Daily Business Report-Jan. 16, 2018
Rendering of proposed Convention Center expansion.
New Push to Raise Hotel Taxes to Bankroll Convention
Center Expansion, Homeless Services, Street Repairs
By Lisa Halverstadt | Voice of San Diego
San Diego business and labor leaders are celebrating the New Year with a revamped pitch to raise hotel taxes to bankroll a Convention Center expansion, homeless services and street repairs.
Backers of the new citizens’ initiative took cues from Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s failed 2017 measure but made significant changes.
The biggest one: A promise to invest more of the increased hotel-tax hauls to homelessness services, housing and other initiatives. The initiative would raise the tax more than the previous plan sought and would put off the investment in street repairs.
Faulconer’s measure would have thrown just 18 percent of new cash at homelessness causes and nearly two-thirds at Convention Center and tourism-related wants. Democrats and labor leaders came out against Faulconer’s measure arguing that it should have done more to address San Diego’s homeless crisis.
We’re still waiting on detailed projections but initiative language released by the campaign promises far more money will go to homelessness, especially in the first five years of the measure. They’re estimating about a $140 million haul during this period.
“We decided to frontload homelessness dollars since it’s such a crisis right now,” said Carol Kim, a Building Trades Council official who helped hash out a deal with tourism leaders. “We wanted to deploy those dollars as quickly as we can.”
The new measure accomplishes this in two ways.
First, it holds off on dollars flowing to road repair projects during the tax hike’s first five years and promises about a third less over the next 37 years than Faulconer’s measure earmarked for those projects.
It also relies on a steeper tax increase.
Last year, hoteliers maintained that Faulconer’s proposed 1-to-3 percent tax hike, depending on the proximity of hotels to the downtown Convention Center, was as much as they could muster without hurting local tourism.
This year, they agreed to tack another .25 percent increase onto hotel bills.
“Ultimately, the industry realized that an incremental increase of the amount we were talking about – a ¼ percent increase across these districts and a change in the percentages – would provide a really meaningful and significant addition to the homelessness funding and that that was of great importance to the industry,” said Robert Gleason of Evans Hotels, one of the key negotiators on the tourism side.
Hoteliers fit in another big edit too.
Tourism leaders have long been fixated on a contiguous Convention Center expansion. Now they’re offering themselves some breathing room.
Faulconer’s measure strictly linked funding to the waterfront, contiguous expansion approved by the Coastal Commission years ago.
The initiative includes new language indicating the Convention Center expansion must simply be “physically connected to the existing Convention Center” – and removes language suggesting the project approved by Port and state Coastal officials is the only option.
Some observers are reading this as though it opens the door for an expansion across the street from the Convention Center with a walkway connecting the two facilities.
That would be convenient given the fact that the city and the Convention Center Corp. no longer controls the land needed for the long-sought waterfront expansion. The partners who do are moving forward with a hotel that would permanently block the long-envisioned bayfront Convention Center expansion.
Laura Fink, a spokeswoman for the campaign, said this change wasn’t an accident. “That was done so that there would be some flexibility with respect to location,” she said. “That was done deliberately.”
Fink, Gleason and Mike McDowell, president and CEO of the San Diego Lodging Industry Association, both emphasized that the focus continues to be on the long-envisioned waterfront expansion for now.
This article first appeared Jan. 10 in Voice of San Diego.
Lisa Halverstadt writes about San Diego city and county governments. She welcomes story tips and questions. Contact her directly at lisa@vosd.org or 619.325.0528.
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Qualcomm Engaging Shareholders
Amid Broadcom Hostile Bid
Qualcomm leaders are reaching out to shareholders ahead of a March 6 annual meeting to make the case for keeping the existing board of directors in place. Last year Broadcom made an unsolicited, $130 billion buyout bid for Qualcomm, which was rejected by Qualcomm’s board. After that Broadcom signaled its intention to nominate 11 new directors, replacing the current board, at the March shareholders session.
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Small Business Leaders Join
Forces for the ‘Good of San Diego’
Local small business owners have formed a local nonprofit with a mission to unite small business owners in driving policy that improves San Diego’s communities. The organization also announced its new issues-based website featuring its new brand.
Business For Good San Diego – previously operating as the San Diego chapter of Main Street Alliance – is comprised of home-grown local business owners focused on issues unique to this region and led by a board of directors. The more than 200 small business members say that good policy — the fundamental principles that guide the region’s governments — intersects with a small business’s bottom line, the livelihood of its employees, and the health of its communities.
“When we use our collective voices to influence San Diego policy, it’s good for the entire county,” says Mikey Knab, director of operations at Ponce’s Mexican Restaurant and chairman of Business For Good’s board of directors. The issue areas that Business For Good has chosen are immigration, government transparency, small business investment, homelessness and environmental health.
Many Business For Good members were a part of Main Street Alliance, which brought the small business movement to San Diego under its national directives. Last year, the all-volunteer business owners then formalized their efforts under a distinct name to focus their work locally. The organization is still led by Karim Bouris, who is now the executive director.
“We’re focused on key issues that affect the bottom line of our San Diego businesses and the well-being of their customers and their community,” says Bouris. “We invite other small business leaders who want to speak up on these issues to join one of our upcoming meetings. We provide education on policy and access to decisions makers so that our time invested truly makes a positive impact in our city.”
In addition to its Jan. 17 seminar about new laws affecting small businesses in 2018, the organization also hosts monthly general meetings and campaign-specific meetings that can be referenced on its new online calendar.
To get in touch with Business For Good, contact Karim Bouris at Info@BusinessForGoodSD.com.
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Health Systems Seek to Make
San Diego a Medical Tourism Hub
Four San Diego healthcare organizations have come together to promote the city’s position as a healthcare and biotechnology development hub.
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Shirley Meng Named Inaugural Holder
of UC San Diego Zable Endowed Chair
Shirley Meng, professor of nanoengineering at the University of California San Diego, has been appointed the inaugural holder of the Zable Endowed Chair in Energy Technologies in the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. As director of the UC San Diego Sustainable Power and Energy Center, Meng is leading efforts to advance solutions to some of the key technical challenges associated with energy generation, storage and power management.
The $1 million endowed faculty chair was established in 2013 by a bequest from the late Cubic Corporation founder Walter J. Zable and his wife, Betty C. Zable. The chair provides a dedicated source of funds, in perpetuity, for the chair holder’s scholarly activities as well as support for faculty salaries and graduate fellowships.
Meng’s research team at the Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion in the nanoengineering department uses advanced imaging and computational techniques to explore novel energy storage materials and their electrochemistry, as well as the mechanisms underlying these materials’ functionalities for lithium-ion batteries, flow batteries, aqueous batteries and solid-state batteries, to name a few.
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Leadership Team Installed for
Greater San Diego Association of Realtors
Steve Fraioli has begun his one-year term as the 2018 president of the Greater San Diego Association of Realtors. Fraioli and the 2018 leadership team were installed on Jan. 12 at a luncheon at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront.
Fraioli, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., owns Steven G. Fraioli & Associates in San Diego. He served on many SDAR committees before being first elected to the SDAR Board of Directors in 2012. He is joined on the Executive Committee by Kevin Burke, president-elect; Carla Farley, vice president; Angela Ordway, treasurer; and Past Presidents Bob Kevane and Cory Shepard.
Rounding out the 2018 SDAR Board of Directors are: Chris Anderson, Megan Beauvais, Glenn Bennett, Linda Drylie, Barbara DuDeck, Vickie Fageol, Ginni Field, Gerri-Lynn Fives, Pat Garner, Steve Kilgore, Derrick Luckett, Mark Marquez, Denise Matthis, Mary Mitchell, Frank Powell, Mark Powell, Judy Preston, Rocky Rockhill, Donna Sanfilippo, Ann Throckmorton, and Robert Weichelt.
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Edico Genome, Genomics England
Partner on Next-Gen Sequencing
On the heels of the 2017 U.K. trade mission, San Diego-based Edico Genome and Genomics England announced a new partnership to strengthen the accuracy and consistency of next-generation sequencing (NGS) data analysis in Genomics England’s Rare Disease Pilot. The partnership will support Genomics England in making NGS the standard of care across the U.K.’s National Health Service in 2018.
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Dermala Secures Partnership with J&J
Johnson & Johnson Innovation has formed a collaboration with San Diego-based MetroConnect company Dermala to develop microbiome-derived treatments for skin conditions. Dermala’s technology harnesses the beneficial function of good skin bacteria to eliminate the bad bacteria and balance the microbiome.
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San Diego VC Activity Increased in 2017
San Diego venture capital activity in 2017 increased to nearly $1.92 billion with 215 deals, supporting recent rankings of the region’s growing prowess as a tech hub. An influx of deals in Q4, lifted by a $125 million financing round for diagnostics company Progenity, brought totals slightly ahead of venture activity in 2016.
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SCORE WORKSHOPS
Automation Hacks: Optimize Your Sales & Marketing Using Techology (CRM)
Tuesday, January 23, 2018 – 9 a.m. to Noon
FEE: $20.
Patents, Copyrights and Trademarks
Wednesday, January 24, 2018 – Noon to 3 p.m.
FEE: $20
QuickBooks Desktop Part 2
(not for Online or Mac)
Thursday, January 25, 2018 – 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
FEE: $20
Create Your 30-Second “Sizzler” Elevator Speech
Friday, January 25, 2018 – 1:30 to 4:30 p.m.
FEE: $20
Mastering Social Media Advertising for Small Business
Friday, January 26, 2018 – 1 to 4 p.m.
FEE: $20
Business Plan B: Setting Goals and Telling the World
Friday, January 27, 2018 – 9 a.m. to Noon
FEE: $20.00
Business Model Canvas
Friday, January 27, 2018 – 1 to 4 p.m.
FEE: $20
