Power Outage
In 2010 the Trans Bay Cable was installed to transmit electricity from fossil fuel generating facilities located in the City of Pittsburg to San Francisco, in part to close Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s Potrero Power Plant, now site of The Power Station development. The undersea cable typically conveys upwards of 40 percent of the City’s electricity supply. However, it’s been placed offline this summer, to repair damage caused by underwater erosion, which has exposed parts of the buried 53-mile-long cable on the bay floor, according to its owner, NextEra Energy Transmission, LLC. In some places, the cable has dropped as much as 15 feet from its original burial depth. Repairs involve installing new protective sleeves and nine- to 12-inch-thick concrete coverings. So far PG&E ratepayers have paid roughly $2.2 billion to fund the Cable, money that may have been better invested in local energy sources, such as photovoltaics, batteries, energy efficient appliances, and demand flexibility programs. Leastwise these resources would be easier to fix when they broke down.
Pricey Portrait
District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton agreed to pay $4,500 in penalties after municipal ethics investigators found he illegally accepted an expensive painting of himself and voted on a lucrative contract for a nonprofit that’d paid for his travel. The settlement was reached between Walton and the San Francisco Ethics Commission more than a year after the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Walton had received the portrait from Urban Ed Academy. The painting cost $5,500; far more than the $590 gift value Walton was allowed to accept. Reimbursement is also linked to Walton voting to increase a contract for Bay Area Community Resources by nearly $4.8 million shortly after the nonprofit paid $1,679.30 for him to attend a conference in Colorado…Last month a candidate to replace Walton, Theo Ellington, was endorsed by the San Francisco Democratic Party.
Vander-art
Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive officer and the world’s seventh-richest man, gifted $75 million to create an art school within Vanderbilt University’s Design District campus. The Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang College of Art, Architecture and Design at Vanderbilt University–San Francisco will replace the California College of the Arts, which’ll close at the end of the 2026-27 academic year. The college plans to offer undergraduate and graduate programs, alongside community and precollegiate offerings. According to Vanderbilt, undergraduate degrees will be grounded in intensive studio practice, apprenticeships, and internships to connect the campus to San Francisco’s cultural and “innovation ecosystems;” graduate programs will be studio-centered and research-oriented.
Robot Square
Amazon Robotics has leased a 250,000-square-foot space at 650 Townsend Street from property owner Beacon Capital Partners. The Massachusetts-based division develops autonomous robots and automation systems for Amazon’s warehouse network. Amazon Robotics is located next door to Scale AI, with 180,000 square feet in the same building, formerly occupied by Airbnb. Showplace Square is emerging as an AI hub, with Together AI at 2 Henry Adams Street, Physical Intelligence nearing 60,000 square feet at 808 Brannan Street, and Sam Altman’s Tools for Humanity occupying 82,000 square feet at 600 Townsend Street East.
More Berths
Brookfield Properties wants to increase Pier 70’s density and height on its 28-acre enclave by roughly 28 percent, from 2,150 to 2,750 residences. The new plan, which includes adding two stories on multiple residential buildings, raising the structures’ height from 70 to 90 feet, the maximum allowed under a 2015 ballot initiative, must be approved by the Port Commission and the Board of Supervisors. According to Tim Bacon, Brookfield Properties’ vice president of development, the changes could allow the company to break ground next year on the first housing complex, a 350-unit apartment building slated for the evocatively named, “Lot E2.”
