The Paragon Market Update Report looks at prices and market dynamics in the different neighborhoods all over the city.

SF Business Times October 2, 2009          Construction spending rose 0.8 percent in August to a seasonally adjusted rate of $941.9 billion, above the revised July estimate of $934 billion.

By John Upton, San Francisco Examiner October 2, 2009    The owners of one-third of The City’s apartments and condos would receive limited city assistance to help protect their buildings from earthquakes, under revised legislation discussed Thursday

By John Upton October 1, 2009     A crumbling Glen Park cottage was analyzed after it was demolished Tuesday and officials determined that it was not, as they had feared, a historic earthquake shack.
 

Each week, the Paragon Market Update Report looks at prices and market dynamics in the different neighborhoods all over the city. Select the neighborhood to access the latest neighborhood details.

By John Upton, SF Exminer September 25th, 2009         Demolishing or removing any housing in San Francisco without first agreeing to build replacement homes would become illegal, under a proposed new law.

San Francisco Business Times - by J.K. Dineen  - The dramatic implosion of the Lembi family’s apartment empire is creating buying opportunities for longtime San Francisco multi-family investors who were shut out of the frothy market in recent years.

SF Examiner Sept. 25th 2009 - The public discussion concerning the future of the northeast portion of the Embarcadero will continue next week with a walking tour and a community workshop.

 By Jonathan Farrell, Sep 25, 2009
On Aug 12th staff members of the SF Planning Dept. presented the Mission Streetscape Plan to the community at a workshop style meeting. This was the fourth of such meetings. Their goal was to get public reaction and input to the plans drawn up so far.

by Gavin Newsom -  In the quest to create new green jobs, we have the opportunity to take existing jobs and make them green.

By: Joshua Sabatini September 22, 2009 , SF Examiner : In a city known for its restaurants and bars, opening new locations is hindered by outdated and imposing obstacles, officials say.

By John Upton - SF Examiner Staff Writer:  From inside a historic brick warehouse building in the South Beach neighborhood, a modern steel-and-glass residential complex is expected to rise.

City officials want to speed up some development projects by replacing their own environmental review experts with private contractors, The Chronicle has learned.

By James B. Stewart - Passing through the Fort Myers, Fla., airport a few weeks ago, I noticed people eagerly signing up for a free bus tour of foreclosed real estate-

 Today eppraisal.com released its National Real Estate Market Analysis report for 183 markets across the continental U.S. This report, which tracks median sales price of residential homes, compares data on homes sold in the first quarter of 2009 with homes sold in the second quarter of 2009.

 A Marin County housing impact fee imposed last fall to help pay for the creation of more affordable housing may be waived for a year in hopes of stimulating the depressed local building industry.

If the proposed 308-unit rental project at 333 Harrison St. is ever built, present rules would require the developers to pay The City an extra $16.5 million in impact fees before they were allowed to break ground. Those multimillion-dollar development-impact payments are in addition to the $700,000 in standard municipal permit and filing fees, plus 18 percent of total construction costs. The fees are for schools, parks, transit and other public services near the projects.

A Whole Foods market could open in the grocery-store-starved Haight-Ashbury district, despite the recession’s effect on construction projects. 

Wednesday night's hearing regarding a controversial police ticketing program was not nearly so crowded as the last time this matter came before the Police Commission; perhaps last night folks were gawking instead at the half-naked male and female dancers gyrating at a loud Carnival show on the City Hall steps.

A crowd of 300 to 400 soggy, hardhat-and-overalls-wearing union men and women -- many of whom, sadly, had no other engagements at noon on a working day -- stood at City Hall Plaza throughout a persistent drizzle for a demonstration today. We know they were there; we saw them. We don't know exactly why they were there because everyone seems to have a different answer to that question. 

Until this year, San Francisco was one of the few cities in the nation without a Historic Preservation Commission. A clear majority of San Franciscans voted to establish a new Historic Preservation Commission this past November.

Are residential developers being soaked by city fees?

Following a Feb. 26 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit in Secretary of Labor v. Summit Contractors upholding the legality of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's multi-employer citation policy, the nation’s home builders announced that they will be encouraging OSHA to address the issue through the rulemaking process. 

Members of the construction industry lined up to testify before the Police Commission Wednesday evening, April 22, 2009. They raised questions about the Safe Paths of Travel (SPOT) program that regulates path-of-travel safety of everyone who uses San Francisco's streets and sidewalks. Their complaint stems from the excessive fines (now exceeding $650 per ticket) small-contractors regularly receive for an “unsafe job site,” that includes double parking under the umbrella language of “unsafe worksite.” 

 After more than two hours of loud and public excoriations of a San Francisco safety program critics say was transformed into an overtime cash cow by the police officers enforcing it, the potentially biggest thunderclap of the night was uttered at barely more than a whisper.

The sunlight ordinance, Proposition K, was passed in 1989 and it mandates that it be considered how a new development affects shadows on any open space. Because of that ordinance, there needs to be special permission from the Recreation and Park Commission and the Planning Commission in order to proceed with building near Boeddeker Park.

...In a two-to-one decision, the court last week reversed an April 2007 decision by the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission against the multi-employer citation policy, which was used in a citation against Summit. OSHA had cited Summit — as the general contractor for the construction of a college dormitory in Little Rock, Ark. — for failing to ensure the use of fall protection devices by masonry subcontractor employees at the site working on scaffolds more than 12 feet high...

 ...The city received 5,600 building permit applications in July. In January, it received just over 4,000. More important, the monetary value of the permits, which often indicates the size and complexity of projects, dropped from about $240 million in July to $78 million in January. As a result, the city's Building Inspection Department laid off 48 employees earlier this month...

John Rahaim values texture in a building, the tactile qualities that reward close inspection and make a structure come alive.

San Francisco's buildings and infrastructure are fundamentally unprepared to handle the big earthquake that will surely hit the city sometime in the coming decades, according to a report by a leading local public policy think tank...

Whenever there’s a crisis, opportunists try using it to get what they want. As the City faces a deficit for the next fiscal year that is half the General Fund, a group of speculators want to raise the cap on condominium conversions – and allow all those waiting in the “condo lottery” to pay a one-time fee to convert their property....

 "San Francisco should force owners of the city's weakest buildings to evaluate their properties' seismic safety and complete any necessary retrofit work, according to a new report..."

 Many California planning and environmental groups are heralding the passage of legislation designed to address global warming by curbing suburban sprawl as a watershed moment, perhaps the state's most important land-use law in more than 30 years.

Across the street from a boarded-up billiard parlor and down the block from the guy in the wheelchair who just needs a little spare change is something unexpected. In the scruffy, graffiti-tagged Market Street center of San Francisco there is a great place to live...

 ...flexed their muscle when over 100 of them showed up at the Planning Commission last Thursday to push for a new Whole Foods supermarket across from Golden Gate Park.

Because of the success of the RBA's first annual golf tournament and raffle both held on October 6^th, 2008, the RBA has made a $5000 donation to the Boys’ and Girls’ Club.

The controversial and long-awaited Eastern Neighborhoods Community Plan — which includes a thicket of thorny planning and financing issues that will largely determine San Francisco's socioeconomic future — has finally arrived before the Board of Supervisors....

"...Under a rezoning proposal recently approved by the Planning Commission, the plan would grant housing developers access to huge swaths of industrial land that was previously available to them only with special permits. The zoning would allow housing development opportunities in east SoMa, the Mission district, Potrero Hill and the central waterfront, four areas with a rich industrial history that also make up about 7 percent of San Francisco’s 47 square miles of land..."

"...Most of Dogpatch is parking permit and meter-free.  And, according to the City, with the “approved and impending development of 21,000 parking spaces at Mission Bay,” which “will consume virtually all street capacity in the area,” Dogpatch residents are squarely facing, to put it mildly, a parking nightmare.  “Dogpatch used to be a little rough and tumble, but now we have four-star restaurants and the owners of the high-end bistro A16 are planning a new restaurant in Homes Esprit,” said Eslick..."

"Will Californians drive less to reduce global warming? Maybe not on our own -- but state officials are ready to nudge us. The Legislature is on the verge of adopting the nation's first law to control planet-warming gases by curbing sprawl..."

...Supervisor Sophie Maxwell is talking about proposing a new law in the coming months that could impose fees on loft owners, but only on those who hope to get something in return...

A 2-year-old Planning Department moratorium that put some 2,000 proposed housing units indefinitely on hold in the eastern neighborhoods of San Francisco has been lifted, giving developers hope that dozens of condo and apartment projects that have been stuck in political limbo will finally be revived....

"Mayor Gavin Newsom today signed what's being touted as the "nation's most aggressive green building legislation" requiring all new and renovated office buildings to meet minimum green standards by 2009 and the highest green standards by 2010..."

"...Local engineers estimate that San Francisco has several hundred concrete-frame buildings that are liable to crumble in a big earthquake centered close to the city. The precarious structures come in different shapes and sizes - some are high-end condominiums on Nob Hill, and others are former printing houses South of Market. But they were all constructed before building code revisions in the mid-1970s that demanded more steel reinforcement in and around beams and columns, and stronger walls..."

"...But while the city spends hundreds of millions of dollars to house the extremely poor, there is a large segment of its population - hard-working, fully employed and stable - that makes too much money to get the help they need to find affordable housing. "

"Half a million square feet of unwanted office space has hit the market in downtown San Francisco over the past three months, brokers say, the consequence of bankruptcies, downsizings and financial turbulence...."

"...Oakland's condo building boom has ground to a near halt. While construction has continued on existing projects,  no new projects have broken ground during the first half of 2008..."

"...After eight years in the making, the city's massive Eastern Neighborhoods document has emerged from city planners. It's too much of a loving look backward at San Francisco's industrial past, and not enough of a bold grasp for its post-industrial future..."

"...The idea is to discourage driving by concentrating development in urban areas near transit, jobs and retail or by laying out suburbs more efficiently. For decades, Northern California's growth hasn't followed this dense, urban model. Most development has occurred outside the nine-county Bay Area, according to a report by the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association..."

"...Many worry it's increasingly turning San Francisco into an enclave of the rich, where nurses, firefighters, cops, teachers and other professionals aspiring toward homeownership or in need of cheaper rent can no longer afford to stay...."

"... as long as the Left keeps talking about housing for the poor (but not housing for the middle class), our capacity to grow as a local political movement will remain illusory. Progressives cringe at the idea of standing up for households making six-figure salaries – but as the Chronicle article demonstrated, even families at the lower end of that spectrum are getting priced out of San Francisco..."

"...As San Francisco takes an increasingly conservative approach to historic preservation, rejected proposals are piling up in the City Planning office. The delays have hurt homeowners, architects and the building industry. Today most everyone - even some preservationists - has started to question the city's permit process and what needs to change..."

"The Bay Area housing market displayed its first positive sign in months as the volume of April sales rose by its highest percentage in at least 20 years..."

"...The 12,284 new arrivals to San Francisco were drawn to an estimated 10,000 new jobs and the city's enduring panache - good weather, views, arts and culture, restaurants, and access to the outdoors. But San Francisco still has some of the highest housing prices in the world and a long-standing housing shortage, so where will all these people live?..."

"...Given the tug-of-war that has emerged between Mayor Gavin Newsom's pro-growth policies and the supervisors' focus on developer fees to create affordable housing, Rahaim may benefit from being an outsider...."

"Stories about family members leaving San Francisco due to overcrowded conditions and insufficient options set the stage for this proposal...when it comes to the mammoth problem of affordable housing, we should encourage such creative solutions...."

Thousands of property owners who may be in violation of the city’s new Eastern Neighborhoods rezoning have a limited-time chance to be exempted from complying with the provisions.

Thousands of property owners who may be in violation of the city’s new Eastern Neighborhoods rezoning have a limited-time chance to be exempted from complying with the provisions.