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Hearing delay for SFPUC's ultragreen HQ
By: John Upton
08/03/09 4:52 PM PDT
A committee hearing into the planned construction of a $190 million super-green San Francisco Public Utilities Commission headquarters will be postponed, after officials decided to add $47.4 million in additional appropriations.
The Budget and Finance Committee was scheduled on Wednesday to discuss plans to construct a windmill-equipped, water-recycling 12-floor office building near City Hall at 525 Golden Gate Ave.
The building was planned as the nation’s greenest office building when it was proposed in 2007 by Mayor Gavin Newsom. Since then, a series of cutting-edge environmental features, such as windowsill-embedded solar panels, have been dumped from the plans to slash costs.
The new proposal is nonetheless planned to qualify for a LEED Platinum rating – the greenest rating possible for an office building.
The Board of Supervisors has already appropriated $43.8 million of the $190.6 million project.
But plans to appropriate the remainder of the money, $146.9 million, have been delayed, after officials decided to add an additional $47.4 million in financing-related appropriations that previously were planned to be considered at a separate hearing.
That extra $47.4 million will not be spent on design or construction of the project, according to SFPUC Chief Financial Officer Todd Rydstrom. Rather, the cash reserve needs to be appropriated and squirreled away to satisfy the requirements of lenders, according to Rydstrom.
A Budget and Finance Committee hearing into the proposed appropriation of the additional $194.3 million needed for the project is expected to be held next week.
The project will be financed through bonds, property sales, grants and city savings, SFPUC documents show.
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