Google, Lendlease End Deals for San Francisco Bay Projects (bloomberg.com) 48
Alphabet's Google and property developer Lendlease Group have ended an agreement to build four projects in the San Francisco Bay Area as the technology firm reviews its real estate footprint. From a report: Lendlease said it will be compensated for its work during the planning process for the projects, which are located in San Jose, Sunnyvale and Mountain View, according to a statement Thursday. "The decision to end these agreements followed a comprehensive review by Google of its real estate investments, and a determination by both organizations that the existing agreements are no longer mutually beneficial given current market conditions," Sydney-based Lendlease said in the statement.
The projects would have totaled more than 15 million square feet (1.4 million square meters) of office, residential, retail, hospitality and community development space. The projects were also slated to bring more housing to California's tight residential market. Google still plans to work with developers and capital partners to move the projects forward, according to a spokesperson. "As we've shared before, we've been optimizing our real estate investments in the Bay Area, and part of that work is looking at a variety of options to move our development projects forward and deliver on our housing commitment," Alexa Arena, a senior director of development at Google, said in an emailed statement.
The projects would have totaled more than 15 million square feet (1.4 million square meters) of office, residential, retail, hospitality and community development space. The projects were also slated to bring more housing to California's tight residential market. Google still plans to work with developers and capital partners to move the projects forward, according to a spokesperson. "As we've shared before, we've been optimizing our real estate investments in the Bay Area, and part of that work is looking at a variety of options to move our development projects forward and deliver on our housing commitment," Alexa Arena, a senior director of development at Google, said in an emailed statement.
San Francisco (Score:1)
Re:San Francisco (Score:4, Informative)
Re: San Francisco (Score:3)
The problem is still being actively worked on, they just need to finish defunding the police. As Lisa Bender said, if you're wondering who you'll call if your house is broken into in the middle of the night, that's just coming from a position of privilege and you should be ashamed of yourself for asking that.
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That website doesn't seem super credible. For one, the guy who runs the reformcalifornia dot org is quoting himself (a lot) as the expert:
Experts say Newsom is either woefully ill-informed or being dishonest. “The overwhelming facts prove businesses and residents are fleeing San Francisco due to the crime wave and a spike in homelessness,” says Carl DeMaio, Chairman of Reform California.
And the website states that Salesforce is leaving San Francisco? Who is going to break the news to Marc
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Idunno. Maybe he read the SF Chronicle article. [sfchronicle.com]
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San Jose, Sunnyvale and Mountain View are not in San Francisco. San Jose is many times the size of San Francisco and has deeply troubling libertarian politics combined with century old political corruption. Mountain View might as well be Googleville for the lack of autonomy that their city council exercises. Sunnyvale wants to be Cupertino but in reality they are indistinguishable from Santa Clara.
Vampires (Score:2)
San Jose, Sunnyvale and Mountain View are not in San Francisco. San Jose is many times the size of San Francisco and has deeply troubling libertarian politics combined with century old political corruption. Mountain View might as well be Googleville for the lack of autonomy that their city council exercises. Sunnyvale wants to be Cupertino but in reality they are indistinguishable from Santa Clara.
That's the one thing I couldn't stomach about Santa Clara: all the goddamn vampires.
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San Jose, Sunnyvale and Mountain View are not in San Francisco. San Jose is many times the size of San Francisco
1.2 times larger than San Francisco by population.
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Yes, they take preference to people's' rights over business. The current state of San Francisco can't be pinned down to one particular policy or political group. Like everything else there are many factors at work and no simple solutions.
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Which rights?
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Still a lower murder rate than Dallas TX.
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Re: San Francisco (Score:2)
No it's not, you just sell them veblen goods. Those carry higher profit margins than anything else. The only way you could have shitty margins in a place like that is if you have high shrink. And that sounds exactly like what is happening.
I have an idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I have an idea (Score:4, Interesting)
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Where does the responsibility lie for speculation? People who are not part of government and who don't have to state their affiliation. Companies grabbing up what they perceive to be undervalued assets. And the Chinese oligarchy, when things were going well, loved to drop money in real estate in other countries, particularly the U.S.
Follow the money and you'll know who is responsible.
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I have always agreed with follow the money. I'm thinking maybe you left out what others brought up. The state of California, county and local politicians. You have to admit, those people profit greatly off of their decisions. They get money from pushing certain agendas. Come on, if you're honest, you will admit the government in power shares this responsibility. It's the easy way to setup a boogey man with one hand and do what politicians do with the other. You now lie, take money, screw people, etc.
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I would not be surprised if some of those making money off the speculation are government insiders. I harbor no delusions that Democrats are "better than that". I just don't think that's the root cause. Have they sat on their hands too long? Quite possibly, but it's typical of government to only get involved when things are already out of control. Doing nothing is often the prudent move from the perspective of someone who only has the job for a few years.
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Follow the money and you'll know who is responsible.
People say this a lot. Have you followed the money? Where did it lead?
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China, to a first approximation. They have to do something with their dollar hoard. If you want more detail than that, you'll have to do more digging.
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Have you followed the money? Where did it lead?
Back around In a circle, according to Keynesian economics.
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The San Francisco Bay area isn't a city, it's a bunch of cities.
I'd argue that California's state and local governments aren't progressive enough, else we wouldn't have capitalists deciding where people can afford to live.
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Atherton won't even build sidewalks because nobody wants poor people walking to places when civilized people use Uber Black.
The South Bay isn't really are super "liberal" as you seem to assume. And the East Bay isn't liberal at all once you are South of Oakland.
Also you seem to forget that there are the dominate power of globalist liberals ("third way" capitalists), or neo-liberals, that control much of the politics in Southern California and the Peninsula of the Bay Area. And of course there are progressiv
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Unkg. Suburbs have been exclusive since transportation became relatively convenient. (Before then the well-off lived in the city, the poor lived in the suburbs, and the rich had both a place in the city and a rural estate.)
And the thing is, the well-off don't want the poor living next to them. Liberal or conservative has little to do with this. It's not "the capitalists" deciding where people can afford to live. It's a systematic problem involving ease of transporation, people wanting to live among peo
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Actually, if the Senate wanted to they could bring up each promotion for a procedural vote, instead of a voice vote. If the position warrants Senate confirmation, perhaps it warrants more than just a passing yea or nay. You neglected to mention the reason why Tuberville "refuses" to do his job, and that's the Pentagon trying to get around the Hyde amendment. Oh and s
Re: I have an idea (Score:3)
Republicans started hating the military when the military started reacting to real world concerns.
Specifically the military acknowledges global warming as a threat, and also that service members need health care. It's a no brainer that abortions are cheaper than paying health care costs for service members having kids, and that this also improves readiness. But Republicans have no brains so they think appeasing imaginary sky daddy is more important than war fighting.
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You should read the news some time.
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The thing is, sane politicians aren't available. You can either have the bat-shit crazy liberals or the bat-shit crazy religious nutjobs.
Google bought the Silicon Graphics HQ in (Score:2)
One promise of computing was to end commuting. (Score:4, Interesting)
Commuting not absolutely required by a job needing humans to take physical action onsite is an absurdly wasteful polluting expensive time sink and liking it is degenerate.
Every company wanting physical employee presence without ample justification should be savaged for it.
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It is a free market economy. There is no need to offer justification for any job requirement, only to offer financial compensation.
If you don't want to do the thing, don't take the job.
Either someone else will do the thing, or the company will change the job to one that does not include doing the thing you find objectionable.
Your sense of entitlement is very strong.
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Well, since it's a free economy, it appears that working from home has enough appeal that Google would rather pull out of real estate investments than lose the people working from home. Because it's a free economy.
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I'm entitled to call out pollution. (Score:2)
Companies are free to make choices but the public are also free to excoriate them for it and use exposure to pressure for different conduct.
That's one way to admit (Score:2)
that forcing people back into office hell didn't work out.