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San Francisco Chronicle
an hour ago
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
Pizzeria calls it quits after 17 years, plus more Bay Area restaurant closings
The following is a list of notable Bay Area restaurants that closed in June. Click here for a list of May closings. Rotten City Pizza has closed following a 17-year run in Emeryville, E'Ville Eye reports. Owner Jonas Bernstein confirmed the closing to the outlet, blaming the current economics of running a restaurant. Workers have launched a crowdfunding campaign to keep the pizzeria alive. Oakland's hip French restaurant the Rendez-Vous is unexpectedly closing. In an Instagram post, its owners wrote that "unforeseen circumstances' forced the sudden decision but did not elaborate. The chic restaurant, which the Chronicle named one of the Bay Area's most beautiful new restaurants in 2022, served French dishes like a Nicoise salad with tuna loin, a classic coq au vin and beet-cured halibut. Bay Area barbecue chain Armadillo Willy's unexpectedly shut down three of its final four locations in mid-June, SFGATE reported. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but operate independently). The brand announced via Instagram that its San Jose, Santa Clara and Sunnyvale locations were officially closed. The post thanked patrons and staff for their support for more than 40 years. The sole remaining location in San Mateo will continue to carry the company's legacy onward. Khana Peena has served its final northern Indian plates, East Bay Nosh reported. The neighborhood restaurant was a popular fixture on Berkeley's stretch of Solano Avenue. You can still find the sought-after tandoori chicken legs and chapati at the restaurant's sibling location in North Oakland. It's a wrap, at least locally, for the wildly popular Basuku Cheesecakes. Owner and baker Charles Chen and his unimaginably creamy cheesecakes made their final appearance at Palo Alto's Vina Enoteca after he announced the end of his baking project earlier this year. Chen told the Chronicle that he was moving to Asia to focus on his restaurant consulting work. The Ferry Building's Grande Crêperie, a popular Parisian-style café, shut down when its lease expired on June 30. Owners Patrick and Joanna Ascaso told the Chronicle the closure was unexpected and had hoped to renew their lease; in a statement to the Chronicle, Ferry Building management said they were letting the lease expire. Grand Crêperie specialized in sourdough crepes, pastries and coffee, all of which lured long lines of customers. Walnut Creek's Nusantaran restaurant has closed for good after months of inactivity. SanDai owner Nora Haron officially put an end to her Singaporean-Indonesian project in June. The restaurant was regularly packed during weekend dinner service, but midweek business was ultimately insufficient. Dishes included beef rendang topped with pineapple, fish fried rice and a raviolo stuffed with tiger prawn in a red broth. Its joint coffee shop, Kopi Bar, has also shut down, though Haron is looking at opening more cafés in the future. One Market, the 32-year-old restaurant at the end of Market Street on the Embarcadero, closed June 11. Co-founder Michael Dellar told the Chronicle the decision was due in part to his retirement, but also to a slow pandemic recovery downtown. There were plans to sell the restaurant to current management, but the deal didn't materialize and a different buyer wasn't found. The restaurant held a Michelin star from 2008 through 2012.
San Francisco Chronicle
6 hours ago
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
Letters: It's not a story of rich people against housing in Menlo Park. Here's what is at stake
Regarding 'This rich California city is losing its mind over a housing project — and it shows why new rules are needed' (Emily Hoeven, June 28): Menlo Park has many neighborhoods with varying levels of housing. It is not just a wealthy town fighting low-income housing, as Chronicle Columnist Emily Hoeven would lead one to believe. And, I am not a NIMBY lunatic. Our downtown area is akin to a public square — a place to gather, to run errands and enjoy the ambiance of a small, suburban community. Most people access it by car because there is little public transportation, and the parking is located behind the storefronts. The success of our businesses comes from this access, which allows people from the entire area, and of a range of ages and abilities, to park and walk in downtown. The city's plan reduces the parking where more is needed. To replace this safe, accessible parking and the walkability of downtown with high-rise housing is a short-sighted, destructive and easy answer to state-mandated housing pressure. Virtually all downtown businesses line up against this plan; other locations, other options have been suggested. I encourage Hoeven to dig deeper next time, to work to undo bias and labels, and to present the full story in all its complications for our city and for the times in which we live. Lynne McClure, Menlo Park More planning needed Regarding 'This rich California city is losing its mind over a housing project — and it shows why new rules are needed' (Emily Hoeven, June 28): Chronicle columnist Emily Hoeven called the lawsuit opposing the city's downtown housing plan 'unhinged.' It's a striking word. When a journalist frames a perspective that way, it stops being a conversation and starts becoming an agenda. The group I'm involved with, Civifolia, doesn't support using the California Environmental Quality Act to block inclusive, climate-friendly housing. At the same time, sound governance requires more than clinging to one idea as conditions change. It calls for legally grounded, adaptable strategies designed for long-term success. Civifolia recommends four steps that Menlo Park can take to preserve local control and comply with state law: Add affordable housing-prioritized sites in eastern Menlo Park that were left out of the city's Housing Element for reasons inconsistent with fair housing goals. Work transparently with the state to address downtown site risks. Pursue redevelopment of the newly sold U.S. Geological Survey campus. Reevaluate large city-owned land near Burgess Park. This isn't a culture war, it's a planning challenge. And it demands solutions, not sides. Skyler Ellis, contributor, Civifolia, Menlo Park Who writes history of Trump? Regarding 'SCOTUS deals huge blow to judges' power to rein in Trump in birthright citizenship case' (Politics, June 27): The courts are the last check on the president, but as Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett admits, the judiciary, including the Supreme Court, doesn't have unbridled authority to enforce its decisions. Barrett has cautioned against an 'imperial judiciary,' emphasizing that while the executive branch has to follow the law, the judiciary's ability to force that compliance has limitations. Following Friday's U.S. Supreme Court rulings, I fear that history will document how President Donald Trump's three appointments to the Supreme Court had an enormous impact on the erosion of the rule of law and destruction of our democratic republic. It is becoming clear that all power may have been ceded to the executive branch — something that our founding fathers wished to prevent. I'd be hard pressed to refute the claim that we now live in a dictatorial autocracy. Will historians be intimidated and coerced by the president? If they acquiesce, Trump, discursively, may be able to write the future, what communication scholars call the rhetorical construction of history. And that, I worry, will take decades to correct and will result in the loss of what the Constitution guarantees all of us in the Bill of Rights.
San Francisco Chronicle
6 hours ago
- General
- San Francisco Chronicle
These 24 city-owned San Francisco buildings could collapse in a major earthquake
When the next major earthquake strikes, at least 24 of San Francisco's city-owned buildings could collapse, and over two dozen more could suffer major damage. The at-risk buildings include the Hall of Justice — where tens of thousands of San Franciscans report for jury duty each year — as well as multiple fire stations, police stations and homeless shelters. That's according to the city's own Seismic Hazard Ratings (SHR), a 1 through 4 score that classifies how seismically sound — or unsound — a building is, as determined by a structural engineer. Two dozen still-unretrofitted buildings in the city's portfolio have the highest SHR score of 4, according to data shared with the Chronicle. When a sizable quake strikes those buildings, per the SHR 4 definition, 'extensive structural and nonstructural damage, potential structural collapse and/or falling hazards are anticipated which would pose high life hazards to occupants.' Twenty-six more of the city's buildings notch an SHR of 3, which means a quake is likely to deal enough damage to pose 'appreciable life hazards' to people inside. For both categories, there's a chance that the damage could be too severe to repair. The damage estimates are based on an earthquake that would produce ground shaking more intense than the 1989 6.9-magnitude Loma Prieta quake; the city calculated a 10% probability of such a quake occurring over a 50-year period. Since 1990, San Francisco has spent over $20 billion on seismic retrofits for some of its most essential public infrastructure, including City Hall, the Veterans War Memorial and Laguna Honda Hospital. City officials say San Francisco is ahead of other Bay Area cities in having a standardized and thorough method for assessing the seismic risk of its buildings. But there are still dozens of city-owned buildings that have not been retrofitted and could collapse in a major earthquake, and the Bay Area is due for one. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates a 72% chance of a 6.7-magnitude quake, a 51% chance of a 7.0-magnitude quake and a 20% chance of a 7.5-magnitude quake hitting the region in the next 30 years. Only about one-third of the city's roughly 900 buildings have been given SHRs, because conducting the assessments the ratings are based on is expensive and labor-intensive, said Raymond Lui, section manager for the Department of Public Works' structural engineering division. Some of the unassessed buildings could be SHR 3 or SHR 4s, but a computer simulation of the buildings' risks suggest that the probability of that is 'slim,' he said. State law does not require San Francisco to retrofit its existing buildings. Under the California building code, most new buildings are held to a 'collapse prevention' standard — strong enough that they won't collapse during an earthquake at least as powerful as the 7.9-magnitude quake that devastated the city in 1906. Buildings deemed more essential, like hospitals and police stations, are held to a stricter 'life safety' standard — resilient enough to provide some life safety services post-quake. That means the retrofits San Francisco has undertaken are, essentially, voluntary, and funded through voter-authorized bond measures. But funding is never a guarantee among the competing priorities in the city's capital plan. Brian Strong, the city's chief resiliency officer, said the city will be able to keep checking off retrofits if San Franciscans keep voting to support bond measures. The next Earthquake Safety and Resilience bond measure, for $350 million, is expected to go before voters in November 2028. 'It's not something that's going to happen overnight,' he said, 'but I'm confident that we're making really good progress.' Here are five of the city's most important buildings that have SHR ratings of 3 or 4 and for which there is either no plan or guaranteed funding to upgrade or replace the structure. Hall of Justice — 850 Bryant St., SHR 3 'Severely overstressed.' 'Substantial cracking.' 'Significant rocking.' Those are all descriptors of what a major earthquake could wreak upon the nearly 70-year-old Hall of Justice, per a 1992 seismic assessment report. The city has known for decades that the eight-story concrete behemoth, which houses the county's criminal courthouse, is seismically unsound. Two of the building's basic specs are enough to alarm any structural engineer: its year of construction (1958) and its main building material (concrete). Before the 1970s, some structural engineers had raised concerns that concrete buildings could be seismically unsafe. But it wasn't until after the 1971 6.6-magnitude San Fernando earthquake, which caused two brand-new concrete hospital buildings to nearly collapse and killed dozens, that those concerns were translated into major changes to California's building code. Old concrete buildings like the Hall of Justice are especially dangerous because they can collapse suddenly and spectacularly, said Bob Pekelnicky, a senior principal and structural engineer at Degenkolb Engineers. 'It's nothing and then it's just — boom,' he said. The city has been slowly relocating people from the building — the offices of the Medical Examiner and District Attorney, San Francisco Police Department's headquarters, and two county jails which previously occupied the 6th and 7th floors have all been moved out. At least 76% of the building is now vacant, according to the Superior Court of California. Aside from a few police and sheriff units, there's really only one function left in the Hall of Justice, but it's a critical one: the courts. Almost every day, judges, attorneys, journalists, people on trial and their families navigate the building's crumbling courtrooms, often out-of-service elevators and leaky sewage pipes. Close to 30,000 San Franciscans enter the Hall of Justice each year for jury duty. Because of the high cost of retrofits, city and county leaders have long sought to replace the failing building altogether, but funding has been elusive. And the Hall of Justice can't be shut down until there's somewhere to relocate the courts, city staff said a lot has been selected just north of the current building. Funding for a new courthouse would have to come at the state level. The Judicial Council of California, which oversees new courthouse construction, includes building a new Hall of Justice with 24 courtrooms in its five-year infrastructure plan. Fire Station No. 7 — 2300 Folsom St., SHR 4 The fire station on Folsom Street in the Mission District is one of eight fire stations in the city rated SHR 4. Four more stations are rated SHR 3. All of those stations have Fire Chief Dean Crispen 'very concerned' about seismic safety, but Station No. 7 is top of mind, he said. That's because in the case of a major earthquake, the station is slated to play an important role in the city's emergency response. Station No. 7 is one of the three stations that would take charge of a section of SFFD's operations after a quake, as part of a decentralized approach in the event that communications are down. One of the other two stations, Station No. 2 on Powell Street in Chinatown, is also an SHR 4. 'You can only imagine,' Crispen said, asked what would happen if Station No. 7 collapses just when it's most needed. 'We'd have to rescue our own members out of a fire house.' Though the department initially planned to look for funding to make seismic improvements, it's now hoping to replace the aging facility altogether. An estimated $65 million project to replace it was deferred from this year's 10-year capital plan. If funding can't be identified, the city plans to prioritize the project in 2028. Taraval Police Station — 2345 24th Ave., SHR 4 Five of San Francisco's 10 police stations are rated SHR 3, and two — Taraval and Ingleside — are rated SHR 4, with no plans for retrofitting yet. Taraval Station in the city's southwest corner serves San Francisco's most populous police jurisdiction, extending south from Golden Gate Park down to Daly City and east from Ocean Beach to 7th Avenue. About $168 million to make structural improvements to or replace Taraval Station was deferred from this year's capital plan. The project was deferred from last year's capital plan, too. Police and fire stations are overrepresented on the list of the city's most unsafe buildings. That's because they tend to be older buildings, and because the stations are essential, so it is difficult to take one offline to perform the upgrades, Pekelnicky said. MSC-South Shelter — 525 Fifth St., SHR 4 Every day, more than 340 homeless people flock to the South of Market shelter for a warm bed and a hot meal. The building, which has distinctive maroon awnings, is more than a century old. Two other city-owned shelters, at 260 Golden Gate Avenue and 1001 Polk Street, also have SHR 4 designations. All three are older, concrete buildings, like the Hall of Justice, meaning they lack the steel reinforcement that resists side-to-side shaking. According to the city's capital plan, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing and the Department of Public Works are in the process of designing a seismically safe shelter to be built on the same site, but no funding has been identified. Human Services Agency headquarters — 170 Otis St., SHR 4 The city long knew that the eight-story concrete building that houses the Human Services Agency was vulnerable, but a 2018 seismic assessment showed it was more dangerous than previously thought. During a 1906-level earthquake, the 1975-constructed building is expected to be 'on the verge of partial or total collapse,' with damage including 'extensive shear wall failure' and the potential for debris to block the exits, according to the assessment. That could be catastrophic for the hundreds of people who work in the building — and for the scores more who frequent the building for services like food assistance and job training. One Human Services Agency employee said they are so scared to work in the building that they have told friends and family to sue the city if they die inside during an earthquake. The employee asked to withhold their name for fear of retaliation. In a statement, an HSA spokesperson said the agency signed a lease last month for several floors of 1455 Market Street and plans to relocate staff from 170 Otis and 1235 Mission, another SHR 4 building. The agency also plans, in the next two years, to acquire a site on the southeastern side of the city to accommodate any employees who can't fit in the Market Street building. The spokesperson did not give a timeline for the relocation out of 170 Otis and 1235 Mission but said the Market Street building is currently being renovated. A 'very real cost tradeoff' San Francisco is not an outlier in owning buildings that could collapse in an earthquake. In fact, experts say, the city is somewhat of an outlier in even knowing which of its buildings might collapse. Sarah Atkinson, a senior policy manager for hazard resilience at urban planning nonprofit SPUR, said she does not know of other cities in seismically active areas that have developed seismic hazard ratings for their portfolio of buildings. San Francisco is far ahead of both Oakland and San Jose, she said. 'I would contend that the city's probably doing more than the average,' Pekelnicky agreed. 'Could they be doing more? Of course.' Some advocacy groups have pushed for more stringent standards to be added to the building code for both new and existing buildings — to require, for example, that buildings aren't just standing after the Big One, but are functional and habitable, too. But requiring those long-term reinforcements would mean higher construction costs. 'There's a very real cost tradeoff,' Pekelnicky said. 'You get into the really hard challenge of 'who's paying for that? ' and 'is it worth the investment? ' because this is a rare earthquake that may not happen for 100, 150 years.' The high cost of building seismic resilience into construction underscores just how powerful earthquakes can be, a wakeup call for San Franciscans as public memory of the Loma Prieta quake continues to fade. 'There is no such thing as an earthquake-proof building,' city structural engineer Lui said. 'It's just gonna be how much damage you're going to sustain.'
San Francisco Chronicle
20 hours ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Beloved Northern California music festival experiences 50% drop in ticket sales
Ticket sales for the High Sierra Music Festival have hit a historic low despite organizers' efforts to keep the long-running event alive amid ongoing post-pandemic financial challenges. Just days away from the outdoor music concert's return to the small town of Quincy on Thursday through Sunday, July 3-6, co-owner and producer Dave Margulies says that revenue is continuing to plummet. 'Our last successful year was 2019,' Margulies told the Chronicle. Before the COVID pandemic, he said the festival sold an average of 6,000 tickets a year. Sales have dropped to around 4,000 since then — and this year's event has barely cleared more than 2,000. Single-day ticket prices range from $82 to $109 apiece for adults, but with overall costs exceeding $2 million, Margulies admits it's looking grim. 'We've tried to adjust to remain sustainable,' he said. 'It's been very, very difficult.' Organizers already cut back on operational costs — such as fencing, golf carts and talent fees — in an effort to reduce last year's budget, which was approximately $2.75 million. 'It was so bad,' he said. 'But we realized the repercussions of canceling. That to me would signify the death knell of the brand.' The four-day family-friendly event has become known for its intimate performances, quirky experiences and spontaneous collaborations that showcase both rising and established talent, from El Sobrante rock band Primus to Phish's Trey Anastasio and improvisational jam band Dogs in a Pile For its 33rd iteration this week, the lineup features Palo Alto bluegrass artist Molly Tuttle, Saratoga rock group ALO and East Bay hip-hop artist Lyrics Born, among others. 'This event is too beloved to let it go,' he said, noting that organizers ultimately decided to 'power through' while trying to reduce losses as much as possible. Despite the festival's current struggles, Margulies remains optimistic. He said they've seen a slight uptick in ticket sales over the past week and is counting on Fourth of July weekend's sunny weather to draw more music-lovers in at the last minute. While he acknowledges 'we're not going to double our sales in a week,' he said the goal is to sell at least 1,000 more tickets. Those looking to purchase tickets can use the discount code '15SIERRA' to receive 15% off four-day passes. 'This is a very passionate community and there's a lot of love out there for this festival,' Margulies added. 'We're hopeful that people will come and rally.'
San Francisco Chronicle
a day ago
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
Exclusive: Dianne Feinstein's lavish S.F. mansion has sold. Here is what we know
The longtime home of late Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her late husband, financier Richard Blum, in a stretch of San Francisco's Pacific Heights neighborhood known as 'Billionaire's Row,' has a new owner. The three-story, 1917 Italianate mansion at 2460 Lyon St. sits on the famed Lyon Street steps, at the foot of Vallejo Street. Among its distinguishing features are meticulously manicured gardens, stunning views of the bay and proximity to San Francisco's national park site, the Presidio. The 9,500-square-foot property traded hands on June 24 for $19 million, public records show. It served as Feinstein and Blum's home since 2006, when the couple purchased it for just over $16 million. Feinstein died in September 2023 at age 90, and Blum died in 2022. The price tag for the property's recent sale places its price-per-square-foot value at $2,000. It's not clear what the value of the Lyon Street mansion was expected to be, but according to reports in 2023, it was previously valued at roughly $21 million. The identity of its new owner is unknown, but signs point to a high-net worth buyer with ties to New York. The property was purchased with a limited liability company formed in that state this month, public records show. The home was paid for using 'all cash,' according to Charlie McCabe of San Francisco Capital Advisors, who viewed the sale documents. McCabe was not directly involved in the deal, but represented Feinstein and Blum in multiple past commercial transactions. Public records link the entity that was used to purchase the couple's former home to New York resident Nicole Maultasch. The Chronicle attempted to contact Maultasch, but could neither confirm nor rule her out as a buyer. The mansion represented one of the more significant assets among Feinstein and Blum's real estate holdings, which included vacation homes like the 36-acre Bear Paw Ranch in Aspen, Colo., and a seven-bedroom Lake Tahoe compound as well as homes in Washington, D.C., and on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. The Aspen Ranch sold in 2023 for $25.2 million, which, according to reporting by the Wall Street Journal, was several millions dollars below asking price. The Lake Tahoe home sold in 2021, reportedly for $36 million. Blum's vast business empire included investments in the real estate, energy, tech and education sectors. He was also a philanthropist and UC Berkeley benefactor. As Feinstein's health declined shortly before her death in 2023, the two factions of her family — with her daughter Katherine Feinstein on one side and Blum's three daughters on the other — became embroiled in legal conflicts over Blum's trust and the former senator's desire to sell her Marin County home. That property, located at Stinson Beach, was eventually sold in late 2023 for $9.1 million. The Lyon Street mansion appears to have been inherited by Katherine Feinstein and Blum's daughters. Both Katherine Feinstein, a former San Francisco judge, and Michael Klein, a longtime business associate of Blum, signed the sale documents as co-trustees, records show. Katherine Feinstein could not immediately be reached by the Chronicle.
