Daily Business Report-Aug. 31, 2018
Councilman Scott Sherman with short-term rental supporters and boxes of petitions. (Courtesy of Councilman Scott Sherman)
Opponents of City Council’s short-term
vacation rental legislation fight back
Supporters of a referendum effort to overturn legislation on short-term vacation rentals that the San Diego City Council adopted earlier this month have turned in petition signatures to either get on the ballot or force council withdrawal action.
The council-enacted rules, which govern short-term stays of less than 30 days, will limit such rentals to one’s primary residence only for up to six months out of the year. The effect of the action, which came following three years of failed efforts by the city to regulate such rentals, is to outlaw short-term stays in second homes and investor properties throughout the city, including Mission Beach, long a magnet for vacation rentals.
If supporters of the referendum effort can succeed in collecting 35,823 valid signatures (5 percent of San Diego’s registered voters) within the next 30 days, the City Council would be required to either withdraw its action or put the short-term rental legislation to a vote of the electorate.
Councilman Scott Sherman, an opponent of the council’s action, issued a statement on the signature drive Thursday. “This signature gathering effort is a direct result of extreme government overreach by the City Council that took away the property rights of many San Diegans,” said Sherman. “If signatures are verified, the Council will scrap this knee-jerk de facto ban, or, I am confident San Diego voters will do it for them.”
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San Diego moves up on green building office space report
San Diego climbed one spot on the U.S. Green Building Adoption Index by CBRE and Maastricht University, coming in at No. 18 this year. The market increased its overall percentage of green certified office space to 29.8 percent, up from 29.2 percent last year.
While San Diego has held steady in the high teens the last three years of the report, CBRE experts point to recent policy changes as a reason to watch for San Diego’s green building adoption ranking to improve in the future. The California Green Building Standards Code (CALGreen) went into effect on Jan. 1, 2017 and is expected to have a significant impact on new product coming to market as well as the renovation and repositioning of existing product. The policy’s effects are already being seen in a variety of projects, including two new LEED Silver certified residential towers at San Diego State University and a 2 million square foot car rental facility at the San Diego International airport, which was awarded LEED Gold.
Overall, the CBRE study found green certified office space across America’s 30 largest metros has reached 41 percent of market totals – the highest in the index’s history. “Green” office buildings in the U.S. are defined as those that hold either an EPA Energy Star label, USGBC LEED certification, or both.
Chicago again claimed the top spot with nearly 70 percent of its space green certified, followed by San Francisco, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Minnesota.
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San Diego’s coastal office market
picks up in the second quarter
After a slow start to the year, sales activity in the Coastal submarket of San Diego picked up in the second quarter of 2018, closing the quarter with $59.6 million in office sales, according to JLL’s Coastal Office Snapshot. The quarter was anchored by the high-profile sale of The Bungalows at Del Mar to Harbor Associates partnering with Bascom for $15.7 million, or $406 per square foot.
“As expected, we continue to see owners utilize on and off market sales techniques to achieve strong pricing on long-held assets that are ripe for repositioning,” the report said. “The table is set for a strong second half of the year with several transactions already under contract and several more in the wings preparing for a September launch.”
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Bondsmen try to detain new bail law
By Dan Morain | CALmatters
A day after Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill ending the money bail system—and thus the businesses that provide it—the bail bond industry served notice Wednesday that it will take its case to voters.
The new law, watched nationally, seeks to end the practice of jailing defendants before trial based on whether they can pay thousands of dollars as bail. Instead, judges and risk assessment experts would decide. The law was supposed to take effect in October 2019.
Bail bonds companies soon will be gathering 365,880 signatures of registered voters to qualify a referendum that would overturn the law for the ballot in November 2020. If the referendum qualifies, the law would be on hold until after the election.
Sacramento campaign consultant Jeff Flint, representing the bail industry: “We don’t think this law will ever take effect.”
Sen. Robert Hertzberg, the LA Democrat who co-authored the bill: “Have at it. I can’t imagine they win.”
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Port earns Platinum Award for website
The Port of San Diego has been honored with a Platinum Award in the Government Website Category by dotComm Awards, an international competition recognizing excellence in web creativity and digital communication. The Port received the award on Aug. 6 for the creativity of the new Port website, launched in early 2018, as well as the ease it provides for the public in accessing information pertaining to the Port.
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RESEARCH
Scientists find new way
to understand odors
Every smell, from a rose to a smoky fire to a pungent fish, is composed of a mixture of odorant molecules that bind to protein receptors inside your nose. But scientists have struggled to understand exactly what makes each combination of odorant molecules smell the way it does or predict from its structure whether a molecule is pleasant, noxious or has no smell at all.
Now, scientists from the Salk Institute and Arizona State University have discovered a new way to organize odor molecules based on how often they occur together in nature, which is the setting in which our sense of smell evolved. They were then able to map this data to discover regions of odor combinations humans find most pleasurable. The findings, published on Aug. 29 in the journal Science Advances, open new avenues for engineering smells and tastes. Read more…
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Researchers discover way
for early cancer detection
Neutrophils—short-lived, highly mobile and versatile—outnumber all other immune cells circulating through the blood stream. Yet, despite the cells’ abundance, the progenitor cell that only gives rise to neutrophils had eluded all efforts to track it down. Now, researchers at La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology identified a progenitor of neutrophils in the bone marrow of mice and humans and tied it to cancer-promoting activities.
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Diplomats’ mystery illness linked to
radiofrequency/microwave radiation
Writing in advance of the Sept. 15 issue of Neural Computation, Beatrice Golomb, professor of medicine at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, says publicly reported symptoms and experiences of a “mystery illness” afflicting American and Canadian diplomats in Cuba and China strongly match known effects of pulsed radiofrequency/microwave electromagnetic radiation. Her conclusions, she said, may aid in the treatment of the diplomats (and affected family members) and assist U.S. government agencies seeking to determine the precise cause. More broadly, Golomb said her research draws attention to a larger population of people who are affected by similar health problems.
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SDSC awarded grant for data reproducibility research
Researchers at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), an Organized Research Unit of UC San Diego, have been awarded a three-year National Science Foundation (NSF) grant worth more than $818,000 to design and develop cyberinfrastructure that allows researchers to efficiently share information about their scientific data and securely verify its authenticity while preserving provenance and lineage information.
The award, which starts Sept. 1 and comes from the NSF’s Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure, which supports the Cybersecurity Innovation for Cyberinfrastructure program, is focused on implementing what the SDSC researchers call an Open Science Chain – a web-based cyberinfrastructure platform that allows a wide community of researchers, regardless of domain, to efficiently share metadata and easily verify authenticity of their datasets in a secure manner.
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USD’s Master’s in Supply Chain
program ranked 2nd in California
The University of San Diego Master’s in Supply Chain program is among the top programs in North America, and 2nd best in California, according to Gartner Inc.’s 2018 rankings. USD’s supply chain master’s program ranked 25th on the list highlighting those with the best curricula, real-world experience and industry reputations. Eighty-eight supply chain programs in the U.S. and Canada were considered for this ranking.
According to Gartner, supply chain leaders can use this information to select the right portfolio of university partners that will strengthen early-career and experienced-hire pipelines.
“We are very excited that our faculty’s and staff’s ongoing efforts to provide the highest-quality supply chain program in southern California has been recognized by Gartner,” said University of San Diego School of Business Dean Jaime Gómez.
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DEFENSE CONTRACTS
Harper Construction Co. Inc., San Diego, has been awarded a $30,817,653 contract for construction of a F-35 simulator facility at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar. The facility will support six full mission simulators and support spaces including administrative, classroom, and conferences spaces. The building will also include space for other training devices as required by the Marine Corps weapons systems planning document and be in compliance with intelligence community technical specifications. Work is expected to be completed by May 2020. The Naval Facilities Engineering Command, Southwest, San Diego, is the contracting
agency.
RQ Construction LLC, Carlsbad, has been awarded a $28,068,000 contract for the design and construction of the Undersea Rescue Command Operations Building at Naval Base Coronado. The facility will support a variety of functions including operational equipment storage, applied instruction, training, administration, and equipment maintenance. Project includes all pertinent site improvements and site preparations, superstructure, mechanical and electrical utilities, pile foundation, interior construction and finishes, roofing, plumbing, and lighting. The task order also contains six unexercised options and two planned modifications, which if exercised would increase the cumulative task order value to $29,847,000. Work is expected to be completed by March 2021. The Naval Facilities Engineering Command, Southwest, San Diego, is the contracting agency.
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Personnel Announcements
RAR Hospitality announces promotions and new hires
San Diego-based hotel management company RAR Hospitality announces the hotel executive promotion of Cameron Lamming to chief development officer and president and the addition of Cindy Wu-Park as the new corporate director of finance, Hallie Leitter as director of sales at The Lafayette Hotel, Swim Club & Bungalows, and Kim Acosta as general manager of Rio Del Sol Inn.
Cameron Lamming’s focus is on company growth in the U.S. through sourcing and executing hotel acquisitions and creating and cultivating partnerships with hotel owners and developers. Prior to joining RAR, Lamming worked at Brixton Capital, an opportunistic investment vehicle with assets totaling more $4 billion, where he was responsible for the acquisitions group.
Cindy Wu-Park is responsible for the oversight of all hotel accounting and financial reporting functions, systems, and operating policies and procedures. She was previously the director of finance at The U.S. Grant Hotel in San Diego and has been in the hospitality finance industry for 16 years. Her career background includes corporate roles as well as on-property and financial auditing positions.
Hallie Leitter manages the sales team at The Lafayette Hotel and oversees marketing, room and group sales, catering and events. Leitter served as a sales manager for The Westgate Hotel in San Diego and event sales manager for restaurant group McCormick & Schmick’s, which owns and operates Morton’s The Steakhouse, The Oceanaire, McCormick & Schmick’s, and Mastro’s Restaurants.
Kim Acosta, the new general Manager of Rio Del Sol Inn, started her hospitality career at a hotel managed by Disneyland in 1986 and she has now worked with properties ranging from midsize to luxury. After managing hotels in California, Arizona, and Nevada for over 30 years, Acosta is overseeing all hotel departments of Rio Del Sol Inn as well as its onsite restaurant, Giggling Cactus.
