Daily Business Report-Nov. 4, 2018
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Why is California’s rent-control
initiative tanking so badly?
By Matt Levin | CALmatters
A California initiative to allow more rent control appears to be failing overwhelmingly, despite the state’s exploding housing costs and ever-rising rents, and its sponsors are already talking about trying again in 2020.
Tenant-rights groups and other backers of Prop. 10 always knew they had an uphill fight. Landlords, developers, realtors and a handful of Wall Street real estate investors have predictably poured tens of millions of dollars into defeating the measure. As of five days before the election, the No on 10 side had raised upward of $75 million and the Yes side, $26 million.
Backers of Prop. 10 point out the obvious: A disparity like that is hard to overcome.
“What the opposition has done with the money they’re using gouging renters is to confuse people,” said Damien Goodmon, director of the Yes on 10 campaign. “They can only win by using their money to confuse voters, and there’s a lot of confusion out there.”
The median price of a two-bedroom apartment in California has increased more than 20 percent over the past five years. A recent USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll found that “lack of rent control” was the No. 1 reason people believed housing had become unaffordable.
“When you’re running a ‘yes’ campaign, you have the burden of proof to show both the problem and that the solution will help the problem,” said one veteran manager of initiative campaigns, who is unaffiliated with Prop. 10 but requested anonymity because of concerns over publicly criticizing professional colleagues at election time. “Here everyone already agreed on the problem, which is helpful for the Yes side.”
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What’s next for Horton Plaza?
Nov. 15 open house to explain
Stockdale’s development plan
An open house will be staged on Nov. 15 where representatives from Stockdale Capital Partners will explain the company’s plans for the old Downtown shopping center. It will be held from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. at Space 289 on Level 3, next to Parking Level 5/Strawberry, in Horton Plaza. The event will be co-hosted by the Downtown San Diego Partnership, San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce and San Diego Economic Development Corp.
Stockdale plans a technology-focused, mixed-use campus to include:
- Technology and biotech innovation hub
- Urban creative office campus
- Several hundred thousand square feet of food and beverage and lifestyle retail choices
- Opportunity for 3,000 to 4,000 new jobs
- Estimated $1.8 billion annual economic impact to Downtown San Diego.
- Estimated completion in late 2020.
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DMJ Partners acquires multi-family
project in Pacific Beach for $5.5 million
San Diego-based DMJ Partners has purchased a multi-family project consisting of five buildings with 12 units for $5.5 mllion. The project is located at 3929-3933 Gresham St. and 3958-3966 Riviera Drive in the Crown Point neighborhood of Pacific Beach.
The project was built in 1977 and is comprised of houses, townhomes and one and two-bedroom apartments. The units offer open floor plans with fireplaces, some water views, private garages and patios with significant onsite parking. DMJ Partners said it plans to complete significant renovations to the interior and exterior of the project.
DMJ Partners was represented by Ascent Real Estate in the transaction and the seller was represented by Dunn, Realtors/Park Pacific Properties. South Coast Commercial will be handling the property management.
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Halozyme inks $25 million deal with Roche
Under a licensing deal with Roche, San Diego-based Halozyme Therapeutics will get $25 million upfront, with the potential for hundreds of millions more. It’s the latest in a series of large deals Halozyme has signed for the use of its drug delivery technology. The agreement allows Roche to use Halozyme’s drug delivery technology for one drug, with an option for two more drugs within four years. Its technology allows drugs that require IV infusion to be injected under the skin.
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Elizabeth Bustos joins county as
community development liaison
Elizabeth Bustos, an experienced health care policy and community engagement executive, has joined the county’s Health and Human Services Agency as community development liaison. She will work primarily with community leaders and stakeholders to advance Live Well San Diego, the county’s vision for healthy, safe and thriving communities. She will start with HHSA in mid-November.
Bustos was previously the director of community engagement for Be There San Diego, which brings together health care systems, patients and communities to prevent heart attacks and stroke. In that role she developed partnerships and implemented strategies aimed at improving heart-health and preventing cardiovascular disease.
As program director of the Southeastern San Diego Cardiac Disparities Project, Bustos built a coalition of faith-based organizations to prevent heart attacks and strokes in the area that has the highest rates of those diseases in San Diego County.
Bustos’ previous positions include director of community relations at San Ysidro Health Center, director of strategic business development and compliance at Comprehensive Health Center, and director of family services at the San Diego chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association.
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Sharp HealthCare named Most Wired for 18th year
Sharp HealthCare has been named one of the nation’s “Most Wired” health care organizations, according to the 2018 analysis of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives HealthCare’s Most Wired survey. The annual survey is designed to identify and recognize health care organizations that exemplify best practices through their adoption, implementation and use of information technology.
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Scripps Research awarded $3.3 million
grant to study brain circuitry
Lisa Stowers, a professor at Scripps Research, has received a $3.3 million grant over five years from the National Institutes of Health’s BRAIN Initiative to support her lab’s work to describe a complete neural circuit in a mammalian brain—a first for science.
Stowers says the goal of the project is to compile a “general parts list” of the brain cells that process emotion in a mouse model. “Then we can study how information is flowing through all these pieces in real time,” she says.
The team will focus on a crucial brain circuit that mice and humans share: the circuit that lets us choose when to urinate. In male mice, this circuit directly controls when and where they mark their territory to attract females. “We’re sort of plugging into something the mouse is really good at,” Stowers says. “And this gives us a model for studying more complicated behaviors.”
Of course, humans use this circuit many times a day to plan bathroom visits. In addition to helping scientists understand the brain, studying this circuit could reveal new targets for incontinence therapies.
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TW2 marketing wins Press Club award
TW2 marketing has won an award for General Writing for External Publications at the San Diego Press Club’s Excellence in Journalism Awards. The second-place award was for the cover story on Endeavor Bank appearing in SD METRO Magazine. The awards program drew a record 1,200 nominations in multiple categories.
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Meals on Wheels CEO honored wih
Cal Wellness Sabbatical Program Award
Debbie Case, president & CEO of Meals on Wheels San Diego County, will be recognized with a 2018 Cal Wellness Sabbatical Program Award at the foundation’s Power Up! convening in San Francisco on Tuesday, Nov. 13.
The Cal Wellness Sabbatical Awards program is designed to improve the long-term effectiveness of nonprofits by investing in the health and wellness of leaders and building staff capacity to manage operations. Each award includes a $30,000 grant to a nonprofit to provide its executive director with a paid sabbatical, plus an additional $10,000 to cover expenses related to the professional development of next-level managers and staff. Executive directors take three to six months off from work to rest and renew while staff assume increased responsibilities and strengthen the leadership capacity within their organizations.
Case joined Meals on Wheels in December 2008. She has extensive experience in both executive level nonprofit management, as well as senior level retail which included almost 23 years with Saks Fifth Avenue and several years with Delaware North Parks and Resorts.
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Personnel Announcements
Patricia K. Wagner named group president
of U.S. utilities for Sempra Energy
Sempra Energy announced that Patricia K. Wagner has been promoted to group president of U.S. utilities for the company. Currently chairman and CEO of Southern California Gas Co., Wagner will assume her new position Nov. 17, and continue in her role as chairman of SoCalGas.
As group president, Wagner will oversee San Diego Gas & Electric, SoCalGas and Sempra Energy’s investment in Oncor Electric Delivery Company LLC. J. Bret Lane will remain president and chief operating officer of SoCalGas and continue to report to Wagner.
Wagner has served as CEO of SoCalGas, the nation’s largest natural gas distribution utility, since 2016 and as chairman of SoCalGas since May 2018. Previously, from 2014 to 2016, she was president and CEO of Sempra U.S. Gas & Power, a predecessor company for Sempra Energy’s renewable energy and non-utility natural gas infrastructure businesses.
In her 23-year Sempra Energy career, Wagner has held a range of other leadership positions, including: vice president of audit services for Sempra Energy; vice president of accounting and finance for SoCalGas; vice president of information technology for SoCalGas and SDG&E; and vice president of operational excellence for SoCalGas and SDG&E. She also has served in key management roles at SoCalGas and SDG&E in gas distribution operations and customer services.
Prior to joining the Sempra Energy companies in 1995, Wagner held management positions at Fluor Daniel, McGaw Laboratories and Allergan Pharmaceuticals.
