, inviting and sustainable for everybody who wants to work in the city. [ applause ] again, thank you to leader pelosi, thank you to the entire federal delegation with senator feinstein and boxer and certainly the administration is here today and thank you for working with us not just on this, on presidio and the transit system, the tunnel

machines are already in and working their way through a hundred feet at a time. that is all very complimentary. i want to give a shout out to governor jerry brown and the leaders of the state, houses and steinberg and perez for their leadership and supervisor kim, thank you. the tgpa has been there from the beginning. we have created that entity to make sure they all work together. you are pulling all the different transportations here to make sure we are not only getting this center done right and working with tjpa but we are going to melody it into the rail. the state of california is looking to san francisco as well as the nation to get these models going. but we need to understand the history of where it all began and when president obama and leader

pelosi said, we are going to recover, we did. i want to thank you leader pelosi for all of your support. this is a really good time for being in the city of san francisco. as many of the media told me, be a little bit more concrete, mayor lee. we are getting real concrete today. thank you very much. [ applause ] thank you, mr. mayor. it's so wonderful to see so much work happening in san francisco. now i have a great privilege to introduce a very important woman, not only to our project but to our district and to san francisco. in 2010 jane kim was elected to the board of supervisors for san francisco. all of the exciting new development that is taking place for our wonderful new neighborhood. the tjpa board

recognizes supervisor kim's leadership and she was appointed to board of directors and also chair of our board. she is the reason we've made progress this far. she is thoughtful and caring and provides a lot of information and valuable input. supervisor kim has not only been a transbay help in our neighborhood but many other factors in our neighbors, pedestrian safety, bicycle safety and other things that involve this community. it is my great pleasure to introduce the chair of the tjpa board of directors supervisor kim. [ applause ] >> in 2011 when i began my first year in office, maria invited the mayor and i to come to this site where we are standing today for the ribbon

cutting for the beginning of construction for this site. in 2011, these ribbon cutings were more of a rarity. this was a ray of sunshine in san francisco that was providing jobs for men and women that had not been for years. this was a time in the recession that many of us remember, but almost, you almost barely remember it today. the mayor actually when i first started approached me in january to talk about how we can create more jobs here in san francisco. and he mentioned a little known company called at which -- twitter and their interest in staying in san francisco. and we began the market on tax exclusion. since then, i get to see the mayor almost every week on different ribbon cutting and ground breaking. you would think it's

more comfortable to walk in heels in these sites. i was informed that my shoes are not osha proof. i need to reexamine as i walk around here. we have many more projects. whether we talk about the the expansion on sf moma and more recently the opening of the did -- tunnel machine and the director of sfmta and there is so much going on here at the south of market. we are talking about smart growth development. that means transit and high density residential commercial. it also means affordable housing as the mayor had said. this is an incredible milestone and i'm really pleased to be here with all of our leaders including leader plows -- pelosi. this

project is incredibly complicated. it was just a dream for many years. if it's not the dream of maria, who demanded the city pay attention to this project and of course our leader pelosi who fights for us everyday in washington d.c. to make sure we are getting prioritized for the funding for the jobs for the men and women and the permanent jobs in the future, this project would not be possible. the transbay project is a national model. it will bring 11 transportation systems under a single roof all in close proximity for the jobs, housing, retail and recreation and open space. this high density development will not only foster the economic growth that i said, it will be the center piece of that economic growth and reduce congestion

and greenhouse gas emissions. we are creating a bicycle community and safe public transit and full range of neighborhoods amenities. i want to thank the residents of district six and acknowledge bruce who is here who is our representative of the neighborhood on the transbay advisory committee. our residents have invested in this neighborhood early. knowing we don't have all the amenities in yet but also to advise on the city government and making sure this is a neighborhood that works for all of us and is the promise that we have made to them. this smart development it was city's goal when the board of supervisors enacted the transit center that both maria and the mayor had mentioned last year. that goal is already being achieved. the plan area right here in the center of south of market will have currently 19 buildings and development. all the

construction cranes that you see around us. it will have 35 percent mandated affordable housing requirement which is incredibly important for our working families and individuals in the city. we want to thank john burton for his leadership and advocacy for this project. [ applause ] we also want to thank a little known resident of district 6, the former mayor willie brown for initiating this project too. it is the undeniable truth that transbay has been the catalyst for this city. i look forward to working with everybody here for the future success of this program. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> thank you, director kim, supervisor kim for those words. our final speaker is one who has been in integral to this

community. mike has been at my side for the last 15 years helping to make this project a reality along with all the members of the labor community, the carpenters, operating engineers and everybody. mike has been a member of the workers union since 1985 and has represented the workers from san mateo and marine and other counties. he has been voted by his peers and elected the treasure since 2005. he's been with us since the beginning. the transit project labor unit has been a model for other projects for success. all 20 units signaturary have signed on and we have been able

to work with mike to create a program to mentor our youth both students ranging from 5 through high school and college. teaching them about engineering and architecture and all of the various disciplines that go into a project like this. mike as well as all the unions have been working with us as well with urs bashay and we have been working very hard with veterans to provide opportunities for them. in fact one of our very first contracts that was awarded was to a disabled company. without further a do i would like to have mike come up and speak. thank you. as supervisor kim pointed

out, this came out of the recession and it put a lot of folks back to work. we have leader pelosi to thank for that and mayor lee and predecessors and supervisor kim and her pred -- board of supervisors. a hand to all of those that i'm happy to represent. and, you know in digging this hole, we have not just been going down into ground. maria talked a little bit about this day and how far it came from. we have gone into history and prehistory. we have gone back

to where immigrants lived here. we came back in tame where a gold nugget was left here, when ships moord here. we have gone back to a place when willie mammoth left a tooth here for our workers to find. as any major construction project in the city you have to deal with it's history in order to start going in the other direction. that is what this pour today does. this pour today starts us in the other direction, starts us back in the present where we stand and start towards the future. the future you begin to see around you now and the future for a high speed rail. a future that will include many

many jobs. we in the san francisco building trades have been building this city for 117 years now. we count on that being just the first 117 years. on this project being a part of starting us towards many more succession of 117 years to come. one more thing. i have a pass here also. you see those cords, they are called floats. i started hanging floats for that company. there is a past towards the future for me as well. with that, leaders pelosi, i would say let's pour some concrete and start ourselves towards the future. [ applause ] >> thank you, mike. now i would like to invite our speakers to sign and put some gloves on and put their i am imprint in the

concrete for history.

4, 3, 2, 1. [ applause ]

>> it has been amazing. the people have been so gracious and so supportive of what we're doing. the energy here is fantastic with so many couples getting married. it's just been an absolutely fantastic experience, so wonderful. >> by the power vested in me, i declare you spouses for life. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> to actually be able to get married and be a part of this time in history and time in our history is amazing. >> this is a momentous occasion for us to be able to actually have this opportunity to have

equal rights. >> we have been together for 14 years. everyone is so welcoming. it's been all set up and people have guided us from step to step. it's been easy. there was live music. people are so friendly and excited. so excited for us. >> it's really great. >> yeah. >> and salvador is party a here to known as party a. >> on the out it looks pretty simple. you come in, you made your appointment. you pay. you go here for your license. you got there to get married. you go there if you want to purchase a certified copy. behind the scenes, there was just this monumental just mountain of work, the details into everything that we had to do and we quickly realized that we were not ready to issue the numbers of licenses that people are anticipating that we would need to issue. we definitely did not want people waiting in long lines.

this is somebody's wedding. you want to be able to plan and invite your family and friends. know what time you are able to get your marriage license, know what time you're going to have your ceremony. >> thanks for volunteering. >> we got city volunteers, we got members of the public volunteering. we had our regular volunteers volunteering. we had such an overwhelming response from city employees, from the members of the general public that we had way more volunteers than we could ever have hoped for. we had to come up with a training program. i mean, there are different functions of this whole operation. you were either, you know a check-in person. you were a greeter. you were part of the license issuing unit. you were deputy marriage

commissioner, or you were on the recording side. each one of those functions required a different set of skills, a different oath of office if they needed to be sworn in as a deputy county clerk to issue marriage licenses or as a deputy county recorder if they were going to register the marriage licenses or the deputy marriage commissioner if they were going to be performing ceremonies. >> donna, place the ring on her ring finger. >> the marriage commissioner training was only about a half hour. it was very simple. very well run, very smooth and then we were all sworn in. >> they said we would get our scheduled sunday night and so 7:00, 8:00, 10:00, you know, i got it at 11:00. this person who was orchestrating all of the shifts and the volunteers and who does what, you know, said from her office sunday night at 11:00. they are just really helping each other. it's a wonderful atmosphere in that way.

>> have you filled out an application? >> not yet. you want to do that. >> take this right over there. >> all right. >> take it tout counter when you're done. >> very good. >> congratulations, you guys. >> for those volunteers, what a gift for them as well as us that they would take up their time and contribute that time, but also that they would in return receive so much more back because they're part of the narrative of someone else's love and expression of love in life. >> this isn't anything that we had budgeted for, so it was basically we asked our i.t. director to do the best you can, you know, belling, borrow, steal if you have to and get us what you need to do this. and he knew what the mission was. he knew what our goal was. and, you know, with our i.t. grids and our software vender, they really came together and pulled it together for us. it made it possible for us to

be able to serve as many couples as we have been. >> so once you're ready, you and your husband to be or wife need to be need to check in here and check in again, ok. are you also going to get married today? >> yeah. >> let's process you one by one. do your license in, exit and re-enter again check in at that desk. >> our wedding is at 3:00. >> as long as we get you in today. >> we're getting married at 2:30. >> don't worry about the time line. we're greeting people at the doorway and either directing them to the services they need on this side which is licensing or the services on this side which is actually getting the ceremony performed. >> this is an opportunity to choose to be a part of history. many times history happens to us, but in this case, you can choose to be a part of it. this is a very historic day and so i'm very, very proud to be here. >> i have been volunteering.

last monday i performed 12 different marriage smones. the least amount of time that any of the couples that i married have been together is two years. most of the couples have been together eight, nine, 10, i'd say 70% have been together at least that long if not longer. >> there is a lot of misconception about who gay and lesbian people are. it's important that people see that we love our husbands and wives to be and love our children and have the right to have families just like everyone else. >> it's important that we have experienced our own families, our own friends, and the excitement of the volunteers when we get here has made us feel wonderful and accepted and celebrated. >> there is a lot of city agencies, city departments, divisions that offer up their

employees to help us out since overwhelming response, it's unbelievable at how city government works. this is the time that san francisco city employees have really outshined san francisco's clerk's office didn't need to hear from the mayor to say what's your plan. they offered a plan and said here is our strategy. here is what we can do. we can add all of these computers here and there. we can connect our databases, we can expand our capacity by x. we can open up early and stay late and stay open on the weekends. it's unbelievable. we can coordinate all of the training for our volunteers and them in as deputy marriage commissioners and make sure it's signed and certified. that's an example and a model for others. this is -- what happens is when people prove that things can be done, it just raises the bar for what is possible for everyone else.

>> it kind of went cooled plan and this is what we planned for. in some respects, people have kind of commented to me, oh, my god, you were a part of history and how many couples did we mary? how many families did we start? how many dreams did we make come true? the whole part of being part of history is something that we are here and we are charged with this responsibility to carry out.

. >> a very exciting day for all of san francisco. thank you for being here today. i'm the elected representative i represent district 10. that's the local community. thank you for joining us today. i as well every member that on the stage are happy to be here. it's been a long time coming. we're excited because we're going to be