Construction Maison

Take a walk east from the gold-plated cupola of San Francisco City Hall and the landscape transforms into the Tenderloin, a patchwork of residential hotels, small delis and social service clinics that cater to the poor. It winds into the city’s main tourist corridor , and, farther along, a glossy cluster of condominium towers where upper- story penthouses cost millions . These symbols of extreme poverty and prosperity are wedged together in District Six, which serves both as a portal for visitors and a cauldron where San Francisco ’s most pressing political issues simmer . For 20 years, District Six voters have reliably concluded that the solutions to those issues come from the progressive viewpoint. And while it’s more than a year until the next election for supervisor, the contest is already shaping up as a test of whether that is still true. From the Tenderloin to the Mission Bay waterfront , District Six has seen a rush of development over the past two decades, and residents are ...

defunct Toscana apartments still stand at 6800 Skillman, but a new project is in the works." src="http://lakehighlands.advocatemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Screen-Shot-2013-05-29-at-1.28.15-PM.png" width="638" height="267" />The defunct Toscana apartments still stand at 6800 Skillman, but a new project is in the works. By all appearances, Prescott’s proposed changes for the Toscana project will be good for the neighborhood. The former Toscana apartment complex , located on the northeast corner of Skillman and Merriman Parkway, will soon be demolished to make way for a new residential multifamily development , which, according to Dallas Department of Development documents, will comprise three stories and 365 units. We already knew that the old Toscana apartments would be replaced with new ones — but originally the new build was going to include four stories and 665 units, which is way denser than what we are looking at now. In case you wer...

Westbrook will not charge fees based on a development’s impacts to the school and sewer system. The decision is a reversal from last fall, when the Westbrook City Council expressed interest in the idea and planned to charge impact fees on all building projects with permits issued since Oct. 3. The fees were popular among residents and officials concerned about the pace of growth in the city at a time when hundreds of housing units were proposed for Westbrook. City staff spent months developing the formulas for the fees, which are designed to pay for new capacity needed as a result of a development. Under the system proposed, for example, the owner of a new three-bedroom house would need to pay a $3, 245 school impact fee to offset the future costs of adding children to local classrooms. But when the final proposals for those fees came before the City Council last week, the group rejected them. A majority of councilors said they were worried the fees would discourage families and b...

Cross posted from our sister-site, Santa Monica Next . California state legislators are back in Sacramento after a month- long summer recess and they are looking to tackle the state’s growing housing crisis with a package of bills that could generate more than $3 billion for affordable housing as well as streamline new housing approval and construction. But lawmakers and political observers alike have noted that it won’t be an easy task to get the votes necessary to pass some of bigger-ticket legislation, like S.B. 2 and S.B. 3 , both of which have passed the State Senate but still need to get through the Assembly. And both require a two-thirds supermajority to pass. S.B. 2, introduced by State Senator Toni Atkins (D-San Diego), would place a $75 fee on real estate transactions and generate roughly $250 million a year annually. State Senator Jim Beall (D-San Jose) introduced S.B. 3, which would put a housing bond before the voters in 2018 that would generate $3 billion. “We ne...