Source: San Francisco Business Times, Riley McDermid 7/11/16
“We want to continue making good on our promises to the voters of San Francisco,” former Supervisor and initiative proponent Sophie Maxwell said in a statement sent to the Business Times. “We have made progress in creating local jobs, open space and affordable homes. This measure is essential to ensuring that this progress continues — and moves faster — at a time when we need it most.”
The San Francisco Business Times first reported on the filed ballot initiative on May 13; you can read more about that here. In mid-May the San Francisco Chronicle reported that efforts to advance the initiative have met with backlash, with the some opponents calling it an "end-run" around Prop M, which was enacted in 1986.
It currently applies to 950,000 square feet per year, 850,000 square feet of which are allocated for large projects of more than 50,000 square feet.
“It seems like they don’t feel the law applies to them — they want to make an end run,” Sue Hestor, the attorney who wrote Prop. M, told the paper.“Of course, they will have the ability to spend an unlimited amount of money to get this passed so they can strike it rich.”
Hunters Point is currently one of the city's "megaprojects" and is slated to eventually have 12,000 housing units, 350 acres of parkland and 1 million square feet of retail and hotel uses. You can read more about what it will eventually encompass here, in our deep dive into what the project will look like when completed.
Kofi Bonner, vice president for Lennar Urban (NYSE: LEN), told the Chronicle in May that the Hunters Point project would benefit from an exemption from Prop. M because it would allow the 775-acre site to draw bigger employers.
“The revitalization of the shipyard is well under way. We’re creating new housing and a lot of green space,” Bonner told the paper “We now have the opportunity to create permanent jobs and long-term economic opportunity. This measure will provide the flexibility to do so.”
Sponsors of the initiative include Veronica Hunnicutt, chairwoman of Mayor Ed Lee’s Hunters Point Shipyard Citizens Advisory Committee, Board of Education member Shamann Walton and former District 10 supervisor Sophie Maxwell. If approved, it would open the door for a host of other developers looking for approvals from the City of San Francisco.
"That’s because when the Candlestick Point-Hunters Point plan was passed in 2010 it was given priority under the Prop. M cap. Only the Transbay Transit Center tower, which is under construction and now called the Salesforce Tower, and those within Mission Bay South, are ahead of the shipyard in the Prop. M pecking order," the paper reports.
"Thus the office buildings lining up South of Market to build around the new Central Subway would be at a disadvantage in competing for square footage with the shipyard."