ground level and gives a sense of community within the building. we are making sure that our residents will have multiple green transportation options including bike storage and preferred parking for low emission vehicles and according to the transportation center will ensure public transportation is always a few blocks away. we've also designed block six to be highly energy efficient, energy conservation includes shading and cross ventilation system using outside air for healthy interested door air quality and also will bring much retail space for all to enjoy. many people don't realize how much work happens before we break ground. so i would like to give a special thanks to a few people who provided their expertise and leadership to get us here today. maria kaplan of

the gapa has been critical in getting us here and ann -- anchor for this development and christy and to the mayor's office our gratitude goes out to elizabeth. our financial partners mept and their advisors kenny, of been a big part of making block six a reality. it's an environmentally sustain able urban project in dedication for real estate investment helps propel the market for sustain able real estate market block six. i would like to thank ed for his incredible innovative

building design and chuck pally from ko construction, our contractors. i want to personally thank brian lawrence and bruce am as -- armstrong for their incredible assistance to getting us to this point and lastly my partner and brother-in-law lee for his tireless work for nearly 4 years in bringing all of the pieces of this amazing puzzle together. thank you everyone and everyone i did not mention. before i bring up the mayor, i would like to discuss something. we also install a time capsule. we want to make the time capsule more meaningful. in addition to burying it on the sight, --

site, we plan to have a display of it. most likely and most obviously it will be how dumb our smartphones are for that time. i guess i should show you what it looks like. we are actually not going to bury it today. we are going to take some suggestions. anybody ha has any interesting ideas, please be sure to let one of us know. so far our partners at kennedy are contributing aerial photos of the before version of this area surrounding the transbay center and to make this local and timely we also couldn't resist including a picture of the bat kid who put so many smiles on san franciscans around the world this year. next, we'll hear from mayor edwin lee. when he's

not delighting young crime fighters, he's worked tirelessly to make sure that construction is at the heart of every new area in san francisco. it's no surprise that the mayor has been focused on affordable housing. this has been his issue. thanks to mayor lee, no other city is developing as much affordable housing that san francisco is doing right now. thanks to the mayor there is now permanent funding in affordable housing in the affordable housing trust fund. $1.5 billion will be available for construction in affordable housing. mayor lee believes building affordable housing is something to

accomplish. mayor's accomplishment includes parks, public safety. ladies and gentlemen, mayor lee. [ applause ] >> thank you, michael. i guess that time capsule is not big enough for me to go in. first of all i have been business an acquainting myself with the family. i'm really happy to not only see you here welcome a great project. this is again another celebration of the presence that supervisor kim and i have been having all this wonderful year. i can't tell how many times we've been together in your district for these kinds of causes, but there is so much congratulations to go around. first to the guam family for

joining with housing of great producers and good solid affordable housing in the city, and i look forward to working with you get on this doug. there is a lot of other congratulations to be had as well. i know the idea of making sure that we did well by using public land that was part of an adjacent to the transit center was a dream that maria had for the transit system. we always wanted to make sure we had in fill housing and use that properly. the redevelopment agency was in there for decades on this theme well before a lot of the arrivals of these projects have come along. i need to thank the former redevelopment agency but now in the form of the newly creative

office of investment, the staff is here that has been working really hard because the vision of using public land and making sure reflected our values is extremely importance. tiffany is leaded that effort now with her efforts to make sure that all of the land that had been formally redevelopment land gets the agreements that we had that the state has in their infinite wisdom decided to honor and keep in fact, i think we are one of the few redevelopment agencies in the state of california, particularly the governor had appreciated the way we conduct ourselves in all of the redevelopment agencies decisions. something i know he realized that because we have a lot of things we are doing and doing it correctly. it's also

thankful because this project continues to contribute signature amounts of money to the transit center and that center is going to again be the grand central of the west. and so, it's important for maria to hear not only is the land adjacent, not only is it a great development, but $23.4 million to the center is not bad either. that's always a great news to hear because all of the projects around here are contributing significant amounts and that's important to hear from the people of cal trans and as well as all the other transit agencies. another great thanks and recognition has to be the people, the men and women that are going to work on here. there is going to be 2300 construction jobs doing lead green jobs for this wonderful

design building and it's going to have it's own natural air pockets and i love hearing green platinum being the goals and standards for this building. 140 units on this block and block 7, that will compliment what we'll do probably here again in the few weeks, supervisor kim. that has opened up the rené project that is 120 p -- units of supportive housing. we are doing it right, building this city for 100 percent. when we match 409 market rate units here, we will have contributed significantly to the affordable housing and the below market rate housing that we need in the city to keep everybody here. we had that vision with the redwopgs -- redevelopment

with the transit center that we wanted all to enjoy the amenities and share the park and share the walkways to the transit and all the different amenities in different backgrounds and this is what we wanted to create. while, also there is a lot to be said about who is financing this project. i will tell you, manny flores e-mail me three times to make sure i said carpenters, i'm glad to do that because if there is any reflection of competence in the city whether it's electrical union that is doing something on van ness with their money or carpenters laying dower their invaluable protection, you have to know they have a high level of confidence for this city. that's the level of confidence that we've always wanted to build in this city and that's

why i'm working hard with the supervisors to build investor confidence in this city, not just for this project but for the quality of life in this city. we have to have that level of confidence, that level of confidence for contractors to be here for them putting their money in the resources, the hiring goals and training for all the future and present construction workers, men and women and people from all different backgrounds investing in their time that they want to build and be a positive force here. this particular project has so much meaning, mr. gallup to all of us. it's not just a reflection of a great family which i'm very glad to be introduced to but all of these partnerships that we are putting great confidence in the city. san francisco is successful. we have an

unemployment rate lower than almost every part of this country. it's because we are putting partnerships together, we are introducing ourselves to different partners, building the right way, designing them the right way. it takes a lot of great confidence and partnerships to do this. and do it in a way in which we respect public lands and get out of it as much as we can for all the other people together including our men and women in our labor force. that is so significant. so confidence building is part of our government job and we are doing it with great partners, with the ocii, now more and more you will hear about their work as they become my partners in so many of the other parcels of land that are publically owned that have waited very patiently for these opportunities where investment in the private sector can match

the government and public investments that we've done. when these buildings open you are going to see a lot of happy people. i know we are looking at a dirt pile today, but just look beyond that pile in all different directions and you will see the most beautiful housing and spaces and parks and we are figuring out the way to manage these with the investments that everybody is making. as you can tell, i'm very positive about local economy and positive about relationships and i want to say congratulations to the gallup family and merchant housing and everybody involved. these have been projects that have been years in the making. i think supervisor kim and i know how lucky we are that right now the investor confidence shows itself up in the brick and

mortar and the jobs that we have. thank you very much for being here and being part of this success industry. [ -- story. [ applause ] [ applause ] thank you, mayor for your very supportive comments. we really appreciate it. next i would like to introduce doug shoemaker, president of housing. >> good morning, everyone. doug shoemaker, the president of housing california. it's great to be here again. as the mayor said we really have the commitment in san francisco to make communities like this inclusive and as hard as it's these days to deal with the affordable housing crisis we are facing with in our city, it's not without a lack of effort. it's two of our best officials in the country mayor

lee and supervisor kim, we are going to do everything we can to make affordable housing in san francisco possible. i want say a few thank yous. i want to thank our contractors for doing the phenomenal work and moving won this project. i want to thank bruce prescott, our architect, two of our managers, barbara and who has done all the work and i would like to thank them for their phenomenal work and the office of community investment and infrastructure. i said that, right? i'm looking at tiffany cut me off. formally knew her in her redevelopment agencies, it's really phenomenal that we

are continuing to move forward when others have not found a way to do it. we thank you and the rest of the regents of this building thank you. it takes years for these projects to get here. this land appeared available to us and to the ocii to make it available for affordable housing for years and we had the vision to build these sites. i want to thank our partners from gaup -- we have a great partnership. when this project was about to get going and the city was struggling to figure out where to get the money together. gallup fronted the money to do all the predevelopment work on this sight and of course it's coming back to them -- [sirens

spren] that by the way, is the investors and the alarms are set off somewhere in seattle. [ laughter ] i will talk to her for a second. in any event, when we were in a moment of need both with the city and mercy housing gallup stepped up and made it possible to move forward with this project so we can build the affordable and market rate. i think it's an attribute to them to the family and in the city to moving forward. i want to thank them for that. >> without further a do. i get the pleasure to acknowledge them because they do the most work than any other district in the country, which you get some

credit but you get a lot of credit now and for folks who know supervisor kim she that is most unique supervisor pedigree more than anyone in the world since she's been an advocate and on many issues, without further a do, i want to introduce supervisor kim. [ applause ] >> doug and i go way back, actually. i think i brought it up at another ribbon cutting the arlington. we used to be in an affordable housing softball league together and i was injured and didn't make it back. doug make sure we did reasonably well, maybe not. a

bunch of non-profit folks playing softball throughout the city. i'm excited to be here at this ground breaking. it was 3 years ago when the mayor and i attended the transbay terminal down the street. i remember that day because the mayor and i got shake hands with workers. many of who had not been working for several years. thises their first job back on the market and they were so excited that there was a project moving forward here in this city creating jobs and hiring hardworking folks throughout the bay area. a year later, the mayor and i saw each other at various ground breaking and for affordable

housing for residents here in san francisco. i get to have two hats, one supervisor representing an amazing part in san francisco and two as the transbay powers authority which i represent with john. transbay is a huge part of the development plan and we would not have the funds if it were not for cal trans. i'm excited about this for many reasons. one, as a supervisor i hear so much from our residents about this massive gap that they have to walk through on their way to work. it's exciting that we are really able to commit to our promise of making this a livable, walkable neighborhood for all of our residents. some of them have been waiting for us to build out this area of

transbay and many will see this neighborhood become a neighborhood. and then as the chair of transbay joint powers authority it's exciting to see this neighborhood coming true and one of the terminals which we've been waiting for which will connect dozens of public transit lines that will connect the bay area into downtown which is important but second, we are building a transit rich neighborhood here in the center of downtown that will include mixed income housing. this is the model of redevelopment, this is the highest example of what redevelopment can be. san francisco did and continues to do redevelopment right. of course this is why we should have continued this very important tool. but i'm so glad that we were able to take advantage of it for this area because building affordable housing for low income and middle income homes in san francisco is important baunsd

-- because as our city continues to grow is affordable housing. i do want to thank ocei. i'm not going to both to say it. our director, our chair, johnson, commissioner sing and ellington who are here. it's exciting that we were able to convince the state to allow us to continue to create jobs and housing and transit. i want to thank everyone involved. so many people is making this redevelopment area plan happen throughout the city but of course our private partners, gallup and mercy. i'm excited to be here a little less than two 2 years for the ribbon cutting hopefully early next year. congratulations. thank you. [ applause ]

>> thank you supervisor kim and doug. is it 12-inch? right? in chicago we played 16-inch and you should know that gallup and company thanks to lee has won the real estate league championship how many times? four times. he's the commissioner of the league of 20 teams. you are the commissioner as far as i'm concerned. anyway, now i would like to introduce tiffany bowhe director of ocii. [ applause ] >> good morning. tiffany bowhe with the community investment infrastructure. today we share

a vision and values. a mixed income community at the epicenter of the most vibrant real estate downtown market in america sharing common area green spaces and amenities. thank you mayor lee for your leadership, your support and clear directive of your administration to stand firm and work tirelessly to provide the highest and best use for these public land parcels. your commitment to affordable housing and authentic mixed income communities is laudable and will help ensure that san francisco remains a vibrant city. thank you supervisor kim for asking the tough questions, for delving into the details to make sure the public interest is being served. your creativity, collaborative spirit and leadership boed

well for the audience to ensure housing development. thank you for the gallup family, jean, lee and mike newman, you were willing to embark in a process in late 2010 and 2011 and your equity partners willingness when the economy was still wavering back then and for recognizing the vision and values of san francisco and this transbay redevelopment project. thanks to doug shoemaker and mercy housing for your continued commitment inform -- to affordable housing and economics programs and revitalize neighborhoods and revitalize lives. finally our infrastructure, our commissioners and it is these folks who work everyday to

exercise land use development and design approval authority to major projects like this. today would not be possible, would not have happened with all of your hard work and dedication to building sustain able and thriving communities. really today is emblematic as the mayor indicated as the work of the office of community of -- thank you for making this possible. >> thank you everybody. i hope

you can tell we are all excited and looking forward to getting this off the ground and looking forward to seeing everybody in the summer or fall of 2016 for the party. we are here, any why was and concepts or things that anybody has, we want to make sure that we are available for everybody. thanks and obviously a ground breaking wouldn't be possible and wouldn't make sense. we have a few photo op's and terry is going to grab the mic and we'll be taking a few photos. also there is some food for anyone who wants to grab it and they can take it in the basket and the boxes at the table there. thank you everybody and thank you mayor for coming, i appreciate it. [ applause ] >> >>

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