Hotel for Warriors
The Golden State Warriors want to add lodging and condominiums next to the Chase Center basketball arena under construction in Mission Bay. The basketball team plans to propose a 142-room hotel and up to 25 upper-floor condos at the northeast corner of the 11-acre project site, near the intersection of South Street and Terry A. Francois Boulevard. The hotel requires approval from the San Francisco Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure, which oversees new Mission Bay projects, as well as other municipal endorsements. If accepted, the team hopes to start building by mid-2021 and open in 2023. Rick Welts, Warriors president, asserted that neighboring businesses and residents have expressed a need for a hotel, especially for visitors to the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center. A 250-room Marriott hotel at Third and Channel streets is being erected; Welts claimed it’d complement the Warriors’ lodging.
Anchor’s Away
Last month, Anchor Brewing workers delivered a letter to the company’s management announcing their intent to unionize the brewery. If the effort is successful, it’d be the country’s first unionized craft brewery, though, given that it’s now owned by a conglomerate, some dispute whether or not it qualifies as “craft.” Workers charge that their wages stagnated after Sapporo acquired the company in 2017. The new union would be part of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 6, based in Oakland, which represents warehouse workers across the Bay Area. “We represent Bayer Pharmacy, Guittard Chocolate, workers in recycling in Alameda. A broad spectrum of companies and manufacturers belong to Local 6,” said Agustin Ramirez, lead organizer for the ILWU in Northern California. Other ILWU members thought the partnership between brewers and the union was a natural fit. “Our warehouse division represents wine distributors, like Gallo wines, so it makes perfect sense for this group of workers,” said Samantha Levens, who’s with the marine division of the ILWU. “I know people like to purchase union made beer. It’s kind of a selling point,” she continued. Garrett Kelly, who has worked for Anchor for three years in the fermentation department and makes $18.35 an hour, agreed. “This is a grassroots bottom-up organizing effort by Anchor Brewing workers.”
Chase Parking
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is working to get ahead of an impending parking crunch between 16th Street and Caesar Chavez, Arkansas and Illinois streets when the Chase Center opens this summer, modeling a potential policy after what’s in place around Oracle Park. Under potential new rules, Residential Permit Parking and four-hour limit meters will be enforced until 10 p.m., Monday through Saturday; meter costs will be $7 an hour during events, including on Sundays. SFMTA is trying to calibrate meter prices to balance the needs of event-goers and local businesses, which still operate when there’s an occasion happening and don’t want parking restrictions to impede their customers.
55 Bus
According to San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency survey data, Southside transit riders want shorter but more frequent routes, direct access from Dogpatch and Potrero Hill to the 16th Street Bay Area Rapid Transit station, connections between Caltrain and the Hill, and more timely service. In response, the agency has developed a modified bus line, which’ll start at the 16th BART station, stopping at Connecticut and 18th and 20th streets, as well as at 22nd and Pennsylvania streets. The extension will replace the 22-Fillmore, which will be re-routed south of 16th Street to serve Mission Bay in early 2020. The new bus route will trigger removal of up to nine parking spaces at 20th and Missouri streets, much to the chagrin of The Good Life Grocery.
More Urgent Care
Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital’s Adult Urgent Care Center re-opened last month after being moved and expanded. The facility was relocated from 1930s-era Building 80 to the first floor, Unit 1E, in Building 5, which formerly served as an acute care inpatient hospital. The enlarged center has one-dozen patient rooms, three more than the previous location. Adult Urgent Care is the first clinic to relocate to Building 5, part of a campus-wide effort to centralizing outpatient clinics on the ZSFG campus…Northern California Presbyterian Homes & Services has changed its name to Sequoia Living. The organization manages the San Francisco Senior Center, The Sequoias, The Tamalpais, as well as affordable housing communities and other senior services located in Northern California.
Neurological Catastrophe
“What we are seeing – and bringing on ourselves – resembles a neurological catastrophe on a gigantic scale,” proclaims Oliver Sacks, from the grave, in the February 11 issue of The New Yorker. Sacks was speaking to what he’d observed years ago, which has only intensified: young people lashed to their digital devices, waterboarding themselves in a never-ending stream of contextless images and words. Something deeply human is being destroyed before our eyes, except our eyes are too distracted by the latest hilarious GIF to notice.
