windy road when you were selected as developer in 2007 but it was worth it as we stand here today. working through the complex process and san francisco and the economy was wavering then demonstrates your commitment to affordable housing that improves the economic status of residents and advance the revitalization of this 6th street corridor. certainly this day wouldn't be possible without the advocacy and the stewardship of the south of market project committee and i'm not sure if i see any members here today but really unsung heroes. without them our community partners in this district we wouldn't be here today. they supported the former redevelopment agency's efforts really to develop in the

last 10 years many units of new construction, the plaza apartments, even rehab hotels in san francisco. it's really because of their stewardship and advocacy and certainly i wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the work and dedication of the commission of community investment and infrastructure, our chair is here today along with our commissioner and former redevelopment commissioner. today would not have happened and our district 6th representative commissioner as well. thank you commissioners. today would not have happened without the commission's work and dedication to building sustainable and thriving communities. consistent with the commission's objectives and goals 474na toma provides needed housing and create jobs for san franciscans. i am proud to say

this development with bridge and contractors have achieved business participation for the professional services contract and well over 1/3 of the very people working on this building are from san francisco, and certainly lastly i would like to acknowledge, and i know there is an acknowledgment component as part of the program but these folks that worked tirelessly day to day on the city side deserve acknowledgment and we wouldn't be here without olson lee who serves with the mayor lee of community development. i think you involved with this for 20 years -- 18 years. pretty close. i think that takes it and the mayor lee staff and kevin, anne romero and takes a village at least on the city side because it's taken so long and our housing staff, george bridges with contract compliance

and focialer agency staffers who aren't here today and deserve a shout out and michelle davis and others and certainly i see my colleagues in the city and paula johnson from the mayor lee on disability and she did the disability check on this building, certainly a labor of love and because of the mayor's charge our director has his hands full but he moved this along and certainly the planning department which permitted it and i want to thank you all the for your participation and i will introduce our site development leader with bank of america. [applause] >> good morning. what a beautiful day for our grand opening. i am ari. i am here

representing bank of america merrill lynch that invested in the land of over $32 million to make this beautiful, beautiful project. i would like to thank bridge housing for your hard work on this, the community on office investment and infrastructure -- did i get it right? >> [inaudible] >> the city of san francisco, and the many, many organizations and people that worked tirelessly to get this beautiful project built. today we're celebrating 60 new homes that will be permanently affordable to the great and diverse residents of san francisco. bank of america believes that we are better when we are connected and it's true. we are better, stronger city. we live not only next to the founder who created a huge company or the software engineer that works there or the

lawyers or the bankers but also next to our teachers and our firemen and the many families who are having a hard time living in this extraordinarily expensive city. that is why we at bank of america are one of the largest investors and lenders into affordable housing. just here in san francisco for the past 10 years bank of america has invested over $400 million and 27 projects to make this a better city. those investments have leveraged over 1.2 billion dollars, created $54 billion in jobs for people that live here. the bank supports the mayor's vision of building many more units in san francisco including 10,000 permanently affordable units, and we look forward to working

on the preservation aspect of that plan also. i am personally happy and honored to serve on the mayor's task force and we work to innovate and build those 30,000 units. we are honored to work with amazing organizations like bridge housing and the many people here that built this housing and do the good work and fight the good fight so congratulations on building these 60 wonderful homes, and i look forward to many, many more grand openings, and now i would like to invite and the reason why we built this housing wally gilbert to come and speak. [applause] >> thank you ari. good

morning everyone. i am really so honored to be here with you this morning. my name is loli gilbert and live here. i am a certified nursing assistant or a cna. i am self employed and i also work on call duty with the clients. most of my patients are older people who have dementia. i totally appreciate working with seniors because they have so much wisdom. a year ago i lost my husband to cancer. before that we were living a block away from here in a room or a shared place with a friend. i kept praying for a

place of my own where i could enjoy some peace and quiet and privacy. when i had opportunity to move in this building it was an answered prayer. i went to the door of my new apartment for the first time and i had ashes of my husband. i cried and i cried, but they were tears of joy. everything is here. i can walk to all the places i want to go to, to the church, to the farmers market, and to the main library. thank you for everything you have done to make this happen. this is the best place i ever lived. thank you very much. [applause]

>> thank you loli for your account. it really makes our job so much more meaningful hearing stories like yours. good morning. i am project manager at bridge housing. thank you for taking time today to celebrate the successful completion of the beautiful development. this development has been a painstaking labor of love for bridge, the mayor's office of housing and icii and the team of architects, engineers and contractors and consultants who stuck with the project against all odds. i would like to thank several people who have worked tirelessly over the past seven years to get us to this milestone. i want to

congratulate my core team members, mimi, code and chris hunter and richard stacy and staff with stacy architects and our general contractors. thank you so much for your hard work and unflinching commitment. i want to add a special note of thanks to bill moffit who is in the back and the construction manager. this was a challenge and we couldn't have done it without your guidance and perseverance. thank you very much. i would like to thank the constructional engineers and our landscape architects. [inaudible] and casey moore with waterproofing consultants,

[inaudible] with applied materials engineering, [inaudible] engineers charles and associates, treadwell [inaudible] and luke and associates. thanks to several of the project engineers and consultants our auditors and attorneys, many who are listed on the acknowledgment card in the program handout. i want to thank lynn for assisting in the process and the art work and catherine wagner for the creation that compliments the exterior facade and thank you for helping to achieve green certification. we really appreciate mayor lee and his staff and [inaudible] at ocii for providing financial support and assistance and thank members of the south of market project advisory committee and the san francisco planning commission

for their support and thank others and our lender bank of america and thank you to the committees for providing tax credits and bond allocations to the project. thank you to the bridge property management and our finance and accounting department and a big shout out to our marketing team ellen and lynn for putting a wonderful event together. i would like to thank cynthia and others and the leadership team at bridge for their support and guidance and last but not least i want to extend a special note of appreciation to the staff and there are others on the list that were critical to the development. i would like to thank all of you for your efforts. i would now like to

invite supervisor jane kim to say a few words. thank you. [applause] >> if you department think it took a village to build this i think she did an excellent job listing the actors and players that were involved in building the affordable housing in this neighborhood. i live half a block away so i could see all of the construction happening and was so excited about this going up. a couple months ago a number of our residents on mid-market were afraid of getting evicted from their units and they came to our office and one of them that did work with us in the tenderloin said i really need to find other housing. every night i am anxious i don't have a place to live if he raises the rent or evicts me so we et cetera

canned him with an organization and. >> >> and a couple of months later he came by and said he wanted housing here and he came by my house and cried "i didn't know what it was like to have a real home." these are the personal stories of why we do the work that we do and getting paid less so we can get projects like this to the residents of san francisco. i met another woman that grew up like loli and lived in the neighborhood and went to betsy carmichael before it was the actual school and wanted housing here also and how amazing is that that residents that live in the south of market their whole life are able to find equitable homes they can

call their own and i can't wait for the hotel to go up next director lee. project that we have talked much about. we all know how important affordable housing is here in the city. i came out of chinatown community development center, another organization that helps to build affordable housing but also building healthy and complete neighborhoods. it's more than just housing that makes a community healthy, safer and stronger. this is one component in it along with the nonprofits that provide the services to our residents when they are in place. but it is also my honor to work with a mayor that had made affordable housing his top policy priority. maybe some of the mayors will argue about who has done more for affordable housing but i think we can all safely say this is our only mayor that has authentic and meaningful relationship to affordable housing units actual

work experience before he came an official and working in chinatown and with residents and as an attorney helping low income residents. that experience is imcomparable to just saying this is your priority. you have worked with the people that you know will benefit from it and you have lived in affordable public housing and it is my honor then to introduce our mayor, mayor ed lee. [applause] thank you and thank you to bridge housing for your tremendous work. [applause] >> well supervisor kim thank you very much for that introduction. i'm going to join with all the of the comments and certainly acknowledge our long lasting partner bridge housing that you're going to hear more of. they're helping me rebuild public housing as we speak and

reinvision with us. i want to also say in light of supervisor kim's comment about my work previously i have also been a customer of bank of america for 50 years so it's great to see that pay back for the interest. [laughter] -- really good --. i am over joyed to be here to join loli and the residents that will be here in their new homes. we understand the struggles that people have in the city. it is incredibly expensive and it's also we're faced with many other pressure points that cause people to live in some level of concern and fear whether they can be here in the city, whether their jobs will be there for them or the residences and i join with supervisor kim in acknowledging the level of anxiety that exists in the city, and that's why i have to make sure that the city family of

agencies from ocii and the great leaders and the commissioners are working closely with dbi and the house -- office of housing and the incredible resources and niby brothers and working with the office of engineers to the office of disabilities to make sure they're for the residents here and only when they feel comfortable is our job to rest for a minute but we're not resting. i think today is both a celebration but yet another call to action just like last november under construction when we announced our aggressive goal of 30,000 units and 33%

affordable but also over 50% of the housing we're going to build will be reachable with work force that are here that are also feeling a lot of pressure as well. we've got to build more housing and we've got to do it more aggressively and when you look at the numbers here and all of the complicated things we put together whether tax increments, using the ocii's abilities, using acquisition in a creative way working with financial partners you will discover it's incredibly expensive to build affordable housing. you do the math and how are we going to get to the other units for the other thousands of people that are waiting like loli had waited for years to get in and feel more comfortable in this city. it is not only the pressure points in d6. it's all over the city and

we need to produce better and faster so we're going to challenge ourselves. olson you're on the front line for that but you have friends and tom and i and others and ocii have a lot of history to build on but we have to ask ourselves how can we build faster, do more, and build it in the lifetimes and career times that people have so they feel the city is for them as well? so we are and i am saying "we" as the supervisor and i wrestle with not just goals of the city but practically how to do it utilizing the strengths of the economy, the people building market rate housing, how they can contribute more. i suggest that office builders need to understand their link to housing as well, so that they're not just building office buildings or just building market rate units. they all contribute along with the city to make sure we're all contributing to the

building of long lasting sustainable beautifully designed affordable housing like this is. this is yet another call to action and therefore i will always arrive early on these openings where we're handing keys out and celebrating people here because we have an agenda that is a real agenda in the city, and you will read about the struggles that we will have to try to get there. it is my job to make sure that nothing disturbing the resources that we need to build and build faster. we will have things that might distract us, but we will always come to the ultimate conclusion what does it take to build to preserve affordable housing, to build more of it and all the other things that allow people to be successful in this city? i want this city to be for the 100% and i know that they're going to be price points that

price people out of the city. that's why we have to be aggressive in our affordable housing. i need all of you to commit yourself in celebrating this let's do more, be faster and more creative and more risks in this area. that's why we put $96 million in the two year budget to take more risks. we have the ability to do it and do it faster. let's keep working together so more loli's can feel great about the city it is a great city and i am so proud to be the mayor of it. thank you very much. [applause] >> please join us now for the ribbon cutting follow by

refreshments on the ninth floor.

one, two, three, five, four, three, two, one. >> yeah! [applause]

watching. >> ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ what would you think about working an, an a airport >> i love it busy all the time people, you know, everyday is an vantage we love people otherwise, we'd be accountants it's a lot of fun. >> we have experience that is a non-airport experience just negative stigma with airports wear trying to erase that and when the flight are detailed

it's fun to joust the fact that people can learn borrow more about us. >> some people are intimed by traveling and they come 0 a place which chaos. tell me how the concept of napa police department farms as it's a violation of the airport director he took the vision of a really cool gourmet speciality market with about friendly products this market with the local flavors that is the first of its kind >> can we get a tour. >> absolutely. so first up on our tour the world of chocolate i like to tall call it >> ? the my favorite. >> in the the flavors made in

san francisco. >> what about the customer service. >> my personal favor the to the the members of congress can chin no bar. >> have to go to multiple flavors to get those chocolates. >> the cupcakes from carr raze that makes people want to live here it's everything we're locking important. in the the crematory case if you know anything about san francisco this cheese with a one the most popular cheese people in the west coast times to know that the san francisco do you get >> do you find 0 people respond to the idea of our garlic. >> thank you. this is awesome that feels like there's a personal touch with the san francisco experience

>> we're very hands on. >> what's our most important offenders. >> it is our fresh vouth in the the propellers a bowl of warm cut oats and coconuts and probably by far the most important thing here. and speaking of drinks tell me a little bit about the congress taking tail scene >> the cocktails are fantastic. >> really make them special saw we use fresh ingredients we do have a sour mix we make those to order so some of our cocktails feature that freshly herbs and are are fraerts bloody mary faerment market bloody mar. >> yeah. >> so bloody marts are the

cocktail the number one drink. and then we're going to gash it with olives and some lime and a fresh stalk of celly. right on. >> yummy we like