I'm going to call to order a special meeting of the Berkeley City Council today is Tuesday, March 10th, 2026, and it is 4.07 p.m.

Clerk, could you please start us off with a roll?

Okay.

Councilmember Kisarwani is currently absent.

Councilmember Taplin is currently absent.

Councilmember Bartlett is currently absent.

Councilmember Tregum.

Present.

O'Keefe.

I am here.

Blackaby here.

Luna Para.

Here.

Humbert present and Mary She.

Here.

Corma's present.

Very good.

All right.

So we have a very special edition of special meeting today.

We only have one item.

It's the Berkeley Economic Dashboards update.

So I am going to pass it over to Elinor Hollander, who's gonna start us off.

Good afternoon, Mayor.

Thank you for that introduction.

Good afternoon, Council members.

It's nice to be with you all today.

I'm Eleanor Hollander.

I'm the manager of the Office of Economic Development here at the City of Berkeley.

We are a division of the city manager's office.

I'm here tonight with my colleagues from OED, as we call it.

Vincent McCoy, Roel Cook, and Liz Redman Cleveland.

Tonight's presentation covers data from the calendar year 2025.

It also has a companion publication, our commercial district dashboards, which are in your packet and online.

And we have a number of topics to get into, and I've been waiting to say this since the year closed.

Let's do the numbers.

Good afternoon, Council members.

Unemployment increased modestly year over year in Berkeley and stayed stable across the county and the state.

Berkeley's unemployment rate rose to 4.7%, up from 4.4% last year, matching 4.7% countywide and lower than what's being observed of 5.4% statewide.

Across the East Bay, total employment declined slightly.

Job growth was concentrated in education and health services, along with smaller gains in arts and government sectors.

At the same time, accommodation and food services, manufacturing, and tech-related services saw declines.

These broader regional shifts shape the operating environment for Berkeley businesses.

But Berkeley's employment base remains diverse and anchored by major institutions.

And that brings us to Berkeley's major employers, which play an important part in stabilizing our local economy.

Our top 25 employers, based on number of employees, are shown alphabetically on the left.

All of them have more than 100 employees, with the largest topping nearly 14,500, if you can guess which one that is.

Five are in the public sector, of which three are major educational institutions.

Four are in the healthcare sector.

There are also a few large private sector corporations in Berkeley, notably Bayer.

And new to the top 25 list in 2025, Form Energy and Boyczyk Bagels.

Form Energy is located in West Berkeley, and it does RD for batteries.

This diverse employment base supports long-term economic resilience, and these major employers not only support thousands of jobs directly, but they also generate secondary employment through local spending, contracting, and foot traffic in our commercial districts.

So now we're going to talk about the first of many sectors that shape the Berkeley economy.

First being our hospitality sector.

Hospitality and visitation remain important drivers of Berkeley's economy in 2025.

The sector performed well relative to neighboring cities.

Berkeley ranked first in hotel occupancy and second in average daily room rate, behind only San Francisco, and was one of the few regional markets to see growth in demand, occupancy, and revenue.

Performance does vary across individual properties, with a small number of hotels still navigating financial and operational challenges following the pandemic.

The city continues to monitor these situations while working with partners like Visit Berkeley to support visitation and demand.

Overall, Berkeley welcomed about 1.6 million overnight visitors.

Hotel occupancy increased slightly, while the average daily room rate rose to a dollar 190 a night.

These trends generated more than 8.3 million in transient occupancy tax revenue for the city.

Local events and programs continue to support visitation.

Last year, Berkeley Restaurant Week featured more than 50 restaurants.

That returns April 2nd, so save the date.

The Bioneers Conference brought nearly 2,000 visitors to downtown Berkeley for the third consecutive year and returns on March 26th.

And the Berkeley Bucks program generated more than $16,000 in spending at local businesses.

So together, these efforts help support restaurants, hotels, and small businesses across the city.

Liz.

Thanks, Roel.

We're turning now to look at a snapshot of our innovation ecosystem, which is comprised of about 370, what we refer to as innovation sector businesses, which are defining strength of the Berkeley economy.

You can see the map here, which you can dive into and really investigate on Berkeley Startup Cluster.com, the startups page, where they're divided by council district and also color coded by industry sector.

Primarily you see software businesses or others that can do RD in an office space along the SHATEC corridor here running north and south, with the larger the bubble indicating the number of firms located at that address.

And then you see south of campus, a big cluster, in this particular picture, you're seeing it show the bubble at the old Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, which is now the Bacar Bioingenuity Hub, which is housing at any given time between 35 to 40 life science or biotech companies.

We're also seeing a lot of biotech happening west of San Pablo Avenue in those clusters of blue, as well as the clusters of purple dots, which are the hardware companies, which are doing everything from sensors, robotics, and quantum computers.

Another way to represent this is shown on the right hand side of the slide, which is the pie chart, where we do our best to divide the industry sector into one or another.

So for example, if you're an AI company that's helping achieve healthcare aims, you could either be classified as software or as healthcare, but we had to put you somewhere.

That being said, we did see for the first time our healthcare, life science companies that are designing products and solutions to improve human health be on par with our historically largest sector, which are the software companies.

So those are the two biggest, with the clean tech or climate tech companies, which are developing transformative solutions to address global warming and resource constraints on our environment, and hardware, the companies I mentioned earlier that make physical devices, primarily in West Berkeley, as our next two largest sectors.

Overall, Berkeley is really a city of startups.

And we are proud to be home to the university that has been ranked now by Pitchbook for three years running as number one in the globe for venture capital backed startups that it has spun out of the university.

It's also number one for the overall number of graduates and undergraduates who have gone on to form companies that attain venture capital, and a little shout out for the females that graduated out of that university and have venture capital backed startups.

Clearly, we are lucky to be home of this startup-producing university, which correlates closely with the composition of our innovation sector, being vast majority early stage companies that are still trying to figure out their product market fit, how they're going to go to market, and develop a prototype.

That's that 86% number shown in the middle.

We also want to point out that probably in large part due to the collaboration that we have with the campus and their focus on innovation and entrepreneurship, we've seen the year-over-year increases steadily rise over the last decade in terms of the number of startups you can find in Berkeley, California.

Though we did see a very small dip year over year from 2024 to 2025 in the number of startups locally, and that aligns very closely with the trend we saw of skittish markets making it very hard for these early stage companies to raise capital.

Speaking of capital raised, in 2025, we expected that dip that I just mentioned to have a more profound impact on our numbers, but actually we had 88 startups raise theater venture capital, which is higher than in 2024, and cumulatively cumulatively they raised 1.5 billion dollars, which again is higher than it was in 2024.

However, that 1.5 billion, more than 50% of it was concentrated in three very large deals.

Those were in Regetti, a quantum computer company that is scaling their quantum work and raised $350 million in a second public offering on the NASDAQ, located in West Berkeley, and then two companies, Cobold Metals and Terrabase, that are located in downtown Berkeley, both of which have designed AI and robotics-related solutions to accelerate our clean energy transition.

I also want to point out that the capital coming into our economy isn't all coming from angel investors and venture capitalists.

It's also coming from other aspects of government, state and federal, primarily.

And in fact, 40 million dollars came into the Berkeley economy from government RD grants to 16 companies, coming from everything from the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Health, the Department of Energy, and the U.S.

Air Force.

And I'll also just mention when any startup forms, they're always thinking about their long-term exit strategy.

And we have five companies get merged or acquired last year in their exit round.

We're also proud to announce that this is the first time ever that we've collaborated with the campus on really trying to quantify how all of the landscape that they refer to as their innovation and entrepreneurship or I and E ecosystem or the initiatives on campus that primarily, as is shown here in the blue part of the pie, help companies with ideation and formation of startups, translates into real economic impact for our community here in Berkeley, California.

What they cataloged through a partnership cross-disciplinary group of students with leadership from the Institute for Business Innovation at Haas Business School was that the hundred innovation entrepreneurship initiatives on campus have translated into about a hundred and eighty UC Berkeley affiliated startups located here in the city.

Those startups produce about 500 to a little over 600 jobs when you count into their indirect and induced effects, like their vendors and suppliers, because for every one job in the sector, it looks like there's about two total people employed because of those startups.

And the startups pay very high average annual salaries of upward of 200,000 a year.

So overall, that contribution to the Berkeley economy is somewhere in the ballpark of 200 to 250 million dollars, and we hope to see that only continue to grow.

We also think here in the Office of Economic Development, not just about the jobs and the investment that comes into our community, but what kind of spaces they're gonna occupy when they're able to hire people and scale their technologies.

And so we want to see them locate in the many labs that have been built here in Berkeley, California.

Unfortunately, we do continue to track higher than our nearby peers in Emeryville and the overall Bay Area average in terms of our life science uh commercial real estate vacancy rate, or those labs that are still on the market and not least.

This 51.6 percent, however, I'll mention, while it sounds very high, is in part because of the actual equation having a new aspect of its denominator, the Berkeley Commons property, which is about 540,000 square feet in West Berkeley.

That's put some downward pressure on the prices being asked per square foot for lab real estate, and we expect the market to continue to adjust to reflect what we're seeing in terms of uh supply and demand.

However, I will just point out for you, lest this scare you, this is on par with what you're seeing nationally and regionally in terms of life science leasing.

And now we'll talk about office market trends.

Uh office conditions across the East Bay remain mixed.

Berkeley's office availability remains stable year over year and significantly lower than nearby markets, where availability reaches 30% in Oakland and 34% in Emoryville.

Asking rents in Berkeley held steady at $3.38 per square foot in 2025, while rents are higher in Oakland and Emeryville.

Berkeley's office market reflects its older building stock, smaller floor plates, and limited class A inventory.

And then we'll talk about our new buildings or new commercial development activity.

Uh, it continues to shape Berkeley's landscape.

You see, Berkeley has expanded its presence downtown and is now the largest rate payer to the downtown Berkeley bid.

New research and academic facilities are under construction, like the Innovative Genomics Institute and the Baker Labs for Energy and Materials.

You can see that in the two photos on the left side of the slide.

Both will be part of the new Berkeley Innovation Zone.

And while private investment is helping reactivate long vacant retail spaces, such as the Shaddock Plaza block, which was recently purchased by Flying Horse Investments, and they have shared that they already have a lot of interest in the spaces with five or six LOIs.

Good afternoon.

Um the topic I'm going to talk about is ground floor vacancy throughout the city.

As you'll see on this chart, at the bottom of it, it shows that the vacancy rate for the city has dropped to about 6.3% over about 7.5% last year.

We did see some changes in areas in terms of increases in vacancies, such as San Pablo, telegraph districts.

But overall, you'll notice that throughout the city there have been a downward trend in vacancies.

This means that planning department means that licensing to department means that different part within the city have done a good job of making sure that they get people through the process of getting a business license, getting their zoning correct, and being able to open a shop in the commercial district.

The second piece I want to talk about is retail.

And what you'll see here is that 31% of the ground floor space within the city of Berkeley is occupied by retail.

In West Berkeley, that number jumps up to about 46%.

We are a retail city, and it means that throughout the city, as you see these commercial districts, you see these properties opening up, we need to continue to encourage retail as a part of our economy.

In that economy, you'll see that 13% of the citywide occupancy is in the food and beverages industry.

This means that people are getting out of their houses and purchasing food, going to restaurants, and enjoying the nightlife.

Excuse me.

The other thing I want to point out is that our concentration of office space tends to be in downtown, West Berkeley, and the San Pablo Corridor.

This reflects the opportunity for increased development and the fact that we actually have a number of developments that are online that people are being able to lease and put their businesses in.

Our expectation is this trend is going to pretty much hold steady in the current year.

But there is a lot of pressure on retail, as you can see, and on offices, as you heard, and so we will continue to monitor that.

Thank you.

Turning now to sales tax.

Over time.

You can see Berkeley has notched steady gains in this area every year.

2022 was particularly exuberant with some pent-up demand after the pandemic.

But again, uh sales tax receipts continue to increase in Berkeley.

This also tracks with what we're seeing at the county where receipts are also up.

The state itself is a little bit down.

Looking at the composition of Berkeley sales tax is this graph.

The blue line represents retail, as Vincent mentioned, we are a city of retail.

Retail receipts compose 40% of our sales tax pie, so to speak, but not to be outdone, food and beverage, uh pun intended, is catching up and eating retail's lunch at 37% of our sales tax composition.

That's the orange line there on the graph.

That is different than some other cities.

Many other cities, retail really runs away with the composition of sales tax, but including in Berkeley, uh, we love our food and beverage, and it shows in the sales tax receipts.

Uh, the only other thing I'll point out on this graph is the yellow line.

Um, that's personal services.

You see, it's taken a very big jump in 2025.

The um sales tax on gasoline and transportation is rolled up in that line.

So when fuel prices fluctuate, the sales tax collected on them does as well.

And so that's what you're seeing with that bounce.

Turning now to housing development, uh, in 2025, over 1600 housing units, actually closer to 1700 housing units were approved.

Uh this map uh demonstrates a lot of those are along our downtown corridor and adjacent to campus in the Southside neighborhoods.

Uh, we also have uh some images of some of the future development uh that's been entitled and is on the way.

Um these new residential projects represent new residents and community members who will activate our commercial districts.

Speaking of residential, taking a look at some of the housing costs and market trends over time.

Uh Berkeley's median price for a single family home in December of 2025 was 1.265 million dollars.

On the table here with the comps, it's second only to Piedmont.

Um, inventory continues to remain strong with sales.

Uh it's indicated as a hot market on many of the multiple listing services, and uh houses typically sell for 57% over their list prices.

Now, if you'll permit me for a few more minutes, I wanted to spend a little bit of time speaking about how OED, Office of Economic Development, supports economic vitality.

I know you all uh the budget is top of mind for all of us, and um I really want to point out how our work wraps around a number of the elements of our general fund.

Business stabilization and retention speaks to business license receipts.

We have over 13,000 business license holders in the city of Berkeley, and so making sure we're working with the folks that are the holders of those business licenses and making sure they're having a welcome and important experience in Berkeley is and seamless experience in Berkeley is important to us.

Commercial corridor and district vitality speaks to our sales tax receipts.

We want to have vibrant corridors where people come and shop and spend their money.

Hospitality and visitation support is directly related to our transient occupancy tax or TOT, that is uh visitors or the heads in beds tax.

You come, you stay in a hotel, you pay a tax.

Um, we work closely with our convention and visitors bureau visit Berkeley to make sure the visitors to our city have a good experience.

And the fourth pillar, our innovation and talent pipeline is this innovation sector we've been talking quite a bit about.

Uh that speaks to capital raised, wealth creation, and new business starts in our community.

And of course, supporting these companies as they grow, and lease space or purchase space in Berkeley contributes to our bottom line here in Berkeley.

To amplify some of the work that we do with sustaining the business community, you'll see on this chart the logos of the various business associations, business improvement districts, and merchant associations that operate throughout the city in Berkeley.

In 2025, here are some of the things that we that were achieved by these organizations.

One was Elmwood Expanded.

It moved further south to include more businesses.

They noted that at their annual meeting, instead of the expect expected 32 businesses that attended, they had 50 to attend.

That's a showcase of what they've done there.

Solano was able for the first time to create its own website and set its own budget for marketing separate from the Solano Avenue Association.

The city decided rightfully to allocate funding to both Gilman to the Lauren District so they could use those funds over a three-year period to improve their operations and set forth a plan for further growth.

And currently, um, and you'll hear about this, of course.

We work with the downtown and the telegraph business improvement districts on their plans for their tenure renewals, which are big drivers for the economy to Berkeley.

And so what I want what we want to point out is that through these efforts, we are helping the different commercial districts and commercial associations throughout the city of Berkeley sustain their efforts to keep traffic and keep people coming to their shops.

The other thing I want to point out is that in 2025, we held a small business forum, and one of the key things that came out of that was access to capital.

Businesses still need and still demand more access to capital.

Currently, the City of Berkeley operate two loan funds that have 25 active loans, totaling about a million dollars out in the street.

This means that businesses that you can see on this chart have the capital they need to keep in business to keep employees working, and we expect that the decision that we was made to transfer one of the loan programs over to working solutions will make it easier for people to pay their loans, to get technical assistance to keep them on compliance with their loans and continue to grow their businesses.

The Discovered in Berkeley marketing campaign highlights local businesses across a range of sectors and helps connect residents and visitors with Berkeley-based companies.

Since its launch in 2019, the campaign has generated over 4.6 million impressions across digital platforms.

Feature stories performed especially well, including Magnetic Tides, a Berkeley company developing a new non-invasive stroke treatment, which was the most viewed article in the series on Berkeley side, followed by the feature on Rainbow Donuts, Lavender Bakery, and Sweet Bites Bakery, because we all love our sweet treats.

Overall, the campaign is increasing visibility for Berkeley businesses and helping drive people to explore and support local establishments.

The discovered in Berkeley hashtag was used in over 6,000 posts in social media, and we encourage you to tag your posts and help more people discover what's great about Berkeley.

Here in the Office of Economic Development, we try not only to help businesses to grow, but to grow in a way that respects the constraints on natural resources and our global challenges around climate change.

And thus we do that by working with the California Green Business Network, specifically the Alameda County Green Business Program, to help businesses save water, conserve electricity, and reduce the amount of waste that goes to the landfill.

And we're really proud that we saw 11 companies renew their commitment to this long-standing program in 2025, as well as 13 new businesses enter the program and attain green certification.

And we now have a total of 81 businesses in Berkeley that are green business certified and hope people will consider when they shop, thinking about who's acting green by looking at the Green Business California website and finding ones there.

When we talk about sustainability, we're talking not only about economic sustainability, which you've heard a lot about today, and environmental, which I just touched on, but also on social sustainability or specifically equity.

That's the third pillar of any sustainable economy.

And in the Office of Economic Development, our partnership with Berkeley Unified School District and the Cal State University Institute for STEM Education has really deepened our commitment toward equitable development through our STEM Career X program, which exposes kids that are learning STEM skills in the classroom to see what those will look like in real-world careers in our community.

Last year we held 10 STEM career X tours, including at some of the companies you've already heard about today, like Reggie Quantum Computing or Form Energy, as well as others like Aeris Composites, Copper, which makes induction stoves, or type five, which has modular ADUs that can be built in the backyard.

And what's really exciting about these programs is not only do they expose the children to career opportunities and visualization of what their STEM skills can translate into in terms of a career, they help the employees at these companies feel really invested in and in uh helping our future talent generation and the pipeline of people that could come someday work from them and be a part of this community.

Also, I'll just mention they've been a really important tool for the Office of Economic Development to get to know the leaders of our startups and innovation companies and be able to know they have a person in government they can call when they're seeking other type of advice like where they can grow in Berkeley or a problem that they're having on their street.

We also have had a great partnership over the last several years with University of California Berkeley, our business associations, and our uh Berkeley lab in the Berkeley startup cluster, but we've really deepened that campus city collaboration over the last year under the leadership of Chancellor Lyons and Mayor Ichi to really double down on what the city and the university can achieve together.

We just launched last month our first civic innovation challenge to make it so civic problems or this the communities challenges can have new apps or technologies designed by students.

As we mentioned earlier, we've been measuring the local impact of the innovation entrepreneurship programs on campus.

And I want to thank the Institute for Business Innovation again, because I see some of them here tonight.

And then I also want to point out that we have many new collaborations being developed at this moment about how we increase access to capital and the venture capital funds that support Berkeley companies, as well as what more we can do for business attraction and the Berkeley brand.

And in fact, if any of you are interested, we have hot off the press, some new cards about innovating and growing in Berkeley and our Berkeley startup cluster uh LinkedIn and website, which we hope will help people know that Berkeley's not just a place where you can draw talent from, but a city where startups are welcome to thrive and accelerate their innovation.

And last but not least, I want to make sure you're also aware of our cultural supporting components in addition to our commercial supportive components.

In 2025, OED administered over $650,000 of civic arts grants across individual artists, community festivals, and arts organizations.

Here on the slide is a sort of sampling of some of the programs we've been pleased to support the new Apollo Youth Symphony Orchestra, Girls Garage, the Berkeley Birding Festival, and I won't I want to spend at least one minute talking about our public art program, which is sorry, 30 seconds, talking about our public art program, which you can see an image of uh the South Berkeley Shines Mural that is slated to be installed on the MLK Yap uh Center at Oregon Street as as that building comes under comes back online during its construction project.

And finally, I just want to spend a minute talking a little bit about economic development and stewardship.

Some people talk about this kind of work is gardening, and I think we think about that every day.

Whether, you know, in any given week, Vincent will be at the Telegraph Board meeting or over on Solano or talking to folks in the Lauren district.

Um, Ruel will be working on vacancies in the downtown.

Uh Liz will be at the Gilman.

We aim to be a really high-touch, high customer service responsive department that people can email or call us, and there's somebody in government that will pick up the phone and make sure we can try to get you connected to the resources you need and the support you do you deserve to feel welcome in Berkeley and Thrive.

And I want to just leave you with um a nice note we got.

Uh Elachi in downtown had a um a robbery happen, their window was broken, uh Ruel reached out to them on social media to remind them about the Berkeley Damage Mitigation Fund, and they wrote us this note that said, It's reasons like this why we love being a part of the Berkeley community so much.

So we thank you for your time today.

Thank you for letting us share a little bit about our work, and we look forward to taking your questions and having a discussion.

Thank you so much.

Um, let's hop into the questions.

Go ahead, Councilmember Taplin.

Uh thank you very much.

Um, as you all know, I'm very proud of our innovation ecosystem here in the city.

Um, regarding our life science commercial vacancies, are there lessons we can learn from Emeryville or there are things that they're doing that we're not doing or vice versa.

Couple things to say about Emeryville.

So uh number one, their vacancy rate dropped primarily because the biomed reality property there sold to Sutter.

And so when you're looking at small denominators, like we don't have the amount of real estate that you would see in a South San Francisco in Emeryville or Berkeley.

So one property can really skew whether your vacancy rate goes dramatically up or down over a period.

So I would say number one, that's kudos to them for having leased that building or so and sold a property, and hopefully we'll have something similar happen here, and that would make a big swing in our vacancy rate.

The second thing I would say, and this might be for a longer conversation, but we have heard that the permit streamlining and the ease of operations is sometimes at least perceived.

I can't say if it's actually easier, but it is perceived as much more streamlined and easier in Amoryville.

And so sometimes we're hearing that um companies consider Emeryville because of that perception, and that's something here in Berkeley we can work on to not just address our processes but also improve the the reputation that we have for doing business because I think we've made great strides in recent years to be a place where it's easier to do business, but it's um not always known by all of the people that are considering leasing.

And I I will add to that, for a long time we didn't have the luxury of having a lot of product on the market, and so it's very exciting that we have over a half a million square feet to offer, which has changed our denominator significantly, which has spent our rate quite high.

But we're working very closely with the group that's working to lease uh the Berkeley Commons space, and when they have a an interest or a warm lead, we we work very hard to make sure they have the data they need to talk about why Berkeley is such a great place for an AI company to locate, for example, or whatever sort of element they're after, we work very closely to make sure we can get them the important information so they know the talent is here, and that again they have somebody to call in government that can be supportive to them as they work to fill that space.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Uh Councilmember Blackby Thanks, Madam Mayor.

Um thanks to Elinor and the small but mighty team of the economic development department.

As you know, this is uh an issue that's near and dear to my heart.

I love the work you guys are doing, and I see this as so critical, obviously, to the future of our city.

Um I've got some comments from later, but just a couple of quick clarifying questions.

Um Berkeley Bucks.

It sort of you highlighted the activity with Berkeley Bucks.

Feels like there's an opportunity to do more with that.

Any kind of ideas for maybe how we uh accelerate the use of that program, or is that mostly kind of driven by Visit Berkeley?

The program is driven by Visit Berkeley.

Um I think we've been hearing some concerns that people have had using their Berkeley Bucks.

Got it.

So I think we're gonna work with Visit Berkeley to make sure they can streamline and I think it's largely a training of staff issue.

It's it's just a different servers don't know exactly how to enter things with a point of sale, so that or you know, cash register people.

So I think it's unfortunately probably on the businesses themselves, maybe signed up for the Berkeley Bucks program three years ago, they had staff turnover.

Right.

Then your experience when you go there might not be seamless.

But I think there's still work to do, like maybe every year there can be an educational program, a reminder of different business owners that they're enrolled in the program and how staff can use it.

And then we do actually see a lot of collaborations happening to promote the Berkeley Bucks.

So, like when we do the annual Berkeley Holiday Gift Fair with the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce, they'll raffle off Berkeley Bucks gift certificates through our Discovered in Berkeley campaign.

We'll sometimes mention the Berkeley Pucks program if the business accepts it.

So we're always looking for ways that we can mention Berkeley Bucks in other things that our office sponsors or supports.

Okay, great.

Uh I love the bubble chart of the innovation ecosystem and where things are located and the color coding.

I assume the big red 41, is that Skydeck?

Basically, it's probably actually you were just talking to us about the Berkeley Gateway Accelerator.

So there's the Wells Fargo building, right?

Berkeley Sky Deck building, the New Gateway 2168 Shadow now we've learned has a couple companies in it.

Then there's also co-working with wisdom right there around the corner, Dharma College, there's Pacific Workplaces.

So, you know, this is zoomed in, and if you dive deeper, you can look on the Berkeley Startup Cluster.com startups page which one is at which address.

But I think there's actually several hubs in the downtown area.

And then when uh when IgI and the new Baker Labs facility come online, those will be their own, those will also be represented here, those companies that start.

Yeah, that's not represented today because it's currently under construction.

Right.

And yes, the IGI will be primarily life science companies and the Baker labs that we talked about earlier that's in the old Berkeley R Museum is expanding to have more expans space for their life science biotech healthcare oriented companies as they grow, but they're also expanding into a new terrain.

They used to they used to call it climate, but because of our current administration, they're not able to call it that.

So it's called energy and advanced materials hub.

Okay.

And so that will be, I guess I think we can say it here in the city of Berkeley, more of a climate technology or clean energy and energy storage type companies.

Okay.

And following up then on what Councilmember Taplin just mentioned, I mean, I guess that there is the potential that when some of these new facilities come online that are a little more oriented towards the life sciences, we might have a some additional creation of lab space.

Is that denominator going to grow with IGI and the new Baker Labs?

So I mean that's gonna be again a continued focus to fill those those.

Yeah, and it will fortunately or unfortunately, depending on where you are, it will create pressure on the West Berkeley life science spaces because a lot of the biotech companies, if they're affiliated with campus, which that number we showed you earlier, about half of them are, then they might want to be as close to campus as possible.

So whereas they used to have to go to a co-working facility, like we used to have a Bonneville Labs or Sell Valley Labs, co-working facilities that could support early stage biotech companies.

Now they can go to the Banfa Baker Labs place, and then they'll be able to expand as they grow closer to campus, which will make the private sector real estate developers that have built larger lab spaces have to work even harder to draw the companies, you know, a mile and a half away.

Yeah.

Okay.

You know, you don't need massive labs.

We need some, maybe you need something more than a shared desk, but you need stuff in kind of that small to middle size, kind of customizable, easy to move in, easy to move out, easy to grow.

How are we doing on kind of that segment?

Because I feel like that's something maybe that other communities have.

We've done a little bit, but is that also maybe a limiting factor of our ability to kind of hold on to some of those non-life science, but more kind of technology software type startups?

Yeah, so there's sort of two answers to that.

One is we don't have a commercial real estate product like we've seen in other cities that is designed for that, just spun out of the university but growing a little bit types company.

So it's like a company that is needing between five and fifteen thousand square feet.

We don't really have uh incubator space that's owned by the private sector that you can grow into once you've expanded beyond the Baker Labs or Sky Deck Incubator or something on campus.

That being said, I just got off a call a couple hours ago where I spoke to a number of um different realtors in our community that are all leasing pretty small parcel sizes and are willing to do some matchmaking and rearranging to accommodate.

So there's a half dozen, maybe more spaces.

They're perhaps a little large or a little outdated or something's not perfect, but I think that there's actually a lot of space on the market that is willing to accommodate the space, but then there's just um a number of things to figure out, which is how our permitting will work for those, and would it be more efficient for them to move somewhere elsewhere, like Amoryville, where that space is ready to go, what versus work with the property owner in the city to get that space up to retrofit to what's required to do RD.

So I think there's some work we can be done, but I wouldn't say it's like we don't have the space.

Yeah, it's just that we need to maybe do some reconfiguring.

I would also add due to council's leadership last year and the year before that, responding to the keep innovation in Berkeley referral and enabling many more zoning districts across our whole city to accommodate research and development uses.

Went a tremendous way to improving our own rules and regulation to welcome that kind of space.

And sort of as Liz is alluding to, that inventory is now allowed by the rules, but what those spaces look like on the inside as they're built to suit the companies moving into them, we're seeing what that's gonna look like.

So, how are we doing?

I think in some ways we've done a great job with council's leadership on adapting to what the market conditions look like and making it so we can embrace those uses here, and we're continuing to see the tail of that as we begin our business attraction around welcoming these companies here and making sure they have a smooth process, and then they tell all their friend companies that they like it here and want to continue to cluster together.

Yeah, great.

I've got some other comments for later, which I'll save, but again, thank you for the presentation and thanks for answering those questions.

Thank you.

Councilmember O'Keefe.

Yeah, thank you so much for this presentation.

Really good work all around the presentation and just all the work you do.

It's really really important.

Um I have three questions.

Um I'll ask the most boring one first.

Um I'm curious how I'd like to understand a little better and only answer like within the scope of this meeting, don't if it's too detailed, we can meet later.

Um, but I I'm curious how you calculate, keep track of and calculate vacancy rates.

And my reason for asking is I've actually like you know spoken with um constituents or merchants associations and they have different numbers.

Sorry, which which vacancy rates are your oh um well the the storefront vacancy, yeah.

Yeah, storefront vacancy.

Thanks.

Um I just would like to know how you do that.

We can answer that one down here.

Yeah.

Yes, so this is a a combination of walking the streets of Berkeley and looking at properties, looking at CoStar, which is a subscription we have, which allows us to go beyond what we see looking at the storefront.

So with CoSTAR, we can put in an address, we can see who the different tenants are, how much square footage they have, how long their leases are.

Um so using the square footage information, using our feet on the foot, feet on the ground, and using the existing data we have about the businesses is how we do it.

It's not a perfect science by by any stretch, but it is allows us to get a handle on what we have in terms of vacancies throughout the city.

Um probably the toughest part is the square footage because if you go to a storefront, you have to guesstimate, and that's where we go to CoStar and they're able to get their information about what the square footage is.

Great, thank you.

That's helpful.

Um another question I have.

Um I didn't see any data on whether or not uh um a particular business is a like a chain or a small local business.

And I'm wondering if you keep track of that, and my curiosity is, and I'm just curious if you have any thoughts about this.

I think you have to be careful we don't want to treat businesses differently because of um their you know size of the business there.

But um like what can we do to in I won't say discourage chains from coming, but to encourage local businesses, because that is something that really um really makes Berkeley special.

And I I can't believe what luck we've had.

It feels like luck to me that we have we don't have that many chains, or really almost so many of our businesses are are really truly local.

And I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about that.

What can we do to preserve that?

Um, thank you so much for that question.

Uh I can almost answer it with a question that sometimes becomes very challenging to define what is the chain.

You know, is it a business that's become successful and has a second location or a third location or anyway?

That's sort of a almost a topic of itself, which we'd be excited to talk about.

We don't track chains particularly, but in our data, which is rich and goes back many years in our field data that Vincent alluded to, we do know the tenant name.

So there is some backward-facing sort of work we could do on that.

I will say that um for our small independent businesses, one of the challenges is getting started.

You have to have a lot of capital, you have to have a lot of patience, you have to have a great idea.

Um small business owners are really tremendous people that keep our main streets alive in our commercial districts vital, and they end up being sort of Jacket and Jills and and uh Janes of all trade.

And time and money are the two levers that um end up either aiding in their success or making it challenging.

And so we try through customer service and making our processes very clear to save them both.

Definitely can.

I think this is another opportunity to remind everybody of the hashtag discovered in Berkeley campaign, discovered in Berkeley.com, uh at discovered in Berkeley on Instagram.

But that does provide us a way to showcase some of those really unique, independently owned, women-owned, values aligned, inspirational businesses.

We try really hard to curate that so that it spans different sectors, different types of businesses, different parts of town, um, and really shed light on the kinds of things you're talking about, the people that we want to thank for being here.

And so we always encourage you or the public to, if there's a favorite business that has done something really unique that deserves a deeper dive, and also hasn't had earned uh media through Berkeleyside, because we don't want to sponsor a story where they already uh got their own media attention.

Our office is all ears for shedding on the really cool, innovative, creative, artistic businesses you can find here in Berkeley.

The other thing is if you look at the city of Berkeley, it is dominated by independent businesses.

As you compare to other cities which have more chains or more um big boxes, Berkeley is dominated by small independent business owners.

The challenge is how do we make sure that their customers keep coming back, make sure that they're running their businesses efficiently and effectively so that they can keep their doors open.

The other challenge we have in Berkeley is we have as we said, we have a high number of retail and food service businesses, two high risk categories.

And so as we talk to um brokers, they've said that if you look at say the the downtown and the areas that border the college, when the students leave, you can see a drop in sales about 40%.

So for those businesses, we have to help them find ways to diversify their customer base so that when those students leave, someone else is coming in the door.

But overall, we have a great mix of independent businesses.

We just gotta figure out more ways to continue to support support.

I was just gonna add one thing.

I do track opening and closings.

Um most of the time in the data that I'm gathering from this, it's small businesses that are coming into a closed business space, and something that's been confirmed by um the brokers that we've talked to is that the second generance generation spaces, which is like a cafe for a cafe, those are the easiest to rent.

And so you get one one small business that's a cafe owner leaves, another cafe owner comes right in, and it's a really like one-to-one switch.

Um, so that's something we see a lot of, and it's all like family owned small businesses that are coming in.

It kind of perpetuates itself.

Yeah, thanks.

Thanks for that.

Um my last question, which was a little bit um teed up by your answer.

Um so I'm sure many of my colleagues up here can relate to this.

I've heard you hear a lot from constituents, um, businesses, customers.

Uh, and they they say why they like anecdotally the problems they have with either um enjoying our businesses or running the business, you know, you hear you hear a lot of things, right, when you're in this line of work.

Um, some things I've heard um are um like uh perceived safety, especially at night, um parking in some parts of town, street behavior, um, business license procedures that you already mentioned in your um presentation.

Those are just a couple of things off the top of my head that I hear of from time to time.

But it's it's anecdotal, and one person's experience is real, but it's hard to know what to do with it policy wise.

And I'm wondering if you have sort of from your perspective, what are maybe one or two of the top issues that are a barrier to more economic vitality that that we could potentially address.

Great question.

So many different ways to answer that.

I think it might be useful if we can talk a little bit about some of the vacancy attraction work we've done specifically with the downtown.

I will say broadly, it's usually never just one thing.

Um, and typically, like for if we say, for example, we have 17 vacancies, there's probably 17 solutions for filling each of those.

Um, and so by the same side of the coin, it's not always the same, the same story about why a business closes or makes a decision or is concerned for their employees.

Um, and uh many of the topics you mentioned certainly are things we hear as well.

Umpredictable street behavior can be really challenging for a business owner who's trying to keep their employees safe and also maintain a harmonious place, whether it's a third space like a cafe that's not work or home, or whether it's um a retail place that you know, sort of curb appeal is very important.

So there are many reasons, and I want to um give you all a little time to talk about some of the vacancy toolkit work we've been putting together.

We'll be back with a little bit more of it fleshed out, but just as a multifaceted strategy of solutions is the best way to go.

Yeah, we're currently working on coming up with sort of uh vacancy policy that doesn't penalize businesses for remaining vacant or property owners for having vacant spaces, but um encourages them to activate those spaces with creative placemaking.

So whether it's vinyl win vinyl window film that's creates artwork or some beautiful messaging in the windows.

Umer's been a wonderful partner with me in helping to do this already in the downtown by getting a lot of the property owners to um agree to do murals on there as the core spaces project on Center Street.

John worked with them very closely to get that mural done, this beautiful mural that sort of makes it a more better experience as you're walking down that street and the also the article student housing on Herald Way, the pit, wrapping that pit with um beautiful mural work so that you have these sort of construction fencing that becomes artwork as you're walking by.

It just helps uh create a perception that this is a there's a place here and it's not just a vacant building or a vacant space.

So we're working very closely with Councilmember Tregub on coming up with vacancy policy and other um efforts to help think of creative solutions to solve some of these really big issues around vacancy.

Oh, and one last thing I wanted to mention, we talked about how we have independent businesses.

We also have a tremendous number of legacy businesses in Berkeley, and again, defining legacy is a challenge too.

Um, you know, is five years in business legacy worthy, ten years, twenty.

I mean, many businesses are over 50 years in business, and thinking about appropriate and thoughtful and meaningl, meaningful and economical ways to celebrate these businesses and the effort that they've put into keeping our community both vibrant and engaged as something we're gonna be working with throughout the spring, and we welcome ideas about that as you hear things out in your your districts.

Yeah, actually, uh I'll just comment on that and then I'm done with my questions.

Um I was actually recently looking at San Francisco's legacy business uh program, which sounded pretty cool.

So I'm sure you know about it, but yeah, good.

Look into that more.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Trega.

Uh thank you so much.

Um thank you to the economic develop office of economic development team.

Um just want to say um, and uh we work with you almost on a daily basis, and it's such a pleasure to work with such a creative, knowledgeable, and passionate team.

I just want to say we're so lucky to have you here in Barkley.

Um as to the questions, and I will ask them in rapid fire to save time.

Um write them down.

I'll go slow.

Um would love to um just be reminded of what has been done to streamline uh permitting for small businesses, as well as if you can speak to any additional um opportunities for to explore for more of that.

Um as far as um qualitative data, um, are we collecting or can we in the future start to collect data as to why companies don't stay in Berkeley beyond anecdotal data?

Um then uh what are we doing to advertise uh Berkeley commercial opportunities beyond Berkeley uh regionally, nationally, or even beyond.

Um would love to learn how um the startups, I'm very excited to um well, I'll I'll say for my comments how excited I am about what's in this report.

Um but how do startups find out information about uh these grants, including, well, maybe maybe when there's another administration um national or federal federal government grants that might be available.

Uh and finally, um wanted to see if you could speak to the outlook of the um small business loan program.

Is there more funding coming in?

Is it still steady?

How much is in debt account?

Those kinds of questions.

Okay.

I'm gonna take some of these in reverse order.

I will speak to the outlook on the loan program.

I will answer your first question about streamlining.

Then I'm going to turn it over to either Liz or Vincent, whoever wants to take this one about exit interviews from companies that leave us.

Um advertising commercial opportunities in Berkeley.

I think will be a Liz Rel split a little bit and talking about business attraction and then how do startups find out about research and development grants and waivers.

I will just tell you right now, please subscribe to our OED newsletter where we certainly remind people, and we are also always interested in engaging with businesses that you think might want to take advantage of these things.

Please OED mailbox at Berkeleyca.gov.

Our email is always open to you.

We strive to return those quickly, and so you are welcome to send anybody our way.

And the Berkeley Startup Cluster newsletter as well for the RD grants.

We promote it heavily through there because those are mostly focused toward our innovation sector companies.

You got it.

I thought that was in the under number three advertising.

And on our LinkedIn.

Smash that like and subscribe button for all of our channels.

Um the loan fund.

So both of these funds are revolving funds, which means as companies or businesses pay them off.

So again, both of our loan are loans that are available to any business in Berkeley.

So just by locating in Berkeley, they can take advantage of these special opportunities to access capital.

And as Vincent talked about, working solutions, which is a CD FI lender lender, is our partner on this.

They have a great depth of technical assistance and a better experience for borrowers so they can pay their loans off electronically, and it's much um smoother.

So as those borrowers that are currently in the portfolio pay back with interest, then the pot grows larger, and we can turn around and make more loans out of that pot.

So it continues to go.

Um, one of our funds was ceded in 2020 with CARES Act dollars, and it has since revolved one time completely.

The other one was uh granted to the city in 1980, and I believe that fund has turned over with interest uh more than three times.

So we continued the beat goes on with with the loan funds.

Um speaking about streamlining, and I'll let Vincent add anything beyond this piece.

Um I just wanted to remind folks of an award we won in 2024 from the the state uh planning association for uh zoning support for Berkeley businesses.

We recognize that business models change over time, and um though our zoning code does change quite often, uh sometimes our definitions of businesses are sort of outdated, like the VCR rental tape category we used to have.

Um businesses evolves, time marches on, and our um code related to business uses was was more outdated, and so we came up with a number of strategies to sort of um embrace new uses and think about flexible formats for new businesses like experiential retail or commercial recreation centers, where you know not only are you going to go buy something in a store, you might be going to buy something and also have an experience.

You you've gone to the fabric store, you've bought the fabric, but then you also take a class in learning how to do uh sewing, for example.

And that's group instruction, which in our code was a totally separate category with a higher bar to meet for permitting, and now we've been able to equalize a lot of those things and and really sort of open up some of those uses that offer our our businesses more opportunities again, back to the time and money piece to get going in our commercial districts faster.

Vincent, did you want to add anything to that piece?

Um screwlining.

But it it back to your question about you know the qualitative data on business's exit or in the legacy businesses.

There are two things I want to say about that.

One is we've got to figure out a way to train the businesses to think about their exit strategy three or four years sooner.

Because organization like Project Equity that we have a contract with, if we if they know that someone wants to exit their business, they can set up a plan for their employees to take it over.

They can set up a plan for them to sell it to someone, they can help them do evaluation.

But instead, what happens is someone comes to us to say, I'm closing my business in 30, 60, 90 days.

That's not a long enough ramp for us to provide or bring in the technical assistance they need to make this transition so the business stays in operation.

So that's one thing that we need to figure out how we can identify people who are in that space where they're looking to leave the business for one reason or another and get them the help so that this business can transition to someone else.

I think it's also important that you clarify when you say why companies don't stay, are you referring to small businesses that are retail, restaurant, professional service, or were you asking about why startups spinning out from UC Berkeley go elsewhere?

Are you asking about like larger employers?

Did you have any in mind or do you want to hear all of the above?

Yeah, I think we've discussed startups a little bit, but uh it might actually be maybe beneficial to hear the answer for both to the extent you have any.

Great.

Yeah, we will say we do track because we have an annual collection process that goes into this report that happens today of reviewing our innovation sector database, and then any time we know that a company has left and is still live, which I guess the first part of my answer is usually they leave because they failed.

Um like they just couldn't raise enough venture capital or they're no longer around.

Sadly, we hear that a lot.

And that's just the nature of being a startup business.

So that's the number one reason why they don't stay is because they're not in business anymore.

But for those that have left here, I'd say the the when we do do an exit interview and we do track it.

It's often that either for some personal reason, you know, founder's mother's sick moving back home, so they're gonna take their startup back home, or um the the team wanted to go remote, so they've given up their office space so that they can employ a remote workforce.

But the other when they leave Berkeley and go elsewhere nearby, which is rare, it's usually just because there was a space that better fit their growth needs.

So I we have not generally heard like we didn't like being in Berkeley.

They almost always say we love Berkeley, we want to stay in Berkeley, we looked first in Berkeley.

Berkeley was our first choice, but the spot in Oakland or Emeryville or San Leandro or Alameda had a better layout or was cheaper or you know, whatever reason that just they couldn't find what they look for in Berkeley.

Were you gonna you were gonna bring up maybe a different one?

Did you have a second point you wanted to touch on?

I don't remember, honestly.

Okay, I'll touch on a couple of of the other questions that you asked that um Elinor kindly assigned to me.

So the no, no, it's great.

Um we already mentioned with the startups finding out about grants.

I just want to point out that in addition to our newsletters, we also work very closely with Skydeck, with Baker Labs, with all of the innovation and entrepreneurship programs on campus to not just tell it through our communication channels, but to tell it through theirs.

And then we also email every year anyone that has received an RD grant from the federal government about the program.

So we can pull that list down the US um small business administration website.

Although it's not always perfect, so you know, all of you being channels to carry this information to your district is helpful as well.

In terms of the advertising commercial opportunities nationally, I'm so glad you bring that up.

This is a huge opportunity area for our city.

Historically, we had less available space than we had interest in staying in Berkeley, and thus the Office of Economic Development never had a business attraction program.

We did more of what Eleanor mentioned earlier, which is uh economic gardening or retention, and we work very closely with a range of stakeholders and partners to always keep our eyes and ears on the ground for when a company is growing or expanding, how we can help them to stay locally.

What we haven't done is go try to catch a fish from Michigan or Delaware or Texas, as they consider a Northern California location.

And so we actually convened our first meeting on this topic in October with actually thank you, Paul, for joining us at that, as well as the chief marketing and communications officer at UC Berkeley and the Chief Innovation Entrepreneurship Officer at UC Berkeley and many of our private sector developers to begin to flesh out what a business attraction strategy would look like.

The short answer right now is that we have a lot of good ideas of what that campaign could do, and we don't have any money to do it.

So this is an opportunity area to either work with our city council in the future to allocate some funding for business attraction and also our private sector partners.

We've been asking to make contributions to help us support it.

But at the moment, we're relying on the courtesy of our partners at UC Berkeley to let us in on things that would help us with business attraction.

So for example, the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, which brings hundreds of thousands of people to San Francisco to talk about life science and health care.

We were able to participate in UC Berkeley's event and present our uh innovate and grow in Berkeley, California slides and why Berkeley.

They uh the Bacar Bioingenuity Hub, which has been mentioned several times, will have a table at the big annual bio convention that's happening this year in San Diego, and we'll be attending alongside and using their table to talk about not just why UC Berkeley, but why Berkeley, California.

So we're very grateful to our partners at UC, which have been willing to share some space and floor time with us.

But we would love to see more opportunity to understand how Berkeley is being perceived in national markets and even international markets and where our messaging should show up and what are some of the most we know a lot of the why Berkeley points, but which ones are gonna resonate best with which audience would require a little bit of market testing and research, which costs money to do.

We also welcome your ideas and thoughts on this.

You all have vast networks, and if you have some ideas about what should go in the buildings, we we're all at yours.

I I think that got all five.

I think so.

Very good.

Okay.

Any other questions?

Okay, I'm gonna open it up to public comment, and then we'll come back around for council comments.

Is there any public comment on this item?

Very good.

John's making his way over.

Oh, you didn't have to do that.

Okay.

Okay.

Uh John Kahner and Downtown Berkeley Association.

I just want to thank the OED team.

I mean, the partnership is extraordinary.

We're going through the renewal, and um Eleanor's been a hero with that.

Um, working with the real and vacancy work.

Um Vincent has been amazing working on um the the retail vacancy and also supporting us in the renewal and Liz with Berkeley Startup Clusters just doing incredible work.

Flying horse is a big big deal.

We want to make sure that's successful.

That whole SHATOC block, the fact that they're moving forward is extraordinary.

Core spaces, as you may have heard, is also moving forward this summer, late fall.

That's a big, big deal.

So we have an opportunity really turn the tide in the downtown.

So we're gonna hopefully we're turning the corner and thank you, Igor, for all the great work.

There was a question about why are businesses leaving, or why are people coming downtown?

To be honest, we're making a lot of progress on homeless.

Our count is down to a near time all-time low.

But all you need to do is sit in Bart Plaza for an hour or so and have two or three uh psychotic episodes or meth things or just feeling uncomfortable.

And you know, it's really we got to create a welcoming downtown.

So our social service for outreach uh initiatives like the care court staff is doing a great job, but we also need to enforce our ordinances.

We did this in late 2019 before the pandemic, we really switched things around.

I don't want to thank Paul and Petey and all for all that work, but we need to continue to do that.

OED needs a discretionary budget.

I'm too in December uh 20 uh two years ago.

I put together a list of 11 programs in San Francisco that they have, and Lori's even given more money.

He's gone out and raised 60 million dollars.

I mean, they obviously have a lot of corporate folks, but they need a discretionary budget.

They do great work, but just a little bit of money.

I understand now, really difficult budget times now.

It ain't gonna happen this year, it may not happen next year.

Thanks, John.

Can I just say one more thing?

Wait, John, I'm sorry.

You're out of time.

Office space and events.

Thank you.

Yep.

Heard.

Anyone else?

Any other time.

Sure.

Go for it.

Since we don't have a huge line of people, you can donate a minute of your time to John.

I also it's really important to us for a class A office space.

And if we were hearing in San Francisco that actually housing is slowing down, office space is taking it off.

It's a lot of the AI boom, a lot of it's spilling over here.

The MSCI building just leased on Addison and uh Milvia, which is a big deal.

So we're seeing the office demand.

We need the startup someplace to go, and it's also daytime economy.

We need condos also, which we've talked to you guys about.

And then events.

We need to support events.

I know there's a lot of work being done here.

Go to First Thursdays in San Francisco, thousands of people on First Street.

San Francisco is doing a great job.

I know we're working hard at it.

It's a lot of hard, it takes a lot of resources, but we need to give you a reasons for people to come downtown.

And we're doing Make Music Day, which we'll hear more about, working with Shoshana on Summer Solstice.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Any is there anyone online who has public comment on this item?

There's uh three hands raised.

Very good.

First speaker is Kelly Hamergren.

Uh thank you.

Uh the downtown was my neighborhood.

But there's hardly a reason to go there with the number of vacancies.

And um window film doesn't really draw me to the downtown except to take photos of the pit behind the screen.

And the Oscars are next Sunday.

The Shaddock Cinemas used to be a huge, we used to have huge lines to see those films on the big screen.

But of course, that's now gone.

Um Elmwood with its movie theater is now my adopted neighborhood.

But I constantly worry that as the upzoning target in the quarter plan, that will be the end of that pleasurable neighborhood.

Um we heard from Dina Belzer and her economic report to the planning commission not to worry about the corridors upzoning, but hearing from the business owners that same evening that are not property owners in your repi your report and just feed on the street tells me a different story that um construction really does have a detrimental effect on our local businesses, and unless we do something about it, we're um one of the draws for people to be here is gonna be gone.

And so um I really wish that we would have heard more about that.

And I don't see a clock, but I expect I'm just about out of time.

You have 25 seconds.

I don't think I can I think I I've really covered what I want to say.

I just really wish we had um more focus on our small business owners who don't own the property because those are the ones I worry about the most.

Thank you.

Thanks, Kelly.

Okay.

The uh next speaker is Cheryl Davila, a former council member.

So for one, the commercial rents are kind of high, and people are leaving for those reasons.

And you know, um the home blessness issue is because people can't afford the freaking high rents in Berkeley.

And then you create an issue by not picking up the trash, allowing um other services that people may need that could help them get off the streets.

And you make it by not picking up the trash, by creating all these issues for the unhoused community.

It becomes like uh a complete um eyesore for most, and that's you do that on purpose, so then you can enforce arrest and eliminate.

Um so you need to really show some compassion and empathy and love for all of the community that lives in Berkeley.

People that live on the streets in Berkeley come back to Berkeley because they were here to begin with.

This is their land, this is their home.

Um and um the way that these look at what's down at the aquatic park.

Completely empty.

Why is that empty?

All those buildings are empty.

That's a damn shame.

All that money for what?

You could be housing people in those empty buildings that are just sitting there occupying space with no people inside.

And there's how many buildings like that in Berkeley?

How many units?

You know, you all need to do better.

Every time I talk to people about Berkeley, they're like, what the hell is up with Berkeley?

Berkeley sucks.

All the people on council suck.

That's what they say.

They're not happy with you.

Nobody is.

Y'all need to get voted out, replaced, move on to something different because you're not doing any good for Berkeley.

Free Palestine.

Thank you, Cheryl.

Uh next is a speaker with a phone number ending in zero zero zero.

You should be able to unmute.

Okay, well.

That that was it.

That was the last speaker.

So I guess um.

We are complete.

All right, very good.

Um, gonna move on to council comments, starting with councilmember taplin.

Uh, thank you.

Uh, first I want to say I'm also interested in uh SF's legacy business work.

Um a number of the businesses in my district have reached out to me about that.

Um also I'm I'm really encouraged by this proactive stance we're taking towards business attraction.

Um it's important to note that we're no longer just competing with Emirville and South San Francisco.

We're now also competing with Alameda and Saling Andro.

Um I know that we have a different difficult budget outlook before us, but I'm happy to team up and put our heads together around permits relining and identifying potential revenue streams to support OED's business distraction efforts.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um Councilmember Trab.

Thank you for the presentation and for the tremendous amount of work that has gone into preparing this report and advancing Barkley's economic development efforts.

I appreciate the collaboration across city departments that contributes to this work to and uh all the ongoing efforts uh to streamline business permitting to support our local businesses and to strengthen uh our Berkeley uh commercial districts uh as well as the downtown.

Um I am while there's a ton of work to do, obviously, um, as we the pandemic is uh not over yet, and for you know, in the small business sense, and we um that shows up in the data.

I was very, very pleased in this report to read that we as Berkeley are turning the corner in a very positive way on tackling uh commercial vacancies all over the city.

Uh and I was very pleased to see that for the first time since the pandemic, um uh Berkeley's um downtown vacancies are below 10 percent.

Um obviously we have more work to do, and our office will continue to engage with uh your team around that.

Um also uh just want to appreciate uh all uh that you have been doing um on initiatives such as the vacant store fronts uh work, um, which I understand will be uh coming back to council uh later uh in the spring, uh, as well as the programs you've been spearheading to support startups, including Grant and loan opportunities.

Efforts to bring more visibility to Barclays commercial opportunities regionally, nationally, and internationally are very important, and I'm excited about the work you're doing in that area as well.

You also mentioned the importance of special events that bring hundreds of people and significant revenue to the city.

Our office is very excited to do additional work in this area and support efforts that help activate our commercial districts and bring more people into Barclay.

Uh and finally, I appreciate your thoughtful approach around learning from best practices, including those from other cities or cities and counties, uh, as well as the attention to understanding what I don't know if anyone got the San Francisco joke.

Um understanding what helps businesses thrive and remain in Berkeley.

Uh thank you again for the dedication and care that has gone into this work.

Um excited to partner with you.

Um we have a lot of work to do, but as the downtown Barclay Council member, I can uh fully say, even though that also will be borrowing from the San Francisco's mayor and some, but downtown Barkley is on the rise, and that would not be possible without uh all of your consorted efforts, and I just want to thank you.

Okay, thank you very much.

Um Councilmember Humbert.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um and I would join generally in the comments that um uh councilmember Trigroub just just made, but I have my own comments too.

Major thanks to you for Elizabeth, uh Eleanor, Ruell, and Vincent, everyone else at OED for your work on this presentation and overall efforts to keep our economy and business strong.

Um it's been said, you know, many, many times, but it's just true, you punch way above your weight.

You really do.

It's so impressive.

Um I think a lot of Berkeley residents don't understand just how much OED does, but they benefit from it every single day as they enjoy all of our wonderful local businesses, cultural institutions, and even the basic city services, frankly, that our strong local economy helps support through taxes and fees.

So even though everyday folks may not say it explicitly, I want OED to know that any time someone praises our small businesses or talks about what makes Berkeley such a unique and wonderful place, they are by extension praising your work, the work of the the OED, the Office of Economic Development.

You're also really skilled, I have to say, um, and I know my chief of staff agrees, uh, at making PowerPoint presentations.

Honestly, all city departments and a lot of us here on council, for example, me could learn a thing or two from you about how informative and well put together your presentations are.

Um as we grapple with a significant budget deficit, your work is more important than ever because expanding our tax base is one of the key ways that we can ameliorate and hopefully eventually resolve our long-term deficits.

So thank you again for your wonderful work and your dedication, which is amazing, and taking the time to share it with us.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Vice Mayor Linapara.

I just wanted to thank you all for the presentation and for your work.

That's it.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Um Councilmember Blackby.

Thanks, Madam Mayor.

Um thanks again to Eleanor Vincent Royal and Liz for the time and the great conversation.

Um, I talked about this before.

I really this is only the second time we've done this presentation since I've been on the council and I really look forward to it because it's uh inspiring and it gives us lots of opportunities to dream big and think about what's possible, and that's really exciting, I think, uh, from a council perspective and just from a community perspective.

Um, you know, we have a huge advantage with this just massive innovation engine, just sort of a few blocks away.

And I see so much of our strategy is just you know, at least when it comes to the innovation part, which is one part of many parts, but you know, how do we hang on to our fair share of that output and keep it here?

Um the good news is there's a lot of activity, and there is a lot of opportunity there.

Um so three things that I you know would love to continue to team up on that we've you've mentioned and some other colleagues have mentioned.

Um I know we kind of collaborated on earlier this um last fall was this research project that uh a couple of uh some of the undergrads did at UC Berkeley about um some of these questions about how do we keep more activity in Berkeley, why are companies leaving or why are the companies that left, why did they not consider locating in Berkeley?

And a couple of the themes that came out of that research was one sometimes just the importance of personal outreach.

I think there was an anecdote of a company where the mayor of Detroit called them and said, hey, why don't you come look at it?

Like some of those things are meaningful.

And then also the importance of having like anchor companies in a particular industry.

So it's like it's a lot easier to build an ecosystem when you know it's a chicken and the egg problem, but it's a lot easier to build an ecosystem when you've got an anchor company that represents that industry, the other the other companies want to be around.

So to that end, um, you know, thinking about this targeted recruitment retention effort, the you know, adding some extra elbow grease to that.

I'm happy to volunteer the mayor's call time to like make some calls.

I'd be happy to make calls.

I think a lot of us would be happy to make calls, but if like if part of this is just finding those opportunities, people whose leases are about to run out, people in neighboring jurisdictions whose leases are about to run out, like there's probably creative ways and then putting some person hours, person time behind it and that that personal gesture just to try and make the make the case.

Um I think any of us would be really happy to do that.

I know I would love to, and then I'll speak for the mayor and say that I know she would love to also.

Um so anything in that bucket I'm super interested in part about partnering with you.

The second, we heard a little bit about the permitting piece.

I almost wonder if there's some sort of a uh a fast track program.

We brand it, we do something with it, but we make a big deal about this fast track effort, and maybe it's a combination of permitting, some sort of limited incentives, maybe it's helping get people connected with real estate and office space opportunities.

Um, but just thinking about how we solve that.

I'm about to leave campus, where do I go?

I'm about to leave the accelerator, where do I go?

Well, we've got a fast track program here to keep you in Berkeley.

Um, and we brand it and we put some press behind it, and it's demonstrates our commitment to sort of doing this.

I think again, I'm just thinking out loud that could there could be something there.

And third, uh, I know Councilmember Taplin mentioned it, Councilmember Humbert, other people have mentioned it.

This super interesting on the business attraction um kind of program.

And I know there is a funding element to it, but look, unlike a lot of the city operation where we have a lot of cost centers that are providing services, you guys are are are uh you're a revenue driver.

And so um thinking about this as an investment in the future that's gonna pay dividends, it's not you're not a cost center, you're a revenue driver, and we need to make those investments.

So, yes, budget times are tough, and yes, we have some constraints on what we maybe what we can do immediately, but I think as we've seen, these efforts pay off in spades, and we can't just be so focused on what's happening between now and June that we don't think about June of 27 and June to 28 and June 29 and the investments we need to make now.

So we may have to be creative um and figure it out, but you know, I'm super interested in if we came up with a really tight, compelling program of what that would look like, um, figuring out how to fund it even in a tough climate, because I just I think it's so critical for the for the future of our economy and the future of the community, and then ultimately making those budget uh decisions easier in the out years.

So those are three thoughts.

Love to partner with you and continue to partner with you.

Our office loves to work with you all, and and there's just so much opportunity.

Looking forward to the year ahead.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Yeah, those great comments.

And yeah, absolutely.

We we just had our retreat, so we were talking about how you're supposed to speak from a place of I, like I think.

But you're welcome to offer my time because I this is something that I really do enjoy doing.

Um and and I actually, yeah, so flying horse investments.

I actually took a meeting with them.

Um we were able to do the unveiling for the clock.

If you hadn't noticed in downtown Berkeley, there is now a working clock in front of that space.

So I'm very excited to see that filled.

Um I called half-price books, both spoke with people who work there and also with the people who the landlord to see what happened there to try to get them to stay.

Um, I think someone opened a laptop and it's uh the sound is echoing.

Anyway, um, but my point is, and so I also have a community and business relations coordinator, Andrea Bernal, who's sitting here.

And um, we've actually been going to businesses like walking downtown, and I've actually run into Vincent on the street doing these counts.

So I just want to tell you all, he's not lying.

He really is out there on the street.

Um I I do want to focus on a few things that you're talking about, this entrepreneurship and innovation piece.

Um, I just really love that map as well of the innovation ecosystem.

I think that's really incredibly incredible.

And I really want to highlight for folks just really how amazing our relationship is with UC Berkeley and how much that's gotten even better.

I am very fortunate to be able to connect with the chancellor, and we talk a lot about improving business and supporting business and our innovation and entrepreneur um ecosystem here in the city.

They I just want to really highlight this.

UC Berkeley leads globally in venture-backed startups.

I mean, that's a huge differentiator for a city, and it's something that we really should be bragging about.

It's really incredible that we have an increase in both seed and venture capital raised by the startups because I mean, if you heard what was being said, it's it's actually gone down for other places.

So the fact that we've had an increase is amazing.

Um I really also thought it was great that we have this quantified uh information about the innovation and entrepreneurship benefits to our city.

I really want to make sure we're continuing to get that data because it's very helpful to understand like how are all of these different startups benefiting our city and how can we continue to find spaces to keep them there?

Um, really just you all do an incredible job.

And I I have to say I get to connect with this team, this department, probably more than most departments, and I really get to see how amazing um you all are and get to hear from business owners and um other community members about how helpful you are too.

So that you know, that individual outreach, like to alighty, that that makes all the difference.

So thank you very much for doing that.

Um again, want to highlight our decrease in commercial vacancy rate.

That's uh amazing.

Like I know that that takes a lot of time, and I know that that's something that we need to continue to improve on.

So, yes, I'm happy to make a phone call, whatever you need, let me know.

Um the fact that food and beverage is right behind retail, really fascinating information because um we are a food and beverage city, and so that's that's awesome.

And to just highlight, I know Taste of North Berkeley is coming up.

I see you, Jane.

I'm surprised you didn't come up to tell us that.

Um, but you know, council member O'Keefe and I actually went last year and and you know, took pictures and did the discovered and berkeley hashtag.

So as you're going out and eating in around the city or going to shop places, you know, use that discovered in Berkeley hashtag.

I know I do all the time.

Um green business program would love to see this grow.

Um, I know that you're already working with our different business districts, but I am hopeful that we can continue to grow that.

I I bet there are a lot of people that don't know about it, and I wonder if if we can do more partnerships to increase that.

Um, just seeing how much water was saved, um, power.

I think there's a few other different metrics that were in there.

Really impressive.

And um, that's partnerships between our local businesses and our students.

Um, really thinking about if we're a city that wants to encourage families also and to support families, we want to make sure that those students have opportunities to you know have different career paths.

And so I I really love that we do that.

I think that's very special, and I know it makes a big impact on our students.

So just brain dump of all the things, but thank you all so much.

Really appreciate the presentation and thanks for being here today.

And uh next year, um, I'm gonna pack this house.

I I want more people to see this presentation because um this information should get out into the community more.

And I know it's public on the website, but having a presentation, I think really just deepens the experience.

So next year we're gonna pack this house.

Okay.

All right, thank you very much, everyone.

Um I am going to see if there's a motion to adjourn.

Second.

Okay.

And is there any opposition to adjournment?

Okay, we will adjourn by unanimous consent.

Meeting is adjourned.

Thank you all so much.