my gavel back. I'm going to call to order a special meeting of the Berkeley City Council
today is Tuesday, March 10th, 2026, and it is 4.07 p.m.. Clerk, could you please start
us off with a roll? Okay. Council Member Castor-Wane is currently absent. Council Member Taplin
is currently absent. Council Member Bartlett is currently absent. Council Member Treggum?
present. O'Keefe. I am here. Black to be here. Luna Parra. Here. Humber present. And
Mary. She here. Kormis present. Very good. All right. So we have a very special
edition of special meeting today. We only have one item. It's the Berkeley
economic dashboards update. So I am going to pass it over to Eleanor Hollander
who's gonna start us off. Good afternoon mayor. Thank you for that introduction.
Good afternoon Council Members.
It's nice to be with you all today.
I'm Eleanor Holliner.
I'm the Manager of the Office of Economic Development
here at the City of Berkeley.
We are a division of the City Manager's Office.
I'm here tonight with my colleagues from OED as we call it.
Vincent McCrory, Ruel Cook and Liz Redmond, Cleveland.
Tonight's presentation covers data
from the calendar year 2025.
It also has a companion publication
or commercial district dashboards
which are in your packet and online.
And we have a number of topics to get into
and I've been waiting to say this since the year closed.
Let's do the numbers real.
Good afternoon Council members.
Unemployment increased modestly year over year in Berkeley
and stayed stable across the county and the state.
Berkeley's unemployment rate rose to 4.7%
up from 4.4% last year, matching 4.7% countywide
and lower than what's being observed of 5.4% statewide.
Across the East Bay, total employment declined slightly.
Job growth was concentrated in education and health services,
along with smaller gains in arts and government sectors.
At the same time, accommodation and food services,
manufacturing, and tech-related services saw declines.
These broader regional shifts shape the operating environment
for Berkeley businesses.
But Berkeley's employment base remains diverse and anchored
by major institutions.
And that brings us to Berkeley's major employers,
which play an important part in stabilizing
our local economy.
Our top 25 employers, based on number of employees,
are shown alphabetically on the left.
All of them have more than 100 employees
with the largest topping nearly 14,500,
if you can guess which one that is.
Five are in the public sector,
of which three are major educational institutions,
four are in the healthcare sector.
There are also a few large private sector corporations
in Berkeley, notably Bayer,
and new to the top 25 list in 2025,
Form Energy and Boycek Bagels.
Form Energy is located in West Berkeley
and it does R&D for batteries.
This diverse employment base
supports long-term economic resilience,
and these major employers not only support
thousands of jobs directly,
but they also generate secondary employment
through local spending, contracting,
and foot traffic in our commercial districts.
So now we're gonna talk about
first of many sectors that shaped the Berkeley economy. First being our
hospitality sector. Hospitality and visitation remain important drivers of
Berkeley's economy. In 2025 the sector performed well relative to neighboring
cities. Berkeley ranked first in hotel occupancy and second in average daily
room rate behind only San Francisco and was one of the few regional markets to
see growth in demand, occupancy, and revenue. Performance does vary across
across individual properties with a small number
of hotels still navigating financial
and operational challenges following the pandemic.
The city continues to monitor these situations
while working with partners like Visit Berkeley
to support visitation and demand.
Overall, Berkeley welcomed
about 1.6 million overnight visitors.
Hotel occupancy increased slightly
while the average daily room rate rose to $190 a night.
These trends generated more than 8.3 million
in transient occupancy tax revenue for the city.
Local events and programs continue to support visitation.
Last year, Berkeley Restaurant Week
featured more than 50 restaurants.
That returns April 2nd, so save the date.
The Bioneers conference brought nearly 2,000 visitors
to downtown Berkeley for the third consecutive year
and returns on March 26th.
And the Berkeley Bucks program generated
more than $16,000 in spending at local businesses.
So together, these efforts help support restaurants, hotels,
and small businesses across the city.
Liz.
Thanks, Ruel.
We're turning now to look at a snapshot
of our innovation ecosystem,
which is comprised of about 370,
what we refer to as innovation sector businesses,
which are defining strength of the Berkeley economy.
You can see the map here,
which you can dive into and really investigate
on berkeleystartupcluster.com, the startups page,
where they're divided by council district
and also color-coded by industry sector.
Primarily, you see software businesses
or others that can do R&D in an office space
along the Shattuck corridor here running north and south
with the larger the bubble indicating the number of firms
located at that address.
And then you see south of campus a big cluster.
In this particular picture, you're seeing it show
the bubble at the old Berkeley Art Museum
and Pacific Film Archive,
which is now the Bacar Bio-Engineuity Hub,
which is housing at any given time
between 35 to 40 life science or biotech companies.
We're also seeing a lot of biotech happening
west of San Pablo Avenue in those clusters of blue,
as well as the clusters of purple dots,
which are the hardware companies,
which are doing everything from sensors,
robotics, and quantum computers.
Another way to represent this is shown
on the right-hand side of the slide,
which is the pie chart, where we do our best
to divide the industry sector into one or another.
So for example, if you're an AI company
that's helping achieve healthcare aims,
you could either be classified as software
or as healthcare, but we had to put you somewhere.
That being said, we did see for the first time
our healthcare, life science companies
that are designing products and solutions
to improve human health be on par
with our historically largest sector,
which are the software companies.
So those are the two biggest with the clean tech
or climate tech companies,
which are developing transformative solutions
to address global warming and resource constraints
on our environment.
And hardware, the companies I mentioned earlier
that make physical devices primarily in West Berkeley
as our next two largest sectors.
Overall, Berkeley is really a city of startups.
And we are proud to be home to the university
that has been ranked now by PitchBook
for three years running as number one in the globe
for venture capital backed startups
that it has spun out of the university.
It's also number one for the overall number of graduates
and undergraduates who have gone on to form companies
that attain venture capital and a little shout out
for the females that graduated out of that university
and have venture capital backed startups.
Clearly we are lucky to be home
of this startup producing university
which correlates closely with the composition
of our innovation sector being vast majority
early stage companies that are still trying to figure out their product market fit, how
they're going to go to market, and develop a prototype. That's that 86% number shown
in the middle. We also want to point out that probably in large part due to the collaboration
that we have with the campus and their focus on innovation and entrepreneurship, we've
seen the year-over-year increases steadily rise over the last decade in terms of the
number of startups you can find in Berkeley, California. Though we did see a very small dip
year over year from 2024 to 2025 in the number of startups locally and that aligns very closely
with the trend we saw of skittish markets making it very hard for these early stage companies
to raise capital. Speaking of capital raised, in 2025 we expected that dip that I just mentioned
to have a more profound impact on our numbers but actually we had 88 startups raise Cedar
Venture Capital which is higher than in 2024 and cumulatively they raised 1.5 billion dollars
which again is higher than it was in 2024. However that 1.5 billion more than 50 percent of it was
was concentrated in three very large deals.
Those were in Righetti, a quantum computer company
that is scaling their quantum work
and raised $350 million in a second public offering
on the NASDAQ located in West Berkeley.
And then two companies, Cobold Metals and Terre Base,
that are located in downtown Berkeley,
both of which have designed AI robotics related solutions
to accelerate our clean energy transition.
I also want to point out that the capital
coming into our economy isn't all coming from angel investors and venture capitalists,
it's also coming from other aspects of government, state and federal primarily.
And in fact, $40 million came into the Berkeley economy from government R&D grants to 16
companies coming from everything from the National Science Foundation, the National
Institute of Health, the Department of Energy and the US Air Force.
And I'll also just mention, when any startup forms, they're always thinking about their
long term exit strategy and we have five companies get merged or acquired last year in their
exit round. We're also proud to announce that this is the first time ever that we've collaborated
with the campus on really trying to quantify how all of the landscape that they refer to
as their innovation and entrepreneurship or I&E ecosystem or the initiatives on campus that
primarily as it's shown here in the blue part of the pie help companies with
ideation and formation of startups translates into real economic impact for
our community here in Berkeley, California. What they cataloged through a
partnership cross-disciplinary group of students with leadership from the
Institute for Business Innovation at Haas Business School was that the hundred
innovation entrepreneurship initiatives on campus have translated into about 180
UC Berkeley affiliated startups located here in the city.
Those startups produce about 500 to a little over 600 jobs
when you count into their indirect and induced effects
like their vendors and suppliers.
Because for every one job in the sector,
looks like there's about two total people employed
because of those startups.
And the startups pay very high average annual salaries
of upward of $200,000 a year.
So overall, that contribution to the Berkeley economy
is somewhere in the ballpark of 200 to $250 million.
And we hope to see that only continue to grow.
We also think here in the Office of Economic Development,
not just about the jobs and the investment
that comes into our community,
but what kind of spaces they're gonna occupy
when they're able to hire people
and scale their technologies.
And so we wanna see them locate in the many labs
that have been built here in Berkeley, California.
Unfortunately, we do continue to track higher
than our nearby peers in Emeryville
and the overall Bay Area average
in terms of our life science,
commercial real estate vacancy rate
or those labs that are still on the market and not leased.
This 51.6%, however, I'll mention while it sounds very high,
is in part because of the actual equation
having a new aspect of its denominator,
the Berkeley Commons property,
which is about 540,000 square feet in West Berkeley.
Let's put some downward pressure on the prices
being asked per square foot for lab real estate
and we expect the market to continue to adjust
to reflect what we're seeing in terms of supply and demand.
However, I will just point out for you,
let's just scare you.
This is on par with what you're seeing nationally
and regionally in terms of life science leasing.
And now we'll talk about office market trends.
Office conditions across the East Bay remain mixed.
Berkeley's office availability remains stable
year over year and significantly lower than nearby markets,
where availability reaches 30% in Oakland
and 34% in Emeryville.
Asking rents in Berkeley held steady at $3.38
per square foot in 2025,
while rents are higher in Oakland and Emeryville.
Berkeley's office market reflects
It's older building stock, smaller floor plates,
and limited Class A inventory.
And then we'll talk about our new buildings,
our new commercial development activity.
It continues to shape Berkeley's landscape.
UC Berkeley has expanded its presence downtown
and is now the largest ratepayer
to the downtown Berkeley bid.
New research and academic facilities are under construction
like the Innovative Genomics Institute
and the Baker Labs for Energy and Materials.
You can see that in the two photos
on the left side of the slide.
Both will be part of the new Berkeley Innovation Zone.
And while private investment is helping
reactivate long vacant retail spaces
such as the Shattuck Plaza Block,
which was recently purchased by Flying Horse Investments,
and they have shared that they already have a lot of interest
in the spaces with five or six LOIs.
Good afternoon.
The topic I'm gonna talk about is ground floor vacancy
throughout the city.
As you'll see on this chart, at the bottom of it,
It shows that the vacancy rate for the city has dropped to about 6.3 percent over about
seven and a half percent last year.
We did see some changes in areas in terms of increases in vacancies such as San Pablo,
Telegraph, Districts.
But overall you will notice that throughout the city there has been a downward trend in
vacancies.
This means that planning department, means that the licensing department, means that different
within the city have done a good job of making sure that they get people through the process
of getting a business license, getting their zoning correct, and being able to open a shop
in the commercial district.
The second piece I want to talk about is retail.
And what you'll see here is that 31 percent of the ground floor space within the city
of Berkeley is occupied by retail.
In West Berkeley, that number jumps up to about 46 percent.
We are a retail city, and it means that throughout the city, as you see these commercial districts,
you see these properties opening up, we need to continue to encourage retail as a part
of our economy.
In that economy, you will see that 13 percent of the citywide occupancy is in the food and
beverages industry.
This means that people are getting out of their houses and purchasing food, going to
restaurants, and enjoying the nightlife.
The other thing I want to point out is that our concentration of office space tends to
be in downtown West Berkeley and the San Pablo corridor.
This reflects the opportunity for increased development and the fact that we actually
have a number of developments online that people are being able to lease and put their
businesses in.
Our expectation is this trend is going to pretty much hold steady in the current year,
But there is a lot of pressure on retail, as you can see, and on offices, as you heard.
And so we will continue to monitor that.
Thank you.
Turning now to sales tax.
The graph on the right shows quarter two receipts in sales tax over time.
You can see Berkeley has notched steady gains in this area every year.
2022 was particularly exuberant with some pent-up demand after the pandemic.
But again, sales tax receipts continue to increase in Berkeley.
This also tracks with what we're seeing at the county where receipts are also up.
The state itself is a little bit down.
Looking at the composition of Berkeley sales tax is this graph, the blue line represents
retail.
As Vincent mentioned, we are a city of retail.
Retail receipts compose 40% of our sales tax pie, so to speak.
But not to be outdone, food and beverage, pun intended, is catching up and eating retail's
lunch at 37% of our sales tax composition.
the orange line there on the graph. That is different than some other cities. Many
other cities, retail really runs away with the composition of sales tax, the
food in Berkeley, we love our food and beverage, and it shows in the sales tax
receipts. The only other thing I'll point out on this graph is the yellow line.
That's personal services. You see it's taken a very big jump in 2025. The sales
tax on gasoline and transportation is rolled up in that line. So when fuel
prices fluctuate, the sales tax collected on them does as well and so
that's what you're seeing with that bounce. Turning now to housing
development, in 2025 over 1,600 housing units actually closer to 1,700 housing
units were approved. This map demonstrates a lot of those are along
our downtown corridor and adjacent to campus in the Southside neighborhoods. We
also have some images of some of the future development that's been entitled
and is on the way these new residential projects represent new residents and
community members who will activate our commercial districts. Speaking of
residential, taking a look at some of the housing costs and market terms over
time, Berkeley's median price for a single-family home in December of 2025
was 1.265 million dollars. On the table here with the comps it's second only to
Piedmont. Inventory continues to remain strong with sales. It's indicated as a
the hot market on many of the multiple listing services,
and houses typically sell for 57% over their list prices.
Now, if you'll permit me for a few more minutes,
I wanted to spend a little bit of time speaking about how
OED, Office of Economic Development,
supports economic vitality.
I know you all, the budget is top of mind for all of us,
and I really want to point out how our work wraps around
a number of the elements of our general fund.
Business stabilization and retention
speaks to business license receipts.
We have over 13,000 business license holders
in the city of Berkeley.
And so making sure we're working with the folks
that are the holders of those business licenses
and making sure they're having a welcome
and important experience in Berkeley
and seamless experience in Berkeley is important to us.
Commercial, corridor and district vitality
speaks to our sales tax receipts.
We wanna have vibrant corridors
where people come and shop and spend their money.
Hospitality and visitation support
is directly related to our transient occupancy tax or TOT,
that is a visitor's or the heads and beds tax.
You come, you stay at a hotel, you pay a tax.
We work closely with our convention
and visitors bureau visit Berkeley
to make sure the visitors to our city have a good experience.
And the fourth pillar,
our innovation and talent pipeline
is this innovation sector we've been talking
quite a bit about.
That speaks to capital raised, wealth creation
and new business starts in our community.
And of course, supporting these companies as they grow
and lease space or purchase space in Berkeley
contributes to our bottom line here in Berkeley.
To amplify some of the work that we do
with sustaining the business community,
you'll see on this chart the logos
of the various business associations,
business improvement districts,
and merchant associations that operate
throughout the city of Berkeley.
In 2025, here are some of the things
that were achieved by these organizations.
One was Elmwood expanded.
It moved further south to include more businesses.
They noted that at their annual meeting,
instead of the expected 32 businesses that attended,
they had 50 to attend.
That's a showcase of what they've done there.
Solano was able for the first time
to create its own website
and set its own budget for marketing
separate from the Solano Avenue Association.
The city decided rightfully to allocate funding
to both Gilman to the Lauren District
so they could use those funds over a three year period
to improve their operations
and set forth a plan for further growth.
And currently, and you'll hear about this of course,
is that we work with the downtown
and the Telegraph Business Improvement Districts
on their plans for their 10 year renewals,
which are big drivers for the economy through Berkeley.
And so what we wanna point out is that
through these efforts,
we are helping the different commercial districts
and commercial associations throughout the city of Berkeley
sustained their effort to keep traffic
and keep people coming to their shops.
The other thing I want to point out is that in 2025,
we held a small business forum,
and one of the key things that came out of that
was access to capital.
Businesses still need and still demand
more access to capital.
Currently, the city of Berkeley operate two loan funds
that have 25 active loans
totaling about a million dollars out in the street.
This means that businesses that you can see on this chart
have the capital they need to keep in business
to keep employees working.
And we expect that the decision that was made
to transfer one of the loan programs
over to Working Solutions will make it easier
for people to pay their loans,
to get technical assistance to keep them in compliance
with their loans and continue to grow their businesses.
The Discovered in Berkeley marketing campaign
highlights local businesses across a range of sectors
and helps connect residents and visitors
with Berkeley-based companies.
Since its launch in 2019,
the campaign has generated over 4.6 million impressions
across digital platforms.
Feature stories performed especially well,
including magnetic tides,
a Berkeley company developing a new
non-invasive stroke treatment,
which was the most viewed article
in the series on Berkeley side,
followed by the feature on rainbow donuts,
lavender bakery, and sweet bites bakery,
because we all love our sweet treats.
Overall, the campaign is increasing visibility
for Berkeley businesses and helping drive people
to explore and support local establishments.
The discovered in Berkeley hashtag
was used in over 6,000 posts in social media,
and we encourage you to tag your posts
and help more people discover what's great about Berkeley.
Here in the Office of Economic Development,
We try not only to help businesses to grow, but to grow in a way that respects the constraints
on natural resources and our global challenges around climate change, and thus we do that
by working with the California Green Business Network, specifically the Alameda County Green
Business Program, to help businesses save water, conserve electricity, and reduce the
amount of waste that goes to the landfill.
And we're really proud that we saw 11 companies renew their commitment to this longstanding
program in 2025, as well as 13 new businesses enter the program and attain green certification.
And we now have a total of 81 businesses in Berkeley that are green business certified
and hope people will consider when they shop thinking about who's acting green by looking
at the green business California website and finding ones there.
When we talk about sustainability, we're talking not only about economic sustainability,
which you've heard a lot about today,
and environmental, which I just touched on,
but also on social sustainability, or specifically equity.
That's the third pillar of any sustainable economy.
And in the Office of Economic Development,
our partnership with Berkeley Unified School District
and the Cal State University Institute for STEM Education
has really deepened our commitment
toward equitable development
through our STEM Career X program,
which exposes kids that are learning STEM skills
in the classroom to see what those will look like
in real world careers in our community.
Last year we held 10 STEM career X-tors,
including at some of the companies
you've already heard about today,
like Rigetti, Quantum Computing, or Form Energy,
as well as others like Eris Composites,
Copper, which makes induction stoves,
or Type V, which has modular ADUs
that can be built in the backyard.
And what's really exciting about these programs
is not only do they expose the children
to career opportunities and visualization
of what their STEM skills can translate into
in terms of a career.
They help the employees at these companies
feel really invested in and helping
our future talent generation and the pipeline
of people that could come some day work from them
and be a part of this community.
Also, I'll just mention they've been a really important tool
for the Office of Economic Development
to get to know the leaders of our startups
and innovation companies and be able to know
they have a person in government
they can call when they're seeking other type of advice like where they can grow in
Berkeley or a problem that they're having on their street.
We also have had a great partnership over the last several years with University of
California Berkeley, our business associations, and our Berkeley lab in the Berkeley startup
cluster, but we've really deepened that campus city collaboration over the last year under
the leadership of Chancellor Lyons and Mayor Ichi, so really double down on what the city
and the university can achieve together.
We just launched last month our first Civic Innovation Challenge to make it so civic problems
or the community's challenges can have new apps or technologies designed by students.
As we mentioned earlier, we've been measuring the local impact of the innovation entrepreneurship
programs on campus and I want to thank the Institute for Business Innovation
again because I see some of them here tonight and then I also want to point
out that we have many new collaborations being developed at this
moment about how we increase access to capital and the venture capital funds
that support Berkeley companies as well as what more we can do for business
attraction and the Berkeley brand and in fact if any of you are interested we
have hot off the press some new cards about innovating and growing in Berkeley
and our Berkeley startup cluster, LinkedIn and website which we hope will help people
know that Berkeley is not just a place where you can draw talent from but a city where startups
are welcome to thrive and accelerate their innovation. And last but not least I want to
make sure you're also aware of our cultural supporting components in addition to our
commercial supportive components. In 2025, OED administered over 650,000 dollars of civic arts
grants across individual artists, community festivals, and arts organizations.
Here on the slide is the sort of sampling of some of the programs we've been pleased
to support, the New Apollo Youth Symphony Orchestra, Girls Garage, the Berkeley Burling
Festival.
And I want to spend at least one minute talking about our public art program, which is, sorry,
30 seconds, talking about our public art program, which you can see an image of the South Berkeley
shines mural that is slated to be installed on the MLK Yap Center at Oregon Street as
that building comes under comes back online during its construction project.
And finally, I just want to spend a minute talking a little bit about economic development
of stewardship.
Some people talk about this kind of work as gardening and I think we think about that
every day, whether you know in any given week Vincent will be at the telegraph board meeting
or over on Solano or talking to folks in the Lauren district, Ruel will be working on vacancies
in the downtown. Liz will be at the Gilman. We aim to be a really high touch, high customer
service responsive department that people can email or call us, and there's somebody
in government that will pick up the phone and make sure we can try to get you connected
to the resources you need and the support you deserve to feel welcome in Berkeley and
thrive. And I want to just leave you with a nice note we got. Elachi in downtown had
that a robbery happened, their window was broken.
Ruelle reached out to them on social media
to remind them about the Berkeley Damage Mitigation Fund,
and they wrote us this note that said,
it's reasons like this why we love being a part
of the Berkeley community so much.
So we thank you for your time today.
Thank you for letting us share a little bit about our work,
and we look forward to taking your questions
and having a discussion.
Thank you so much.
Well, let's hop into the questions.
Go ahead, Council Member Taplin.
Thank you very much.
As you all know, I'm very proud of our innovation ecosystem
here in the city.
Regarding our life science commercial vacancies,
are there lessons we can learn from Emeryville?
Are there things that they're doing that we're not doing,
or vice versa?
Couple things to say about Emeryville.
So number one, their vacancy rate
dropped primarily because the Biomed Realty property there
sold to Sutter.
And so when you're looking at small denominators,
like we don't have the amount of real estate
that you would see in a South San Francisco
in Emeryville or Berkeley.
So one property can really skew
whether your vacancy rate goes dramatically
up or down over a period.
So I would say number one,
that kudos to them for having leased that building
and sold a property.
And hopefully we'll have something similar happen here
and that would make a big swing in our vacancy rate.
The second thing I would say,
and this might be for a longer conversation,
but we have heard that the permit streamlining
and the ease of operations is sometimes at least perceived.
I can't say if it's actually easier,
but it is perceived as much more streamlined
and easier in Emeryville.
And so sometimes we're hearing that companies
consider Emeryville because of that perception.
And that's something here in Berkeley we can work on
to not just address our processes,
but also improve the reputation
that we have for doing business.
because I think we've made great strides in recent years to be a place where it's
easier to do business, but it's not always known by all of the people that are
considering leasing.
And I will add to that, for a long time we didn't have the luxury of having a lot
of product on the market and so it's very exciting that we have over half a million
square feet to offer which has changed our denominator significantly which has sent
our rate quite high, but we're working very closely with the group that's working
to lease the Berkeley common space.
And when they have an interest or a warm lead,
we work very hard to make sure they have the data
they need to talk about why Berkeley is such a great place
for an AI company to locate, for example,
or whatever sort of element they're after,
we work very closely to make sure we can get them
the important information so they know the talent is here.
And again, they have somebody to call on government
that can be supportive to them
as they work to fill that space.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Council Member Blackby.
Thanks, Madam Mayor.
Thanks to Eleanor and the small but mighty team
of the Economic Development Department.
As you know, this is an issue that's near and dear
to my heart.
I love the work you guys are doing.
And I see this is so critical, obviously,
to the future of our city.
I've got some comments for later,
but just a couple of quick clarifying questions.
On the Berkeley Bucks, it sort of you
highlighted the activity with Berkeley Bucks.
Feels like there's an opportunity
to do more with that, any kind of ideas
from maybe how we accelerate the use of that program?
Or is that mostly kind of driven by Visit Berkeley?
The program is driven by Visit Berkeley.
I think we've been hearing some concerns
that people have had using their Berkeley bucks.
So I think we're gonna work with Visit Berkeley
to make sure they can streamline.
And I think it's largely a training of staff issue.
It's just that different servers don't know
exactly how to enter things with a point of sale.
also, or cash register people. So I think it's, unfortunately, on the businesses themselves,
maybe signed up for the Berkeley Bucks program three years ago. They had staff turnover.
Right. Then your experience when you go there might
not be seamless. But I think there's still work to do, like maybe every year there can
be an educational program or a reminder of different business owners that they're enrolled
in the program and how staff can use it. And then we do actually see a lot of collaborations
is happening to promote the Berkeley Bucks.
So like when we do the annual Berkeley holiday gift fair
with the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce,
they'll raffle off Berkeley Bucks gift certificates
through our Discover It in Berkeley campaign.
We'll sometimes mention the Berkeley Bucks program
if the business accepts it.
So we're always looking for ways
that we can mention Berkeley Bucks
in other things that our office sponsors or supports.
Okay, great.
I love the bubble chart of the innovation ecosystem
where things are located and the color-coding.
I assume the big red 41, is that Sky Deck, basically?
It's probably, actually, you were just talking to us
about the Berkeley Gateway Accelerator.
So there's the Wells Fargo building,
Berkeley Sky Deck building,
the new Gateway 2168 Shaddack.
Now we've learned it has a couple companies in it.
Then there's also co-working with Wisdom right there
around the corner.
Dharma College, there's Pacific Workplaces.
So, you know, this is zoomed in,
If you dive deeper, you can look on the BerkeleyStartupCluster.com start-ups page, which one is at which address.
Got it.
But I think there's actually several hubs in the downtown area.
And then when IGI and the new Baker Labs facility come online, those will be their own.
Those will also be represented here, those companies that start...
Yeah, that's not represented today because it's currently under construction.
and yes the IGI will be primarily life science companies and the Baker labs
that we talked about earlier that's in the old Berkeley Art Museum is expanding
to have more expand space for their life science biotech healthcare oriented
companies as they grow but they're also expanding into new terrain they used to
they used to call it climate but because of our current administration they're
not able to call it that so it's called energy and advanced materials hub okay
And so that will be, I guess I think we can say it here
in the city of Berkeley, more of a climate technology
or clean energy and energy storage type companies.
Okay.
And following up then on what Council Member Tapplin
just mentioned, I mean, I guess that there is the potential
that when some of these new facilities come online
that are a little more oriented towards the life sciences,
we might have some additional creation of lab space.
Is that denominator gonna grow with IGI
and the new Baker Labs?
So I mean, that's gonna be again a continued focus
fill those. Yeah, and it will, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on where you
are, it will create pressure on the West Berkeley life science spaces because a
lot of the biotech companies, if they're affiliated with campus, which that number
we showed you earlier, about half of them are, then they might want to be as close
to campus as possible. So whereas they used to have to go to a co-working
facility, like we used to have a Bonneville Labs or Cell Valley Labs
co-working facilities that could support early stage biotech companies, now
they can go to the Banfa Baker Labs place and then they'll be able to expand
as they grow closer to campus which will make the private sector real estate
developers that have built larger lab spaces have to work even harder to draw
the companies you know a mile and a half away. Yeah okay. We've talked in the past
and most recently a couple weeks ago but even kind of last year we went through
this also this question about we talked about life science lab space but also
the amount of space for software AI companies kind of in the, you know, you
don't need massive labs, but you need something, maybe you need something more
than a shared desk, but you need stuff in kind of that small to middle-size, kind
of customizable, easy to move in, easy to move out, easy to grow. How are we doing
on kind of that, that segment? Because I feel like that's something maybe that
other communities have, we've done a little bit, but is that also maybe a
limiting factor of our ability to kind of hold on to some of those non-life
science but more kind of technology software type startups. Yeah so there's
are two answers to that one is we don't have a commercial real estate product
like we've seen in other cities that is designed for that just spun out of the
university but growing a little bit types company so it's like a company
that is needing between five and 15,000 square feet.
We don't really have an incubator space
that's owned by the private sector
that you can grow into once you've expanded
beyond the Baker Labs or Sky Deck Incubator
or something on campus.
That being said, I just got off a call a couple hours ago
where I spoke to a number of different realtors
in our community that are all leasing
pretty small parcel sizes and are willing to do
some matchmaking and rearranging to accommodate.
So there's a half dozen, maybe more spaces.
They're perhaps a little large or a little outdated
or something's not perfect,
but I think that there's actually a lot of space
on the market that is willing to accommodate the space,
but then there's just a number of things to figure out,
which is how our permitting will work for those
and would it be more efficient for them
to move somewhere elsewhere like Emeryville
where that space is ready to go versus work
with the property owner and the city
to get that space up to retrofit
to what's required to do R&D.
So I think there's some work we can be done
but I wouldn't say it's like we don't have the space.
It's just that we need to maybe do some reconfiguring.
I would also add due to council's leadership last year
and the year before that,
responding to the Keith Innovation and Berkeley referral
and enabling many more zoning districts
across our whole city to accommodate research
and development uses, went a tremendous way
to improving our own rules and regulation
to welcome that kind of space.
And sort of as Liz is alluding to,
that inventory is now allowed by the rules,
but what those spaces look like on the inside,
as they're built to suit the companies moving into them,
we're seeing what that's gonna look like.
So how are we doing?
I think in some ways we've done a great job
with Council's leadership on adapting
to what the market conditions look like
and making it so we can embrace those uses here.
And we're continuing to see the tale of that
as we begin our business attraction
around welcoming these companies here
and making sure they have a smooth process
and then they tell all their friend companies
that they like it here
and wanna continue to cluster together.
Yeah, great.
I've got some other comments for later,
which I'll save, but again, thank you for the presentation
and thanks for answering those questions.
Thank you, Council Member O'Keefe.
Yeah, thank you so much for this presentation.
Really, really good work all around the presentation
and just all the work you do.
It's really, really important.
I have three questions.
I'll ask the most boring one first.
I'm curious how I'd like to understand a little better
and only answer like within the scope of this meeting.
Don't, if it's to detailed, we can meet later.
But I'm curious how you calculate,
keep track of and calculate vacancy rates.
And my reason for asking is I've actually like,
You know spoken with.
constituents or merchants
associations and they have
different numbers.
So which which they can see
with you well the the storefront
vacancy yeah storefront vacancy
thanks.
Well I just like to know how you
question we can answer that one
down here.
Yeah yeah so this is a a
combination of walking the
streets of Berkeley and looking
at properties looking at
co-star which is a subscription
we have, which allows us to go beyond what we see looking at the storefront. So with
CoStar we can put in an address, we can see who the different tenants are, how
much square footage they have, how long their leases are. And so using the
square footage information, using our feet on the ground, and using the
existing data we have about the businesses is how we do it. It's not a
of perfect science by by any stretch but it allows us to get a handle on what we
have in terms of vacancies throughout the city. Probably the toughest part of
the square footage because if you go to a storefront you have to guesstimate and
that's where we go to costar and they're able to get their information about what
the square footage is. Great thank you that's helpful. Another question I have I
I didn't see any data on whether or not a particular business is like a chain or a small
local business. And I'm wondering if you keep track of that. And my curiosity is, and I'm just
curious if you have any thoughts about this. I need to be careful we don't want to treat businesses
is differently because of their size of the business there.
But what can we do to, I won't say discourage
chains from coming, but to encourage local businesses?
Because that is something that really, really
makes Berkeley special.
And I can't believe what luck we've had.
It feels like luck to me that we don't have that many chains.
Or really, so many of our businesses
are really truly local.
And I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about that.
What can we do to preserve that?
Thank you so much for that question.
I can almost answer it with a question.
It sometimes becomes very challenging
to define what is a chain.
You know, is it a business that's become successful
and has a second location or a third location or?
Anyway, that's sort of almost a topic of itself,
which we'd be excited to talk about.
We don't track chains particularly,
but in our data, which is rich and goes back many years
in our field data that Vincent alluded to,
we do know the tenant name.
So there is some backward-facing sort of work
we could do on that.
I will say that for our small independent businesses,
one of the challenges is getting started.
You have to have a lot of capital,
you have to have a lot of patience,
you have to have a great idea.
Small business owners are really tremendous people
that keep our main streets alive
and our commercial districts vital.
And they end up being sort of Jack and Jill
and Jaynes of all trade.
And time and money are the two levers
that end up either aiding in their success
or making it challenging.
And so we try through customer service
and making our processes very clear to save them both.
That's the thing.
I think this is another opportunity to remind everybody
of the hashtag discovered in Berkeley campaign,
discoveredinberkeley.com,
at discoveredinberkeley on Instagram,
but that does provide us a way to showcase
some of those really unique, independently owned,
women-owned, values aligned, inspirational businesses.
We try really hard to curate that
so that it spans different sectors,
different types of businesses, different parts of town,
and really shed light on the kinds of things
you're talking about,
the people that we wanna thank for being here.
And so we always encourage you or the public to,
if there's a favorite business
that has done something really unique,
that deserves a deeper dive
and also hasn't had earned media through Berkeley side
because we don't want to sponsor a story
where they already got their own media attention.
Our office is all ears for shedding light
on the really cool, innovative, creative, artistic businesses
you can find here in Berkeley.
The other thing is if you look at the city of Berkeley,
it is dominated by independent businesses.
As you compare to other cities which have more chains
more big boxes. Berkeley is dominated by small independent business owners. The
challenge is how do we make sure that their customers keep coming back, make
sure that they're running their businesses efficiently and
effectively so that they can keep their doors open. The other challenge we have
in Berkeley is we have, as we said, we have a high number of retail and food
service businesses to high-risk categories. And so as we talked to
brokers they've said that if you look at say the downtown and the areas that
board the college when the students leave you can see a drop in sales about
40%. So for those businesses we have to help them find ways to diversify their
customer base so that when those students leave someone else is coming in
the door. But overall we have a great mix of independent businesses. We just got to
figure out more ways to continue to support them. I was just going to add one thing. I do track opening and closings and most of the time in the data that I'm gathering from this it's small businesses that are coming into a closed business space and something that's been confirmed by the brokers that we've talked to is that the second generation spaces which is like a
a cafe for a cafe, those are the easiest to rent.
And so you get one small business
that's a cafe owner leaves,
another cafe owner comes right in
and it's a really like one-to-one switch.
So that's something we see a lot of
and it's all like family owned small businesses
that are coming in.
You kind of perpetuate itself.
Yeah, thanks for that.
My last question, which was a little bit
teed up by your answer.
So I'm sure many of my colleagues up here
I don't think we can relate to this.
I've heard, you hear a lot from constituents,
businesses, customers, and they say why they,
like anecdotally, the problems they have
with either enjoying our businesses or running the business.
You know, you hear a lot of things, right,
when you're in this line of work.
Some things I've heard are like perceived safety,
especially at night, parking in some parts of town,
behavior, business license procedures that you already mentioned in your
presentation. Those are just a couple things off the top of my head that I hear
of from time to time. But it's anecdotal and one person's experience is real, but
it's hard to know what to do with it policy wise. And I'm wondering if you
have, sort of from your perspective, what are maybe one or two of the top issues
that that are a barrier to more economic vitality that that that we could
potentially address? Great question. So many different ways to answer that. I
think it might be useful if we can talk a little bit about some of the vacancy
attraction work we've done specifically with the downtown. I will say broadly
it's usually never just one thing and typically like for if we say for example
we have 17 vacancies there's probably 17 solutions for filling each of those and
so by the same side of the coin it's not always the same the same story about why
business closes or makes a decision or is concerned for their employees and
many of the topics you mentioned certainly are things we hear as well.
Unpredictable street behavior can be really challenging for a business owner
who is trying to keep their employees safe and also maintain a harmonious
place whether it's a third space like a cafe that's not work or home or whether
it's a retail place that you know sort of curb appeal is very important. So
There are many reasons, and I want to give you all a little time to talk about some of
the vacancy toolkit work we've been putting together.
We'll be back with a little bit more of it fleshed out, but just this multifaceted strategy
of solutions is the best way to go.
Yeah, we're currently working on coming up with sort of a vacancy policy that doesn't
penalize businesses for remaining vacant or property owners for having vacant spaces,
encourages them to activate those spaces with creative place-making so
whether it's vinyl window film that creates artwork or some
beautiful messaging in the windows. John Caner has been a wonderful partner with
me in helping to do this already in the downtown by getting a lot of the
property owners to agree to do murals on there as the core spaces project on
Center Street. John worked with them very closely to get that mural done, this
beautiful mural that sort of makes it a better experience as you're walking down that street
and also the article student housing on Harold Way, the pit, wrapping that pit with beautiful
mural work so that you have these sort of construction fencing that becomes artwork
as you're walking by.
It just helps create a perception that there's a place here and it's not just a vacant building
or a vacant space.
So we're working very closely with Councilmember Tregov on coming up with vacancy policy
and other efforts to help think of creative solutions to solve some of these really big
issues around vacancy.
One last thing I wanted to mention, we talked about how we have independent businesses.
We also have a tremendous number of legacy businesses in Berkeley.
And again, defining legacy is a challenge too.
You know, is five years in business legacy worthy, 10 years, 20?
I mean, many businesses are over 50 years in business.
And thinking about appropriate and thoughtful and meaningful and economical ways to celebrate
these businesses and the effort that they've put into keeping our community
both vibrant and engaged as something we're going to be working with throughout
the spring and we welcome ideas about that as you hear things out in your
your districts. Yeah actually I'll just comment on that and then I'm done with
my questions. I was actually recently looking at San Francisco's legacy
business program which sounds pretty cool so I'm sure you know about it but
but yeah, good, look into that more.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Council member Trigob.
Thank you so much.
And thank you to the Office of Economic Development Team.
Just wanna say, and we work with you almost on a daily basis
and it's such a pleasure to work
with such a creative, knowledgeable, and passionate team.
I just wanna say we're so lucky to have you here in Berkeley.
As to the questions and I will ask them in rapid fire
to save time if wanted to.
Write him down.
I'll go slow.
Would love to just be reminded of what has been done
to streamline permitting for small businesses,
as well as if you can speak to any additional opportunities
to explore for more of that.
As far as qualitative data, are we collecting
or can we in the future start to collect data
as to why companies don't stay in Berkeley
beyond anecdotal data, and then what are we doing
to advertise Berkeley commercial opportunities
beyond Berkeley, regionally, nationally, or even beyond.
I would love to learn how the startups,
I'm very excited to, well, I'll say for my comments
how excited I am about what's in this report.
But how do startups find out information about these grants, including, well, maybe when
there's another administration, national or federal government grants that might be
available?
And finally, wanted to see if you could speak to the outlook of the small business loan
program.
Is there more funding coming in?
Is it still steady?
How much is in that account?
Those kinds of questions.
Okay, I'm gonna take some of these in reverse order.
I will speak to the Outlook on the Loan program.
I will answer your first question about streamlining.
Then I'm going to turn it over to either Liz or Vincent,
whoever wants to take this one about exit interviews
from companies that leave us.
Advertising commercial opportunities in Berkeley,
I think will be a lizzarell split a little bit
in talking about business attraction.
And then how to startups find out
about research and development grants and waivers.
I will just tell you right now,
please subscribe to our OED newsletter
where we certainly remind people
and we are also always interested in engaging with businesses
that you think might wanna take advantage of these things.
Please OED mailbox at berkeleyca.gov.
Our email is always open to you.
We strive to return those quickly.
And so you are welcome to send anybody our way.
and the Berkeley Startup Cluster newsletter as well
for the R&D grants.
We promote it heavily through there
because those are mostly focused
toward our innovation sector companies.
You got it.
Thought that was in the under number three,
advertising.
And on our LinkedIn.
Smash that like and subscribe button
for all of our channels.
The loan fund.
So both of these funds are revolving funds,
which means as companies or businesses pay them off.
So again, both of our loans that are available
to any business in Berkeley.
So just by locating in Berkeley,
they can take advantage of these special opportunities
to access capital.
And as Vincent talked about working solutions,
which is a CDFI lender is our partner on this.
They have a great depth of technical assistance
and a better experience for borrowers
so they can pay their loans off, you know,
electronically and it's much smoother.
So as those borrowers that are currently
in the portfolio pay back with interest,
then the pot grows larger
and we can turn around and make more loans out of that pot.
So it continues to go.
One of our funds was seated in 2020 with CARES Act dollars
and it has since revolved one time completely.
The other one was granted to the city in 1980.
And I believe that fund has turned over with interest
more than three times.
So we continued, the beat goes on with the loan funds.
Speaking about streamlining,
and I'll let Vincent add anything beyond this piece.
I just wanted to remind folks of an award we won
in 2024 from the state planning association
for zoning support for Berkeley businesses.
We recognize that business models change over time
and though our zoning code does change quite often,
sometimes our definitions of businesses
are sort of outdated like the VCR rental tape category
we used to have.
Businesses evolves, time marches on
and our code related to business uses was more outdated.
And so we came up with a number of strategies
to sort of embrace new uses and think about flexible formats
for new businesses like experiential retail
or commercial recreation centers where, you know,
not only are you going to go buy something in a store,
you might be going to buy something
and also have an experience.
You've gone to the fabric store, you've bought the fabric,
but then you also take a class
in learning how to do sewing, for example.
And that's group instruction,
which in our code was a totally separate category
with a higher bar to meet for permitting.
and now we've been able to equalize a lot of those things
and really sort of open up some of those uses
that offer our businesses more opportunities,
again, back to the time and money piece,
to get going in our commercial districts faster.
Vincent, did you want to add anything to that, please?
I don't know if it's green lining,
but back to your question about the qualitative data
on businesses exit and the legacy businesses,
there were two things I wanted to say about that.
One is we've got to figure out a way to train the businesses
to think about their exit strategy three or four years
sooner.
Because an organization like Project Equity
that we have a contract with, if they know that someone wants
to exit their business, they can set up a plan for their employees
to take it over.
They can set up a plan for them to sell it to someone.
They can help them do evaluation.
But instead, what happens is someone comes to us and say,
I'm closing my business in 30, 60, 90 days.
That's not a long enough ramp for us
to provide or bring in the technical assistance
they need to make this transition
so the business stays in operation.
So that's one thing that we need to figure out
how we can identify people who are in that space
where they're looking to leave the business
for one reason or another and get them the help
so that this business can transition to someone else.
I think it's also important that you clarify
When you say why companies don't stay,
are you referring to small businesses
that are retail, restaurant, professional service,
or were you asking about why startups spinning out
from UC Berkeley go elsewhere?
Are you asking about larger employers?
Did you have any mind or do you want to hear all of the above?
Yeah, I think we've discussed startups a little bit,
but it might actually be maybe beneficial
to hear the answer for both,
to the extent you have any.
Great, yeah, we will say we do track
because we have an annual collection process
that goes into this report that happens today
of reviewing our innovation sector database
and then anytime we know that a company has left
and is still alive, which I guess the first part
of my answer is usually they leave because they failed.
Like they just couldn't raise enough venture capital
or they're no longer around.
Sadly, we hear that a lot,
and that's just the nature of being a startup business.
So that's the number one reason why they don't stay
is because they're not in business anymore.
But for those that have left here,
I'd say when we do do an exit interview
and we do track it,
it's often that either for some personal reason,
you know, founder's mother is sick moving back home,
so they're gonna take their startup back home,
or the team wanted to go remote,
so they've given up their office space
so that they can employ a remote workforce.
But the other, when they leave Berkeley
and go elsewhere nearby, which is rare,
it's usually just because there was a space
that better fit their growth needs.
So we've not generally heard,
like we didn't like being in Berkeley.
They almost always say, we love Berkeley,
we wanna stay in Berkeley, we looked first in Berkeley.
Berkeley was our first choice,
but this spot in Oakland or Emeryville
or San Leandro or Alameda had a better layout
or it was cheaper or whatever reason
that just they couldn't find what they look for in Berkeley.
Were you gonna, you were gonna bring up
maybe a different one?
Did you have a second point you wanted to touch on?
I don't remember, honestly.
Okay, I'll touch on a couple of the other questions
that you asked that Eleanor kindly assigned to me.
So the, no, no, it's great.
We already mentioned with the startups
finding out about grants.
I just wanna point out that in addition
our newsletters. We also work very closely with Skydak, with Baker Labs, with all of
the innovation and entrepreneurship programs on campus to not just tell it through our
communication channels but to tell it through theirs. And then we also email every year
anyone that has received an R&D grant from the federal government about the program.
So we can pull that list down from the U.S. Small Business Administration website, although
So it's not always perfect, so all of you being channels to carry this information
in your district is helpful as well.
In terms of the advertising commercial opportunities nationally, I'm so glad you bring that up.
This is a huge opportunity area for our city.
Historically, we had less available space than we had interest in staying in Berkeley,
and thus the Office of Economic Development never had a business attraction program.
We did more of what Eleanor mentioned earlier, which is economic gardening or retention,
and we work very closely with a range of stakeholders and partners to always keep our eyes and
ears on the ground for when a company is growing or expanding, how we can help them to stay
locally.
What we haven't done is go try to catch a fish from Michigan or Delaware or Texas as
they consider a Northern California location.
And so we actually convened our first meeting on this topic in October with actually thank
you Paul for joining us at that as well as the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer
at UC Berkeley and the Chief Innovation Entrepreneurship Officer at UC Berkeley and many of our private
sector developers to begin to flesh out what a business attraction strategy would look
like.
The short answer right now is that we have a lot of good ideas of what that campaign
could do and we don't have any money to do it.
So this is an opportunity area to either work with our city council in the future to allocate
some funding for business attraction and also our private sector partners.
We've been asking to make contributions to help us support it, but at the moment we're
relying on the courtesy of our partners at UC Berkeley to let us in on things that would
help us with business attraction.
So for example, the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, which brings hundreds of thousands of people
to San Francisco to talk about life science and health care.
We were able to participate in UC Berkeley's event
and present our Innovate and Grow in Berkeley, California
slides and why Berkeley.
The Bacar Bio-Ingenuity Hub,
which has been mentioned several times,
will have a table at the big annual bio convention
that's happening this year in San Diego
and will be attending alongside and using their table
to talk about not just why UC Berkeley,
but why Berkeley California.
So we're very grateful to our partners at UC
which have been willing to share some space
and floor time with us,
but we would love to see more opportunity
to understand how Berkeley is being perceived
in national markets and even international markets
and where our messaging should show up
and what are some of the most,
we know a lot of the why Berkeley points
but which ones are gonna resonate best
with which audience would require a little bit
of market testing and research which costs money to do.
But we also welcome your ideas and thoughts on this.
You all have vast networks.
And if you have some ideas about what
should go in the buildings, we're all yours.
I think that got all five.
I think so.
Very good.
OK.
Any other questions?
OK, I'm going to open it up to public comment,
then we'll come back around for council comments.
Is there any public comment on this item?
Very good.
John's making his way over.
Oh, you didn't have to do that.
It's OK.
John Caner, Downtown Berkeley Association. I just want to thank the OED team. I mean,
the partnership is extraordinary. We're going through the renewal and Eleanor's been a hero
with that. Working with the rail and vacancy work. Vincent has been amazing working on
the retail vacancy and also sporting us in the renewal and Liz with Berkeley Startup
clusters just doing incredible work. Flying horses is a big, big deal. We want to make
sure that's successful. That whole shadock block, the fact that they're moving forward
is extraordinary. Core spaces, as you may have heard, is also moving forward this summer
late fall. That's a big, big deal. So we have an opportunity to really turn the tide
in the downtown. So we're going to hopefully be turning the corner and thank you, Igor,
all the great work. There was a question about why are businesses leaving and why are people
coming downtown. To be honest, we're making a lot of progress on homeless. Our count is
down to near all-time low. But all you need to do is sit in Bart Plaza for an hour or
so and have two or three psychotic episodes or meth things or just feeling uncomfortable.
And you know, it's really – we've got to create a welcoming downtown. So our social
to outreach initiatives like the care court,
staff is doing a great job,
but we also need to enforce our ordinances.
We did this in late 2019 before the pandemic.
We really switched things around.
And I want to thank Paul and PD and all for all that work,
but we need to continue to do that.
OED needs a discretionary budget.
In December, 22 years ago,
I put together a list of 11 programs in San Francisco
that they have.
And Lori's even given more money.
He's gone out and raised $60 million.
I mean, they obviously have a lot of corporate folks.
But they need a discretionary budget.
They do great work, but just a little bit of money.
I understand now really difficult budget times now.
It ain't going to happen this year.
It may not happen next year.
Thanks, John.
Can I just say one more thing?
Wait, John.
I'm sorry.
You're out of time.
Office space and events.
Thank you.
Yep.
Heard.
Anyone else?
Any other?
Can you donate a minute of my time?
Sure.
Go for it.
Since we don't have a huge line of people,
you can donate a minute of your time to John.
Also, it's really important for class A office space.
And we were hearing in San Francisco
that actually housing is slowing down.
Office space is taking off.
It's a lot of the AI boom law that's spilling over here.
The MSCI building just leased on Addison and Milvia, which is a big deal.
So we're seeing the office demand.
We need the startup someplace to go, and it's also daytime economy.
We need condos also, which we've talked to you guys about.
And then events.
We need to support events.
I know there's a lot of work being done here.
Go to First Thursdays in San Francisco, thousands of people on First Street.
San Francisco's doing a great job.
I know we're working hard at it.
It's a lot of hard.
a lot of resources, but we need to give, you know,
joyous reasons for people to come downtown.
And we're doing Make Music Day,
which we'll hear more about working with Shoshana
on Summer Solstice.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay.
Is there anyone online who has public comment on this item?
There's three hands raised.
Very good.
First speaker is Kelly Hammergren.
Thank you.
The downtown was my neighborhood,
but there's hardly a reason to go there
with a number of vacancies.
And vinyl window film doesn't really draw me to the downtown
except to take photos of the pit behind the screen.
And the Oscars are next Sunday.
The shadow of cinemas used to have huge lines
to see those films on the big screen.
But of course, that's now gone.
The Elmwood with its movie theater is now my adopted neighborhood, but I constantly worry that as the up zoning target in the quarter plan, that will be the end of that pleasurable neighborhood.
We heard from from Dina Belzer and her economic report to the Planning Commission not to worry about the corridors up zoning, but hearing from the business owners that same evening that are not property owners and your report, your report and just feet on the street tells me a different story.
That construction really does have a detrimental effect on our local businesses and unless we do something about it, we're.
One of the draws for people to be here is going to be gone and so I really wish that
we would have heard more about that.
And I don't see a clock but I expect I'm just about out of time.
You have 25 seconds.
I don't think I can, I think I've really covered what I want to say, I just really wish we
we had more focus on our small business owners who don't own the property,
because those are the ones I worry about the most. Thank you.
Thanks, Kelly.
The next speaker is Cheryl Daval, a former council member.
For one, the commercial rents are high and people are leaving for those reasons.
The homelessness issue is because people can't afford the freaking high rents in Berkeley.
Then you create an issue by not picking up the trash,
allowing other services that people may need that could help them get off the streets,
and you make it by not picking up the trash,
by creating all these issues for the unhoused community,
it becomes like a complete eyesore for most,
and you do that on purpose so then you can enforce,
arrest, and eliminate.
You need to really show some compassion and empathy and
love for all of the community that lives in Berkeley.
People that live on the streets in Berkeley come back to Berkeley because they were here
to begin with. This is their land, this is their home.
And look at what's down at the aquatic park, completely empty. Why is that empty? All those
buildings are empty. That's a damn shame. All that money for what? You could be housing people in
those empty buildings that are just sitting there occupying space with no people inside.
And there's how many buildings like that in Berkeley, how many units? You all need to do
better. Every time I talk to people about Berkeley, they're like, what the hell is up with Berkeley?
Berkeley sucks. All the people on council suck. That's what they say. They're not happy with you.
Nobody is y'all need to get voted out replaced
Move on to something different because you're not doing any good for berkeley free palestine
Thank you, cheryl
Uh next is a speaker with a phone number ending in 0 0 0
You should be able to unmute
Okay. Well
That that was it. That was the last
speaker, so I guess
Okay.
We are complete.
All right, very good.
I'm gonna move on to Council comments,
starting with Councilmember Taplin.
Thank you.
First, I want to say I'm also interested
in SF's legacy business work.
A number of the businesses in my district
have reached out to me about that.
Also, I'm really encouraged by this proactive stance
we're taking towards business direction.
It's important to note that we're no longer
just competing with Emeryville and South San Francisco.
We're now also competing with Alameda and San Leandro.
I know that we have a difficult budget outlook before us,
but I'm happy to team up and put our heads together
around permit streamlining
and identifying potential revenue streams
to support OED's business attraction efforts.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Council Member Trigab.
Thank you for the presentation
and for the tremendous amount of work
that has gone into preparing this report
and advancing Berkeley's economic development efforts.
I appreciate the collaboration across city departments
that contributes to this work
and all the ongoing efforts to streamline business permitting,
to support our local businesses
and to strengthen our Berkeley commercial division
districts, as well as the downtown.
While there's a ton of work to do, obviously, the pandemic is not over yet, in the small
business sense, and that shows up in the data.
I was very, very pleased in this report to read that we, as Berkeley are turning the corner in a very positive way on tackling.
Commercial vacancies all over the city, and I was very pleased to see that for the first time since the pandemic.
Berkeley's downtown vacancies are below 10%.
Obviously we have more work to do
and our office will continue to engage
with your team around that.
But also I just want to appreciate
that you have been doing on initiatives
such as the vacant storefronts work,
which I understand will be coming back to Council
later in the spring,
as well as the programs you've been spearheading
to support startups, including grant and loan opportunities.
Efforts to bring more visibility
to Barclays commercial opportunities regionally, nationally,
and internationally are very important.
And I'm excited about the work you're doing
in that area as well.
You also mentioned the importance of special events
that bring hundreds of people
and significant revenue to the city.
Our office is very excited to do additional work
in this area and support efforts
that help activate our commercial districts
and bring more people into Berkeley.
And finally, I appreciate your thoughtful approach
around learning from best practices,
including those from other cities or cities and counties,
as well as the attention to understanding what,
I don't know if anyone got the San Francisco joke,
as well as the attention to understanding
what helps businesses thrive and remain in Berkeley.
Thank you again for the dedication and care
that has gone into this work.
Excited to partner with you.
We have a lot of work to do,
but as the Downtown Berkeley Council member,
I can fully say, even though that also will be borrowing
from San Francisco's mayor and some,
but Downtown Berkeley is on the rise
and that would not be possible
without all of your consorted efforts
and I just want to thank you.
Okay, thank you very much, Councilmember Humbert.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
And I would join generally in the comments
that Council Member Trigg Group just made,
but I have my own comments too.
Major thanks to you four, Elizabeth, Eleanor,
Ruelle, and Vincent, everyone else at OED,
for your work on this presentation
and overall efforts to keep our economy and business strong.
It's been said many, many times, but it's just true.
You punch way above your weight.
You really do, it's so impressive.
I think a lot of Berkeley residents
don't understand just how much OED does,
but they benefit from it every single day
as they enjoy all of our wonderful local businesses,
cultural institutions, and even the basic city services,
frankly, that our strong local economy
helps support through taxes and fees.
So even though everyday folks may not say it explicitly,
I want OED to know that any time someone praises
our small businesses, or talks about what makes Berkeley
such a unique and wonderful place,
they are by extension praising your work,
the work of the OED, the Office of Economic Development.
You're also really skilled, I have to say,
and I know my chief of staff agrees,
at making PowerPoint presentations.
Honestly, all city departments and a lot of us here
on council, for example, me, could learn a thing or two
from you about how informative and well put together
your presentations are.
And as we grapple with a significant budget deficit,
your work is more important than ever,
because expanding our tax base is one of the key ways
that we can ameliorate and hopefully eventually resolve
our long-term deficits.
So thank you again for your wonderful work
and your dedication, which is amazing,
and taking the time to share it with us.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Vice Mayor Lynn O' Parra.
I just wanted to thank you all for the presentation
and for your work.
That's it, thanks.
Thank you.
Councilmember Blackby.
Thanks, Madam Mayor.
Thanks again to Eleanor Vincent, Ruel, and Liz
for the time and the great conversation.
You know, I talked about this before.
This is only the second time we've done this presentation
since I've been on the council.
I really look forward to it because it's inspiring
and it gives us lots of opportunities to dream big
think about what's possible and that's really exciting I think from a council
perspective and just from a community perspective you know we have a huge
advantage with this just massive innovation engine just sort of a few
blocks away and I see so much of our strategy is just you know at least when
it comes to the innovation part which is one part of many parts but you know how
do we hang on to our fair share of that output and keep it here and the good
news is there's a lot of activity and there is a lot of opportunity there. So
three things that I you know would love to continue to team up on that we've
you've mentioned and some other colleagues have mentioned. One thing that
I know we kind of collaborated on earlier this last fall was this research
project that a couple of some of the undergrads did at UC Berkeley about some
of these questions about how do we keep more activity in Berkeley why are
companies leaving, or companies that left, why did they not consider locating in Berkeley.
And a couple of the themes that came out of that research was, one, sometimes just the
importance of personal outreach.
I think there was an anecdote of a company where the mayor of Detroit called them and
said, hey, why don't you come look at it?
Like, some of those things are meaningful.
And then also the importance of having, like, anchor companies in a particular industry.
So it's like, it's a lot easier to build an ecosystem when, you know, it's a chicken
and an egg problem.
but it's a lot easier to build an ecosystem
when you've got an anchor company that represents
that industry the other companies want to be around.
So to that end, thinking about this targeted recruitment,
retention effort, adding some extra elbow grease to that,
I'm happy to volunteer the mayor's call time
to make some calls.
I'd be happy to make calls.
I think a lot of us would be happy to make calls,
but if part of us is just finding those opportunities,
people whose leases are about to run out,
people in neighboring jurisdictions whose leases
are about to run out, like there's probably creative ways
and then putting some person hours, person time behind it
and that personal gesture just to try and make the case.
I think any of us would be really happy to do that.
I know I would love to and I'll speak for the mayor
and say that I know she would love to also.
So anything in that bucket I'm super interested in
partnering with you.
Second, we heard a little bit about the permitting piece.
I almost wonder if there's some sort of a fast track program.
We brand it, we do something with it,
but we make a big deal about this fast track effort.
And maybe it's a combination of permitting,
some sort of limited incentives,
maybe it's helping get people connected
with real estate and office space opportunities.
But just thinking about how we solve that,
I'm about to leave campus, where do I go?
I'm about to leave the accelerator, where do I go?
Well, we've got a fast track program here
to keep you on Berkeley.
And we brand it, we put some press behind it,
it demonstrates our commitment to sort of doing this. I think, again, I'm just
thinking out loud that there could be something there. And third, I know
Councilmember Taplin mentioned it, Councilmember Humbert, other people have
mentioned it, this super interesting on the business attraction kind of program
and I know there is a funding element to it but look, unlike a lot of the city
operation where we have a lot of cost centers that are providing services, you
you guys are, you're a revenue driver.
And so thinking about this as an investment in the future
that's gonna pay dividends,
it's not, you're not a cost center, you're a revenue driver
and we need to make those investments.
So yes, budget times are tough and yes,
we have some constraints on what we,
maybe what we can do immediately.
But I think as we've seen these efforts pay off in spades
and we can't just be so focused on what's happening
between now and June that we don't think about
June of 27 and June of 28 and June 29
and the investments we need to make now.
So we may have to be creative and figure it out,
but I'm super interested.
And if we came up with a really tight, compelling program
of what that would look like, figuring out
how to fund it, even in a tough climate,
because I think it's so critical for the future of our economy
and the future of the community, and then ultimately
making those budget decisions easier in the out years.
So those are three thoughts.
Love to partner with you and continue to partner with you,
our office loves to work with you all
and there's just so much opportunity.
Looking forward to the year ahead.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Yeah, those great comments and yeah, absolutely.
We just had our retreat so we were talking about
how you're supposed to speak from a place of I,
like I think, but you're welcome to offer my time
because this is something that I really do enjoy doing.
And I actually, yeah, so Flying Horse Investments,
I actually took a meeting with them.
We were able to do the unveiling for the clock.
If you hadn't noticed in downtown Berkeley,
there is now a working clock in front of that space.
So I'm very excited to see that filled.
I called Half Price Books,
both spoke with people who work there
and also with the people who, the landlord,
to see what happened there, to try to get them to stay.
Oh, I think someone opened a laptop
And it's, the sound is echoing anyway.
But my point is, and so I also have a community
and business relations coordinator,
Andrea Bernal, who's sitting here.
And we've actually been going to businesses
like walking downtown.
And I've actually run into Vincent on the street
doing these counts.
So I just wanna tell you all, he's not lying.
He really is out there on the street.
I do wanna focus on a few things
that you're talking about this entrepreneurship
and innovation piece, I just really love that map
as well of the innovation ecosystem.
I think that's really incredible,
and I really wanna highlight for folks
just really how amazing our relationship is with UC Berkeley
and how much that's gotten even better.
I am very fortunate to be able to connect with a chancellor
and we talk a lot about improving business
and supporting business and our innovation
and entrepreneur ecosystem here in this city.
They, I just wanna really highlight this.
UC Berkeley leads globally in venture-backed startups.
I mean, that's a huge differentiator for a city,
and it's something that we really should be bragging about.
It's really incredible that we have an increase
in both seed and venture capital raised by the startups
because, I mean, if you heard what was being said,
it's actually gone down for other places.
So the fact that we've had an increase is amazing.
I really also thought it was great that we have this quantified information about the innovation and entrepreneurship benefits to our city.
I really want to make sure we're continuing to get that data because it's very helpful to understand how are all of these different startups benefiting our city and how can we continue to find spaces to keep them there.
really just, you all do an incredible job.
And I have to say, I get to connect with this team,
this department, probably more than most departments.
And I really get to see how amazing you all are
and get to hear from business owners
and other community members about how helpful you are too.
So that, you know, that individual outreach,
like to a lychee, that makes all the difference.
So thank you very much for doing that.
Again, wanna highlight our decrease
in commercial vacancy rate, that's amazing.
I know that that takes a lot of time
and I know that that's something
that we need to continue to improve on.
So yes, I'm happy to make a phone call,
whatever you need, let me know.
The fact that food and beverage is right behind retail,
really fascinating information
because we are a food and beverage city
and so that's awesome.
And to just to highlight,
I know Taste of North Berkeley is coming up.
I see you Jane, I'm surprised you didn't come up to tell us that.
But Council Member Keith and I actually went last year and took pictures and did the discovered
in Berkeley hashtag.
So as you're going out and eating around the city or going to shop places, use that discovered
in Berkeley hashtag.
I know I do all the time.
Green business program would love to see this grow.
I know that you're already working with our different business districts, but I am hopeful
we can continue to grow that, I bet there are a lot of people that don't know
about it and I wonder if if we can do more partnerships to increase that just
seeing how much water was saved, power, I think there's a few other different
metrics that were in there, really impressive and that's partnerships
between our local businesses and our students, really thinking about if we're
a city that wants to encourage families also and to support families, we want to
to make sure that those students have opportunities
to have different career paths.
And so I really love that we do that.
I think that's very special,
and I know it makes a big impact on our students.
So just brain dump of all the things,
but thank you all so much.
Really appreciate the presentation,
and thanks for being here today.
And next year, I'm gonna pack this house.
I want more people to see this presentation
because this information should get out
into the community more,
and I know it's public on the website,
but having a presentation, I think,
really just deepens the experience.
So next year, we're gonna pack this house.
Okay, all right, thank you very much, everyone.
I am going to see if there's a motion to adjourn.
Second. Okay.
And is there any opposition to adjournment?
Okay, we will adjourn by unanimous consent.
Meeting is adjourned.
Thank you all so much.
Thank you.