Homeowners aren’t the only ones looking for a break on their property taxes — San Mateo County officials are expecting commercial property owners to jump on the bandwagon in increasing numbers this year.
The county Assessor’s Office expects to review more than 1,000 commercial properties in the next few months for drops in their assessed values, up from 681 reviews last year, as they prepare the tax rolls for the fiscal year that begins July 1.
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Downtown developers may lose the final say over what art to showcase on their property, even though they are sometimes forced to spend millions of dollars on it.
A 25-year-old mandate requires that developers with large projects in the Financial District and along upper Market Street must spend at least 1 percent of their total construction budget on public art. But Luis Cancel, The City’s director of cultural affairs, believes there is insufficient aesthetic oversight of this spending.
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Lawsuits against San Francisco businesses for failing to provide access for wheelchair users have been on the rise in recent months, and now some merchants are calling for a plan to protect small businesses.
Plaintiffs represented by Thomas Frankovich, a San Rafael attorney who has made a career out of filing suits against businesses that violate the Americans with Disabilities Act, have filed dozens of federal lawsuits in the last few months. Frankovich was suspended from filing in federal court in 2008 but has returned to San Francisco.
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San Mateo County’s bridges are among the worst in the state by some measures, but work is under way to address some of the worst of the worst — and local officials say others aren’t as bad as they might appear.A report released last month by Transportation for America, a lobbying group campaigning for greater investment in transportation infrastructure, found that 74 of San Mateo County’s 344 bridges are considered “structurally deficient” based on federal and state data.
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The Board of Supervisors will consider the future of Parkmerced on Tuesday when members review the Planning Commission’s February approval of a proposal to nearly triple the development’s housing density and run a Muni light-rail line there.
During a multidecade time frame, the developers propose adding 5,700 additional housing units. Their plan calls for the demolition of about 1,500 World War II-era townhouses whose displaced residents would then be offered the right to move into rent-controlled replacement homes, probably in multistory buildings.
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A San Francisco Superior Court judge Thursday began hearing the last remaining unresolved lawsuit against Lennar Urban over the Hunters Point shipyard redevelopment, where community groups want the housing developer to provide more details about the health impacts of buried toxic chemicals before moving forward with the massive 20-year project.
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San Francisco officials re-examining the proposed Treasure Island redevelopment project in the wake of the recent tsunami in Japan say the threat of inundation has already been addressed in design plans.The multibillion-dollar redevelopment project was questioned at last week’s Board of Supervisors Land Use and Economic Development Committee meeting by Supervisor Eric Mar, who wanted more information about a tsunami’s potential impact.
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Following January’s temporary closure of a parking lot shared by the Exploratorium and the Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco hoped to construct 23 new parking spots on a triangular plot of land at Palace Drive and Lyon Street. But neighbors of the 9,000-square-foot space were protective of the once-wooded lot.
Demanding that The City keep the land as is, they showed up to public meetings and replanted trees where pavement was about to go down.
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The latest U.S. census data confirms much of what we knew about already San Francisco. That white hipsters are displacing Hispanics in the Mission. That Asians are now as common as blacks in the Bayview. And that the population in the South of Market area has exploded.
But the numbers also contain surprises. That Chinatown is becoming less Asian. That Treasure Island is the most diverse neighborhood in The City. And that if you count the homeless community in Golden Gate Park as its own neighborhood, it becomes the second-whitest neighborhood in the county.
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Architects have revealed their vision for a shuttered, 110-year-old train depot near the Balboa Park BART station — and now they are trying to convince the state a revival is worth the investment.
The Geneva Car Barn and Powerhouse at San Jose and Geneva avenues has been vacant since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and barely escaped demolition. But a nonprofit that took over the building from The City revealed Thursday detailed schematics that are key to securing money to move a renovation project forward.
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