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Published: 05 March 2018

1978: Nearly two-thirds of California's voters pass Proposition 13, capping property taxes in California and dramatically changing our State’s fiscal and development landscape. Forty years later, a proposed ballot initiative to amend Prop 13 proposes to eliminate the existing inflationary cap on annual assessments for most industrial and commercial properties statewide, allowing non-residential properties to be assessed at fair market value and generate higher property taxes to help fund schools, infrastructure and public services.  
On Wednesday March 7, ULI SF’s Housing the Bay presents "Forty Years of Proposition 13: Truth and Consequences”. Moderated by Libby Seifel, the panel will discuss the “truth and consequences” of Prop 13, examining how it governs the collection and distribution of property taxes and how this landmark initiative has affected the fiscal and development landscape throughout California. Fred Diaz (City Manager of Fremont), Brian Uhler (Principal Fiscal & Policy Analyst at the California Legislative Analyst's Office), Tom Bannon (California Apartment Association CEO), and Ben Grieff (Campaign Director at Evolve) will share their insights and explore how Prop 13 affects housing costs, new housing development and property turnover.
"Forty Years of Proposition 13: Truth and Consequences" takes place Wednesday, March 7 at 5pm. Prologis Ventures has graciously opened their doors (at Pier 1, Bay 1, Embarcadero, San Francisco) for this panel. Full event details and registration are available here: https://sf.uli.org/event/forty-years-prop-13-truth-consequences/
This program is part of ULI SF’s Housing the Bay, a ULI SF member-driven initiative to foster innovative solutions to the Bay Area housing crisis in the realms of financing, building costs, policy, and the public process. This panel has been coordinated by our Innovative Financing group and is a lead-up program for the ULI SF Housing Summit on Friday, March 23, 2018.

UPDATE! (March 8): Click here to view the presentation "Forty Years of Proposition 13: Truth and Consequences”.

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Published: 01 February 2018

New Partners for Smart Growth (NPSG) holds their 17^th annual conference in San Francisco on Thursday 2/1 through Saturday 2/3 at the Hilton Union Square Hotel. Themed “Practical Tools and Innovative Strategies for Creating Great Communities,” NPSG’s 2018 conference features a dynamic speaker series and eight thematic tracks that address timely housing, transportation, planning and environmental challenges, with smart growth and equity as the threads that weave among each track.

Conference tours will offer attendees the chance to learn firsthand about local development initiatives across the Bay Area (including tours in San Francisco, Oakland, Richmond and Berkeley). In addition to helping to coordinate the NPSG housing track, Seifel Consulting arranged the Thursday morning “Downtown San Francisco Transbay Transit Center District Tour,” which will feature the numerous public private partnerships under development and recently built. Not only are these developments creating San Francisco’s newest mixed-income neighborhood (featuring 35% affordable housing), they are providing hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for the new Transit Center.

On Saturday morning, we will delve more deeply into funding strategies for affordable housing. “Paying for Affordable Housing,” will explore the opportunities and challenges in raising capital to fund affordable housing, including multi-layered investment funds, cap and trade auction proceeds, and local ballot measures. Session attendees will leave with a greater understanding of successful approaches to fund housing within their own community. Speakers include Amie Fishman of Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California, Julijs Liepins of Forsyth Street, and Brian Prater of the Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF). Libby will moderate this engaging session.

Full details on the 2018 New Partners for Smart Growth conference, as well as registration information, can be found here. Presented by the Local Government Commission, NPSG draws a national audience of federal, state and local leaders who are committed to building safer, healthier and more livable communities everywhere. In recent years, the NPSG Conference was held in St. Louis, Portland and Baltimore.

UPDATES (February 5)
Click here for a peek at the accompanying presentation to the Transit Center tour.
Click here to explore the Saturday morning Finance Panel "Paying for Affordable Housing"

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Published: 03 December 2017

Transbay Transit Center poised to open in Spring 2018
The Transbay Transit Center is poised to open in 2018. In addition to providing intermodal transit access throughout the Bay Area, the 1.2 million-square-foot Transit Center will feature more than 100,000 square feet of retail space and a signature 5.4-acre rooftop park, including an amphitheater and public plazas. Surrounding the Transit Center are numerous new developments underway that will ultimately include more than 6 million square feet of commercial space, about 4,400 new housing units (35% affordable to very low, low and moderate income households) and new public parks and open space.
Lincoln Property Company is leading the management team of the Transit Center’s public spaces, retail leasing, open space programming, and promotional platform, collaborating with Colliers International, Biederman Redevelopment Ventures, and Pearl Media. Collectively this team will lease and activate the Transit Center’s retail space, dynamic rooftop park and its promotional platform featuring more than 270 digital displays throughout the Transit Center. The Transit Center will connect eight Bay Area counties and 11 transit systems, including future California High-Speed Rail. Bus operations at the Transbay Transit Center are scheduled to start in early 2018. (To learn more updates about the Transbay Transit Center, visit them at www.TransbayCenter.org.)
Seifel Consulting has advised the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, the City and County of San Francisco and the former San Francisco Redevelopment Agency on the complex funding program for the Transit Center, the redevelopment of the surrounding area, and the implementation program for the Transit Center District Plan.

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Published: 10 October 2017

The Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture (Fort Mason) is a nonprofit historic center located along San Francisco’s northern waterfront in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. More than 20 nonprofit and arts organizations are permanent residents of Fort Mason, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Magic Theatre, the well-established Cowell Theater and the internationally acclaimed Greens Restaurant. 

Located in the beautifully renovated Pier 2, the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) is Fort Mason’s newest tenant. Working in close collaboration with Fort Mason, SFAI reinvented a 67,000-square-foot space on Pier 2 that includes more than 160 art studios for students, faculty and visiting artists, as well as 3,300 square feet of newly created public exhibition space that adjoins the existing Cowell Theater.

To celebrate its new Fort Mason Campus, SFAI held a series of grand opening events in November 2017 and commissioned artists to share new works to celebrate the new building over the next year. SFAI alum and faculty Alicia McCarthy (BFA 1994) kicked off this series with a beautiful mural of interwoven color, energy, and gesture—visible throughout the entire space and shown near the top of the accompanying photo from SFAI’s grand opening. 

Seifel Consulting gratefully acknowledges SFAI, Fort Mason and the LAI Golden Gate Chapter for hosting an event in Fall 2017 to showcase the renovation of Pier 2, which was led by William Leddy and Marsha Maytum, founding Principals at LMS Architects who creatively designed Pier 2’s sustainable renovation. We also had a wonderful time at SFAI’s grand opening celebration meeting the talented array of SFAI students and faculty who exhibited their art works throughout Pier 2.