Vol. I, No. 32 · San Francisco — Wednesday, September 2, 2026 · Price: one logged contact
BY CONSTANCE FEENEY, CITY HALL
Melinda Sarjapur is a real estate attorney at Reuben, Junius & Rose, one of San Francisco’s busiest land-use law firms. For more than a decade her name has shown up on more disclosed conversations with city officials than anyone else’s.
Since 2015, Sarjapur has logged 4,200 contacts with San Francisco officials under the city’s lobbying-disclosure law. That is more than 1,000 ahead of the next-busiest lobbyist, and 6.4 percent of every such contact any lobbyist in the city has filed since public disclosure began in 2010. Every one of her contacts falls under the same subject heading, Planning and Building Permits, and none falls under any other. That much concentrated access to the desk that decides what gets built matters beyond her own career: it is a standing line to Planning staff that most applicants never get.
She was still that busy in 2021, when her filings alone made up close to a quarter of the citywide total. Since then her count has fallen to a trickle. Just 26 were logged through the middle of 2026, even as the city’s overall lobbying total climbed back to normal.
Her clients ranged from major developers to private homeowners. Tishman Speyer was her largest account: $65,407 in fees across 384 recorded payments, and 783 separate contacts with city officials on the company’s behalf. A client logged only as “Abuyaghi, Roger and Mike” paid $24,815 across 145 separate contacts, for reasons the filings do not specify.
Most of her contacts went to Planning Department staff, not elected officials. The department appears twice in the record, under the names “City Planning” and “Planning,” accounting for 2,107 and 1,165 contacts respectively. Three staffers absorbed more of her attention than anyone else: Linda Ajello Hoagland, with 220 logged contacts; Rich Sucre, with 202; and Christopher May, with 111.
Sarjapur is still a partner at the firm, and her byline still runs on its legal updates. The most recent, from July 2, 2025, analyzes a change in state housing law, not a city permit fight. Her logged contacts with city officials, meanwhile, have all but stopped. The likeliest reading is a shift in her role, from case-by-case Planning Department filings to the kind of policy writing a state legislature reads. This desk could not confirm that directly with the firm. Call it a medium-confidence account built from a public paper trail, not an on-record explanation.
Mission Bay Sales Tax Climbs 57% Since 2019 as Citywide Total Falls 12%
Taxable sales fell in most San Francisco neighborhoods since 2019. Mission Bay, largely built since 2000, grew faster than all but two of the city’s 41 tracked areas, and the timing lines up with a wave of new filings tied to the Mission Rock development.
BY MEL ADLER, COMMERCE
In March 2024, a single filer using the name “Bamco” registered a San Francisco business address for all fourteen floors of one office building on the same day. The building sits on a street in Mission Bay that did not exist a few years earlier: 300 Toni Stone Crossing.
That filing is one thread in a citywide pattern. San Francisco’s taxable sales have fallen 11.6 percent since 2019. Mission Bay’s have climbed 56.9 percent, the third-fastest growth of the city’s 41 tracked neighborhoods. Only Japantown and the Presidio grew faster.
New business registrations there jumped from 269 in 2023, a five-year low, to 754 in 2024, the highest count on record. In 2025 it fell back to 484, close to where the neighborhood stood in 2019 (496). Completed building permits held flat over that same span, 164 in 2023 and 166 in 2024, before jumping to 261 in 2025. The registration spike landed a year ahead of the permit jump, and 2025’s registration count looks more like a pullback from 2024’s spike than a continued climb. The permit jump is still underway, though, and it points the same direction as the sales-tax numbers: a neighborhood still being built, not one recovering from a slump like most of the city.
Public filings trace a specific project behind the jump. Five parcel-owner LLCs for “Mission Rock” all registered at the same address, 1 Bush Street, on September 11, 2020. A utilities company tied to the site registered in March 2023, then again in January 2024 at two brand-new addresses, on Dr. Maya Angelou Lane and Third Street. By March 2024, all fourteen floors carried a same-day registration under that one name, Bamco. That is a batch filing, not confirmation that a single tenant occupies the building.
This desk did not confirm who currently occupies the tower, or independently verify that Mission Rock alone explains the neighborhood’s growth. The pattern here comes from the city’s own business-registration and sales-tax records, not a reported account of the project itself. Confidence is high on the numbers and lower on the specific cause: other developments nearby could be finishing on the same timeline. The count for all of 2026 will not be final until the new year. Through early September it stands at 214, on pace for roughly 320 by year’s end. That would land below both 2024’s spike and 2025, closer to the neighborhood’s pre-2024 pace than to a continued acceleration.
SOURCES & RECEIPTS
1. SF Ethics Commission, Lobbyist Activity Directory, DataSF s4ub-8j3t, queried September 2, 2026: 65,808 ContactOfPublicOfficial records since 2010 across 607 distinct lobbyists; Sarjapur, Melinda A. logged 4,200, 100 percent coded subject area “Planning and Building Permits”; second-busiest lobbyist, Frattin, Daniel, logged 3,151. Sarjapur’s contacts by year: 2015: 77, 2016: 112, 2017: 377, 2018: 431, 2019: 622, 2020: 549, 2021: 1,081, 2022: 565, 2023: 170, 2024: 96, 2025: 94, 2026 (through June 18): 26. Citywide contacts by year: 2015: 5,434, 2016: 6,909, 2017: 7,481, 2018: 6,587, 2019: 6,058, 2020: 3,506, 2021: 4,402, 2022: 3,631, 2023: 2,959, 2024: 4,497, 2025: 4,324, 2026 (partial): 2,543. Sarjapur’s 2021 share: 1,081 of 4,402 (24.6%). Record date range for Sarjapur: 2015-04-16 to 2026-06-18. 2. Same source, PaymentReceived records where lobbyistname=“Sarjapur, Melinda A.”: $425,625.00 total across 2,641 payments. By client: Tishman Speyer Properties, L.P., $65,407.16 across 384 payments (783 ContactOfPublicOfficial rows); The S. Hekemian Group, $56,256.50 across 393 payments (571 contacts); American Buddhist Cultural Society, $27,916.00 across 199 payments (282 contacts); client logged as “Abuyaghi/Roger and Mike,” $24,815.00 across 145 payments (235 contacts). 3. Same source, ContactOfPublicOfficial rows for Sarjapur grouped by departmentname: City Planning 2,107; Planning 1,165; Public Works 173; Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure 171; grouped by officialname: Ajello Hoagland, Linda 220; Sucre, Rich 202; May, Christopher 111. 4. Reuben, Junius & Rose, LLP firm website, reubenlaw.com, author search for “Sarjapur,” queried September 2, 2026: most recent post dated July 2, 2025, byline “Andrew J. Junius and Melinda Sarjapur,” subject a California state budget CEQA provision; Sarjapur credited as “Partner” on posts since 2023. Full queries and raw responses in receipts.json.
2. DataSF Registered Business Locations, g8m3-pdis, filtered dba_name like “Mission Rock,” queried September 2, 2026: “Bamco Mission Rock Floor 1” through “Floor 14,” fourteen separate registrations, all filed March 8, 2024 at 300 Toni Stone Xing, San Francisco; “Mission Rock” itself registered June 6, 2024 at the same address; “Chipotle #5956-Mission Rocks” registered July 10, 2026 at 365 Toni Stone Xing Bldg F. 2. DataSF Sales Tax by Analysis Neighborhood, w6qv-daq5, queried September 2, 2026, all 41 neighborhoods, 2015Q1–2026Q1: citywide 2019 total $166,629,280.53; trailing four quarters (2025Q2–2026Q1) $147,222,052.75 (−11.6%). Mission Bay 2019 total $4,412,579.81; trailing four quarters $6,922,237.23 (+56.9%). Ranked by percent change, 2019 to trailing four quarters: Japantown +62.2% (1st), Presidio +57.1% (2nd), Mission Bay +56.9% (3rd of 41). Mission Bay by quarter: 2015Q1 $813,259.98 … 2021Q1 $251,937.23 (low point) … 2025Q2 $1,992,796.15 (high point) … 2026Q1 $1,569,608.12. Full 45-quarter series in receipts.json. 3. DataSF Registered Business Locations, g8m3-pdis, filtered neighborhoods_analysis_boundaries=“Mission Bay,” grouped by year of location_start_date: 2022: 356, 2023: 269, 2024: 754, 2025: 484, 2026 (through September 2): 214. DataSF Building Permits, i98e-djp9, same neighborhood filter, grouped by year of completed_date: 2022: 313, 2023: 164, 2024: 166, 2025: 261, 2026 (partial): 140. 4. Same business-registration source: “Mission Rock Parcel A Owner, L.L.C.,” “Parcel B Owner,” “Parcel G Owner,” and “Horizontal Sub (Phase 1) L.L.C.” all registered September 11, 2020 at 1 Bush St Ste 500; “Mission Rock Utilities, Inc.” registered March 1, 2023 at 1011 3rd St / 1 Bush St Ste 500, then re-registered January 26, 2024 at 1090 Dr Maya Angelou Ln and 1051 3rd St Bldg B. Full queries and raw responses in receipts.json.
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