SF Port Authority Shuts Down Tech-Hub Pier 38 | Hacker News Reader

SF Port Authority Shuts Down Tech-Hub Pier 38

techcrunch.com

73 pointspetercooper24 comments

This has been brewing for many years, the city has tried to kick out the landlord for about 10 years and he's been in bankruptcy proceedings for a while. It's amazing he's hung on so long. There's a detailed 9 year old profile about this crazy situation here http://www.sfweekly.com/2002-11-20/news/griftin-on-the-dock-...

I can attest from personal experience that the man is a paranoid hot head, and from this article he seems to be spiraling out of control: http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-05-29/bay-area/29596184_1_po...

The question will be what the city wants to do with that space after they finally get rid of Carl. With the ball park next door I doubt they will want to keep it as an office building.

Wow, I didn't realize Carl was that crazy.

This whole thing has convinced me to never do business with the City of San Francisco. Mountain View is vastly more pro-business, low-politics, and sane.

In my experience, if you look far enough down the tracks of any forced eviction, you'll find someone's cousin who's a developer who'd love to build a trendy new hotel.

Looking at the place on google maps, I'd be willing to bet a substantial amount that we'll be hearing about a hot new night spot and a swanky new hotel right on the water. (plus a lot of gushing about what a good thing this will be for the local economy.) That or a nice bunch of million dollar condos the size of my closet.

The pier (owned by the city) was always leased at below-market to a landlord with a connection to the maritime industry. All use had to have some connection to the maritime industry; I think there was a yacht club, lots of storage of boats, etc., in addition to the new tech offices (which were somehow maritime as well). After I went back to Afghanistan, there was some change where the former master leaseholder lost the lease and it got reassigned to someone else.

(I worked for Social Media back when we did the initial conversion, then started renting it out to other companies)

I'm very sad to see it go, because I'm currently working at a startup in pier 38. It's a great space, even though it could use some renovating. The location is perfect, and being able to see the water directly when looking out the window makes for a great work environment.

I have a hard time seeing it remodeled as a hotel, or anything else—even though I've always thought vacant piers would make great spots for bars, nightclubs, restaurant and many other things. Most of the piers between the ferry building and pier 38 are vacant for the most part blight and urban decay. Pier 38 has the advantage of somewhat closer proximity to AT&T Park and the trendy King St, but that's about it. I have a hard time seeing how pier 38 will be different.

I have fond memories of working at True's office back at the start of Loggly. Not so fond memories of the restroom, however.

Yes, and walking in the garage at night was like being in a Stephen King novel. One motion sensor light turning on at a time

"It's just amazing that the city of San Francisco isn't able to care about something that has generated so many jobs," writes someone in the comments of TC.

I enjoyed my Muni-view of the the neon "socialmedia.com" sign in the second story window just as much as the next guy, but it blows my mind to think that people believe it's the fiduciary duty of a municipality to keep a place like this open. My various points in short (1) These jobs inevitably move down Penninsula; (2) Tech is better off without government playing VC; (3) if you've ever seen this place, it does look like it's about to fall into the Bay.

The company makes the place, the place doesn't make the company. I hope companies like Automattic are able to pack up and make some other -- hopefully more structurally stable -- place famous.

Can someone placed to comment (ie a resident of the building) tell us what aspects were considered unsafe - and ultimately whether this is justified or whether this is a new landlord who wants everyone out to redevelop the property?

Aren't funded startups, around here, the people you can charge a lot of rent money to? I mean, every time I walk through the highest-value retail spaces in the south bay (like, say, castro st in mountain view.) I run across startup offices.

I'm not sure what you could do with land around here that would net you more money than being a trendy startup hub.

Yes, but to play that logic out if you already have a tenant paying a low rent and you want to make a lot more, you'd need a good reason to kick them out, remodel a little and then be able to put the place back on the market for the top dollar amount you want.

I am not a resident, but have been there several times and have friends there. My understanding is that the issue has nothing to do with it actually being unsafe and more to do with zoning. Basically what was there previously was a restaurant and they converted it to office space without getting the proper permits from San Francisco. You can see something to that effect in Scoble's picture: https://plus.google.com/u/0/111091089527727420853/posts/PefH...

Edit: great details posted by guelo suggests the story is not quite what I'd heard, the owner seems like a ridiculous person - it seems the city didn't care to certify his construction work at all at first but now wants to - http://www.sfweekly.com/2002-11-20/news/griftin-on-the-dock-...

http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-05-29/bay-area/29596184_1_po...

Zoning and unsafe tend to go hand in hand. From Scoble's pic they converted the space illegally to office space with no plumbing, electrical, fire etc. inspections done. Essentially the whole thing could be a fire trap with bare electrical cables running over gas lines. Or it could be bullshit, point being it seems that no one can prove that anything in there is up to code. Someone fucked up the conversion pretty hard.

Re zoning and unsafe going hand in hand- that may be true in general, but typically a property like this that looks on the up and up is probably structurally sound.

I have done a few significant conversions / redevelopments, and zoning issues I've faced had absolutely nothing to do with actual problems with the property. They are more often a way for city employees and the city to make some money, and often the city architects/building inspectors are in on the game. It is the only form of outright bribery I've seen firsthand in this country, but for my contractor friends it is a part of everyday life. Typically you pay some fee for the city to look at drawings before you do anything and then if you want the building inspector to actually show up and rate it well you might be asked to grease the wheels to speed up the process. It's pretty unfortunate and I didn't think these types of things happened but they definitely do.

My properties are in Chicago and Pittsburgh and that is certainly the case in those cities (much worse in Chicago), not sure if it's the case in SF, but I would be willing to guess that it is.

Not to say this isn't the case, but San Francisco, in some cases, actually has a history of hostility towards developers. For example: Live/work conversions are banned in the city and have been banned since 1999. There seems to be a lot of bad blood dating back to the bubble burst and half-assed redevelopment of SOMA.

> Basically what was there previously was a restaurant or something and they converted it to office space without getting the proper permits from San Francisco.

Translated: The proper bribes were not paid to city officials.

What kinds of permits do you consider bribes?

> What kinds of permits do you consider bribes?

Just as engineering students learn skills while working summer internships, architectural students learn how to offer a bribe.

As it was explained to me: Everyone in the transaction must maintain plausible deniability. For example: For a house inspection, move a $100 bill from one pocket to another when something out-of-code is found. If the inspector tell you he'll overlook it, then the $100 is dropped someplace conspicuous.

Surely earthquake codes are a factor here?

I work at Automattic (our office is in the pier, we're one of the companies being kicked out). I'm usually at the pier about twice/week. I have absolutely no idea what's unsafe about it. As far as I know, we've never been told. As far as whether it's justified, there's a lot of not very reliable information involved in the answer to that question, so I'll just say that if it is justified I couldn't tell you why or how.

I was a resident of the building for a year, it was Twilio's first office space. I loved it, I am so happy we got to stay there until we just couldn't fit anymore. Working there was like being outside all the time though, there was no insulation and some parts of the downstairs floor we so rotten you could step right through. People had space heaters (it was SO COLD), its a miracle we didn't burn the place down. Some electrical outlets smoked when used. We used to joke that a tsunami or earthquake would probably have leveled the place into the Bay, then we had a tsunami warning and it wasn't so funny.

Those all sound like little things, but no one really maintained the place beyond the superficial things that the managers of the coworking spaces did to keep it livable. I remember there were divers from the city (state?) inspecting the pilings and foundation a few times while we were there.

Desks were $500 each and this place was not creating jobs (as some other people have said) but they did offer something that really felt homey after moving from Seattle, and being part of that community made transplanting myself a lot easier and more fun. I'm sad it is shutting down.

I went to a meet-up hosted at Dogpatch labs once. Great venue. Pier 38 is not quite in the Dogpatch neighborhood. I grew up in the Bay Area, but never heard of a Dogpatch neighborhood in S.F. until after the internet came along. The wikipedia article is no help http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogpatch,_San_Francisco,_Califo.... When did Dogpatch first get called Dogpatch? Perhaps it has something to do with the Hell' Angels clubhouse? Naturally the name comes from Al Capp.

Interesting - the StartupHouse guys are offering to house the Pier38 refugees free through 2011 at their new place at 880 Harrison St.

More at www.startuphouse.com/pier38-refugees.html

Yeah, so the problem Pier 38 is that it has zoning for M2 which is "heavy industrial use". 880 Harrison St is on RSD which is live/work.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/liako/6122632880/in/photostream

Reply on news.ycombinator.com