San Francisco Mayor Ed Leeis upping the ante on the California Pacific Medical Center project on the site of the old Cathedral Hill Hotel, saying he wants an ironclad agreement from Sutter Health that it will keep St. Luke's in the Mission open for 20 years.
Otherwise, he says, no deal for a big new hospital and medical office building on Van Ness Avenue.
"That's was bottom line for me when we started our negotiations, and it's still the bottom line today," Lee said.
Lee and Sutter did have a deal under which the company would spend $300 million to rebuild a smaller, updated version of St. Luke's Hospital - but could close it if the operating margin for the systemwide medical center dropped below 1 percent for two consecutive years.
The deal hit a snag just as it was going to the Board of Supervisors, when a whistle-blower leaked documents that indicated Sutter was considering a scenario where it could deliberately drive down the bottom line to trigger the escape clause and close St. Luke's as early as 2020.
Sutter spokesman Sam Singer said the company had never seriously considered the plan. Nonetheless, the damage was done.
So now, unless Sutter comes through with an up-front guarantee to keep St. Luke's open, there's probably no way the supervisors are going to green-light a big new Cal Pacific hospital.
Ranked decision: The latest slimmed-down move to alter ranked-choice voting in San Francisco gets the big test Tuesday - and its fortunes hinge on Supervisor Christina Olague.
Under the latest plan, only the mayor's race would return to the traditional, one-on-one runoff system, with a first round in September and a runoff in November to get a high turnout.
It needs six votes at the Board of Supervisors to be put before voters in November.
Supporters think they have those six votes, but one of them is Olague - and even though she is one of the bill's co-authors, there are questions about which way she'll go.
Olague, appointed by Mayor Ed Lee to fill out Ross Mirkarimi's term, faces her first election this fall. Voting to make any alteration in the ranked-choice system could cost her support among progressives, especially in the Haight.
"I hear she is under a lot of pressure," said a fellow co-author, Supervisor Mark Farrell.
As for Olague? She didn't return calls seeking comment.
Tower II: Four years after the economy tanked, a developer of One Rincon Hill plans to finally break ground this week on that second giant condo tower next to the Bay Bridge.
"We are ready to start," said Michael Kriozere of Urban West Associates, which developed One Rincon and is now advising on the new project.
The 299-unit, 50-story tower will sit next to the 60-story One Rincon building that was completed in 2008, just as the Wall Street meltdown sent the real estate market into a tailspin.
Condo sales sputtered, and the fate of the second building fell into limbo after an investor foreclosed on the property.
But Principal Global Investors of Iowa purchased the second phase of the development earlier this year for a reported $29.75 million, putting the deal back on track.
Jerry's dilemma: Wealthy patent attorney Molly Munger, who is backing a rival tax to Gov. Jerry Brown's, is pulling out all the stops - including heading to court Monday to try to block Brown's measure from appearing atop the November ballot.
Munger says the governor and his Sacramento legislative allies relied on election-year hanky-panky to engineer its ballot placement above her initiative, which would boost income taxes across the board to raise money for schools.
The legal challenge comes on top of an estimated $2 million Munger already has spent on TV to promote her measure. Brown's people worry that the total is just a warm-up for the millions that will be spent this fall trashing the governor's competing plan.
So far, Brown's campaign team has refrained from hitting back, fearing it will only lead to more attacks on the governor's plan to raise income taxes for the rich and sales taxes for everyone.
Brown has more problems than just the Munger measure.
Goddard Claussen West - the Sacramento PR firm that just helped big tobacco fend off a buck-a-pack tax on cigarettes in California - is spearheading a campaign to defeat Brown's tax.
Source: http://feeds.sfgate.com/click.phdo?i=f43a6b2a2664ce0e8b2f001a5e2f57f3
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