Bits and pieces

After a lot of meetings, a lot of public comment and a lot of talk, the City is finally moving forward with the long term lease with Greenway Golf.  Details of the deal are in the staff report, the nutshell version is that it is a 20 year lease with a five-year option to renew.   For the rent portion:

$75 000 per Lease Year (defined as July 1 to June 30) equal monthly payments for years 1-4 plus those number of months in Lease Year 5 equal to the number of months from July 1 , 2012 to the Commencement Date when Greenway takes over the operations.

The greater of Minimum Rent of $300 000 in equal monthly payments or 8% of gross revenues up to $4,000,000 and 12% of gross revenues over $4,000,000 in Lease Years 5-The increase from $75 000 to $300 000 and the payment of percentage rent shall commence in Lease Year 5 after the expiration of the number of months between the beginning of Lease Year 1 and the Commencement Date as described above. In other words , if Greenway takes over operations on September 15 , 2012 , then the increase in the rent will begin in mid-September in Lease Year 5 rather than on July 1 in Lease Year 5.

The greater of Minimum Rent of $350 000 per year in equal monthly payments or 10% of gross revenues, up to 4,000,000 and 12% of gross revenues over $4,000,000 in years 9-20 and in any subsequent option period.

There’s some other stuff about contributing to the Captital Improvement Fund and Tenant Improvements.  The big thing is that Greenway will be the body to set green fees from now on.  It used to be the Golf Commission, but now it will strictly under Greenway’s control.   They have agreed to provide free golf for the high school golf teams though.

Anyway, that’s tonight for anyone who wants to get one last word in.

In other moving foward-y sort of news, demolition has begun at the Alameda Landing site, aka Target.  I tweeted this photo over the weekend to a fellower Tweeter who hadn’t noticed any progress:

#Alameda Landing demo @barronlee pic.twitter.com/p5RwrkXC

— Lauren Do (@laurendo) July 23, 2012

He did note that demo is visible from Stargell now, it was limited to behind the athletic club for a while, but apparently Target (or Catellus) is moving quickly to get all those buildings torn down to make way for the new buildings and infrastructure.

And in other big news, Peet’s has been bought out by a German conglomerate to the tune of $977.6 million.  From SFGate:

German conglomerate Joh. A. Benckiser will pay $73.50 per share, which is a 29 percent premium to Peet’s Friday closing stock price of $57.16. The companies put the deal’s total value at about $1 billion Monday.

…

Privately held Benckiser invests in brands in the consumer goods category. It is the majority owner of Coty Inc., which is known for its celebrity fragrances and OPI nail polish. Coty announced last month that it is planning to go public and hopes to raise $700 million in an initial public offering. It also owns Labelux, a luxury goods company with brands such as Jimmy Choo, Bally and Belstaff.

Not too shabby.

Finally, the Housing Element has been certified by the State of California.   After the vote last Tuesday night the City received a letter from the State two days letter with an “it’s all good.”   Which means, no penalization of transportation funding and no penalization with regard to RHNA numbers.  And only time will tell if the MF housing overlay means that developers across the nation will perk up and decide that it’s time to ruin Alameda by building multifamily housing as opponents have suggested.   Of course, Alameda will be going through the process of recertifying the Housing Element in another two years because we missed the last deadline for the last seven year cycle, perhaps this time around people who didn’t feel engaged enough will mark their calendars.