John A. and John M. Sobrato - Builders of Silicon Valley

The Sobratos

Years ago, in the ancient pre-tech and pre-Jobs era of the late 1970s and 1980s, I had the opportunity to work on a lot of projects in the early orchard-clearing days of the Silicon Valley. I was involved in the design of retail centers, the first high-density housing (2 story garden apartment walk-ups), the first high tech campuses, and later some of the first new high-rise commercial buildings.

A leader in this new form of development – the build-to-suit manufacturing/research/office complex was a gentleman from San Francisco, John A. Sobrato. For a kid working in one of the Bay Area’s premier landscape and planning offices it was a kick and a fantastic learning experience. The firm, Guzzardo and Associates, handled anything and everything – but large scale planning was the most exciting.

John Sobrato was a close friend of the owner and my boss Tony Guzzardo and over the years allowed me to peek into the early exotic and exciting world of high technology in the South Bay. These were the days of hundred of acre campuses, of one-story office/research buildings that sprawled across the region from Milpitas to Sunnyvale, and the growth that has pushed the region to the top of the world. And if there was a ground zero it was Cupertino - Sobrato's office was just blocks from Apple GHQ. In time (and for some with the Sobrato's help) the home to Apple, Sun Micro Systems, HP, and hundreds of other small companies.

This short video interviewing the Sobratos was produced by THE REGISTRY   

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The model is changing, in fact has changed. And it is good to see that the Sobrato’s have changed with it.

Stay Tuned . . . . . . .  

Are Corporate High-Tech Campuses Really Dead?

Years ago, in the Neolithic 1980s, I was job captain on the planning of a number of then high tech campuses for some of the up-and-coming companies of the day, Sun Microsystems, Rolm, HP and maybe even an IBM. I also did some master planning of campuses that were incubator developments that would later become the Apples and Ciscos. I worked in Scotland, Texas, Colorado, and of course the mothership of technocracies, California.

What was common was not just a cohesive master plan with hundreds of thousands of square feet, but a land use plan with lakes and gymnasiums, restaurants/cafeterias, and other cool stuff. The goal was not unlike a college campus – thus the high-tech business campus began. These ancestors of the 21st century tech campus, especially in Silicon valley, have now been dissolved and reimagined as the technocratic social media campus and other multi-use business parks (old school term) we see today. But what is the future for these companies and their insatiable need for space?

An article that crossed my desk GO HERE from the San Francisco Bay Area real estate news company The Registry, got me thinking. They dug into the past reasons and the murky futures of the high tech campus, albeit from a totally different perspective – the high-density, vertical, downtown mega building in the mega city and its future as “THE” place for this type of campus growth. I wondered what could be expected from these non-suburban company GHQs? Why downtown San Francisco, why New York, why not?

Most tech campuses are still suburban or at least within the urban ring, they are near airports and freeways – workers, even those on the web, still needed to show-up to work. They are near other tech campuses (potential employees), near universities (highly educated – low-pay employees), and less expensive housing (especially now), think Austin, Texas and Raleigh, North Carolina. The vision now is an uber-technocrat in SOHO, New York or SOMO, San Francisco with everything they need just a subway or taxi drive away. That would have never even passed as a shadow through the mind of a business owner back in the day. Then, as even now, home base was near where the owner/founder lived, not where a bunch of black jeaned techies with moussed hair, live. A problem that Silicon Valley has today is that all the cool kids want to live in San Francisco and work in Mountain View, or have a loft in New York City and not work in New Jersey. So the “factory” is moving - a boon to the landlords of the once old and cheap (not anymore) warehouse space in the south of Market area of San Francisco and the Bowery of New York. These are the metro-technicals of the future.

With this comes all the usual problems that retrofits have: severe lack of the essentials such as power, fiber optics, water, sewerage, parking and transit. Cities are bribing these companies to come and rebuild their old infrastructures for deferrals of taxes and fees. Suburban communities would kill for some of these companies, unfortunately the employees would rather be found dead than use the window at a drive-up Starbucks. Such is the life of the urban uber-techie; which black tee shirt to wear with which black jeans? but I generalize and I'm old. For the better cities these can be home runs, ask Boston and even Chicago.

This too will change, and soon, and morph into something different. Is face to face necessary in a high tech world? We are instantaneous and everywhere, so why a campus at all? A million square feet of old creaky wood flooring and spalling concrete columns is urban-chic, but you still need to put people in it. So a longer term vision may be in order.

The billions being spent by Apple for their new “suburban” campus is, maybe, up in the air (my speculation), especially when you lose more than 1/3rd of your market cap in less than six months. So we will wait and see.

Back in the day, when these were developer driven campuses, the first question was “What will it cost to retrofit this complex when the lease is up or the company has been bought out. What will I do with this dinosaur then?”

Not my problem I thought to myself, not my problem.

Stay Tuned . . . . . .

Location, Location, Location and the Bus

One hundred years ago the Van Sweringen brothers built Shaker Heights on the east side of Cleveland. This property, once owned by a Shaker religious colony, was developed into a new community with imaginative street layouts, parklands, and rigid design controls over the architecture and construction. It has been a very, very successful community since its inception, the address ranks with Scarsdale, Pacific Heights, and Beverly Hills as the place to live in their respective cities.

What was different about Shaker Heights was that the Van Sweringen’s built a railroad from their new community to downtown Cleveland to help market the properties to the downtown executive and it worked. When completed, as a part of the acquisition of a much larger railroad network, the community exploded through the 1920s until the slowdown of 1929.

Sidebar:

This acquisition of the railroad, well beyond the track needed to reach downtown Cleveland, led to their development of the Terminal Tower. The Depression eventually bankrupted and destroyed the brothers. They died in their 50s broken and almost penniless.

Now back to the story.

“They built a railroad to serve their community,” I don’t know a single developer who would even consider the thought. Can you imagine the impact to areas like Gilroy and Tracy, California if the private side were to step up and extend BART to their communities? Well I can at least dream. But there has been a work-around that has interesting ramifications, for want of a better term, I’ll call it the Silicon Connection.

There has been a serious increase in home and residential values and rents in San Francisco near makeshift bus stops where private charter buses that serve Google, Apple and Facebook pick up San Francisco residents. KTVU, a Bay Area TV station, focused on the story (the 3:30 minutestory is HERE).

The techies get the best of both worlds, a cool job in Silicon Valley and the opportunity to live in San Francisco (your author lived there 20 fantastic years). Some may not even own a car.

It has also had a serious impact on home values near these stops, they have risen sharply against other SF properties far from these makeshift stops. For sale flyers even note how far the house is from a Google Stop. The buses follow the employees, when there is a critical mass – a bus may magically appear. Here is an older story about the buses (HERE).

But as with all things, there are those that don’t appreciate these buses. When there are hundreds of the Google buses roaming the freeways no one cares, when they come down your residential street, now that is a bus of a different color. All the green friendly excuses: fewer cars, mass transit, reduced congestion, and efficiency go out the window when the neighborhood has to deal with these machines. Go (HERE) for the other side, you might also check out the comments – there are a lot of techies that have anger issues and social disconnections out there.

The buses are pretty cool and very high tech themselves (GO HERE). 

And while regional transit systems continue to rely on Fed dollars and regional taxes, these buses are privately owned, respond to the customer’s needs, and do not use tax money. Whether the employer pays for the service or the user pays a percent of the cost is irrelevant. It is done outside of the realm of the public sector – but be careful, I can see cities and counties trying to get their noses under the tent.

Stay Tuned . . . .

Noodling Housing, Redevelopment and Gehery

It’s The Market Stupid

I always wonder about politicians, then again don’t we all. We listen to their speeches, announcements, and pronouncements and shake our collective heads. Either I’m just not getting it or they are as dumb as a box-of-rocks. In an effort to wave a federal wand and change the course of housing, banks, financing and apple pie; President Obama is escalating the fight over how to revive the housing market. But one critic Paul J. Miller, a bank analyst at FBR Capital Markets in Arlington, Virginia, said that while it doesn’t “have a prayer in hell of passing,” the proposal may help Obama score political points. A bank tax is “bad public policy, but it’s populism at its highest,” he said. So there you have it, Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead. GO HERE   for the story. My hero Ludwig von Mises must be chortling in his grave. I repeat again, “The market is supreme.” You can’t legislate, cajole, bribe, or intimidate the market; it will ignore you and do what is in ITS own best interest. Ask the Soviet Union, China, solar power makers, electric car builders, and Apple acolytes.

The Law of Unintended Consequences

California Governor Jerry Brown must be all puffed with pride over his flaying and gutting the redevelopment districts of California. With the Democratic Assembly and Senate with Supreme Court acquiescence he was able to eliminate these bothersome agencies. But they may still rue the day. They were shut down, I think for a number of reasons: 1) No politician understood them, 2) For the most part they were successful in helping cities move forward, 3) They had huge bags of money hidden under the floorboards. For a couple of perspectives GO HERE for an article in the Wall Street and HERE for a southern California viewpoint.

Builders Survive – But is it Slow Suicide?

Builder Magazine states the obvious regarding the current condition of home builders at the start of 2012. Their survey which poles 345 readers, who represent a hard-core (or hard-headed) set of survivors, “all united by a resolve to carry on.” GO HERE to get up-to-date on the latest. A builder is quoted: “I do all the work: sales, bills, marketing, management, and field work. Sixteen-hour to 18-hour days just to pay the bills. NO PROFIT.” Wrote another, “Nobody gets a salary any more.” And, I ask, why wouldn’t you just go to Hawaii and wait it out?

A Voice of Sanity – I Think

In a January ruling the Alameda County Superior Court ruled that the Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s guidance regarding the mitigation of air quality issues for new development was clearly in violation of California’s environmental quality act. These guidelines were challenged by a group led by the Center for Creative Land Recycling (a group I have never  heard of). The new guidelines would have made it even more difficult (as hard as that is to believe) to get a project approved in the Bay Area. GO HERE and HERE 

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Doghouse

To show that he wasn’t just one of America’s greatest architects, FLW took a commission to design a doghouse for a client’s son. It’s now in a movie and a book. In 1956, Jim Berger ask the architect for a favor, please design a doghouse for his black lab, “Which would be easy to build (unheard of in FLW’s vocabulary) and would go with our house.” GO HERE   for the complete story. I wonder if it too, leaked? BTW, I wonder what Frank Gehery’s dog house would look like?

"Dog House" Architect Frank Gehery

Stay tuned . . . .

Re-Urban Balance – The Quest for the Future Downtown

I live in a delightful small town twenty-six miles east of San Francisco. The village was once a Spanish ranchero, that beget cattle ranches, that beget walnut and fruit orchards– hence the name Walnut Creek – that beget housing, that beget freeways, that beget BART (regional transit), that beget a regional crossroads, that now has beget one of California’s most successful urban retail and commercial developments. Sounds almost biblical.

I remember during an Urban Land Institute presentation a number of years ago, a past mayor of our village remarking, as a part of a panel I was moderating, about a regional mayor’s conference she attended. “Well, the mayor of Alameda walked up to me all puffed up and said they had just acquired a Trader Joe’s, well I said congratulations, we haven’t achieved anything so large in our down town, we just got Tiffany’s.” Yes, size sometimes does make a difference. Trader Joe’s is a go to and leave store, Tiffany’s is contagious like a plague (the good kind), it will infect every store and building owner. It will bring more buyers to the downtown, all profit.

The difficulty with much new urban (faux-retail) development is its lack of history, variety, and texture. I am always looking for friction in my designs, things rubbing against each other, close by shops, near and available parking – (but not too much - it can push apart uses and lose friction), a broad mix of retailers and restaurants. It’s extremely difficult to achieve this in a new retail center, and almost impossible in the old enclosed mall. We are lucky here in Walnut Creek.

While this is, and all downtowns are, in a constant state of renewal through creative destruction (stores fail, owners lower and raise rents, cities try to nudge land uses around such as restaurants and retail, and developers try to find the best mix for their centers), Walnut Creek is lucky to have a broader rental base and a diverse number of building owners. Ain’t completion great!

The old part of town was a classic California “valley” town. Main Street flanked by mostly one story buildings (most insubstantial), somewhat narrow sidewalks, adequate parking (for 1930), and a low surrounding population. But now the town sits at the intersection of two major freeways and a regional transit center with BART. The streets have trees that stand fifty to sixty feet high and as each old building is renovated, new walks and street improvements are made. The city has built discrete parking garages with retail and restaurants on the street, and, most importantly, supported the expansions of the Macerich urban mall on the south side of the downtown core. There is a symbiotic relationship between the north and south sides of the downtown core, the old and the new, the large floor plates to the south and the privately owned shops and stores to the north. Restaurants are tucked between things, there is the beginning of a good sidewalk restaurant trade, and there is enough of a downtown to make a day of it – not just drive to, shop and leave.

New retail centers try to build in history and texture, it’s almost impossible to achieve. A new car takes fifty years to be a classic, and not all classics are high-end, the ’57 Chevy Belair was the vanilla of its time, it now turns heads. It’s tough to achieve maturity and success. But with an older and very competitive area of the downtown mixed with the draw and high end values of the Macerich portion, the downtown is richer and more exciting. There is now a night life (go find that in your downtown), there is Nordstrom, a new Forever 21, a Neiman Marcus will open soon, an Apple store with its usual customer line outside each morning, and some really, really great food.

I’m reminded of the old Yogi Berra comment, “Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded!” That can be said for our downtown, everyone complains about the traffic and lack of parking, as if that’s a bad thing. Would you want to own a business with no traffic problems and plenty of available parking right outside your front door? I was discussing downtowns with a city planning director of a community near San Jose, he was charged with creating a downtown out a disparate jumble of strip malls, regional centers, and six and eight lane main streets. He had no traffic or parking problems anywhere. “I would kill for a traffic level of F,” he said. “But if I said it, I’d be fired.”

There’s the rub, or lack of it.

Stay tuned . . .