Vol. I, No. 47 · San Francisco — Wednesday, October 7, 2026 · Price: one-for-one, eventually

BY GWEN OKAFOR, HOUSING DESK

The low apartment blocks along Gonzalez Drive at Parkmerced date to 1942, by the complex’s own filing to the Rent Board. On February 10, 2011, the city’s Planning Commission voted 4 to 3 to recommend tearing down every one of the complex’s 1,538 low-rise apartments and building the neighborhood over.

Fifteen years later, all of them stand. Not one building in the plan has gone up. The complex’s latest report to the Rent Board, a count of every rent-controlled unit on the property, lists 3,162 units and 383 of them empty: 12 percent, against 4.4 percent across all 133,320 rent-controlled units in the file. Parkmerced is 3,221 homes on 152 acres beside Lake Merced, built from 1941 to 1951, the largest apartment complex in San Francisco. The file shows the complex sat one-fifth empty through 2023 and 2024 and filled back up during the year a court-appointed receiver ran it. It does not say why, and neither can this story.

The 2011 decision was a contract. The Board of Supervisors approved a development agreement with Parkmerced Investors on May 24, 2011. It let the owner demolish the 1,538 low-rise rent-controlled apartments, keep the 1,683 units in the eleven towers, and build 5,679 more, for 8,900 homes in all. Every displaced household was promised a new unit, under rent control, at the rent it already paid. The agreement runs thirty years. A civil grand jury that spring titled its report on the deal “Government-by-Developer.” The four yes votes were Michael Antonini, Gwyneth Borden, Rodney Fong and Ron Miguel. Kathrin Moore, Hisashi Sugaya and Christina Olague voted no.

The paperwork kept moving. The city approved a first phase of about 1,668 units on June 3, 2015. On November 28, 2017, it approved final maps, the last subdivision step before building, for the first building sites at 310 Arballo Drive and 405 Serrano Drive. Construction was to begin in 2016. It never did.

The money moved the other way. The owner, Maximus Real Estate Partners, refinanced in 2019 with a $1.5 billion senior mortgage and a $275 million second loan. The senior loan came due in December 2024 and went unpaid. In March 2025, San Francisco Superior Court put the complex in receivership, under a court-appointed manager, Douglas Wilson Companies. In July of this year, Yellowstone Real Estate Investments foreclosed on the four first-phase building sites, which carry permission to build about 1,668 units. It took them with three credit bids of $10 million each; a credit bid is the lender bidding its own debt rather than paying cash. The debt was a construction loan made in 2022 that had grown from $101 million to $199 million without a building to show for it. Maximus had defaulted on that loan too, in March 2026.

Since 2022, every owner of a rent-controlled building in San Francisco has had to report each unit to the Rent Board once a year: whether it is occupied, since when, and at what rent, in $250 bands. Parkmerced’s filings run like this. In 2023, 639 of 3,212 units vacant, 19.9 percent. In 2024, 18.8 percent. In 2025 the complex was filed twice, in February and in June, either side of the receivership order, at 19.3 and 19.5 percent. The filing signed in December 2025 shows 383 vacant of 3,162, 12.1 percent. The share across the whole file fell too, from 7.2 to 4.4 percent.

But the file grew from 111,513 units in 2024 to 132,088 in 2025 as more owners filed, so part of that decline is who started reporting. Among the city’s neighborhoods in the 2026 file, only Chinatown reports a higher vacant share than Parkmerced, at 13.2 percent. Lakeshore, the city’s name for the district that holds the complex, is at 10.5 percent, and the Tenderloin at 9.8. The whole of Parkmerced’s drop, 620 vacant units to 383, falls between the June and December 2025 filings, under the receiver. Those two counts also sit either side of a fall move-in, with San Francisco State’s campus adjoining the complex, so June and December are not quite the same measurement.

The empty units are spread through the complex. Of the 1,140 units the filing dates to 1942, low-rise apartments of the kind marked for demolition, 134 are vacant, 11.8 percent. The file dates only 1,140 of the 1,538; the rest sit among 798 units with no build year. Of the 1,224 units dated 1949 and 1950, the towers that stay, 124 are vacant, 10.1 percent. The 798 undated units are the emptiest group: 125 vacant, 15.7 percent.

The people in the other 2,779 units are an old crowd by city standards. Tenants in 777 of them, 28 percent, moved in before 2011. Citywide, 19 percent of rent-controlled tenants have been in place that long. Households that arrived before 2000 report a median rent band of $1,501 to $1,750. Those who arrived in 2024 or later, 891 units, report $3,001 to $3,250. The complex’s median band, $2,751 to $3,000, sits above the file’s $2,501 to $2,750. But the bands are per unit, not per bedroom, and more than half of Parkmerced’s occupied units have two or three bedrooms.

The counts are the property’s own, signed under a city ordinance. The refill is real: 602 occupied units took a new tenant in 2025, more than in any other year in the filing, while a receiver ran the complex. Softer: the build-year split leaves 798 units unlabeled, and the file says nothing about why a fifth of the complex sat empty for two years. Units may have been held for a demolition that kept not coming, or they may simply not have rented. A neighbor would name San Francisco State first, since its campus adjoins the complex. This paper has not checked that, or the condition of the buildings; neither is in the file. Confidence is high on the counts, moderate on the split, low on the cause.

The agreement the commission sent to the Board that February night still governs the land. Yellowstone bought parcels that already carry permission to build, and that permission is the 2011 plan. It has fifteen years to run.

Thirty-six officials, from the fire chief to school board members, wrote down $14,700 in Warriors tickets, dinners and gala seats on the yearly disclosure forms the state requires. The gifts peak on the arena’s own calendar. The most, nine worth $1,215, went to Marily Mondejar of the five-member Mission Bay land body that approved Chase Center’s plans in 2015. Her three 2018 gifts total $475 against that year’s $470 state cap; her filing does not name an exemption, and the minutes of the 2015 vote are not online, so whether she was in the room is unconfirmed.

BY CONSTANCE FEENEY, CITY HALL

On January 17, 2017, the Warriors broke ground on their arena in Mission Bay. That afternoon the Commission on Community Investment and Infrastructure met at City Hall. It is the city body that oversees Mission Bay’s land and approved the arena’s plans. Its executive director announced the groundbreaking to the room. Its vice chair, Marily Mondejar, reported a $100 gift from the team dated that day: “Groundbreaking Ceremony and Lunch.”

Since 2014, San Francisco officials have reported 64 gifts from the Golden State Warriors on their annual statements of economic interests, the disclosure forms state law requires. The gifts come to $14,700 in tickets, jerseys, dinners and gala seats to 36 people, from the fire chief to school board members. The two bodies whose votes the arena needed took 25 of them, worth $5,353. Fifteen went to that five-member commission, which certified the arena’s environmental report on November 3, 2015. Ten went to the Board of Supervisors and its aides, which upheld that certification over an appeal on December 8, 2015.

Each gift was legal and declared, and the state cap from a single source in 2015 was $460. That is what makes the ledger readable. A team’s hospitality, written down by the people who accepted it, draws a map of the government that decided its building. It shows proximity, not influence.

The Board of Supervisors and its aides took the most money, ten gifts worth $2,985. One was $488 in Chase Center gala tickets reported by Supervisor Norman Yee. The Planning Commission took four, among them a $500 game ticket reported by Kathrin Moore in April 2019. Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson reported three.

The dates mostly follow the arena. The Warriors bought the Mission Bay site on April 19, 2014; the first three gifts in the file came that fall. Eight came in 2017, the groundbreaking year. Fifteen, worth $3,343, came in 2019, the year Chase Center opened with Metallica and the San Francisco Symphony on September 6. Three days before that, on September 3, the commission’s chair, Mara Rosales, reported $130 for the “Stevie Wonder/Opening Gala” and $114 for dinner. Commissioner Miguel Bustos reported the same pair. Port Commissioner Kimberly Brandon reported a $144 opening dinner.

No official reported a Warriors gift in 2024, a year in which the whole file logged 426 gifts from all sources, so the zero is not a gap in the filing system. Two did in 2025. The one bump off the arena’s calendar is 2023: eight gifts, five of them tickets priced identically at $316.26, three for a February 13 game and two for a game on May 2.

Ms. Mondejar’s nine gifts run from a $250 “luncheon and game tickets” in October 2014 to two $200 sets of game tickets in 2018. Her three 2018 gifts total $475 on her filing. The state cap on gifts from one source that year was $470. The state’s rules exempt some things an official may still list, such as admission to an event where the official plays a ceremonial role, and her filing does not say which rule each item fell under. The Board of Supervisors confirmed her reappointment to the commission in 2014 for a term ending November 3, 2018. The minutes of the commission’s November 3, 2015 vote were not online tonight, so whether she was in the room for it is not in the record this paper has.

Against the whole file, 3,373 gifts from 578 filers since 2014, the Warriors rank third by officials reached, behind the San Francisco Host Committee and Bloomberg Philanthropies. The Giants gave fewer gifts for more money: 17 worth $9,462 to 11 officials. The 49ers gave nine.

The ledger shows proximity, plainly. The bodies whose approvals the arena needed reported more of the team’s gifts than any others, and the gifts peaked on the arena’s own calendar. It does not show influence. The commission’s 2015 vote was unanimous and came before most of the gifts; so did the Board’s. Confidence is high on the counts, which re-ran after the file’s duplicate rows were removed, and moderate on the department labels, which are the filers’ own.

The last Warriors gift in the file is a $500 ticket reported by Film Commissioner Roberto Hernandez, dated March 20, 2025.

ON THE CALENDAR

SkyPilot AI Infra Meetup with H Company. An evening of technical talks on the machinery behind large AI models: how teams train them on big fleets of graphics chips, serve them, and keep the bills down. 287 people had registered as of October 6, up 224 since the page appeared on September 22, and the room is full; the host is admitting from a waitlist as spots open. It is a one-off on the SkyPilot Community calendar rather than a recurring series, with H Company and LMSYS Org among the four listed hosts.

Thursday, October 8, 5:30 PM · DG717, Yerba Buena · free · lu.ma/3iobavjj

From the desk’s calendar: public Luma pages, counts as of October 6, 2:01 AM. Tell the desk about the gathering it missed.

SOURCES & RECEIPTS

1. Planning Commission, minutes of the February 10, 2011 special meeting (default.sfplanning.org/meetingarchive, page 2681), read October 7, 2026: Motion 18269 (certifying the final EIR), Motion 18270, Resolution 18271, Motion 18272 and Resolution 18273 (recommending the Development Agreement), each AYES Antonini, Borden, Fong, Miguel, NAYES Moore, Sugaya, Olague; the commission’s response to the 2010–11 Civil Grand Jury (“voted 4 – 3”). Development Agreement as recorded (sfplanning.s3.amazonaws.com): Recital A.1, “One-for-one replacement of 1,538 rent-controlled dwelling units”; 1,683 retained + 1,538 replacement + 5,679 new = 8,900; Section 1.4, term thirty years; replacement rent equal to the rent at relocation. Legistar Web API (webapi.legistar.com/v1/sfgov): File 110300, Ordinance 89-11; M11-83 affirming the EIR, May 24, 2011; Resolution 339-11 responding to the Civil Grand Jury report “The Parkmerced Vision: Government-by-Developer” (3,221 units); Ordinance 183-16 (street vacation, Subphases 1A and 1B); M17-190, 191, 192 (Final Maps 8530–8532, Block 1 at 310 Arballo, Block 6 at 405 Serrano, November 28, 2017). sfplanning.org/project/parkmerced: Board approval May 24, 2011; Phase 1 approved June 3, 2015, about 1,668 units; 152 acres; 3,221 units; built 1941–1951.2. Rent Board Housing Inventory, DataSF gdc7-dmcn (owner-reported; buildings of ten or more units since July 2022), data as of October 6, 2026, queried October 7: Lakeshore rows filtered to Parkmerced’s streets, assessor blocks 7308–7344. Units and vacant by filing year: 2023 3,212/639; 2024 3,161/595; 2025 (February) 3,161/611 and (June) 3,182/620; 2026 (signed December 2025) 3,162/383, of which 2,779 occupied by a non-owner. All units in the file, vacant: 2023 7,767 of 107,886; 2024 8,363 of 111,513; 2025 8,011 of 132,088; 2026 5,898 of 133,320. By year built, 2026: 1942, 1,140 units, 134 vacant; 1949–50, 1,224 and 124; no year, 798 and 125. Tenure: 777 of 2,779 occupied units with a move-in year before 2011; citywide 23,135 of 119,968; 891 moved in 2024–2026, 602 in 2025; 286 with no date. Median rent bands as stated; file-wide median $2,501–$2,750 over 117,802 units with a dollar band. Bedrooms, 2026 occupied units: 1,412 two-bedroom, 1,281 one-bedroom, 86 three-bedroom. Neighborhoods, 2026: Chinatown 507 vacant of 3,847 (13.2%); Lakeshore 421 of 4,002 (10.5%); Tenderloin 922 of 9,419 (9.8%). Signature months: 2023 February–April; 2024 March–April; 2025 February and June; 2026 December 2025. Queries in receipts.json.3. San Francisco Standard, July 22, 2026 (“Yellowstone takes over Parkmerced development site in foreclosure”): four parcels, about 1,668 entitled units, three $10 million credit bids, $101 million construction loan (2022) grown to $199 million, Maximus default on it March 2026, $1.5 billion senior and $275 million mezzanine loans refinanced 2019, construction “supposed to start in 2016.” CRE Daily brief on the receivership: $1.5 billion loan due December 2024, lenders Barclays and Citigroup, receivership approved by San Francisco Superior Court March 2025, receiver Douglas Wilson Cos. San Francisco Standard, June 16, 2026: no ground broken on the expansion.

2. Form 700 Schedule D, gifts, SF Ethics Commission e-filings, DataSF y9be-fypm, updated October 2, 2026, queried October 7: 7,082 rows, every row filed twice (ids suffixed -1 and -2); deduplicated on filer, gift date, amount and source to 3,373 gifts, 578 filers, $1,599,666. Team = any source naming the Warriors except its foundation (eleven spellings merged; three foundation gifts excluded): 64 gifts, $14,700.13, 36 filers, 2014–2025. By body: Commission on Community Investment and Infrastructure 15 ($2,368); Board of Supervisors and aides 10 ($2,985); Board of Education and SFUSD 5; Planning Commission 4 ($1,418); Fire Department 3. By year: 2014 3, 2015 5, 2016 3, 2017 8, 2018 10, 2019 15 ($3,342.85), 2020 4, 2021 2, 2022 4, 2023 8, 2024 0, 2025 2. Named items: Yee, September 3, 2019, $488, “Chase Center Gala Tickets”; Moore, April 24, 2019, $500, “Basketball Game”; Nicholson, January 16, 2020, $150, November 3, 2021, $350, December 2, 2022, $316.26; Rosales, September 3, 2019, $130 and $114; Bustos, September 9, 2019, $130 and $114; Brandon, September 3, 2019, $144; Hernandez, March 20, 2025, $500, “Ticket.” Giants 17 gifts, $9,462, 11 filers; 49ers 9, $430, 9 (the 49er Foundation’s one gift, $2,200, excluded as the Warriors’ foundation was). Whole file by gift year, deduplicated: 2023 520, 2024 426, 2025 383. 2023 Warriors rows at $316.26: Kilgore, Matsuda, Smeallie, February 13, 2023; Burch, Walton, May 2, 2023. Board of Supervisors, Legistar Web API: File 150990, hearing on the appeal of the certification; Motion M15-178 affirming the commission’s certification, passed December 8, 2015; reversing motions (Files 150992, 150993) killed. Ranking by distinct recipients under each source’s main spelling: Host Committee 35, Bloomberg Philanthropies 30, Warriors 28. Arena dates: Wikipedia, “Chase Center,” read October 7, 2026 (site bought April 19, 2014; groundbreaking January 17, 2017; opened September 6, 2019; 18,064 seats); KTVU, November 3, 2015, “SF commission certifies environmental report for Warriors arena” (unanimous). OCII minutes, January 17, 2017 (sfocii.org): letterhead lists Rosales chair, Mondejar vice chair, Bustos, Pimentel, Singh; “Ms. Bohee announced that the Warriors were holding their groundbreaking ceremony that day.”5. Mondejar’s nine gifts, by filing: October 22, 2014, $250; March 6, 2015, $100; November 14, 2015, $150; January 17, 2017, $100; May 31, 2017, $100; June 8, 2017, $40; March 25, 2018, $200; October 10, 2018, $75; November 10, 2018, $200; total $1,215. Board of Supervisors Motion M14-0210: reappointment to Seat 2, term ending November 3, 2018. Gift limits: FPPC, Gifts and Honoraria page and State Gift Fact Sheet, read October 7, 2026 ($630 for 2025–2026; $590 in 2024; gifts of $50 or more reported; ceremonial-role admissions excluded under Regulation 18942); 2015–2016 limit $460 and 2017–2018 limit $470 per the FPPC’s biennial adjustments as reported by Atkinson, Andelson, Loya, Ruud & Romo, October 11, 2016. OCII minutes for November 3, 2015 returned 404 at sfocii.org; the November 17, 2015 minutes list Ms. Mondejar absent that day. Queries in receipts.json.

The Frisconian · Published from forty-nine square miles surrounded by reality · thefrisconian.com · @deaconsanti