San Francisco Business Times articles from November 1999

San Francisco Business Times archives from November 1999

Banking powers push south.(Statistical Data Included)
November 5, 1999... Moves show Bay Area doesn't glitter as brightly as Southern Cal Bay Area banks large and small are pushing south, throwing resources and key personnel into a renewed attempt to harvest the resurgent Southern California market. At...

Taming Oakland's wild West.
November 5, 1999... Economic boom sparks transformation in city's neglected neighborhood With live-work lofts and new businesses sprouting like dandelions, and its first grocery store opening next month, West Oakland is on the brink of finally joining the Bay...

Del Monte, Scient pack One Market.
November 5, 1999... Two companies that represent San Francisco's old and new economies have stepped up to take about 70 percent of the Landmark, a $100 million renovation project at the foot of Market Street. Both Scient Corp., an Internet consultant, and food...

Commerce One rockets skyward.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
November 5, 1999... Internet star battles for lead in business-to-business market Three... two... one... blastoff! The Commerce One stock rocket has cleared the tower. There is no better way to describe the recent run on shares of the Walnut Creek-based...

Visa to put $50 million charge into Olympics.
November 5, 1999... "It's Everywhere You Want To Be" is once again about to include the Olympics. Visa International, which has used the ongoing tagline to great success via its long-standing Olympic affiliation, is close to renewing its global sponsorship;...

Firms provide their harried office workers with food for thought.
November 5, 1999... Long before high-tech companies began building playrooms and offering desk-to-desk service for shoe repair, one of San Francisco's top law firms had employee services wired. As long as anyone can remember, caterers at Orrick, Herrington and...

Big apartment complex slated for Mission Bay.
November 5, 1999... San Francisco-based Catellus Development Corp. has tapped AvalonBay Communities Inc. to develop a 250-unit luxury apartment complex at its massive Mission Bay project in San Francisco. Under terms of the deal, Alexandria, Va.-based...

S.F. group to be Havana good time.
November 5, 1999... Third time lucky as trade group's big names get OK for Cuban visit Senator Dianne Feinstein, her financier husband Richard Blum and former mayor George Christopher top a list of local luminaries heading to Cuba in January. The...

Rumors say buyer still tries to sink Fangs into Examiner.
November 5, 1999... San Francisco's publishing Fang dynasty has been running a take-no-prisoners campaign in its various publications against Hearst Corp.'s takeover of the San Francisco Chronicle and likely closure of Hearst's own Examiner. Calling Hearst's...

Wages of wildlife.
November 5, 1999... Wildlife Works is finding out that altruism can be more complicated than it looks. The San Francisco-based clothing and African craft company has purchased 75,000 acres of a wildlife preserve in Kenya, planning to establish a low-impact...

OffRoad, Robbie Stephens in private placement pact.
November 5, 1999... San Francisco's OffRoad Capital will offer private placements by a major investment bank online, the latest move to give private investors access to the choice morsels once reserved for institutions. The six-month-old Internet venture has...

S.F. drags feet in starting up small business panel.
November 5, 1999... More than three months after San Francisco's Board of Supervisors established a Small Business Commission, owners of the city's 75,000 small businesses are still waiting for the organization to materialize. The supervisors quietly approved...

Spieker nabs tenants for San Carlos office project.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
November 5, 1999... Spieker Properties Inc. has nabbed two tenants for the entirety of its Skyway Landing office project in San Carlos, several months before the two-building complex will be ready for occupancy. Corio, a computer-software firm, is taking...

S.F. Net billing firm inks deal with major banks.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
November 5, 1999... Three of the country's largest banks have chosen a San Francisco startup to provide the technology for a newly formed Internet billing venture. Wells Fargo, Chase Manhattan and First Union -- doing business together under the name Spectrum...

Oakland, AT&T rev up talks on cable contract.
November 5, 1999... As Oakland's AT&T/TCI cable contract comes up for renewal, city officials say it's unlikely to attract the storm of controversy over Internet access that hit San Francisco's negotiations earlier this year. AT&T/TCI's contract with the city...

Fleet management firm seeks buyer.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
November 5, 1999... Fleet management and leasing company PLM International Inc. will hire an investment banking firm to investigate a merger or sale. PLM, which owns, leases or manages an aircraft, ocean-going vessel, refrigerated trailer and rail-car...

UCSF-Stanford kill hospital merger.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
November 5, 1999... UC San Francisco and Stanford University pulled the plug on their merged hospital system, UCSF Stanford, following poorer than expected financial results and continuing opposition from doctors and other health-care staff. Stanford University...

S.F. mayoral race results are in.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
November 5, 1999... Willie Brown and Frank Jordan will apparently face off in a December mayoral election after no candidate gained 50 percent of the vote. In the election, with 90 percent of precincts reporting, incumbent Willie Brown garnered 48 percent of the...

East Bay CAPP initiatives defeated.(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... Anti-development initiatives designed to restrict suburban sprawl in the East Bay were defeated in Tuesday's election. Three communities in Alameda and Contra Costa counties elected to leave land use decisions to their elected officials. The...

Gap division president resigns.(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... Gap Division President Robert Fisher has resigned from the company his parents, Donald and Doris Fisher, founded. He will remain on the board of directors. The Gap division, which has been struggling with weaker than expected sales lately, will...

ATM surcharges banned by voters.(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... San Francisco residents voted to prohibit banks, thrifts and credit unions from imposing a surcharge on noncustomers who use their cash machines. Proposition F does not prohibit. ATMs that are not owned by financial institutions from charging....

Levi takes its jeans off online.(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... Citing the high cost of doing business online, Levi Strauss & Co. has stopped selling its products on its own web sites. After Christmas this year, cyber-shoppers will only be able to find Levi products at J.C. Penney and Macy's web sites. The...

Port of Oakland facelift is under way.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
November 5, 1999... Ground was broken on the 120-acre Hanjin Shipping Co. Ltd. terminal at the Port of Oakland, signaling the start of the port's $560 million maritime expansion program. Other plans, including $200 million in new development at Jack London Square...

Court: Macy's not fit for disabled.(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... Macy's has lost a lawsuit over access for disabled shoppers. U.S. District Court found the store in violation of state and federal laws requiring that store entrances, aisles, dressing rooms and cash registers be accessible to disabled people....

Valley Care lays off 1,200 workers.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
November 5, 1999... Valley Care Health System in Pleasanton has laid off 1,200 employees to try and offset losses. Despite a nearly $1 million first-quarter loss this year, the system, which includes ValleyCare Medical Center and Valley Memorial Hospital in...

Medical group practices to merge.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
November 5, 1999... Camino Medical Group of Sunnyvale will join the Palo Alto Medical Foundation to create one of the largest medical group practices in the Bay Area. The combined group will care for about 300,000 patients. The merger ensures the continuation of...

Kaiser reports healthy profits.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
November 5, 1999... Kaiser Permanente, as a result of cost-cutting measures and raised premiums, has reported continuing operations profits of $107 million for the third quarter. Last year, the Oakland-based nonprofit health maintenance organization posted a $140...

Internet economy growing fast.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
November 5, 1999... A study commissioned by Cisco Systems Inc. and completed by researchers at the University of Texas found that the Internet economy is growing as fast as it seems. Between first-quarter 1998 and first-quarter 1999, Internet-related revenue of...

FDA panel rejects AIDS treatment.
November 5, 1999... U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel rejected a new HIV treatment created by Foster City-based Gilead Sciences. The decision almost certainly means Gilead will have no chance to get its treatment approved for sale by the FDA.

E-Trade ups the ante.(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... Menlo Park's E-Trade Group Inc. is offering customers of Discover Brokerage Direct $150 to switch to E-Trade. Discover Brokerage owner San Francisco-based Morgan Stanley Dean Witter announced last month that it would close the division, fold it...

Don Pazour.(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... Name: Don Pazour. Title: President and CEO. Company: Miller Freeman Inc., the San Francisco-based business-to-business media company and trade-show organizer. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of United News & Media plc. ...

Tamalpais makeover captures hearts, souls, wallets.(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... In the age of cross-selling, most bankers talk about their share of customers' wallets. Kit Cole also wants their hearts. It's not that Cole, chairwoman of Tamalpais Bank, refuses to see the business side of banking. She just doesn't want...

Full-course Bay View a lesson in digestion.(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... Bay View Capital Corp.'s oft-delayed $282 million deal with Franchise Mortgage Acceptance Co. has finally jumped all its hurdles, closing Nov. 1. But one post-merger concern lingers: San Mateo-based Bay View faces skepticism about how it...

Wait-and-see attitude reigns among BofA leaders.(People)(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... Legacy NationsBank president Ken Lewis was dubbed chief operating officer of Bank of America Corp. and elected to the board of directors Oct. 27. With the COO position, new to BofA, Lewis has formal responsibility for running the...

The survey says: Fix your web site or lose sales.(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... When the New Year rings 2000, there are going to be some e-commerce executives slugging back the champagne with gusto, but there will also be many more sobbing in their beer. Online shoppers are an ornery and fickle bunch. There's lots of...

Mambo throws a 'P2P' e-commerce shindig.(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... Buzzword alert! Forget B2C and B2B. Make room for P2P -- Person-to-Person e-commerce. That's the revenue angle being touted by Mambo.com, a new Menlo Park-based event planning web site that lets party people plan shindigs and send out...

Ask Jeeves makes some corporate sales calls.(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... I listened in on the Ask Jeeves third quarter conference call and heard CEO Rob Wrubel outline some very aggressive growth plans centered around the corporate side of the company's business. Ask Jeeves provides natural language question...

The dough rolls in for Bay Area Net startups.(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... Christmas came a bit early for a trio of Bay Area startups -- lucky recipients of bushels of VC cash. More.com, the San Francisco-based Net drugstore, pocketed $43 million in its latest financing round. Backers included Boston Millennia...

Bay Area hospitality boom dies down to a soft buzz.(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... After a decade of virtually no development activity, the Bay Area hospitality industry has been marked in the last two years by a rush to establish projects. But true to the industry's boom-or-bust cycle, that rush is largely over now....

Destination: Upper Market.(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... Over the last month, the new Johnfrank at the corner of Church and Market has contributed to the emergence of the intersection as a destination point for restaurant visitors. Joining Mecca, 2223 Market, Chow, Zodiac Club, Crepes on Church...

S.F.'s Bay West buys Seattle wholesale marts.(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... The owner of the San Francisco Design Center has purchased a similar facility in Seattle. Bay West Group, a San Francisco-based group of real estate developers and investors paid about $20 million for the Seattle Design Center and Seattle...

FTC gets busy slamming costly Internet 'cramming'.(Government Activity)(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... The Federal Trade Commission used a Senate hearing on "cramming" -- the placement of unauthorized charges on a customer's telephone bill -- to announce its largest enforcement action yet against an alleged crammer of Internet services. To...

Small business group teams with Microsoft.(National Federation of Independent Business)(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... David is hitching a ride with Goliath on the information superhighway. The National Federation of Independent Business, a small business advocacy group, hopes its new partnership with software mega giant Microsoft will help its members use...

EPA to get more input on lead reporting rule.(Government Activity)(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... The Environmental Protection Agency will seek more input from small businesses before it proceeds with a new regulation concerning the disposal of lead and lead compounds. EPA hit the brakes after Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., scheduled an...

Food distributors see hefty ergonomics bill.(Government Activity)(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... One of the industries most affected by a proposed ergonomics regulation says it would cost at least $500,000 per food distribution center. That's just the cost of establishing an ergonomics program, says Food Distributors International, a...

Internetlobby.org formed to represent web users.(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... Lobbyists representing Internet companies are all over Capitol Hill; now Internet users have their own lobby. Internetlobby.org was founded by Edward Segal Communications, a Washington, D.C., public relations firm, and Taxsoft a Bethesda,...

S.F. real estate market leads the nation -- again.(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... Hey, we kick butt, but you already knew that. For the fourth consecutive year, San Francisco was named the No.1 U.S. market for real estate investment and development by a survey of industry experts. New York came in a close second -- jumping...

Rosenberg puts 501 Second St. on the block.(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... In what could be a weather vane for investors looking to exit South of Market properties, Douglas Rosenberg has hired Colliers International to sell 501 Second St. Rosenberg acquired the 230,0000-square-foot building in late 1997 for about $28...

CB Dabs tenant rep veteran Ed Grammens.(People)(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... Ed Grammens, one of the better-known tenant-representation brokers in San Francisco, has left Julien J. Studley to join CB Richard Ellis Inc. Grammens, a 14-year Studley veteran, has represented some of the region's fastest-growing companies...

Telecom switching centers proliferate.
November 5, 1999... Anyone who has tried to get a highspeed Internet connection in the last couple of years knows how in-demand phone lines have become. That explains the rush to convert warehouses and other industrial buildings to telecom switching centers. Deals...

Man of vision.
November 5, 1999... Hamid Moghadam steers the world of real estate to meet the needs of the New Economy Hamid Moghadam's passions include one reserved for those with ice in their veins: race-car driving. Now, he's using that fast-car zeal and precision in a...

Building owners vie with city for new parking spots.
November 5, 1999... Two years ago, you could park all day in Bank of America's garage for $22. Now, that same spot goes for $30, and its neighbors are catching up. That's not just a wallet issue, though. As parking gets ever tighter in San Francisco and the...

SRM uses broad team to help grow the bottom line.
November 5, 1999... Steve Meckfessel needs years to find the right staff: A stack of resumes just won't do: As a result, SRM Associates has only 17 people on staff after seven years in operation. Meckfessel has handpicked each one from the relationships he...

2020 vision in real estate: A look at the crystal ball.
November 5, 1999... Forget Y2K. What will the world of real estate look like in the year 2020? We don't know, of course, but technology is already having a profound impact on the way the industry operates. Buyers and sellers of commercial properties can now...

Net company puts toxic hazards in renters' reach.(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... Within one and a half miles of my house, there are 26 locations of environmental "concern." Within three miles, there are another 46 potential trouble spots. No, I don't commute to and from Chernobyl. I live in the middle of San Francisco,...

Largest Bay Area Commercial Developers.
November 5, 1999... Development continues to swing in the Bay Area, and much of the rest of the nation, turning the real estate slump of the earlier part of this decade into an ever-more-distant memory. Projects spearheaded by commercial developers on this week's...

City's living-wage ordinance: It's alive and kicking.(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... After several quiet months, things are starting to get interesting again on the living-wage front. Living Wage Task Force Chairman Jim Illig says now that the numbers from cost analyses are in place, the weekly meetings to form a...

Bay Area covered in Inc.
November 5, 1999... The annual "Inc. 500" issue has been released, recognizing 500 fast-growing companies in the United States. Among them: More than 25 companies in our neck of the woods, like No. 23 Aegis Mortgage Acceleration of San Francisco, No. 34 UTStarcom...

Designing retail's future.
November 5, 1999... Architecture firm preps brick-and-mortars for the e-tail revolution At a time when the Internet is pulling consumers out of malls and into cyberspace, Michael McCall is finding ways to make brick-and-mortar. retail stores more attractive to...

Ankesh Kumar.
November 5, 1999... Title: President and CEO. Company: Personic Inc., based in Brisbane, is a software firm that provides staffing automation software for recruiting firms and company human resources departments. Revenue: $26 million. Employees: 265....

Check new software for Y2K bug.(Brief Article)
November 5, 1999... You have new hardware. You have new software. Are you ready for the millennium? Seems like you should be. But if you read the tortured geek speak that comprises most Year 2000 disclosure statements, your software vendor actually is...

PEOPLE ON THE MOVE.
November 5, 1999... Cosmetics e-tailer puts a new face in its boardroom San Francisco-based gloss.com is getting a leadership makeover. The online cosmetics and beauty products retailer has harnessed domestic and international business veteran Barbara...

UCSF Stanford's demise points to malady, not cure.
November 5, 1999... UCSF Stanford Health Care's long-awaited demise last-week came as little surprise to most observers, but it still signaled a clear change in Northern California's patience with health care. For years now, the grumble in the health-care...

Squinting at 'the 360-degree vision'.
November 5, 1999... I was sitting at my desk early on Thursday morning, staring at a blank computer screen. An unenlightened observer, such as my editor, might have assumed I was goofing off. But nothing could have been further from the truth. In fact, a...

Oakland business must swing, or miss the A's.
November 5, 1999... If I were to describe to you a sports franchise that is very active in the local business community and with local charities, has been named "Organization of the Year" the last two years, whose major league record was the talk of the sports...

Livermore lab project produces labor deal run amok.
November 5, 1999... At a nearby lab, a macabre experiment is under way and the results so far are pretty scary. A costly and inefficient construction policy known as a union-only project labor agreement is being applied to construction of a new scientific...

LETTER.
November 5, 1999... Mistaken identity: Columnist is no `yuppie-faux-hipster' I'm a new San Francisco Business Times reader, so I'm not yet familiar with the newspaper's columnists. So, seeing Adam Feuerstein's photo before reading "dot-depression" story...

1999 Summit Award Winners.
November 5, 1999... Barbara Rodgers Anchor, Channel 5 Eyewitness News Barbara Rodgers joined Channel 5 Eyewitness News in 1979. She anchors four weekend newscasts and is a contributing reporter for Evening Magazine. Her weekly segment, "Doin' Good",...

Message from the Chairman and the President of the Summit Bank Foundation.
November 5, 1999... The Summit Bank Foundation was founded in 1998 as an asset and resource to all the communities of Alameda and Contra Costa counties. The Foundation is a publicly supported 501(c)(3) organization with a Board of Directors comprised of local...

Mortgage lenders shift gears.
November 12, 1999... As originations stall, companies bet the house on servicing fees Rising interest rates are crimping mortgage originations, but lenders are compensating by swelling instead of selling their loan servicing portfolios. Norwest Mortgage...

Waves on the waterfront.
November 12, 1999... Politics threaten to stall $200M redevelopment of Jack London Square The Port of Oakland's ambitious $200 million plan to redevelop Jack London Square has drawn intense interest, but real estate professionals and locals worry that politics...

Organic grows with $125M lease.
November 12, 1999... E-business builder aces out USWeb/CKS for headquarters Taking a cue from its high-flying Internet clients, e-business builder Organic Inc. has signed a long-term lease for new corporate digs in the Baker Hamilton building at the foot of...

Developers answer call of telecom.
November 12, 1999... Big developers Shorenstein Co., Boston Properties Inc. and Cornerstone Properties Inc. have teamed up to jump into the telecommunications business, signaling building owners' growing efforts to squeeze new revenue streams out of their...

S.F. real estate's big kahuna bags another deal.
November 12, 1999... Hawaiian Jack Myers is saying aloha to his second major development in downtown San Francisco: a 25-story, $110 million office building along the bustling Second Street corridor. Myers, who relocated here from the nation's 50th state two...

Alpha mail.
November 12, 1999... Acquisitions chart Critical Path's course for world email domination Got email? Doug Hickey bets you do -- maybe more than one address -- and though you'll never see his company's name, the chief executive of Critical Path is aiming...

Stock Answers.
November 12, 1999... Small-cap fund profits from its mistakes John Wallace says the secret to his success is not what he buys and holds, but what he doesn't. Wallace, portfolio manager of the RS Diversified Growth Fund, has been a consistently strong...

Just For Feet leaps out of building, into bankruptcy.
November 12, 1999... Just For Feet's bankruptcy filing has stomped on the shoe retailer's plans to open a big three-story superstore near Union Square. The Atlanta-based company filed for restructuring under Chapter 11 bankruptcy court protection on Nov. 2...

Consumer world is whole new jungle for Shaman.
November 12, 1999... ShaimanBotanicals.com seems to be suffering some digestive distress in moving from the stern scientific realm of making drugs to the glitzier world of peddling "dietary supplements." The company, a surviving outgrowth of the old Shaman...

Girls topple buoys.
November 12, 1999... In the fight for local bragging rights by San Francisco's two America's Cup contenders, Paul Cayard's AmericaOne has superior name recognition, bigger financial backing, and, until this week, an unbeaten record in head-to-head races with...

New can of worms for Del Monte.
November 12, 1999... Various computer software companies and financial institutions remain a bit twitchy about possible calamities associated with Y2K, but are careful to downplay the potential for pandemonium. San Francisco-based Del Monte Foods Co., on the...

Rise & Fall.
November 12, 1999... A barometer of the region's movers, shakers and fakers Chang-lin lien Sure, UC Berkeley has had a lot of chancellors, but how many can say they have an asteroid named after them? Tien does, after Chinese researchers salute his...

SoCal developer tags Tenderloin for $60M suite.
November 12, 1999... A Southern California developer has its eye on three Tenderloin real estate parcels and is puffing together a proposal to build downtown's first all-suite hotel. Steve Crowe, president of the Los Angeles-based Hotel Development Group, is...

Port scores big tenant.
November 12, 1999... Educational testing giant Kaplan Educational Centers is relocating its after-school program and related ecommerce division to Oakland. The unit, known as Score, will be the Port of Oakland's single largest office tenant when it moves into...

Dot-coms snag remaining free space on Peninsula.
November 12, 1999... An invasion of high-tech companies has wiped out what was once the largest chunk of available space on the Peninsula: Redwood Shores' Westport Office Park. Six months ago, the 1 million-square-foot complex east of Oracle Corp.'s...