Popular Oakland taqueria moving into S.F. food hall adjacent to IKEA
Chef-owner Dominic Prado confirmed to the Chronicle that his business will be serving customers at Saluhall, the two-story food hall connected to the IKEA on Market Street. He estimates the kiosk space will begin operating at the end of June.
Tacos El Último Baile began as a food truck serving the bar crowd in Oakland. The top-rated taqueria became well known for its offerings, which include smoky tacos stuffed with flame-kissed carne asada and al pastor-style pork shaved off a spinning trompo, served on corn or flour tortillas.
Prado launched his first brick-and-mortar shop at Oakland's Fruitvale Public Market in 2022, but announced he was changing his model after a dispute with a landlord over construction. Now the taqueria operates as a popup and catering company, with tacos featuring coal-grilled meats and specials including smoked brisket and chile colorado.
The restaurant arrives as Saluhall, an expansive dining venue, is at a crossroads. Two operators, Algerian restaurant Kayma and vegan taqueria La Venganza, have pulled out from the hall's top floor, citing low sales. Meanwhile the hall's operators retired two proprietary concepts: a vegan burger bar and a bakery. The latter were replaced with critic's pick burger shop Smish Smash and Cheezy's Artisanal Pizza, a project of Delfina Pizzeria and Flour + Water Pizzeria alum David Jacobson.
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San Francisco Chronicle
3 days ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Will Giants be buyers or sellers ahead of this week's trade deadline?
With the trade deadline looming Thursday, front offices around baseball kept an eye on the San Francisco Giants ' series against the Mets this weekend, including a number who sent scouts to Oracle Park. Sure, some teams out of it are focused on New York, which is in first place in the NL East and needs a starting pitcher and bullpen help while also looking at the Giants as likely buyers, in the market for a starter and a right-handed bat. Others, though, are wondering whether the Giants, losers of eight of 10 entering Sunday, might look to sell rather than buy. Executives and scouts who spoke to the Chronicle the past week aren't sure, but the consensus is that president of baseball operations Buster Posey is far more likely to go for it, with the Giants only 2½ games out of a playoff spot, than move any parts. That said, there was extra interest in Robbie Ray 's start against the Mets — any contender with a need would pay a great price for Ray, an All-Star and former Cy Young winner who will be a free agent after the season. Should the Giants flip outright to sellers this week, Tyler Rogers would be attractive to pretty much any club in a playoff spot. Other teams have such specific needs, the Giants conceivably could be sellers even while dealing with another seller. Take Seattle, a frequent trade partner under the previous front office and the team that dealt Ray to the Giants. The Mariners need a third baseman and no, they're not crazy, they're not asking about Matt Chapman, but there is a scenario in which the pitching-rich club could move a starter to San Francisco for a package that included Casey Schmitt. The Giants inquired about Luis Castillo last winter, but it's unlikely a playoff hopeful would deal a starter with an ERA under 4.00 even if they'd like to move salary. Seattle exec Jerry DiPoto is unafraid to pull the lever on just about any trade, though, so never say never. Castillo is signed through 2027 and has a vesting option for 2028. Reliever Ryan Walker is catnip for some playoff hopefuls, but he's under team control through 2029; as with Schmitt, the Giants aren't looking to deal him. To get a top-flight starter, though? Maybe. In a discussion with the Chronicle last week, Posey hinted that the team would listen on top prospects Bryce Eldridge and Carson Whisenhunt, saying, 'I think it's important to listen, I'll leave it at that. I think we have to listen on everything.' It's safe to assume that Eldridge is off limits for only the most major addition, say an All-Star caliber starter under team control beyond this year. Even that's a stretch, whether Rafael Devers is now the first baseman or not. (There are no indications the Twins are shopping Joe Ryan, who is not a free agent until 2028, and no, the Pirates aren't trading Paul Skenes.) One Giants minor-leaguer consistently mentioned by scouts and execs: Bo Davidson, a 23-year-old left-handed outfielder at Double-A Richmond. Davidson is batting .304 with 11 homers, 57 RBIs, 55 runs and 14 steals combined at two levels this season. He's currently ranked as the Giants' fifth-best prospect by MLB Pipeline, fourth best by Baseball America. Several execs noted that Posey already pulled off what is likely to remain the biggest deal of the summer by acquiring Devers from Boston, he just did so early, on June 15. Even if the Giants do nothing else, the first-year exec might have won the trade deadline. Players, coaches and managers love getting help this time of year. It's usually a boost, a sign the front office and ownership believe in the team. With Devers already in the fold, now playing first and starting to hit, do the Giants need to do more to get that kind of vibes bump in the clubhouse? 'Even before that (Devers deal), I've done it long enough to know that you have to be happy with what you have, and if you get some help, then that's great,' Giants manager Bob Melvin said. 'And we got some big-time help before anybody else did, really, so we have enough here to go where we want to.'
San Francisco Chronicle
3 days ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Influential San Francisco nonprofit faces uncertain financial future
LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired has served people in San Francisco for over 122 years. Now, community members fear for the nonprofit institution's future. The organization received a $125 million bequest a decade ago, but today, its story is of financial distress. It lost over $17 million when the bank foreclosed its Market Street property last year. The organization has laid off 40 employees, or 23% of its staff, since January, interim CEO Brandon Cox told the Chronicle in an interview, and more layoffs may be necessary. The LightHouse is one of the largest and most influential blindness organizations in the country and the only one along the coast from San Francisco to the Oregon border. It runs early childhood education programs; a beloved summer camp in Napa; a factory employing blind workers in Alameda; and mobility and orientation training for adults losing their sight, along with many other classes. It served over 3,000 clients in the fiscal year ending in June. The organization recently closed its Humboldt County office and will close its Berkeley campus next year, Cox said. It does not plan to hire a permanent CEO until next year. The average wait to receive services from the LightHouse is two to three months long, as it has been for a few years, said Summer Sanzo Dittmer, vice president of external affairs. Community members said even a few months' delay could be devastating to people facing a blindness prognosis, who often experience depression. However, one blind client told the Chronicle that she is currently on a wait list for up to one-and-a-half years to receive training to use a white cane. The LightHouse receives federal funds to provide deafblind clients — people with some level of both hearing and vision loss — technical support for communication devices like keyboards with braille displays, but a client and a former employee told the Chronicle the organization's services are often unreliable after staffing cuts. That program has retained funding for the coming year, and it receives additional federal dollars along with income and grants from the state, city, corporations and private donors. Not all of those funds are guaranteed going forward. The Trump administration's estimated $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid in its tax and spending bill are expected to put more pressure on private organizations like the LightHouse to provide services — at the same time that many nonprofits are struggling. And while blindness can happen to anyone, whether through disease, accident or birth, visual impairment is expected to exponentially increase among baby boomers in the next decades, making the LightHouse's services even more essential in the aging Bay Area. The LightHouse's management insists that services have not changed since the layoffs, which it said are part of needed adjustments to put the organization on a path for success. Nonetheless, blind community members continue to report difficulty getting access to training and support, even though the organization has $80 million in assets that could go toward boosting its operations. 'My major concern is that we're on a slippery slope of loss of blindness services in Northern California,' said Joshua Miele, a former board chair of the LightHouse who is blind and recipient of a 2021 MacArthur Fellowship, known as a 'genius grant,' for his work designing blind adaptive technology. 'I'm worried that we're only seeing the beginning of the repercussions of the financial irresponsibility that has happened in the last few years' at the LightHouse, he said. Jennison Asuncion, the chair of the LightHouse's board, said that the board is 'laser-focused' on ensuring long-term stability of the organization, and that it will determine if more layoffs are necessary this fall when it finalizes its budget. 'No one on the board is thinking or talking about the demise of the LightHouse,' he said. 'It's had such a storied history since 1902.' Diana McCown, the LightHouse's chief of rehabilitation, said that the layoffs included a small percentage of service providers. The wait time depends on a person's individual needs and source of funding, whether it's the California Department of Rehabilitation, Veterans Affairs or other sources, she said, and that no one is turned away or charged for services. 'We are still maintaining our level of service that people know and love,' she said. Not all who are involved with, or rely on, the LightHouse are so confident. Margie Donovan, 63, a former board member who began attending the organization's Enchanted Hills Camp at age 9, helped organize a rally in front of the LightHouse offices last month to call for new leadership. 'The situation is grim and we need the LightHouse to stay open,' said Donovan, who lives in Folsom (Sacramento County). Miele and Donovan questioned how the organization allowed the default to happen when it still had assets from its windfall bequest. They and five other members of the Bay Area blind community told the Chronicle they are concerned about the future of the LightHouse and angry that the organization has said it does not plan to have a permanent CEO in place until next April. Asuncion said finding a new CEO is one of the board's top priorities, but that 'we won't rush for rush's sake,' adding they needed time to find the right fit. It is unclear if the LightHouse's financial struggles are a result of wasteful spending, of growing too fast after its bequest, as a recent San Francisco Standard article reported, or of the economic challenges hitting all types of nonprofits and for-profit businesses. For example, the pandemic played a role in its default, because the main tenant in its office building, the city of San Francisco, left in part because of the glut of commercial real estate. And after the 2017 Wine Country fires burned Enchanted Hills Camp, the LightHouse committed to $55 million to rebuild it. 'This may be symptomatic of what is affecting the nonprofits, not just in disability rights and access, but really widely across the sector,' said Kara Wentworth, executive director of the Nonprofit Center at La Salle University in Philadelphia. Nonprofits reported anticipating a surge in demand for their services in a 2020 survey, and now many other financial factors are impacting them, Wentworth said. But after big events like a loan default and layoffs, it's essential that an organization communicates its strategy, she said. 'I hope that the organization is able to speak to that in a way that allows people to understand and trust that there is a strong plan in place.' Cox said that the changes the organization is making are intended to secure long-term stability. One example, he said, is the LightHouse will save $250,000 per year by relinquishing its Berkeley location. 'If we didn't make changes now and we continued along the same trajectory, we would be concerned about the future of the organization,' he said. Cox said he does not believe financial mismanagement took place at the organization. 'Our previous CEOs have been innovators and they wanted to do big, big things in the blindness world,' he said. Some of that ambition was sparked when the LightHouse learned that a Seattle businessman had left it $125 million in 2014, dwarfing its usual annual income of around $1 million. The following year, it became the majority owner of its current property on 1155 Market St, and in 2016 left behind a longtime location on Van Ness Avenue to take over the top three floors. In the renovation, Bay Area architect Chris Downey, who is blind, added acoustic elements so that blind people could navigate the space more easily, wrote Andrew Leland in his 2023 memoir, 'The Country of the Blind.' 'Normally, a center serving the blind would be in an infinitely more modest space,' wrote Leland. But the bequest helped make the LightHouse 'one of the most innovative blindness rehabilitation centers in the country,' he said. The city of San Francisco had long rented out the eight bottom floors, part of a separate parcel from the top three floors. The LightHouse and a partner took out a $48 million loan for the space. But after the city decided that the rent was too high, its departure triggered the default in June 2024, because the loan was contingent on having a tenant, Cox said. The LightHouse still retains ownership of the top three floors of the building under a separate loan of $28.5 million, though the value of that property has dropped from $28 million to $4.7 million, according to Dittmer. Cox said the original purchase of the building, at the time, 'was a smart thing to do. No one could imagine that property values would plummet.' But Miele, the former board chair, disagrees that the organization was simply a victim of the pandemic. He said that the organization's leadership should have worked harder with the city and been more prepared. 'I understand that there was a pandemic and lots of people had trouble, but this was next-level negligence,' he said. 'They were not proactively trying to plan for the future or avoid this fiscal crisis.' About six months before the default, the LightHouse had close to $117 million in unrestricted liquid assets, meaning funds not designated for specific purposes by donors and that the board had set aside for 'subsidizing operating deficits' among other potential uses, according to the organization's September 2023 financial audit. The organization considered using those assets to prevent the default but decided it would not make sense in the long term without a tenant, Cox said. The offices are still empty. Around the time of the default, the organization also increased its staff, spending around $13 million on personnel in the 2023 and 2024 fiscal years, up from around $11 million in 2022, according to its audits, which was one of the reasons for the layoffs, said Dittmer. Though the LightHouse said that the layoffs haven't impacted services, some community members report long wait times. Patti Knochenhauer of Santa Rosa said she was told by a LightHouse employee in March that she would have to wait one to one-and-a-half years for mobility training she needs to get a guide dog. Knochenhauer said her family does not want her to go out without one because they fear for her safety. 'I'm pretty much housebound and it's really lonely,' said Knochenhauer, who is 69. In October, Knochenhauer reached out to the Earle Baum Center, where she had received services after first losing her sight in 2018. The LightHouse took over the Santa Rosa center last year and laid off five employees, then brought one of them back part-time, said Cox. 'We're on less than a skeleton crew,' said Knochenhauer. Knochenhauer declined to allow the Chronicle to share her name with management, so Cox said that he could not comment directly on her case. But he said that 'the staff member misspoke' and that there are no clients waiting that long for services, in an email. Susan Kitazawa of San Francisco first went to the LightHouse to learn how to use a white cane and get around the city 20 years ago, when the former registered nurse learned she had severe optic nerve damage and was 'living with terror' at the prospect of losing her sight. Now also a volunteer and donor at the organization, Kitazawa continues to rely on its access to technology services. While it used to be reasonably easy to communicate, she said in recent years the LightHouse has not responded to calls. Cox said that anyone experiencing problems should reach out to their service navigator, a new role created by the organization. He also said the organization has a complaint line for which there are no active complaints. However, deafblind clients staged a protest against the LightHouse in front of its Berkeley location last month and said they're struggling to access technology that is essential to their lives. They're part of a LightHouse program that provides communications devices, training and technical support to deafblind clients throughout California. The Federal Communications Commission awarded the LightHouse $832,853 to run the program in the fiscal year ending in June 2025. It served 126 active participants that year, according to the LightHouse. Angela Palmer of Hayward said the LightHouse recently reassigned or laid off employees in the program who were skilled in braille technology as well as tactile American Sign Language, which deafblind people use to communicate by signing into each other's hands. About a year ago, the LightHouse replaced those staff members with a person who knows tactile ASL but has limited ability in braille technology, she said. Palmer uses a keyboard with a refreshable braille display connected to her iPhone and computer to read and send messages, and to check her bank account and medical records. But she said the LightHouse trainer did not set up the phone correctly, leaving her unable to send emails and more reliant on her partner. 'It makes me feel inadequate, isolated, worried about my future,' she said. Four other members of the program provided video testimonials reporting similar problems, which they posted on a website calling for the FCC to stop working with the LightHouse. Cox said the individuals did not contact LightHouse directly with their complaints. Palmer, however, said she did inform the LightHouse of the issue recently. McCown said that the LightHouse has 10 staff members who can assist deafblind clients, and that all are proficient in braille. However, the LightHouse said it had only three employees working in the program in July 2024, in its response to a complaint former employee Mussie Gebre filed with the Federal Communications Commission, alleging the LightHouse provided insufficient staffing and failed to hire qualified personnel. Only one of those employees still works in the program full-time, said Gebre, who is deafblind and lives in Oakland. The LightHouse has asked the FCC to dismiss the complaint and denies the allegations. Gebre said he expects the FCC to respond in the coming weeks. 'Our ultimate objective is ensuring deafblind people can use the telephone or Internet to communicate with their families, and emergency services,' he said, 'access that the rest of society takes for granted.'
San Francisco Chronicle
3 days ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
The Bay Area suburbs where renters are taking over the market
For decades, the path from renter to homeowner in America looked like this: You rent in a big city when you're just starting out, then once you've settled into your career and personal life, you buy a house in the suburbs. But high home prices combined with 30-year mortgage rates stubbornly stuck in the sixes have kept home ownership out of reach for many for the past few years, especially in the Bay Area. A new study from Point2Homes shows that renter households now outnumber homeowners in more than 200 metropolitan suburbs nationwide. Point2Homes provided the Chronicle with data on the share of renters in the smaller cities around the San Francisco, Oakland and Fremont metropolitan area (the data excludes San Jose and most of the South Bay, which are considered a separate metro). In 24 of the 54 cities analyzed, the percentage of the population that rents is rising. In seven of them, renters now represent larger shares of the population than homeowners. The trend is accelerating at an even faster rate on the East Coast, said Doug Ressler, the manager of business intelligence for data acquisition firm Yardi Matrix, who worked on the data cited in the Points2Homes study. Both companies are owned by Santa Barbara-based real estate software company Yardi Systems. In 15 metropolitan areas, suburban cities transitioned from majority-owner to majority-renter between 2018 and 2023; in another 15, the number of renter households more than doubled. In the Dallas, Minneapolis, Boston, Tampa and Baltimore areas, the suburbs gained renters faster than the big cities they surround. But that's not quite what's happening in the Bay Area. All the cities that are renter-majority as of 2023 in the San Francisco area were already that way in 2018. Of the 54 cities analyzed, the share of renters dropped in 30 of them, though in some of them not by a statistically significant amount. Taken together, the 54 cities experienced a modest net 1.9% increase in renter household growth during that period. The reason we're not seeing the same explosion in renting that some cities on the East Coast are is the same as the explanation for many of the Bay Area's problems: It's hard to build housing here. 'We don't build enough housing compared to the wealth and jobs we create,' said Matt Regan, senior vice president of policy for the Bay Area Council, a pro-housing advocacy group. The urban cores themselves 'make it ridiculously hard to build,' he said, which leads developers to look for opportunities in suburbs and exurbs. But even in smaller cities and suburban areas, Regan said, many local governments have determined that the right place to build more homes and apartments is 'somewhere else.' 'The Bay Area has been ground zero for 'not in my backyard,'' said Jeff Ostrowski, a housing market analyst for Bankrate. A combination of growth restrictions, lack of land and income growth have created what he called the 'perfect storm for an explosion of property prices.' As housing prices have risen, the age of the average first-time homebuyer in the U.S. has increased, meaning people are renting for longer. The median first-time homebuyer is now 38 years old, according to the National Association of Realtors. The years 2018 to 2023 are an interesting period for studying housing trends in America. The COVID-19 pandemic created a drastic shift: Rents rose, mortgage rates hit rock bottom, and remote work vaporized commutes. California's population declined by more than half a million people from April 2020 to July 2022, though it's bounced back since then. COVID played a dual role: Some people left because a fully remote job meant they could live somewhere more affordable. And the polarization of pandemic restrictions and vaccine policies drove some people to search for alternative political climates. Some workers who were given free rein to move to Texas or Idaho found themselves recalled by return-to-office policies. But even now, many offices in the Bay Area have only partial RTO: Office visits are down 44.6% in San Francisco this year compared with 2019, according to a study from location data analysis firm That makes the suburbs a more appealing place to live, Regan said. Only needing to drive to the office two or three days a week instead of five makes an onerous commute slightly less daunting. So there's interest in more housing in the suburbs — but challenges to build it. Regan said California's condo defect liability laws dissuade developers from building a type of housing that was traditionally a solid first rung on the property ladder. Many cities are out of space to build single-family homes. That leaves apartment buildings, which can be appealing to developers given the region's high incomes and high demand, but often face planning and permitting issues and anti-renter sentiment from homeowners. A standout on the list of cities with a high renter share is Emeryville. The share of renters increased by 28% from 2018 to 2023, with the city adding more than 1,100 renter households. Cities that have seen more renter growth tend to have certain things in common, said Ressler of Point2Homes. They're usually situated close to transit; have social amenities such as parks, community centers and museums; have less expensive land compared with the urban areas; and have local governments that are amenable to housing development. Regan said Emeryville's government has embraced housing growth alongside job growth from companies such as Pixar and commercial growth from major retailers including IKEA. Emeryville has 'been willing to accept that with economic growth comes a demand for housing, and they have built a commensurate amount of new housing units to accommodate their economic growth,' Regan said. 'Most cities in our region are happy to take the jobs and then increase their tax base, but have traditionally not been willing to build the housing.'
