Martignetti Companies and tenant Ferguson Plumbing Supply have agreed to a lease for 260,150 square feet at the Taunton Trade Center in Taunton, MA.

Philip Verre, Rob Byrne, Pete Whoriskey and Paul Leone of global real estate services firm Cushman and Wakefield represented Martignetti Companies, a wine and spirits distributor based in Taunton, MA. Ferguson Plumbing Supply was represented by CBRE.

The Taunton Trade Center is a speculative industrial project with 584,640 square feet of prime high bay warehouse and storage space. The property features 112 loading docks with cross-dock capabilities, 40-foot ceiling heights, 132 trailer parking spaces, an 8-inch thick Ductilecrete custom floor slab that increases a user's cubic space by 25% compared to other new construction on the market, and 546 parking spaces.

The property is located at 300 Charles F. Colton Road, close to Interstate 495 and Interstate 95, providing access to the surrounding areas of MA and RI.

The post Wine Distributor, Plumbing Provider Agree on 260K-SF Lease at Taunton Commerce Middle appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

San Francisco Conservatory of Music Ute and William K. Bowes, Jr. Center / Mark Cavagnero Associates

© Tim Griffith

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https://www.archdaily.com/994026/san-francisco-conservatory-of-music-ute-and-william-k-bowes-jr-center-mark-cavagnero-associates
© Tim Griffith

Text description provided by the architects. Located in the heart of San Francisco’s Civic Center, the city’s performing arts district, the Ute & William K. Bowes, Jr. Center for Performing Arts at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) was designed by Mark Cavagnero Associates (Cavagnero) as a “vertical campus” that incorporates student housing, dining, classrooms, rehearsal rooms, performance spaces, and a radio station all under one roof.

© Tim Griffith© Tim Griffith

The Center is named in honor and recognition of the $46.4M gift from the William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation, which marks the largest capital gift ever made to a music school; the Foundation’s namesake was a longtime SFCM supporter and trustee. Walking distance to SFCM’s Ann Getty Center at 50 Oak Street, the Conservatory’s home since 2006, the Bowes Center creates housing for up to 420 students. The building also includes 27 rent-stabilized apartments, which upgrade and replace existing units from the site’s previous building for its prior tenants.

© Tim Griffith

Cavagnero’s design emphasizes openness, engagement, and light through its exterior of white and transparent glass. Filled with the sights and sounds of music, the Bowes Center invites passersby at this active intersection to see performances through floor-to-ceiling windows in its ground-floor jewel-box Cha Chi Ming Recital Hall. The top two floors glow like a beacon at night, with floor-to-ceiling windows, the 200-seat Barbro Osher Recital Hall, flexible event space, and roof terrace offering unparalleled views of City Hall, Davies Symphony Hall, the War Memorial Opera House, and other landmarks.

© Kyle Jeffers© Tim Griffith

Building on the firm’s innovations in the design of SFJAZZ, Cavagnero’s design for Bowes achieves the transparency of a glass exterior while exceeding its rigorous acoustic requirements. To achieve a cohesive design language, while meeting its high acoustic demands—which change from floor to floor, with a mix of performance, practice, recording, and residential spaces throughout its twelve stories, and are made more complex by the neighboring Van Ness Avenue —the Cavagnero team designed a custom curtainwall system that integrates all acoustic requirements into one seamless envelope. Collaborating with Kirkegaard Associates, Tipping Structural Engineers, and curtainwall fabricator CS Erectors, Cavagnero pushed the boundaries of glass’s capacity to perform at high acoustic levels. The design utilizes double-glazed walls and a floating structural slab to isolate noise and vibration transmission from the street while maintaining transparency in the performance spaces. The double-glazed system also provides a sustainable element to the design, creating an additional thermal buffer.

© Tim Griffith

On the Bowes Center’s second level, the Center for New Media features studio space, lesson rooms, and critical listening rooms for students participating in the Conservatory’s Technology and Applied Composition Program. Capitalizing on the school’s location in the performing arts district, and proximity to Silicon Valley, the program prepares classically trained composers to score the film and video games. The center is also used by students in SFCM’s Roots, Jazz, and American Music Program, created in partnership with SFJAZZ. Classrooms, keyboard labs, a black box technology hall and a recording studio for all SFCM students are located in highly acoustically controlled spaces below ground levels. Floors three through 11 hold one, two, and three-bedroom housing units, each acoustically isolated for practicing. One floor is dedicated to housing San Francisco Ballet Students as an extension of the Conservatory’s unprecedented partnership with the nearby SF Ballet.

© Kyle Jeffers

Project Description. A “vertical campus” that incorporates affordable student housing, dining, classrooms, rehearsal rooms, performance spaces, faculty offices, and a radio station under a single roof, the Bowes Center is designed to enable students to create, learn, and share music in an integrated, collaborative environment. Named in honor and recognition of the $46.4M gift from the William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation, the Bowes Center doubles the school’s square footage and features state-of-the-art teaching facilities and three new performance halls.

© Kyle Jeffers

The post San Francisco Conservatory of Music Ute and William Okay. Bowes, Jr. Middle / Mark Cavagnero Associates appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

South San Francisco’s economic advancement center, a resource hub for residents and business owners in north San Mateo County, will receive $500,000 from the recently passed $1.5 trillion federal appropriations act, officials announced this week.

The downtown center opened late last month to house programs providing job training and business and entrepreneurship courses. Mayor Mark Nagales said the center complements the city’s other initiatives, like guaranteed income, that aim to help underserved communities.

“People are looking for jobs, and they are also looking for the assistance in terms of placement,” he said. “This is going to be a long-term commitment from us, from the city.”

The city partnered with Bay Area nonprofits JobTrain and the Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center in July last year. Since then, Renaissance has already served 91 clients and secured $86,700 in capital for 19 client businesses in Daly City, San Bruno and South San Francisco, according to the city. Meanwhile, JobTrain has helped 73 clients, 22 who have found job placement with an average wage of more than $22 per hour.

The city committed $2 million over two years from its American Rescue Plan Act funding to the center. Another $1.1 million was granted by the US Economic Development Administration, and the county pitched in $200,000. Genentech contributed $50,000 and Lane Partners gave $10,000. Nagales said the city is continuing to explore additional funding sources.

North County residents can stop by the center to receive résumé and interview help, vocational training and be connected with employers. Small business owners or those interested in starting a business can take courses, network and receive help applying for grants. Services are free and available in both Spanish and English.

The new federal funding will go to the JobTrain program, adding classroom training and enabling expansion of service to at least 50 people, Nagales said. The greater Bay Area is slated to receive $73 million of the appropriations act for various uses.

“We are so incredibly grateful for the efforts of Senators Feinstein and Padilla, and Congresswoman Speier for fighting for the needs of our residents and surrounding communities,” Nagales said. “This money will dramatically improve access to job training and placement services for the region’s most vulnerable residents.”

East Palo Alto is also planned to get a center offering similar services. JobTrain, based in Menlo Park, is partnering on the effort and will provide services at the new location that will be constructed in coming years.

The South San Francisco center is located at 366 Grand Ave. and is open 10 am to 4 pm Monday to Friday.

The post Funding boosts South San Francisco financial development middle | Native Information appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Pictured (left to right): Yasemin Kologlu, Kimberley Petredis, Caleb Anderson, Laura Kohler

Kohler Company partnered with The Real Deal and Best Plumbing Supply to host an event at the Kohler Experience Center in New York City during Climate Week 22′ which brought together a trio of AEC experts about the responsibility manufacturers and the development community have in addressing major societal shifts like climate change, water shortages and urbanization. With a rapidly aging and increasingly urban population, the discussion led by Kohler Company SVP Human Resources, Stewardship and Sustainability, Laura Kohler, kicked off with an urgent call to action to design sustainable products, living and working spaces that reduce environmental impact while accounting for changes brought about by climate instability. It continued with an urgent call to action for manufacturers and the build industry to unlock consumer adoption of more environmentally friendly products.

“The market is changing,” said Yasemin Kologlu, Design Principal at SOM (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill), a leading architecture and engineering firm with studios in the United States and the UK. “As designers, it’s our job to make sure that sustainability can be delivered at every price point. I don’t think that should be our excuse any longer.” Kologlu pointed out that companies like Kohler producing a wider range of sustainable products help her in her role as a designer, giving her the ability to address climate impact at “every level of society.”

Caleb Anderson, Partner at Drake/Anderson emphasized the importance of teaching clients and consumers about the importance and benefits of environmentally friendly designed products and spaces. “Our responsibility as an industry is to come together and educate people,” said Anderson, who went on to say that sustainable products often set themselves apart from the rest of what’s on offer by virtue of their sustainability. “When we show clients an innovative material that we are excited about, it makes them excited.”

“One thing that people have always been really great at is rising to an occasion and innovating out of a problem,” said Kimberley Petredis, Director of Residential Interiors at FXCollaborative in Brooklyn. Petredis, who works with big-name developers around New York City, mentioned that she has seen an increased interest in sustainable design in the last couple of years, thanks in part to individuals recognizing the need to address climate change as well as more budgetary concerns . “Depending on what kind of product it is, you might actually be saving money in the long run by paying more upfront.”

Laura Kohler tied things up with a few lessons that she had gleaned from the discussion. She used Kohler’s WasteLab as an example of her first lesson, that design and engineering don’t have to conflict with sustainability. The WasteLab, which takes materials destined for the landfill and repurposes them into manufactured materials like tiles, has taken off since its inception in 2019, with more demand for the products than the firm can meet. “Let’s try to use easy-to-understand language. Let’s bring everybody with us. Everyone’s participation counts.” After all, it’s all of our futures that are at stake.

“We’re starting to see a lot of really interesting products and solutions,” said Caleb Anderson, who got the last word. “The exciting thing to me is that with the challenge comes newfound creativity and innovation.”

The second lesson related to what Caleb Anderson said about generating excitement around sustainable products, and Kohler emphasized the importance of the company’s associates in creating positive energy around products like those from WasteLab to build the momentum needed to make real change happen. The third lesson related to the need to produce environmentally friendly products at multiple price points now, not at some distant point in the future, calling back to Kimberley Petredis’s point that demand for these products grows every day.

Finally, Kohler closed out the discussion with a call for the AEC industry to be inclusive when talking about sustainability.

Ready to learn more? reach out to [email protected]nyc.com today to make an appointment at their showroom to see the experience.

The post Kohler Firm companions with The Actual Deal and Finest Plumbing Provide to host an occasion on the Kohler Expertise Middle in New York Metropolis throughout Local weather Week 22’ appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

San Francisco’s Tenderloin Center, a building at UN Plaza where people on the streets can drop in and receive basic services, including connections to substance abuse treatment and housing, will close in December.

Conceived as a centerpiece of Breed’s state-of-emergency initiatives in the Tenderloin, the center opened in January as a safe harbor for homeless people and part of the emergency’s push to deal with skyrocketing overdoses. City officials used emergency powers to bypass the city’s typical contracting process and quickly secured a lease for the building, while Breed announced efforts to crack down on drug dealing in the neighborhood.

But the center met resistance early on after it came to light that the city allowed people to use drugs there. Critics argued that it enabled addiction and that very few people were connected to drug treatment through the site.

The news that the center will shutter in December comes at a fraught moment. Breed and the supervisors are hammering out a nearly $14 billion budget and must decide where to put resources to address some of the city’s most vexing problems, including homelessness, mental health and addiction.

Weeks ago, the supervisors voted to extend the center’s lease from June through the end of the year. And in early June the health department allowed the media, which had been shut out of the center, to finally tour it.

Breed spokesperson Parisa Safarzadeh described the center in a statement as an “immediate intervention to stabilize the community in the short term while the city developed its longer term plans for the tenderloin.”

“The declaration of emergency enabled the city to quickly launch a service center as a safe respite from the streets,” Safarzadeh said.

While it was framed as a temporary solution to a chronic problem, the center appears to operate at high volume, serving about 400 people each day at its fenced-in site, according to Safarzadeh.

“We reversed overdoses — we saved people’s lives,” Vitka Eisen, CEO of HealthRight 360, a nonprofit partner helping operating the center, said of her staff’s work.

“It doesn’t make sense to me that we would close one program without opening others,” she said.

Whether the center was cost-effective is difficult to know. In its first five months, workers logged more than 49,000 visits, but just 53 connections to substance-use treatment. The center has also made 900 placements into shelters and 150 placements into permanent supportive housing. Operating the center for the next six months will cost $10.6 million, though city officials haven’t in the past been able to say how much the first six months of operation cost.

Community organizer Del Seymour, founder of the workforce nonprofit Code Tenderloin, a partner in the center, is disappointed it will close.

Seymour said his organization has hired at least 40 people referred by the center’s case managers.

“Nobody ever said the word ‘permanent,’ and we understand that,” he said. “But now we’re seeing successes. So why give somebody something and then take it away?”

He said the site’s central location may have triggered resistance.

A new apartment tower and Whole Foods Market just opened in Mid-Market, signaling the possible turnaround of an area where businesses have long struggled with drug use outside their doorsteps. With more investment starting to pour into downtown, Seymour said he wouldn’t be surprised if complaints are piling up about the center. Seymour would like to see the concept continued but moved elsewhere.

Sara Shortt, a representative of the Treatment on Demand Coalition, also supported the model and methods of the center but questioned the execution. She remembered the bravado with which Breed announced her package of programs to clean up the Tenderloin and Civic Center.

Shortt wondered whether the city had just found an available space in UN Plaza — albeit one with a $75,000 a month rent payment — and “just jumped on it.”

“This was all done in a ‘grand gesture’ kind of way,” Shortt said. “For the mayor to just pull out of it at this point,” with no alternative for people who clearly rely on the services, “reinforces that it was perhaps only that — a gesture.” She worried the mayor, who is facing pressure to reinvigorate the local economy, may have buckled to neighborhood complaints.

Yet Breed’s spokesperson Jeff Cretan said residents’ misgivings never factored into the city’s decision to pull the plug. Officials anticipated strong feelings on all sides from the moment they announced the center, he said, which hasn’t stopped the city from methodically testing solutions.

The tenderloin emergency also added social workers and outreach staff to coax people into treatment. Breed has also publicly pushed for supervised drug consumption sites, a controversial strategy to alleviate the overdose crisis that has widespread political support in San Francisco.

Although the city’s behavioral health budget has enough money to support such sites, they are not sanctioned by the state or federal government and may face legal hurdles.

Supervisor Matt Dorsey, whose district spreads through downtown and the South of Market area, said Thursday that he needed more information before weighing in on the upcoming closure of the center, which is not in his district but is close to it.

Dorsey announced a plan this week for police to prioritize arresting drug dealers and seizing illegal drugs in areas where people are seeking help with addiction — such as outside a treatment center — that was partially inspired by neighborhood disenchantment when the city unveiled the center in UN Plaza .

He presented the plan as part of a “right to recovery” initiative intended to stave off overdose deaths and despair caused by fentanyl.

Residents and merchants “are going to be justifiably suspicious of anything we’re doing to encourage open air drug scenes and brazen drug dealing,” Dorsey said, standing at a parking lot near Sixth and Market streets on Thursday, where he’d attended the mayor’s press conference to announce a new housing ballot measure.

After speaking at the event, Breed declined to answer questions from reporters.

Despite city officials’ repeated assurances that they are pursuing a viable long-term plan to curb drug use, Eisen of HealthRight 360 said she scoured the budget for any alternative programs, and found nothing. She worries for the hundreds of people who rely on the center each day for everything from work referrals to overdose treatment to cell phone chargers. The demand, she said, is clear.

San Francisco Chronicle staff writer JD Morris contributed to this report.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with the correct spelling of Sara Shortt’s name.

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan

The post San Francisco’s Tenderloin middle will shut in December as funding dries up appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

The first of what will soon be hundreds of places in the Bay Area to provide a guarantee of fresh air on smoky days opened in San Francisco on Tuesday.

The new Clean Air Center, located at the Bayview Linda Brooks-Burton Branch Library in the city’s Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood, has been outfitted with special filtration equipment and allotted space in a 1,000 square-foot meeting room to accommodate those wanting respite during periods of heavy wildfire smoke.

The facility marks the debut of a network of Clean Air Centers planned across California, and it shows the extent to which the state is going to prepare for increasing wildfires — and climate change.

In recent years, millions of Californians have been exposed to unhealthy levels of smoke as a result of bouts of wildfires that scientists attribute, in part, to drought and rising temperatures.

“Having a place where people can go to breathe clean air is something that is extremely vital and important,” said San Francisco Supervisor Shamann Walton during a kick-off celebration of the new Clean Air Center on Tuesday morning. Walton also sits on the Board of Directors of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which is overseeing the rollout of the facilities.

The first center was launched in San Francisco’s southeastern corner to underscore the project’s aim of prioritizing underserved areas, where air pollution is typically greatest and fewer people may have air purifiers in their homes.

Air district officials say that more than 300 facilities will open in the Bay Area in a matter of weeks, including one at a YMCA just a few blocks from the first site. The centers will generally be located in libraries, schools and other community hubs where portable air cleaners will be brought in and HVAC upgrades made.

The sites will be identified with signs sporting the program’s new, blue and orange Clean Air Center logo.

The initiative is the product of Assembly Bill 836, the Wildfire Smoke Clean Air Center Incentive Program for Vulnerable Populations. The legislation, authored by Assembly Member Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, provided funds for the creation of the network of clean air facilities.

The Bay Area Quality Management District, serving the region’s nine counties, was allocated $3 million to help pilot the program. The California Air Resources Board and the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management helped with Tuesday’s launch.

“We get more calls on this than anything during wildfire season,” said Kristine Roselius, spokeswoman for the air district. “People want to know where they can go to get out of the smoke.”

Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander

The post California opens its first Clear Air Middle, in San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Level neighborhood appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Juliana McNeil greeted reporters in what’s known as the living room, a tranquil space with yellow walls where people use computers, read books and unwind.

She was there as a kind of ambassador for the visitors who come in regularly, and had glowing reviews of her experience at the Tenderloin Center.

McNeil said she had been sleeping on the streets in Oakland before she arrived at the site. She said staff helped her find housing, mental health support and mentors.

“Places like this need to exist in other counties because when you’re homeless, you feel like you have nothing,” she said. “They got me not only a hot meal, they gave me a hygiene kit, clothes. They basically linked me back up to where I’m building myself again, my trust with people.”

Juliana McNeil told members of the media she lived on the streets of Oakland before finding support at the Tenderloin Center. (Holly McDede/KQED)

Donna Hilliard, executive director of Code Tenderloin, took reporters to the courtyard.

“What we tell people is, ‘Welcome to grandmother’s backyard,'” she said.

She pointed toward a mobile shower and laundry station.

“You can come in smelling like pee, but guess what, we have a shower, and we’re going to give it with care,” she said.

Hilliard nodded toward the game area and where guests can get coffee, and gray-and-blue reclining chairs arranged in a circle where people wait for services or nap.

Then reporters were escorted to what staff called “the overdose prevention area.”

The area is pretty basic. Plastic tables and chairs are set up for people to use drugs with relative privacy, while staff are nearby to reverse overdoses.

“There are people we don’t see in treatment, people who leave treatment and have reoccurrence of drug use. And for those people, we believe we have an obligation to care for them so they don’t die of a drug overdose,” said Vitka Eisen, president and CEO of HealthRIGHT 360, a nonprofit health provider that offers harm-reduction services at the Tenderloin Center.

On a typical day, in this outdoor lounge area at the Tenderloin Center, guests wait for services. Vitka Eisen with HealthRIGHT 360 said staff have reversed overdoses at this spot and that naloxone is readily available when needed. (Holly McDede/KQED)

Naloxone, the drug used to reverse overdoses, and clean needles are at the ready. No one has fatally overdosed at the Tenderloin Center, and staff have reversed over 90 overdoses since the site opened in January, according to data from the San Francisco Public Health Department.

Eisen disagreed that the site is a safe consumption site, however, and preferred to call it an overdose prevention site.

“The safe consumption sites are typically indoors. They have nursing staff, a medical model, and this is outdoors in a tent,” she said. “It’s rugged.”

The post Inside San Francisco’s Tenderloin Heart, Which Serves A whole bunch Each Day appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

San Francisco’s Tenderloin Center, a building at UN Plaza where people on the streets can drop in and receive basic services, including connections to substance abuse treatment and housing, will close in December.

Conceived as a centerpiece of Breed’s state-of-emergency initiatives in the Tenderloin, the center opened in January as a safe harbor for homeless people and part of the emergency’s push to deal with skyrocketing overdoses. City officials used emergency powers to bypass the city’s typical contracting process and quickly secured a lease for the building, while Breed announced efforts to crack down on drug dealing in the neighborhood.

But the center met resistance early on after it came to light that the city allowed people to use drugs there. Critics argued that it enabled addiction and that very few people were connected to drug treatment through the site.

The news that the center will shutter in December comes at a fraught moment. Breed and the supervisors are hammering out a nearly $14 billion budget and must decide where to put resources to address some of the city’s most vexing problems, including homelessness, mental health and addiction.

Weeks ago, the supervisors voted to extend the center’s lease from June through the end of the year. And in early June the health department allowed the media, which had been shut out of the center, to finally tour it.

Breed spokesperson Parisa Safarzadeh described the center in a statement as an “immediate intervention to stabilize the community in the short term while the city developed its longer term plans for the tenderloin.”

“The declaration of emergency enabled the city to quickly launch a service center as a safe respite from the streets,” Safarzadeh said.

While it was framed as a temporary solution to a chronic problem, the center appears to operate at high volume, serving about 400 people each day at its fenced-in site, according to Safarzadeh.

“We reversed overdoses — we saved people’s lives,” Vitka Eisen, CEO of HealthRight 360, a nonprofit partner helping operating the center, said of her staff’s work.

“It doesn’t make sense to me that we would close one program without opening others,” she said.

Whether the center was cost-effective is difficult to know. In its first five months, workers logged more than 49,000 visits, but just 53 connections to substance-use treatment. The center has also made 900 placements into shelters and 150 placements into permanent supportive housing. Operating the center for the next six months will cost $10.6 million, though city officials haven’t in the past been able to say how much the first six months of operation cost.

Community organizer Del Seymour, founder of the workforce nonprofit Code Tenderloin, a partner in the center, is disappointed it will close.

Seymour said his organization has hired at least 40 people referred by the center’s case managers.

“Nobody ever said the word ‘permanent,’ and we understand that,” he said. “But now we’re seeing successes. So why give somebody something and then take it away?”

He said the site’s central location may have triggered resistance.

A new apartment tower and Whole Foods Market just opened in Mid-Market, signaling the possible turnaround of an area where businesses have long struggled with drug use outside their doorsteps. With more investment starting to pour into downtown, Seymour said he wouldn’t be surprised if complaints are piling up about the center. Seymour would like to see the concept continued but moved elsewhere.

Sara Shortt, a representative of the Treatment on Demand Coalition, also supported the model and methods of the center but questioned the execution. She remembered the bravado with which Breed announced her package of programs to clean up the Tenderloin and Civic Center.

Shortt wondered whether the city had just found an available space in UN Plaza — albeit one with a $75,000 a month rent payment — and “just jumped on it.”

“This was all done in a ‘grand gesture’ kind of way,” Shortt said. “For the mayor to just pull out of it at this point,” with no alternative for people who clearly rely on the services, “reinforces that it was perhaps only that — a gesture.” She worried the mayor, who is facing pressure to reinvigorate the local economy, may have buckled to neighborhood complaints.

Yet Breed’s spokesperson Jeff Cretan said residents’ misgivings never factored into the city’s decision to pull the plug. Officials anticipated strong feelings on all sides from the moment they announced the center, he said, which hasn’t stopped the city from methodically testing solutions.

The tenderloin emergency also added social workers and outreach staff to coax people into treatment. Breed has also publicly pushed for supervised drug consumption sites, a controversial strategy to alleviate the overdose crisis that has widespread political support in San Francisco.

Although the city’s behavioral health budget has enough money to support such sites, they are not sanctioned by the state or federal government and may face legal hurdles.

Supervisor Matt Dorsey, whose district spreads through downtown and the South of Market area, said Thursday that he needed more information before weighing in on the upcoming closure of the center, which is not in his district but is close to it.

Dorsey announced a plan this week for police to prioritize arresting drug dealers and seizing illegal drugs in areas where people are seeking help with addiction — such as outside a treatment center — that was partially inspired by neighborhood disenchantment when the city unveiled the center in UN Plaza .

He presented the plan as part of a “right to recovery” initiative intended to stave off overdose deaths and despair caused by fentanyl.

Residents and merchants “are going to be justifiably suspicious of anything we’re doing to encourage open air drug scenes and brazen drug dealing,” Dorsey said, standing at a parking lot near Sixth and Market streets on Thursday, where he’d attended the mayor’s press conference to announce a new housing ballot measure.

After speaking at the event, Breed declined to answer questions from reporters.

Despite city officials’ repeated assurances that they are pursuing a viable long-term plan to curb drug use, Eisen of HealthRight 360 said she scoured the budget for any alternative programs, and found nothing. She worries for the hundreds of people who rely on the center each day for everything from work referrals to overdose treatment to cell phone chargers. The demand, she said, is clear.

San Francisco Chronicle staff writer JD Morris contributed to this report.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with the correct spelling of Sara Shortt’s name.

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan

The post San Francisco’s Tenderloin middle will shut in December as funding dries up appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

South San Francisco CA February 28, 2022 Submitted by City of South San Francisco

The old US Bank on Grand is now home to the Economic Advancement Center

Today the City of South San Francisco officially opened the Economic Advancement Center (EAC), strategically located at 366 Grand Avenue, to offer workforce development and small business and entrepreneurship services to residents of South San Francisco and throughout North San Mateo County. The goal of the Economic Advancement Center is to provide much needed economic recovery tools to some of the most vulnerable residents and small businesses, offering support in both English and Spanish.

One of South San Francisco’s partners at the EAC is JobTrain (www.jobtrainworks.org/south-san-francisco-career-center), a nonprofit accredited in vocational training, academics and essential skills development for adults of all ages to help move unemployed and underemployed individuals to successful and self-sufficient employment with skills development. Since the city’s partnership, JobTrain has served over 73 clients, had 22 job placements (14 full-time, 6 part-time and an average hourly wage of $22.65/hour), and nine clients pursuing training and education.

South San Francisco also partnered with Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center (Renaissance)(www.rencenter.org/mid-peninsula/), a nonprofit who works with individuals who want to start a small business and helps them successfully do so by offering training on a variety of topics, such as business planning, access to capital, as well as offering ongoing assistance to the business owner. Services offered by Renaissance are currently being offered to all small businesses in North San Mateo County (Daly City, Pacifica, Colma, San Bruno, Millbrae, South San Francisco, and Brisbane). Since starting the partnership, Renaissance has served 91 clients, secured $86,700 in capital for 19 client businesses in Daly City, San Bruno, and South San Francisco, and offered 45 consulting classes and workshops and English and Spanish.

Mayor Mark Nagales announced at today’s grand opening that the City of South San Francisco has been selected to receive a $1.1 million grant through the United States Economic Development Administration (EDA) to support services offered by Renaissance at the the EAC. This grant is estimated to create 372 jobs, retain 748 jobs and generate $43.7 million in private investment. The City has committed $1 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding for the EAC, and has received $200,000 in funding from the County of San Mateo, $500,000 in federal funds through Congresswoman Jackie Speier and private donations from Genentech and Lane Partners. City staff and its partners continue to pursue additional funding sources to expand and sustain all services offered to the community.

“The initial idea of ​​the EAC was introduced at a City Council meeting less than one year ago, and now that we are here celebrating the grand opening is incredible. So much work has been done between city staff, contractors, and our non-profits, and it’s amazing how many residents this center has been able to help even before the doors officially opened,” says South San Francisco Mayor Mark Nagales.

“Securing this grant for entrepreneurship services was a huge undertaking and our application being awarded shows not only the rest of California, but the entire nation, what amazing things we are doing here in South San Francisco. This will put us on the map in terms of economic development” says South San Francisco Mayor Mark Nagales.

All the services offered at the EAC are free to residents. To learn more about the EAC, please visit www.ssf.net/EAC. To learn more about JobTrain and workforce development services, please contact Julia Horiuchi at jhoriuchi@jobtrainworks.org, call (650) 505-4727 or visit the EAC at 366 Grand Avenue. To learn more about Renaissance and entrepreneurship services, please contact Amanda Anthony at amanda@rencenter.org, call (650) 321-2193 x 1103 or visit the EAC at 366 Grand Avenue.

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San Francisco will open a drug sobering center on Monday where people on the streets can temporarily ride out highs and get connected to treatment, the latest initiative to address the overdose crisis and complaints about drug use on city streets.

The center, called SOMA RISE, will operate out of a former office building the city is leasing at 1076 Howard St. in the South of Market Neighborhood, one of the epicenters of the drug crisis, along with the Tenderloin.

It will have 20 beds where people from the Tenderloin and SoMa are expected to stay between four and 12 hours, longer if necessary. People can access beds and chairs, bathrooms and showers, food and water, clothes and connections to “services and housing support,” according to information online.

The city designed the center in 2019 to mainly serve users of methamphetamine, which can cause bad reactions including paranoia or hallucinations and can prompt aggressive behavior. The increase in meth use over the last decade contributed to skyrocketing overdose deaths and flooded San Francisco’s emergency rooms with people in a mental health crisis. The center will also help users of the powerful opioid fentanyl, a factor in a majority of the city’s more than 1,300 overdose deaths over the past two years, and other drugs.

The program will be voluntary. People can walk in or be transported by ambulance or city outreach teams that respond to people who are homeless or in mental health crises.

Staff on site will monitor participants’ vital signs, respond to and reverse overdoses and help them find and navigate services. Once people come down from their highs, staff can transport them to their next destination, such as a shelter, treatment program, medical clinic or “home location,” information said online. The site will be run by nonprofit drug treatment provider HealthRight360, but funded by the city.

The center will initially be open daily from 8 am to 8 pm and scale up to 24 hours a day.

Officials hope the opening of the long-awaited drug sobering center — after three years of planning — will provide long-term solutions to people suffering from addiction and reduce the number of people acting erratically or dangerously while high on the streets.

“The rise in drug use and overdoses in San Francisco shows that we have to take action and try new things to get people the help they need,” Breed said in a statement in June 2021. “Opening a sobering center provides our outreach teams with a place to take someone who shouldn’t be left alone on the street where they can sober up, settle down, and get connected to other services.”

The need is far greater than 20 beds: In the last comprehensive count in 2019, the city counted 4,000 people who struggled with substance use, mental illness and homelessness.

The 18-month pilot program finally comes to fruition as San Francisco continues to try to grapple with reducing public drug use and fatal overdoses. The center’s opening follows Mayor London Breed’s emergency declaration in the Tenderloin in December to address the overdose crisis. It also comes a week after the news that the centerpiece of the emergency – a drop-in center to connect people to services in UN Plaza – will close at the end of the year.

The Tenderloin center was meant to help people get off the streets, receive basic services and find long-term housing and treatment, but critics took issue with the city allowing drugs use in the outdoor area of ​​the center, saying it enabled addiction. Supporters said it provided a low-barrier space for people to get help.

The debate could be reigned at the sobering center. Last year, the city said people would not be allowed to use drugs at the new sobering center, but would not be kicked out if they were caught using them.

Tom Wolf, a recovery advocate, said he wanted to reserve judgment on the sobering center to see how it goes. He supported the idea three years ago, but was more hesitant after the city allowed drug use at the Tenderloin center, which he opposed as counterproductive to recovery.

“I appreciate the fact that (the city) is trying to do something to address drugs and people in crisis,” he said. “I’m not 100% sold that this low-barrier approach where they give people a space to use dope, when it’s not a clinical setting like a drug consumption site, is really the best approach.”

He expects all the beds will be full, but said the key is to see what happens after visitors leave the center.

“What happens to that human being?” he asked.

The federal government prohibits supervised drug consumption sites staffed by medical professionals, but New York City has opened two. City officials, including Breed, have been talking for years about also opening a consumption site in San Francisco similar to New York’s, but the plan hasn’t moved forward, frustrating harm reduction advocates.

Her spokesman Jeff Cretan said Tuesday the city was still talking with the Department of Justice as they worked through “very real issues.” He said it was “an option” to have a nonprofit run the site, as New York does, to avoid liability, but the city was still “working with the federal government and finding a path forward.”

The city started planning the drug sobering center in 2019, but the pandemic delayed the planned opening in 2020. The city announced last June that the center would open in the fall. It wasn’t immediately clear why the opening was yet again delayed.

Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who co-chaired the city’s meth task force, which recommended opening such a site in 2019, told the Chronicle in the spring of 2021 that while he was glad the site was in the works, he was concerned about delays and that this tiny pilot wouldn’t be enough to meet the needs.

“I’m sure we’re going to find that we need more than just one,” he said at the time.

Information online about the center said experts are developing criteria to evaluate the program’s effectiveness, which will guide improvements and “may support initiatives to create additional drug crisis response centers in other neighborhoods where we know the need exists.”

The program’s costs, what long-term services would be offered and other details weren’t immediately available Tuesday.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Mallory Moench (she/her) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mallory.moench@sfchronicle.com Twitter:@mallorymoench

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