Yesterday at A/D/O, a MINI-sponsored creative space in Brooklyn, New York, seven start-ups pitched their companies to an audience of investors and public sector agencies as part of URBAN-X’s Demo Day. URBAN-X is an accelerator for urban tech companies that was launched in 2016 by BMW-owned car brand MINI, one of its many forays into rethinking shelter, fashion, and design. The seven start-ups are members of URBAN-X’s fifth cohort, bringing the total number of companies that URBAN-X has fostered to 39. URBAN-X selects up to 10 start-ups twice a year for its program, which includes a $150,000 investment and five months of support in engineering, design, and business development.

Urban mobility and access to electric vehicles featured prominently in this cohort, not a surprising theme for an incubator with roots in the automotive sector. But other strong trends, like construction site productivity and emissions efficiency, pointed to a focus on the built environment and its relationship with ecological concerns.

If this cohort is any indication of the trends in urban mobility, then the two startups dedicated to transit hinted at a very electric future. Borrow offers short-term, flexible leasing of electric vehicles, making them more available to those who can’t purchase the pricey cars, while Circuit, formerly The Free Ride, offers free electric shuttle transportation in five-passenger vehicles for short distances. The latter is already rolled out in 17 cities around the United States, with more than 20 cars on the streets of San Diego. With funding from advertisers, private developers, and transit agencies, the free shuttle is specially designed for first- and last-mile conditions to supplement other forms of transit, and also offers hail and on-demand services. Brooklyn residents and visitors can experience Circuit for themselves, with the company extending its Williamsburg run this summer.

Buildstream cofounder David Polanski talks about his company, which digitizes heavy construction equipment and processes to make construction sites safer and more efficient. (Courtesy MINI)

Buildstream and Toggle both address construction site safety and other challenges. Buildstream (formerly GearBuddy) utilizes IoT-based software and machine learning to digitize data collection on heavy construction equipment like bulldozers and trucks to monitor and assess construction sites in real time, allowing someone at an office desk and not just the construction manager on site to monitor what is happening. The technology is currently in use in the U.K. on one of Europe’s largest infrastructure projects, according to David Polanski, co-founder and COO of the company. Toggle, on the other hand, combines software and industrial robotics to help automate the construction site and reduce costs in the building process.

Energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions are also a central concern of this year’s cohort. Treau develops technology to improve energy efficiency in cooling and heating systems, essentially bringing HVAC and refrigerants into the modern age with lighter, more inexpensive polymers and other material innovations. The overarching promise of Treau is to reduce energy consumption in the U.S. by 10 percent.

Another vital but less glamorous aspect of city life is waste management infrastructure. Israel-based GreenQ‘s technology attaches to existing truck-based garbage collection systems to collect data and offer analytics to help meet demand and cut costs where needed. For example, in its applications across Israel cities, towns, and villages, GreenQ has identified areas that need one less collection day a week, or data on what homes or users need larger trash receptacles. The data from the garbage also delivers demographic data for those companies it partners with. Consumption and waste were also addressed by Thrilling, the first e-commerce platform for second-hand and vintage stores, with a goal of reducing carbon, waste, and water footprints in garment production.

From transit to garbage, the technology-driven platforms of these start-ups hints an increasingly wired, mobile urban future to come.

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Rigorous screening limits candidates, who are groomed for union apprenticeships

The good news: San Francisco offers a free 18-week training course through City College that takes low-skill, out-of-work city residents and sets them on the path to construction trade careers.

The not-so-good news: While the instructors try hard to be inclusive, some city residents who need the program do not satisfy the minimum qualifications, including a high school equivalency degree.

Each year, neighborhood organizations direct candidates to CityBuild Academy from the low-income communities they serve. From there, unions are able to find job placements for 85 percent of graduates. It helps that San Francisco is experiencing a massive construction boom that has raised demand for trade laborers to levels not seen in a decade.

Since CityBuild began in 2006, its organizers have sought out workers who are “economically disadvantaged” — those who have had interactions with the criminal justice system, lived in public housing, used a substance-abuse treatment program or received welfare or financial aid. The theory is that construction is ideal for people whose backgrounds exclude them from other labor sectors.

But applicants must possess a few basic requirements: a valid California driver’s license, a high school diploma or GED, and the ability to pass a drug test. A background check is not part of the process.

Even these minimum standards disqualify some San Francisco residents who could benefit from construction work the most, say some job training experts and advocates for workers from poor neighborhoods.

“CityBuild is not inclusive to those in the community, based on the prerequisites,” said Jamie Brewster, the employment training center site manager for Asian Neighborhood Design, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that offers a pre-apprenticeship program in solar panel installation. Ethnic minority workers are disproportionately affected by the program’s union-based criteria, he said.

Brewster’s organization channels its graduates into jobs that do not require union certification. “When they brought the unions into the mix, they have their own standards,” he said.

But Michael Theriault, secretary-treasurer of the San Francisco Building Trades Council, said unions can absorb only so much responsibility for placing workers with multiple barriers into stable careers in construction. From its inception, Theriault said, CityBuild “was intended to be a feeder to apprenticeships with unions. The requirements answer to the realities of the industry.”

THOROUGH TRAINING

No more than 100 students will make it into the academy this year. CityBuild runs two courses a year, accepting 40 to 50 applicants per cycle. Meanwhile, the number of applicants is growing: 250 are expected in the next cycle, up from fewer than 100 in the program’s early days.

The city spent $2.7 million on the training course in fiscal year 2012-13, city records showed, making the average annual cost over the last five years $33,296 per job.

The academy provides students with all the supplies they need for the 18-week program — boots, helmets, tools, even transportation and grocery vouchers. They also get college credit.

In mid-August, CityBuild students learned plumbing at City College of San Francisco’s Evans Campus in the Bayview. They got experience soldering, joining copper pipes to forge the handle of their own toolboxes. When one student expressed nervousness about the assignment, the instructor replied: “The thing is to learn from the mistakes.”

Some CityBuild students already have jobs but are looking to move into better-paying careers.

“I figured that if I’m going to bust my back at work, doing this for $12.65, I might as well actually go and bust my back and make $25 an hour,” said Donald Williams, who left his job refueling airplanes to retrain for construction with CityBuild. During the plumbing exercise, an independent contractor was on site, instructing students and scouting for talent; Williams pocketed his business card enthusiastically.

“When you start to actually learn these things — hands on — then I can look at a site, I can analyze it and I can tell, OK, this is what the plumbers are doing, this is what the electricians are doing, this is what the glazers are doing,” he said. “The carpenters are building this framing, the ironworkers are laying this in the raw patch.”

RIGOROUS SCREENING?

But CityBuild is small compared with the ranks of unemployed manual laborers. The program is “relatively competitive,” said Jacqueline Flin, executive director of the San Francisco chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, a nonprofit group that does training and community organizing with minorities and public housing residents. “There are only a certain number of slots per cycle,” she said, “and we need to make sure we are screening the right folks.”

Many of the candidates she refers to CityBuild are rejected. Sometimes the prospects are clearly irresponsible — they miss a meeting or neglect to answer the phone. All she can do is help them to reapply. But Flin said CityBuild needs to take care not to exclude workers who can take advantage of a hand up, adding that the APRI considers what additional resources, such as childcare, might be needed.

Those who meet the minimum program application requirements must attend five days of “job-readiness training,” beginning at 7 a.m. — a schedule that filters out undisciplined workers. Then students are interviewed and undergo physical fitness training, which continues throughout the 18 weeks of the academy.

“CityBuild provides a polished product,” said David De La Torre, business manager of the Northern California District Council of Laborers. He said the academy provides students with simple life skills, such as getting up early and arriving at work 15 minutes ahead of time.

The program’s director, Patrick Mulligan, said students are filtered, and only those likely to follow through are selected. Otherwise they will graduate from the program without a real chance at apprenticing with a union, which is the impetus of the entire training. “We don’t want to bring people into our program and not be able to help them,” he said. “We want to set them up for success.”

CityBuild was originally designed to provide minority communities with good jobs, said Terry Anders, founder of the Anders & Anders Foundation, a San Francisco workforce training organization focusing on preventing criminal recidivism and drug abuse. But he said that CityBuild and unions should be helping larger numbers of disadvantaged workers.

“If you’re not trying to include someone, then you are excluding them,” Anders said. “Why should a hundred people out of a community of a thousand be able to say that we work?”

ON-SITE RECRUITING

Experienced contractors and trade workers supply instruction and are paid through the program, but they donate materials for the classes. They also scout for promising apprentices.

“Contractors come to City College and as part of their community outreach, to give back, they bring back people who have gone through the program, and they bring supplies,” said Miquel Penn, project manager for the Mission Hiring Hall, which helps recruit for the academy.

The partnership with contractors is two-sided. It exposes students to 26 construction trades and prepares them for union jobs. It also eliminates the uncertainty for employers in hiring inexperienced workers.

“The thing with CityBuild is you take a lot of the risk away,” said Chris Iglesias, the first director of the academy.

Use of the City College facilities allows access to federal financial aid for the intensive 18 weeks of hands-on training. After their apprenticeships, usually lasting five years, construction workers reach journeyman status. Construction offers higher wages — $20 or more an hour, basically middle-class work — than entry-level positions in other industries, as well as health insurance and a pension. Ironworkers tend to make the most.

But City College is now facing the loss of its accreditation next summer over management and financial issues. Mulligan said that in that circumstance, CityBuild would have to reevaluate its programming. “We try to measure the pulse daily,” Mulligan said. “I can’t say definitively where that’s going to go.” There has also been talk of moving to another school.

ALTERNATIVE PATHS TO JOBS

Not everyone in the industry is impressed by CityBuild’s results. Brian Colombo, apprenticeship coordinator for Ironworkers Local 377, said graduates do cultivate a better understanding of what’s required in the workplace, but that does not guarantee success. “It’s been a mixed bag of results,” he said. “There are some that do fairly well and some that bomb.”

And the slim prospect of steady union jobs only disappoints those hundreds of hopeful workers who are not selected for the program.

Brewster of Asian Neighborhood Design said one of CityBuild’s original aims was to help residents of Bayview-Hunters Point, but few applicants from the neighborhood get in. “It’s a double-edged sword,” he said of the academy. “They’ve done a lot. They’ve put a lot of people to work, but now they are neglecting the southeast sector.”

Brewster’s own agency, which trains workers who need more help with basic life skills, closed in October as government funding dried up, but he hopes to reopen it in early 2014. He said he worries that the city’s workforce development infrastructure is missing the chance to bring the long-term unemployed into productive and stable careers. “We work with people CityBuild won’t touch,” Brewster said. “Who’s going to take them when our funding is getting cut?”

Photo by Tearsa Joy Hammock | San Francisco Public Press.

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Big construction projects in Downtown San Francisco have stalled, leaving carpenters, plumbers, painters and other professionals and tradespeople short of work.

Big-ticket permit applications at the city’s Department of Building Inspection have plummeted, as office, apartment and tenant improvement projects in the Financial District have been put on hold or canceled, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The statistics only include jobs worth $5 million or more. From January through August, builders filed for 42 such permits, worth a total of $1.4 billion in electrical, plumbing and building jobs.

It’s on pace to rival 2020, when pandemic lockdown rules didn’t allow for nonessential construction, which included commercial and retail projects. That year there were 60 big-ticket permit applications totaling $1.3 billion.

Last year, 86 such permit applications were filed, for $2.9 billion in work.

The number of big construction projects this year is on track to be 70 percent less than 2018, when 184 permits were pulled for projects in excess of $5 million, for $7.3 billion worth of jobs.

Construction industry leaders blame the steep decline in construction on a drop in tenant improvement projects related to office leases.

With office buildings still at less than 50 percent capacity and a majority of Financial District workers operating remotely much of the week, San Francisco saw 2.6 million square feet of office leasing through June, on pace to end the year with about 5 million square feet.

That’s less than the 6.5 million square feet of leasing that took place last year and fewer than the 11 million square feet of deals completed in 2019 or the 13 million in 2018.

Workers who rely on tenant improvements – architects, carpenters, electrical contractors, drywallers, painters, plumbers, movers and HVAC technicians – are hustling to make up for lost income.

There are now 1,300 union construction workers out of work in San Francisco, according to Rudy Gonzalez, secretary-treasurer for the San Francisco Building Trades Council.

“For some crafts, (tenant improvements) may be one-third of their hours and for others it might be half,” Gonzalez told the Chronicle. “Most of that work has dried up.”

Patrick O’Riordan, director of the Department of Building Inspection, said the construction business is boom or bust.

The permitting slowdown is still busier than it was in 2010 and 2011, when the city was recovering from the Great Recession. In 2010, the city saw 28 permit applications for work that exceeded $5 million, for a total of $728 million in work.

“Everyone who has ever worked in construction knows it’s a cyclical business,” O’Riordan said. “As a former carpenter, I know this cycle firsthand.”

— Dana Bartholomew

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A construction worker in San Francisco died Thursday when a trench collapsed on him, burying him under several feet of dirt, fire officials said.

Emergency crews spent roughly two hours trying to rescue the worker in the area of Oak and Divisadero streets, but when they finally reached him, it was too late.

“It’s sad to say that after two hours underneath a lot of debris with no oxygen, this became a fatal incident,” San Francisco Fire Department Capt. Jonathan Baxter said.

The worker was in the trench – described as being 8 to 10 feet deep and narrow – when it collapsed, officials said.

“We initially had to get in there just with our people, with hands and buckets, lifting, basically pulling sand and dirt out of there,” San Francisco Fire Department Chief Jeanine Nicholson said.

A construction worker in San Francisco died Thursday when a trench collapsed on him, burying him under several feet of dirt, fire officials said. Sergio Quintana reports.

An urban search and rescue dog was brought in to help locate the worker, and a massive vacuum truck was used to help clear out pounds and pounds of dirt and debris that buried him.

After finding him, it took crews another two hours to remove his body from the trench.

According to San Francisco Public Works, the worker was part of a contracted crew that’s working on a city sewer upgrade project.

“Safety is our number one priority. We want to find out what happened, why it happened,” said Rachel Gordon with San Francisco Public Works. “We’re going to be working with the contractor. We’re going to be working with the fire department, Cal OSHA. We have street inspectors, construction inspectors all on scene to try and find out what happened.”

Mayor London Breed toured the site and said the city will do what it can for the worker’s family.

“Some of his family is here. We need to make sure they are properly notified and provided with the respect and the support that they need,” she said.

See more

Unfortunately, rescue crews have located the worker.
He did not survive the trench collapse. This is now a recovery operation and investigation. The SF Public Works dept says this was a contract worker involved in a city sewer upgrade project. pic.twitter.com/pr0dUsV6ny

— Sergio Quintana (@svqjournalist) September 28, 2023

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SAN FRANCISCO – Three former executives of a San Francisco based construction planning and design firm were charged today paying bribes to employees of the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection (”DBI”), announced the Chief of the Criminal Division of the Office for the U.S. Attorney Thomas A. Colthurst and Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent in Charge Robert Tripp.

Siavash “Sia” Tahbazof, 72, was charged in an Information filed today with one count of conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud for paying bribes to DBI employees in return for their agreement to expedite and issue building plan permits and approve building inspections, beginning in 2003. According to the Information, Tahbazof conspired to bribe city employees including former DBI plan checkers Cyril Yu and Rodolfo “Rudy” Pada, and DBI building inspector Bernard Curran.

In a separate information also filed today, Reza Khoshnevisan, 54, was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud for paying bribes to Pada and Yu in return for their agreement to expedite and issue building plan permits. The conspiracy allegedly began in 2012.

In addition, Bahman Ghassemzadeh, 38, was charged in a third Information filed today. Ghassemzadeh is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud for paying bribes to Pada, Yu, and Curran, beginning in 2014, in return for their agreement to expedite and issue building plan permits and approve building inspections.

DBI is a regulatory city agency in San Francisco responsible for overseeing enforcement of building, electrical, plumbing, and housing codes for the City of San Francisco’s more than 200,000 commercial and residential buildings. Contractors and builders submit construction plans to DBI for approval and permitting; the plans are required to be reviewed and approved by DBI to insure that the proposed construction and building meets city codes and regulations.

An Information merely alleges that crimes have been committed, and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The defendants were each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1349. If convicted, each defendant faces a maximum sentence of twenty years imprisonment, and a fine of up to $250,000. However, any sentence following conviction would be imposed by the court after consideration of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and the federal statute governing the imposition of a sentence, 18 U.S.C. § 3553.

Pada, 68, and Yu, 41, have both already been charged in separate Informations with conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud. The Informations, filed on November 3, 2023, allege Pada accepted bribes in return for expediting and approving permits for building and construction plans and allege that Yu accepted bribes in return for approving permits for construction and building plans.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys David Ward and Casey Boome are prosecuting the case. The prosecution is the result of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

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In February 2022, Mayor Erin Mendenhall touted plans by two biotech firms to open labs on the west side of Salt Lake City, at the renovated and celebrated INDUSTRY SLC building.

Recursion President Tina Larson was “thrilled” to be expanding into the Granary District building, she said in a news release issued by the city. Denali Therapeutics CEO Ryan Watts said he was “excited” to open a “state-of-the-art biologics clinical manufacturing facility” there.

Since then, neither company has moved in — with both blaming construction delays. Denali Therapeutics terminated its lease earlier this year, while Recursion is locked in litigation with the building’s owner, Industry Office SLC.

The absent labs are two of several projects across the city tied to the work and uncertain fate of general contractor Makers Line, which has deleted or set to private its web page and social media accounts in recent days as employees announced their goodbyes on LinkedIn and described the company as closing. Subcontractors have filed liens and lawsuits — with a flurry of at least five more this week — claiming they haven’t been paid by Makers Line or concrete company Titus.

Makers Line and Titus are two of an “integrated suite of companies” under developer Q Factor, owned by the husband-and-wife team of Jason and Ellen Winkler. The Winklers made a splash in Salt Lake City as they began reclaiming the cavernous foundry building that became INDUSTRY SLC, after developing similar projects in Denver’s River North Art District, or RiNo, a transitional area now turned fashionable.

But as Makers Line has gone silent, Jason Winkler has not responded to requests for comment from The Salt Lake Tribune. Reached last week by Building Salt Lake — which reported first on the company’s layoffs and possible shutdown — he said in a text only that Makers Line did “not quite” close down entirely.

Here are some of Makers Line’s projects in Salt Lake City and what’s known about their status.

Chicago Street Townhomes

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Chicago Street Townhouses, one of Makers Line’s projects under construction on Chicago St. and South Temple, on Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023.

Q Factor is the owner of the Chicago Street Townhomes project, a planned 30-unit subdivision off South Temple that was approved by the city in 2021 and, as of two weeks ago, was being developed according to schedule.

But designer Jarod Hall hasn’t heard from Q Factor in a week, he told The Tribune. Hall’s firm, di’velept design, designed the units and submitted applications to the city on Q Factor’s behalf. Hall said everything seemed “fine” in a weekly check-in meeting with Q Factor two weeks ago — the companies even discussed future projects they might work on together. But since news of Makers Line’s potential closing, Hall hasn’t been able to reach anyone.

“It’s totally out of left field,” Hall said.

Hall said his team has been paid for their portion of the work so far. He doesn’t know what will happen to the town house project, which, for now, is in limbo. But he said he is “nervous” about what Makers Line’s departure could mean for the city.

“The problem is, we’re going to have about 20 Sugar House holes throughout the valley,” Hall said, referring to a plot of land in Sugar House that sat demolished but undeveloped for years.

(Sheila R. McCann | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Atre Sugar House development, which contractor Makers Line has been working on, is planned to include a complex at 1121 E. Ashton Ave. with 228 units.

Atre Sugar House

Two residential towers are planned on Ashton Avenue in Sugar House, with an eight-story building adjacent to Fairmont Park and a larger 10-story complex across the street, where a 24 Hour Fitness gym once stood.

The complex at 1121 E. Ashton Ave. plans to offer a mix of 228 studios and larger units with one, two or three bedrooms, available at market rates.

The smaller building at 1132 E. Ashton Ave. will have 113 microunits, studios to two-bedrooms, which “will allow people of lower incomes to be able to afford something in the Sugar House Business District,” the Sugar House Community Council has noted.

Kova, an interior design and supply firm in Austin, Texas, is working for Makers Line on the project, according to its website. On Tuesday afternoon, two Makers Line trucks were parked at the sites and a banner declared them a Makers Line and Alta Terra project.

But no work was underway. Alta Terra, a real estate investor and developer based in Park City, has not responded to multiple requests for comment from The Tribune.

If construction is delayed in Sugar House or elsewhere in the city, there is no limit on how long a pause could last, said Salt Lake City Council Chair Darin Mano.

“I don’t know of any city rule or ordinance specifically related to this,” he said. “In practice, we tend to see projects in this state sit in perpetuity.”

A site where construction has halted “still needs to be secured and safe,” Mano added. “When construction begins again it would need to be re-permitted and inspected and anything that has worn out due to weather exposure would need to be replaced.”

The Granary District

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) The INDUSTRY SLC building, at 650 S. 500 West in the Granary District, in 2021.

The INDUSTRY SLC building, at 650 S. 500 West, has become an anchor in the burgeoning Granary District and is owned by Industry Office SLC, according to property records.

The Winklers are minority owners of Industry Office SLC, according to Recursion’s lawsuit, with Catalyst Opportunity Fund as the company’s majority owner.

There have been more than 20 liens filed against the property by various subcontractors, according to city records, including one filed Oct. 31 by White Cap, a building materials supplier. Many have been later resolved and released, but roughly 10 are still pending.

Across 500 West from the INDUSTRY SLC building, a seven-level parking garage is in mid-construction.

Mendenhall was back in the Granary District for the groundbreaking of the garage in May 2022, KSL reported. The city handled some pass-through funding for the garage, said Andrew Wittenberg, a spokesperson for the mayor.

In a statement issued Thursday, the mayor’s office said, “we never want to see a company struggle or fail. The city is aware of some projects which are utilizing new general contractors to stay on schedule. Salt Lake City Building Services staff members are always available to assist with technical questions to ensure projects with new leadership can still move forward without delay.”

County records show some of the land where the garage is being built is owned by Industry Office SLC, but the bulk of the area is owned by AAM Investments Ltd., which the Utah Department of Commerce lists as a limited partnership based in Salt Lake City.

A year ago, banners on the fence around the site advertised Makers Line, Q Factor and their related companies, according to Google Street View. This week, those banners were gone.

North of the area, Q Factor has also been a partner in projects in the developing Post District.

Denali Therapeutics

Denali Therapeutics, a biotech and pharmaceutical company based in San Francisco, says it has moved on from the Granary District. It had signed a lease for space at INDUSTRY SLC in August 2021, the company said in Securities and Exchange Commission filings, but there had been construction delays.

In March of this year, Denali Therapeutics said, it terminated that lease. In April, it signed a new lease for a lab, office and warehouse space, it said in filings, elsewhere in Salt Lake City.

The company did not respond to requests for comment. The website Intelligence360 has reported that the new site is on Amelia Earhart Drive, near the Salt Lake City International Airport.

Denali Therapeutics does still have an incentive contract with the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity, the office confirmed, for up to $1.3 million in tax rebates.

Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune Recursion Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology company, opened its headquarters at The Gateway in Salt Lake City in 2018.

Recursion

Recursion hired Industry Office SLC to construct a shell of a manufacturing facility — which Industry Office would own — and when it was done, Recursion would become a tenant and build out the interior, according to court documents.

But after construction delays, each company began accusing the other of breaching their contract, according to letters filed in 3rd District Court in Salt Lake City. Industry Office sued Recursion in June and Recursion filed its own counterclaims in September; all are still pending.

Industry Office SLC has accused Recursion of trying to breach the lease and avoid liability; it wants Recursion to pay fines for terminating the lease early. But Recursion argues Industry Office failed to execute essential components — most crucially, a three-hour firewall that would separate Recursion’s lab from its planned neighbor, Denali Therapeutics.

Such a wall “effectively separates a structure into separate buildings,” providing three hours of protection in case of an emergency, Recursion explained in court documents, a safety feature required by its research and manufacturing.

Recursion also accuses Jason Winkler in court documents of misrepresenting the building’s progress, lying about having relevant permits from the city, and lying about the delivery of steel that — at that point — hadn’t even been ordered.

In a pivotal meeting in January, Recursion said in court documents, its executives met with Catalyst co-founder Jeremy Keele and other company leaders without the Winklers, described as Catalyst’s general partner.

The Catalyst representatives said their relationship with their general partner had become ‘toxic’ and resembled ‘Armageddon,’” Recursion attorneys wrote, “and they admitted that Industry Office had terminated the General Partner from the project for ‘gross negligence’ and ‘willful misconduct’” related to repeated construction delays.

Describing the meeting from the other side, attorneys for Industry Office wrote that “attendees for Recursion emphasized that their issues were with Winkler and his entities.”

Keele, Catalyst’s co-founder, told the Recursion leaders, “There must be a way to resolve your issues and get this back on track,” the attorneys wrote, “I feel like we’re on the 90-yard line and it would be a waste to pick up the ball and go home.”

Charles Jabara of Recursion, the filing said, responded, “I wish we were on the 90-yard line, we feel like we’re not even in the game.”

Industry Office SLC, its attorneys, Catalyst and Maker’s Line all declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement to The Tribune, Recursion declined to comment on the dispute, citing the litigation. The company said it “remains committed and excited to continue its growth here in the Beehive State and is actively pursuing alternative options for further expansion.”

Ogden

Ogden officials halted work in March on a 55-unit apartment building that Makers Line’s companies were involved in constructing — after the city found some of the lumber didn’t meet the fire code, the Standard-Examiner reported.

The five-story Union Walk project at 144 25th St. has been sitting idle since, according to the Standard-Examiner. The city most recently issued a notice on Oct. 12, giving the developer, Summa Terra Ventures, until Dec. 11 to resolve the problem.

Summa Terra’s CEO, Mike Watson, said in a statement to KSL that “Makers Line unilaterally made the decision to substitute fire-treated lumber — as originally prescribed in the contract, the approved building plans and the prevailing national building code — with untreated lumber.”

Two companies also claim, according to court documents, that Makers Line owes them money for work done on the Union Walk project. Bingham Plumbing and Mechanical claims Makers Line owes more than $106,000, plus interest, for plumbing and mechanical work and equipment, while Bear River Heating and Air Conditioning is seeking more than $64,000 in compensation — claiming Makers Line has failed to pay them for materials, equipment and labor for the same project.

Q Factor’s website also touts another Ogden project, the restoration of the Ogden Stockyard Exchange building. The plans call for converting the 1931 Art Deco building’s 14,400 square feet into office space, and adding a 25,000-square-foot building onto it. The Ogden City Council approved the project in November 2022, the Standard-Examiner reported — though Mike McBride, spokesman for Mayor Mike Caldwell, told the newspaper this week that if Makers Line was shut down, “that whole agreement would be null and void.”

Several other suits filed by subcontractors also are pending. LG Concrete, for example, claims Makers Line owes it $104,194, plus interest, for labor, materials and equipment. LG Concrete and other companies also have filed liens on some of the properties where they have conducted work and not been paid, which attorney Justin Scott could expedite payment or force foreclosure.

“I’m one in a long line of attorneys representing contractors that have performed work and have not been paid,” said Justin Scott, the attorney representing LG Concrete. “It’s a difficult situation. [Subcontractors] outlined a lot of resources and money and haven’t been paid.”

Tribune reporter Blake Apgar and Tribune culture & business editor Sean P. Means contributed to this report.

Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.

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Peter Owen Shea Sr., the last survivor of three engineers who built the construction and homebuilding company J.F. Shea Co., died Monday, Oct. 23, at his Newport Beach home after a “fierce and courageous fight” against Parkinson’s disease. He was 88. (Photo courtesy of J.F. Shea Co.)

Peter Owen Shea Sr., the last survivor of three engineers who built a multibillion-dollar construction and homebuilding business in their grandfather’s name, died Monday, Oct. 23, at his Newport Beach home after a “fierce and courageous fight” against Parkinson’s disease. He was 88.

Shea had served as vice president of Walnut-based J.F. Shea Co., the successor to a plumbing and heavy construction firm his grandfather, John Francis Shea, founded in 1881 in Portland, Oregon.

A company statement said Shea was most comfortable in khaki pants, a buttoned-down blue shirt and muddy boots, which he used to walk construction sites.

“While Peter was a man of few words, he enjoyed connecting with people and deeply valued gathering with family and his loyal community of golfing, bridge-playing, or neighborhood friends,” the company said.

The original company was a leader in the construction industry that worked on the Golden Gate Bridge, the San Francisco Bay Bridge, the Hoover Dam and the Interstate Highway System.

In 1961, Shea joined his cousin John Shea and older brother Edmund Shea Jr. as co-owner of the newly dissolved and reincorporated J.F. Shea Co. Shea later served as president of the conglomerate’s heavy construction subsidiary, J.F. Shea Construction, focusing on tunneling and large infrastructure projects.

In the following years, J.F. Shea Co. branched out into homebuilding, commercial real estate development and venture capital investing.

Founded in 1968, Shea Homes built more than 123,000 homes in 11 states, according to the company. Builder Magazine’s latest ranking listed the Los Angeles County company as the nation’s 27th biggest homebuilder in 2022, with 3,428 homes sold and $2.98 billion in total revenue.

The family’s commercial real estate arm, Shea Properties of Aliso Viejo, owns and operates about 10,000 apartments and 6 million square feet of office, industrial and retail space in California, Colorado, and Washington, the company’s website said.

In 2015, Forbes magazine estimated the Shea family’s combined fortune was $2.5 billion.

Peter Shea outlived his two founding partners. Edmund died at his San Marino home in August 2010 at age 80. John, a Pasadena resident, served as J.F. Shea’s chief executive officer, and then as board chair until he died at age 96 in October 2022.

Shea’s son, Peter O. Shea Jr., succeeded John as company CEO.

Born May 29, 1935, in Los Angeles, Shea was the fourth of five children. His father, Edmund Sr., supervised the construction work on the piers for the Golden Gate Bridge before the family moved to Los Angeles shortly before Shea’s birth.

Shea attended Loyola High School in Los Angeles, then earned a degree in business at UC Berkeley and an engineering degree from the University of Southern California.

He grew up around the family business’s construction sites, spending his summers on dam and tunnel projects, working as a driller’s assistant and miner on several tunnel projects.

J.F. Shea tunneling jobs included work on underground stations and Berkeley Hills tunnels for the Bay Area’s BART system, according to the company. The firm also did tunnel work for the Washington D.C. Metro.

Shea served on various construction industry and community organizations, including the Association of General Contractors board and the board for the Paul Merage School of Business at UC Irvine.

“Peter was a very kind, smart, and humble man,” said Shea Homes President and CEO Bert Selva. “He was also very quiet, but when he did share his thoughts, it was always incredibly valuable insight that was spot on. He was a great man and we will really miss him.”

Shea is survived by his wife, Carolyn; daughters Sarah and Catherine Shea Johnson; son Peter Jr.; sister Mary Elizabeth Callaghan; brother Henry; eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Nov. 11 at Our Lady Queen of Angeles Church in Newport Beach.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to Loyola High School of Los Angeles.

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A scathing new report has found that it takes longer and costs more to build housing in San Francisco than anywhere else in California, exacerbating the state’s homelessness crisis and preventing many workers from being able to live in the city.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has demanded that cities approve far more construction as residents struggle to make ends meet and begin moving to other states in search of cheaper places to live. But some local governments still give housing opponents generous leeway to slow or block projects.

Governor Newsom’s housing division has determined that no city has put up more housing roadblocks than San Francisco, according to an investigation released on Wednesday. The report is the first of its kind, trying to compel San Francisco to do better, as well as show other municipalities what is necessary to create a thriving, equitable city.

“It is egregious, the enormous amount of constraints and barriers they impose on new housing development,” said Gustavo Velasquez, director of the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development. “The cost of housing is exorbitant because there isn’t enough of it.”

In San Francisco, city housing officials approve housing at a snail’s pace because they allow anyone to object, even if a project meets all of the city’s requirements. That means one cranky neighbor can drastically slow a project.

The city also allows far more environmental review — in some cases, quashing proposals because they would cast too many shadows — and gives the local Board of Supervisors far more say than in other jurisdictions.

The state, with the help of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, found that it takes 523 days on average for a developer to get the initial go-ahead to construct a project. After that, it takes another 605 days on average to get building permits for specific installations such as plumbing and electrical hookups.

Even a proposed apartment building that meets all of the city’s rules and would be automatically approved in many California cities takes more than two years to get the green light in San Francisco.

The result is that many of the workers the city needs to function — including teachers, police officers and firefighters — cannot find places to live there and must venture far beyond San Francisco. In some cases, low-wage workers have resorted to living in their vehicles or on the street because the city has too little affordable housing.

“People who were born and raised in the city of San Francisco cannot afford to stay and raise their own families there,” Mr. Velasquez said.

In one glaring example of San Francisco’s slow approval process, the Board of Supervisors two years ago stalled 495 apartments on a lot used for valet parking by Nordstrom shoppers in the center of the city. Now, as construction costs have spiraled, the project is stuck because it no longer pencils out financially — and the Nordstrom store has closed.

The city has tried to fund housing for workers in some instances, but even its own projects have been waylaid. A teacher housing complex near Golden Gate Park that was funded by a previous mayor in 2017 is not expected to have its first tenant until next fall — seven years after the project began.

California officials say the state needs 2.5 million more units of housing to ensure that homeless people have roofs over their heads and that people of all income levels can afford places to live. It has assigned targets for how much housing each city needs to build and has threatened to withhold state funding if they fail.

The state has charged San Francisco with building 82,000 new units of housing by 2031, and the city adopted a plan in January to achieve that. But nine months later, San Francisco has already veered off track.

To fulfill its promise, the city would need to build more than 10,000 new homes each year, including 5,800 units priced affordably. That means it should be approving 27 units every day, but it is averaging less than one.

Mr. Velasquez said that a host of new state laws intended to accelerate housing construction hadn’t been enough to fully reshape how San Francisco builds housing — and that in some cases, the city was flouting state laws. For example, the city’s slow pace of approving building permits has prevented San Francisco from fully complying with a new state law intended to increase affordable housing.

Moira O’Neill, a research scientist at U.C. Berkeley, said she talked with scores of experts to write the new report and found that many developers and architects wouldn’t work in San Francisco anymore because the city’s arduous process has added so many delays, resulting in soaring costs.

Mayor London Breed said in a statement that she agreed “wholeheartedly” with the state’s conclusions and was pushing to change how the city handles approvals and amend local laws to make housing easier to build.

In the report, the state specifies 18 actions that the city must take. They include eliminating the right of any individual to thwart projects that comply with city rules and expediting the process of getting building permits once a project is signed off on.

If the city does not change its practices, the state could eventually withhold state funding and revoke local control over development in San Francisco.

The state could even allow developers to construct whatever they want — even, say, a skyscraper in a residential neighborhood — as long as enough of its units are priced affordably.

Ms. O’Neill said that San Francisco had progressive, inclusionary rules, such as strong tenant protections and wide swaths of land zoned for dense housing. But it also has housing practices that have resulted in a city that excludes middle- and lower-income workers.

“It’s a progressive city, but there’s this contradiction,” she said. “It’s really, really important to highlight not just for California, but for the country, how it’s possible to use procedural rules to be exclusive and block the ability to house people.”

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In September 2022, a major data center operator based in the western suburbs of Chicago was facing a dilemma that has become all too common in today’s climate.

The delivery of the power distribution units, or PDUs, the operator relied on to keep centers running was extremely late, delaying the opening of a new 185K SF facility. This delay was costing time and money and keeping clients from gaining access to the data storage they needed. 

Thankfully for these operators, they were working with Clune Construction, a Chicago-based general contracting firm with offices in Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Over the last few years, Clune has adopted strategies for overcoming the supply chain issues that have been plaguing data center construction. 

After the client decided to select an alternative brand of PDUs in case its preferred choice didn’t arrive, Clune Senior Vice President and Senior MEP Coordinator Joe Zobel and his team devised a plan to prep the location so they could work with either solution. 

“We needed to accommodate multiple choices,” Zobel said. “This way if our client were to change their minds on which equipment to install, there would not be any cost impact. It gave them the freedom to make the right decision for their facility.”  

He added that there were 75 of these units, so it would have been very costly and time-consuming for this data center client if an adjustment to its new facility was needed to accommodate a last-minute decision to go with a different solution. Having freedom like this has become particularly important for data center operators, who have been dealing with significant project delays since the pandemic began, which led to major supply chain disruptions. 

While these disruptions have impacted every asset class, Zobel said that they can be particularly devastating for data centers, which are mission-critical facilities that can cost companies thousands of dollars for every second they aren’t operational. 

“As soon as construction is completed, data centers can net a lot of income for our clients,” he said. “So if there are delays and they can’t receive a month or two of rent from their clients, it can be significant. It can also make those who are renting the space consider other options.” 

The Clune team has decades of combined data center experience, so it is uniquely positioned to understand these challenges and devise strategies to overcome them. In recent years, these strategies have included developing new workflows to minimize the impact of delays. 

When Clune is awarded a project, its team analyzes the specified equipment and materials and is upfront with the client about the lead times it can expect for these items. If necessary, it proposes alternatives that can be purchased immediately to ensure the best price. 

“We adjust the bidding process to reflect what we are seeing in the design and the potential delays that may arise from it,” Zobel said. “We view our clients as partners, and the more we collaborate with them and understand what needs to happen and by what date, the better we can meet their schedule.” 

Zobel’s role as mechanical, electric and plumbing, or MEP, coordinator at Clune has also evolved as the company continues to work to meet its data center clients’ needs. He said that while Clune has always partnered with clients and taken responsibility for the equipment, now, when there appears to be no end in sight for supply chain delays, the team is going above and beyond to ensure clients are getting the materials they need. 

“We have weekly calls with all vendors and we get into every detail of their fabrication schedule. This helps confirm that they have all the necessary parts from their vendors to build the equipment,” Zobel said. “If they are having trouble obtaining a part, we then get on the phone with the engineer of record to decide if we can recommend an alternative  to keep the flow going.” 

His team also includes its trade partners on these calls to discuss installation methods with the vendors. The goal is to make sure that all parties completely understand how everything should be installed so Clune is aware of and can prepare for any changes that must be made at the factory.

Zobel said that in the past, factory witness tests where the Clune team would go and personally test every piece of equipment being manufactured were common practice. These visits can be expensive, and over the years, clients stopped requiring them. Now, however, as supply chain issues persist, Clune has brought this practice back, letting clients know which pieces of equipment are worth the trip to test in person. 

“Sometimes it’s because the information we’re receiving from the factory isn’t clear,” he said. “Other times, there are elements that could potentially pose field-related challenges if we don’t verify it prior to their arrival at our site. Our motto in these scenarios is, ‘Trust, but verify.’” 

As a result, Zobel said Clune and its factory partners have been able to strengthen their relationships. In the past, vendors have occasionally tried to resolve minor issues before sharing the problem with Clune or its clients, he explained. 

“We have created an environment so if they have to, they are able to give us bad news, even if the bad news is only a possibility. This way we can decide if we need to make a change in the field,” Zobel said. “There’s no penalty. We just want the truth. The more we know, the better we can mitigate the problem.” 

He said that to better plan for the future and the likelihood of continued supply delays, Clune is developing a database of lessons learned and things to look for so it has more details to share with its partners and its teams across the country. 

“The more information we have, the more tools we gain to help us make the best decisions for our clients,” he said. 

This article was produced in collaboration between Clune Construction and Studio B. Bisnow news staff was not involved in the production of this content.

Studio B is Bisnow’s in-house content and design studio. To learn more about how Studio B can help your team, reach out to studio@bisnow.com. 

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