tv [untitled] January 30, 2014 4:00pm-4:31pm PST
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premise of that project is. okay. so that kind of concludes where i am -- where we are with surplus property. i think it's probably not as exciting as the grand jury when they keep sending me stuff expects to find, but we're awake and working on it, and the days are over where we're not taking our properties and the value and revenue that we could generate from it seriously so with they will conclude and be happy to answer any questions. >> thank you mr. golden. thank you for the comprehensive presentation. it's good to get a relook -- at least from my perspective i know the board of education has probably seen this many times but to see where we have come from over the 12 years with surplus property. i have a couple of questions and then i will open it up for comments and questions from the rest of the
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committee. first, and i can't exactly remember where this was and on the surplus property or list or examined by the boe about the site and i know there were conversations about the current [inaudible] campus and it's a huge site and a lot of it is open space and i know there was a grade issue with that site but what is the status of that site? >> okay. so that -- i mean that potential is still there, so right now the current strategy would be if all the cards fell into place would be to relocate the school of the arts to 135 van ness. we are currently investing a fair amount of money into the macktier campus and going to take a number of years to make it happen and we don't want the students to have a heating system, not have lights
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that work and for all of the time to make that happen and we think the campus even in soto moves to 135 the academy is going strong. we expect it to grow. we expect to colocate another school there because the campus will be great and we think soda will use some of the things there no matter what because there will be a black box theater, and auditorium and a number of things that could be coshared so the prospect of liquidating the entire property doesn't look realistic in a long-term horizon or would i recommend it. the potential that exist and what we need to sell a lot of the sloping for us as a school is not usable land
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but to a developer who is already paying a fortune for land in san francisco a slope on land is no big deal so we recognize there are probably several hundred units or more of some serious development potential that's there. >> and you know it's good to see kind of the other sites that you're considering and i have a list of the principal site and it's concrete other than the loton and considered open space by the neighborhood and i am glad about that as well. and i am curious from the school district's perspective and maybe it's not just a question for mr. golden and consolidating staff and i don't know if we have staff at cook middle school and the bay view and doesn't
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help the staff members collaborate and given that you have have those sites and are there conversations about consolidating office space rather than obviously building a larger office and with a private developer and there isn't a slush fund for sfusd to do that. >> so the answer to that is yes if you remember when -- actually when i first came here in 2004 superintendent ackerman had consolidated a lot of -- i can't remember the name of the hi tech. [inaudible] >> but the goal was to move them
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and we saved $800,000 a year by doing that and we moved them into cabrillo and since that time there has been an expansion of personnel both in special needs and early learning and that has dictated spaces? the district. a lot of the needs to be in other -- it doesn't work to be all together. they actually need to be i think in locales throughout the city but i think one of the solid goal that parcel to consolidate those all in one place. how all that comes about i don't exactly know but for starters we know there are several hundred people at the budget office and the facility
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office and in finance that need to go somewhere if soda is unavailable. the mayor's office would like to see eight story there is so i think there is a number of options. >> thank you. i apologize and it was an oversight on my part. i meant for the mayor's office of housing to be here as well. it's a joint select committee and we shouldn't have the school district presenting on one single item and i apologize for that and beginning of the year and we will make sure they're present for the committee meetings and the last point i want to make and on the resolution the school board passed in 2010 i would like to see that one of the goals was to leverage district real property assets for revenue that will
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aid the general fund, but also opportunities to close the opportunity gap which i think is one of the thinking behind 1950 mission that affordable housing is one of the opportunities that is a gap between students and our school district so i hope to see that in future presentations as part of the thinking with surplus property so i did want to open it up to comments or questions from our members if there are any? commissioner norton and then commissioner wynns. >> thank you. i just want to thank you for the presentation. i mean a lot of this information i'm aware of but to see it all collected like this is really, really helpful and partly just to help you dispel that kind of disconception that we have tons of empty properties lying around the city so i really thank you for that. i guess i want to explore a little bit the
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seventh and loton discussion a little bit moamplt i think i heard you just say to supervisor kim that site could accommodate -- did you say hundreds of units of housing? >> seventh and loton. >> [inaudible] >> oh the sota site. >> [inaudible] >> i think seventh and loton actually could accommodate -- >> about 120. okay. >> yes. >> and i mean i know when this comes up we sort of talk about the neighborhood opposition to this, but it does seem like given -- i mean what is happening in the city right now and just the that there does seem to be so much agreement on the need to build more housing whether it's market rate, affordable -- a mix. people disagree what it should be but everyone agrees we're not building enough housing in the city but this seems to me that we have a responsibility to
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really explore. i mean both as a board of supervisors, as the board of education to really say this is a prime site in a prime neighborhood, residential neighborhood near transit. it just would make sense that we move on that. >> and i couldn't agree more, and it's interesting every single time we have a hearing that mentions the word "surplus property" this is the only time that 14 neighbors haven't come out that their desire is this to remain public open space forever so that will take some partnerships and a brave developer who wants to take on that fight but i think we would be anxious to partner with somebody on that. i would love to have olson step up and take that one. >> i agree. >> commissioner wynns. >> thank you. thank you
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mr. golden. first of all i think it kind of goes without saying but we should make sure all of the members of the board of education get a copy of this as well as maybe on the website or just as part of our public outreach. there are a lot of people interested in this subject so i think this very cogent and clear summarizing visual presentation would be helpful to us in our -- and maybe we make sure that all of the members of the grand juries opine -- no, i thank you for the work that has been done. i think actually one of the most interesting things is to see the status of things that were on our surplus property list because as mr. golden said the process is so long and complex
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and somber some we need to do that to have the discussion, have things on the surplus property list and go through the committee process, et cetera, et cetera, and even at at time at slow to no growth in our population to see just within a few years the educational uses of these properties should give us pause to think about balancing our obligation to use the public resources as well and for the advantage of the public and also be cognizant all the time that schools' needs and the district's needs are going to evolve over time, so that's interesting, and then i wanted to -- like following up on commissioner norton's comments talk a little bit about the properties that are left, and i think that we really do need to do a lot of community discussion and talk to the mayor's office to -- not only the mayor's office of housing but to the
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board of supervisors and others and think how we want to have the public discussion about these things, so for instance seventh and loton was part of a previous lond trade with the city, not so much to our advantage, and so the restrictions on this property i mean actually at one time years ago we had -- which i have available. i don't know if you have ever seen it. were you here -- we have a conceptional design for housing at the seventh and loton site which was meant to be rental housing for teachers, and so the discussion about whether educator housing is a educational purpose and with a small group of people in
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a room wondering if we could get money for this and i think that's the discussion we need to advance. we have people that are saying -- at that time to me it seems there was interest in the community from this item and other sites and having additional preschool sites so that was at least one group of people was. it would be acceptable to them if we built a child's center site, an early education site that we would call it now and i think it's important to work with the community to engage people and discussions that take into account -- for instance the fact that high rise buildings have been built in the area and the character of single family housing has changed significantly since that time and we should difficult talk about it and also this doesn't
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take into account and this picture doesn't include that piece of property continues to the south, and is open space that belongs to the water department as i -- >> it's a community garden. >> yeah, it's also -- in other words we should talk about the whole thing when we talk about community uses for open space, et cetera, what the impact might be, and this is a little facetious of course, not having a site for a christmas tree lot or a pumpkin patch and use it for something else but i think it's a good example how -- now, we have a commitment to and some kind of infrastructure for actually working with the city on these kinds of issues whereas before we talk, they talk, and we weren't doing things together and there are some things, and the same thing is true at the mac tire site and the soda site
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and the areas that are under utilized as well as our athletic field there at the high school are part of a major open space that the city has, so we ought to talk how we could use those things and the same is true in the old day when is we talked about the possibility of building housing on the open hill sides along bos worth there were far fewer houses on the up side across the street of that hill side and whereas now they're filled with residential units, so i would welcome, and i think with the experience that we now have staff -- we have staff that -- yourself and others that could be talking about a way that we could do some kind of collective or partnership discussion with the public about the future of those kinds of sites. >> yeah, and just to follow up
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on that if the school of the arts is going to come to fruition at 135 there will be partnerships with the city and public and private that need to be forged because there will be some landmark issues. there maybe some environmental issues, and the city and the school district may have to partner together to be able to overcome what could be some fierce advocacy in certain areas to make the whole project come to be, so i think it's kind of an important relationship. i think deputy superintendent lee and olson ly are trying to make this transaction happen. i think in the end -- i forget who said it, but i think that deal -- i think came out
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primarily because at that time commissioner fewer had the strength of will to force a solution, and i think that it was time and we were ready for that. we spent a lot of time on too many options, so there's a lot of work in each one of these steps to happen. even at 555 and parcel lee i think the potential to go higher potentially so they're all new territories to work on in the city. >> if i may just finish up i wanted to say something about those sites. one thing you need to take into account is the under utilizing of the mccallister building, the older building on the site and i think we should consider that. maybe we can make some -- talk to
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some architects and tell us what could be done on the site, and the same thing -- and lastly i want to make one comment i am hoping that we -- i remain committed to the idea that we need to provide access to housing for our employees, particularly for teachers if we're going to remain competitive as to having teachers be able to come here in the future which we will definitely need, and i think that -- i am hoping that we will continue now having done this one deal with the city to look for new models because the weakness of course is the deal that we have done it will result in some affordable housing but there will be limited if any access for our own employees to that project -- to that housing because any housing project -- affordable housing or low income housing that includes federal subsidies teachers and most
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school employees are not eligible so we need to make a new deal and will be and i think we should pursue politically or think about other ways to build housing that is exclusively or largely for school district employees notably teachers. >> thank you. >> thank you commissioner. commissioner fewer. >> thank you supervisor kim so thank you mr. golden for this report. i have a couple of questions. one is at 1475 ellis street to the church. when does that expire? >> i don't know. can i find out for you. >> and it's the same for [inaudible] garage and do we know when the lease expires and the parking authority -- >> [inaudible] >> [inaudible] >> i can get you all that information. >> okay. do you think these are leases that would be up within the next five years?
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>> the bush street garage, no. the other ones probably. >> oh for renegotiation. >> yeah the bush street garage was recently done and i need to check on ellis. >> and the lease for that on the bush street. >> yeah in fact we did it because we carved out spaces for the school. >> for redding elementary. >> they were requesting spaces and we redid the lease to get those spaces and still keep the lot available. glad tithings obviously is not one of the money makers. i think we have a long history with them -- >> i don't know the history -- >> but i can find out. >> okay. >> i know the fifth and market lease goes on for decades.
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>> yeah that's too bad -- actually -- yeah, that's too bad. >> there were those that thought it was a great deal and those in hindsight do not think that. >> yeah. now that we look like the price of a two bedroom condo -- >> right. 1440 harrison is a very long deal and there are a number of sites at the bottom if you look on the list there are four sites including the old downtown high school site that were leased to city college for instance for a up front lump sum payment of $10 million or whatever it was some years ago so there's a number of those that are floating out there where all the money was paid and the lease is good for another 50 years. one of them is the old polytechnic high school for instance. >> out on waller there. >> right. so we're no longer getting revenue from the sites,
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the money was paid up front, but we still own the land and will eventually. >> okay. >> downtown site was for -- i don't know if this will work but we got the money up front and used to build betty carmichael. >> yeah, that was that campus. >> and i think that we are concerned about our employer housing; however, through conversations with teachers though and it is also with the leadership of uasf that the last statement was they're willing to look at something other brick and mortar and rental subsidies which actually may work out better for us because we're not in the business -- we're in the business of education. we're not landlords and tenants and do we really want to -- we have some property that we rent but do we want to work with
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individual housing tenants? i don't know about you but as a board member i don't think i want to work with that. i feel that we should be using some of the revenue to help retain the teachers, yes, because 50% leave within the first five years but i think there is polling and surveying to do among the membership to what teachers would like. i think if we ask teachers if they would like to live together in one complex you might get different answers from that and personally my husband being a i wouldn't want to live in a complex with all police officers or fellow board members so there we go. i also wanted to ask you about that space i just drove by the other day at the 42nd avenue site and i am wondering all these sites we aren't currently using that
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site at all? is that correct? >> the 42nd site is currently used for two things. it's used for the storage for the special education department so there's a lot of records there, and it's being used as it always has been by the principal's union that maintain office there, but the building is such lousy shape we're not encouraging permits to have active events there. we have suggested to the supervisor of that district that potentially it could be a farmers market site in the interim. there are a number of things we would entertain as a community asset while we figure it out, but you're right, right now very low use. >> so actually i think i would categorize that as vacant because we don't have permanent office there. we don't have a school there we have buildings that actually we can't house or
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educate children in, right, because they're so broken down but it's also a eye sore of that community of single family homes so i am wondering what maintenance do we do to clean up the area? i drove by the other day and granted it was quickly on a motorcycle and i was wondering there is garage and debris and to be good neighbors are we constantly maintaining that site? >> and the answer to that question is we are supposed to be and one of my phone calls after i leave is call willy green in custodial and do policing and clearly when you have sites not heavily used you wind up with trash and debris and we want to be good neighbors. i agree. >> and i think that was a problem on 1950 mission and garage there and in front of that and to be a good neighbor
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we should keep that clean so the one at seventh and loton and i believe you're talking about the garden which is north of the site. >> that's not ours. >> yeah, that's not ours but i'm saying there is a garden but actually what is south of the site isn't ours either. that belongs to the water department of city and county of san francisco, whatever, so both of those, noght and south are not our site but the north site is already a community gardin there with open green space there and the south is also the reservoir of this huge big area, right, and so when you spoke -- when we explored about housing on 7th avenue when you spoke about there was enough room for housing and open space were you considering the property that's adjacent to the south and not to the north but to the south as the open space or were you looking at open space and housing within the property that we own?
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>> yeah. what i was considering commissioner is that the end of a planning process that would be fairly contentious there would be a compromise between a moderate housing density with some open space opposed to a totally built out site. if i had to guess of the eventual outcome would be there would be some give and take on our property. >> okay. >> but i think that's a planning process i am speculating. >> okay. great. yeah, well you know what? i have to say one i am looking at this list and we have made movement on this; right? page street that's done. 1950, 1101 connecticut and font street and they're done and this list is shrinking fairly within the last couple of years. >> yeah, and the chinese --
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jackson street is back to being a school. >> yes. and then i wanted to ask about cook street. you mentioned they're bursting at the seams and going over to that other site. are they all moving over there and will that be vacant site? >> no. early learning has a huge proposal to take over head start. i think we are anticipating that we're going to get some portion of that and we are anticipating we have to hit the ground running really fast. the combination of sort of expanded interest in pre-k and now with tk essentially being more and not less. i'm speaking out of my area of expertise. they have needs for staff so where city college was previously at the havard site on
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the other side of the building we are now our preschool programs will take over part of that space and new special needs classrooms there as well, and there will be administrators on the second floor which has been predominantly empty for a long time. >> right. >> that plus gloria davis which is predominantly administrators so there's a lot of programs in the district and a lot of things that need. >> right. i think what would help with the mapping out in the future of our real estate is one is looking at the future needs even 20 or 25 years from now about where we might need schools and i am just say out at the park merced area there is going to be a huge development out there, right. we will see a huge increase of the family housing being built of needing a school out there and frankly we
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don't have a site out there and the schools out there can't accommodate such -- they're smaller schools so i think that type of planning about what we will need. the developers there they're going to have to also pick it up for us i feel because they're building it and their families are going to need schools somewhere but we don't have a school space there so i think when i'm looking at surplus property or property that is vacant or newly vacant or not utilized it would be helpful to have a plan also has we project out the age of school age children in san francisco and where we night need the space to actually educate them. as we see here we have little vacant property surplus property. everything is being used. i think there was a time when enrollment was down and people freaked out and you're going to have all
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