Tracey Taylor is a writer and editor. Her work appears in The New York Times, the Financial Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Diablo Magazine, The Guardian and a range of business magazines. Her articles cover a broad range of subjects — including business stories, features on food and architecture, as well as profiles and interviews.
In a previous life Tracey worked as an editor for several magazines, including Campaign and Media & Marketing Europe. She is also the editor of two books: Posters of the Century (Profile Books, 1999) and Finding An Angel Investor (The Planning Shop, 2007).
Tracey writes On the Block, a blog about Bay Area property, for the San Francisco Chronicle and Home Girl, her own housing blog; she used to write Sweet Digs for online real-estate agents Redfin.
Her personal blog, Not A Soccer Mom, which is on hiatus, chronicled her impressions of life in California — where she has lived since moving from London in 2005.
Tracey’s full professional credentials can be found on LinkedIn.
Contact her by email here.
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Recently Published: New York Times, April 23, 2009
MADE IN AMERICA MANUFACTURING: A LABEL OF PRIDE THAT PAYS
[See the online version of this story, which includes a photo slideshow, on the New York Times' website here.]
Michael Goldin, CEO, Swerve. Photograph Pete DaSilva, New York Times.
In a timeworn factory in Sausalito, Calif., 67 workers turn out Heath ceramics, doing everything from mixing the clay to applying the finishing glazes. Twenty miles away, a Japanese robot called Ziggy works day and night in a converted brass foundry in Berkeley, making precision-cut office furniture.
What the two neighboring factories demonstrate is that it is still possible to manufacture high-quality products in one of the most expensive locations in the United States — even in the grip of an economic recession.
And while both are being forced to adapt to the tough times, the two businesses have been helped by the fact that their products are made in America.
“In hard economic times, a slogan built around ‘Buy American’ is going to resonate a little more,” said Steven J. Davis, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. “People read stories about unemployed Americans and they want to feel good when they make consumption decisions.”
Professor Davis said manufacturing was generally moving outside wealthier countries like the United States. “Only an outbreak of protectionist policies or a sharp rise in international shipping costs could slow or temporarily reverse manufacturing’s declining share of employment in the United States,” he said.
Still, there still seems to be an appetite for products from high-end, craft-based manufacturers in America. That proved to be the major reason that Robin Petravic and his wife, Catherine Bailey, bought Heath Ceramics six years ago even though competition from abroad had forced most artisanal potteries across the country to shut down.
They said that when they first walked into Heath’s factory in one of Sausalito’s former shipyards, they decided that Heath’s idiosyncratic way of doing things and its geographical roots could prove to be its salvation. They said they were struck by the fact that every part of the manufacturing process was under one roof. “Many of the employees had worked there for decades and knew everything, including how to fix the machines if they broke down,” Ms. Bailey said.
The company was founded in the mid-1940s by Edith Heath, a ceramicist and creative spirit, and her husband, Brian, an inventor. The company quickly earned a reputation for durable, finely crafted tableware and tile whose clean, modernist lines signaled a break from the more fussy designs of the past.
It would seem at first glance that little has changed at Heath’s dusty, 30,000-square-foot factory in the time since — the tableware and tile are made in the same sustainable, labor-intensive way they have always been. Some lines, like the Coupe pattern, have been in constant production since 1948.
But change has come with the need to make the manufacturing more efficient, cater to the current design aesthetic and respond with agility to the economic downturn. New production systems have been introduced, and dusty pink has been removed from the palette in favor of more contemporary glazing hues like persimmon and cocoa.
In January, Heath introduced a line of less expensive tile. While previously all of Heath’s tile was made to order, the Modern Basics line can be bought off the shelf in a limited selection of colors and shapes. It is about 40 percent cheaper than the custom tile.
Heath’s mix of sales channels has also been adjusted, with wholesale taking a backseat to more direct routes, like the company’s Web site, its factory store and a new retail outlet, which opened in December in Los Angeles. “That’s where we can be most effective and react most quickly,” said Mr. Petravic, a former product designer who developed the business plan.
The factory store, he said, helps them learn which new designs work and which ones do not. It has also reinforced the couple’s commitment to manufacturing in the United States. “We can test the market and avoid suffering from our mistakes,” he said. “If we try something that turns out not to be popular, maybe we have made 100.”
In 2008, Heath’s sales increased fivefold and its profit margin was about 8 percent. The company increased its employee roster to 67 from 25. This year the goal, Mr. Petravic said, is simply to stay flat.
Reinier Evers, founder of Trendwatching.com, which tracks consumer habits, agreed that Heath seemed to be benefiting from consumers’ renewed interest in homegrown products. How products are made is on consumers’ radar, he said. “There’s a story that consumers can tell themselves, or better, the ‘status story’ they can tell their peers to gain recognition.”
Michael Goldin, an architect and industrial designer, has also tied his company’s fate to that trend. For the last 14 years, Mr. Goldin has been contributing to the rejuvenation of a light-industrial district in Berkeley. He transformed an abandoned model airplane motor factory into his office and has designed and outfitted streamlined, open-plan office spaces for lawyers, architects and dotcom start-ups in Berkeley and neighboring Emeryville.
Mr. Goldin’s company, Swerve, has also been making furniture, seeking out the technology required to produce precision-cut aluminum taper joints and machine-tooled, eco-friendly work surfaces for the desks, workstations and shelving systems.
For Mr. Goldin, outsourcing was never an option. “Ever since I was at grad school I have felt very strongly about having my hands in what I am making — actually feeling materials and how they work,” he said. “It all started with my desire to make things and to have a shop where I could do that.”
Outsourcing, he said, would also make it difficult to ensure high design and craftsmanship standards. “How do you keep track?” he asked. “How do you make sure your product comes to you as you specified it? Overseeing the process would require constant traveling back and forth.”
In any case, having Swerve’s pieces made overseas would compromise the company’s just-in-time manufacturing model. “We always make our products to order. We can’t afford to keep items in stock,” Mr. Goldin said. “If we went overseas we would have to order huge inventory ahead of time. And we’re not ready for that.”
The company’s labor costs are kept low because of its reliance on computerized cutting machines, including a new canary yellow robot from Japan, nicknamed Ziggy by the employees, which works 24 hours a day. Of Swerve’s 15 employees, only four work on the shop floor.
In the last few months, Mr. Goldin has had to make some hard choices to ensure that Swerve rides out the economic crisis. A recent order for 500 aluminum-framed chairs will be completed at cost.
He and his administrative staff have vacated the factory’s sleek offices and some income-generating tenants have moved in. And his employees have all agreed to salary cuts. But he believes more strongly than ever that outsourcing would be the wrong choice. “Of all times, we need to do what we can to keep jobs here,” he said.
Both Mr. Goldin and the owners of Heath say they hope what they have achieved will stand as a model for other small- and medium-size businesses facing the critical question of whether to locate production locally or in low-cost offshore sites. As Ms. Bailey put it, “The craft of manufacturing has to a great extent been lost as a value in American culture, and we are striving to retain it.”
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Published: Financial Times House & Home, March 21, 2009
PRESERVATION ORDER: THE BERKELEY FRAT BOYS
TURNED ARCHITECTURAL PRESERVATIONISTS
In many ways Scott Earnest and his roommates are like any other students at the University of California, Berkeley. They spend long hours writing papers, they study hard for their exams and, as brothers of Sigma Phi, they tend to blow off steam at weekend fraternity parties.
The reason for this rather untypical “frat boy” behaviour is architectural appreciation. Earnest and his friends live in an arts-and-crafts masterpiece designed in 1910 by brothers Charles and Henry Greene, “poets” of the movement, who were also behind the better known Gamble House in Pasadena, southern California.
Thorsen House, as it is known, has belonged to the Sigma Phi society since 1942. And any student who wants to belong to the Berkeley chapter and live in its lodge, must also agree to become a responsible custodian of an important US landmark that was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
Many universities around the world boast architecturally distinctive buildings. Oxford has the Bodleian Library and some of its halls of residence date back to the 12th century. Baker House at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was designed by Alvar Aalto, his only North American building. Princeton has Spelman Hall, designed by IM Pei, while Frank Lloyd Wright built the Robie House in 1910, which was subsequently bought by the University of Chicago. But all these buildings are the property of the academic institutions, which are responsible for their maintenance and preservation.
What makes Thorsen House so rare is not even its status as a fraternity lodge. There are other examples of this in the US too. A landmark 1909 Prairie-style house in Madison, Wisconsin designed by Louis Sullivan is also owned by Sigma Phi, and a beautiful Georgian mansion in Lawrence, Kansas, built for the state’s 18th governor, Walter Roscoe Stubbs is owned by Sigma Nu. Rather it’s because the students living in the Greene and Greene property are wholly in charge of its upkeep. They are de facto historic conservationists.
“There’s a lot of scepticism about this,” concedes Josh Taxson, president of the California Sigma Phi Society. “Why would you trust a bunch of college students with such a house? But that uncertainty evaporates when people come through the front door.”
. . .
Like many university cities in the US, Berkeley has a “fraternity row”. Piedmont Avenue, a wide, tree-lined street that skirts eucalyptus-dotted hills and sweeps towards campus, was designed as a grand boulevard in 1865 by Frederick Law Olmstead, creator of New York City’s Central Park. Today, many of its formerly grand homes have been commandeered by fraternities and their female equivalents, sororities – those peculiarly American social and academic coteries that wouldn’t necessarily be every landlord’s pick for the ideal tenants.
The houses are used as lodges where fraternity and sorority members live and, if films like National Lampoon’s Animal House are to be believed, throw parties – frequently and with some abandon. The evidence on Piedmont Avenue seems to bear out this image. Outsize Greek letters affixed to the façades of buildings denote their society affiliation, be it to the Pi Kappa Alpha or Chi Omega orders. Banners heralding forthcoming festivities are often seen strung from balconies, while cast-off pieces of furniture and motley pieces of debris are left out on decks and lawns. Many of the houses look worse for wear, with sagging porches, unkempt yards and dilapidated roofs. Over time, haphazard attempts at remodelling – the addition of a bedroom annex or concrete parking lot, for example – have done little to retain the elegance of the original properties.
But 2307 Piedmont Avenue, the three-storey, shingle-clad Thorsen House stands out for being remarkably intact. With its exaggerated roof overhangs, swathes of clinker-brick walls and stained glass panels, it is known as the last of the four “ultimate bungalows” designed by the Greene brothers, whose aesthetic, like that of the UK’s William Morris, was founded on artisanship and “honest” materials. Custom-built for William Thorsen, a lumber baron, his wife and children, the home’s interiors showcase the architects’ exquisite attention to detail and superlative standard of craftsmanship, including elaborate joinery and custom-painted friezes.
The house has enchanted several generations of students. For Ted Bosley, it literally changed his life: “I owe my academic and professional career to having walked down that street in 1972 as a freshman and been attracted to that house,” he says. “It grabbed me by the lapels and spoke to me in a visceral way.”
He joined Sigma Phi, switched his major to art history while living in the house and went on to become director of the Gamble House organisation, “which demonstrates the power of architecture”, he says.
More recently, Dave Elias came under the house’s spell. He joined Sigma Phi as a philosophy student in 1992 but ended up studying architecture and now, as a Berkeley alumnus, is actively involved on the society’s board of advisers. “I am resigned to the fact that I have lived in the most beautiful house I will ever live in,” he says.
He also worked on one of the fraternity’s most ambitious restoration projects – commissioning a new set of chairs for the home’s elegant mahogany dining room since the original Greene-designed furniture including built-in bookcases, several fire screens and an inlaid table and decorative inlay frieze in abalone, oak, and fruitwoods – is now part of the permanent collection at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. On a limited budget, several students created a prototype design for Gustav Stickley-inspired chairs and convinced a local furniture manufacturer to mill the parts. Elias and his friends then assembled the chairs on site.
“It was a challenge finding something that would stand up to the wear and tear of the house and would also be in tune [with] the Greene and Greene aesthetic,” he says. “We incorporated a spoon-shaped back and flared back legs. I think we gave the furniture- maker a run for its money.”
Earnest, the current house president, has made his own contribution, using the basement workshop to repair many of the original window sashes and helping to paint the upstairs hallways – after research was put into identifying the right historical hue. He says screening for new recruits to Berkeley’s Sigma Phi chapter is a delicate process. “We look for someone who will fit in but they also need to be prepared to do their share of daily [chores], give tours and participate in regular eight-hour [house] workdays,” he says.
And there is much work to be done. Tom Saxby, a 1970s resident of the house who is now an architect specialising in preservation, has devoted significant time to drafting a Historic Structures Report and establishing priorities for what needs to be accomplished. His laundry list is daunting, not least because the building happens to be located on the Hayward Fault, which scientists describe as a tectonic time bomb, due for a major earthquake within the next 30 years.
“The house is far from conforming to contemporary seismic standards. The chimney needs re-enforcing, the foundation needs to be bolted to the house and the roof is the asbestos-cement one that was installed in the 1930s,” he says. “Ideally we would need to close the house down for a year to get everything done.”
Indeed, the large back garden, in which a couple of students are playing table tennis, offers a clear view of the collapsing covered walkway that links the house to the garage, above which the Thorsen family’s chauffeur would have been lodged.
The work to date, overseen by the California Preservation Foundation, has largely been funded by donations from Sigma Phi alumni. Fundraising is ongoing and contributions are tax-deductible. But Josh Taxson estimates they need $8m to carry out all the restoration that lies ahead. “What we really need is Brad Pitt,” he says jokingly, referring to the fact that the multi-millionaire actor is known to be a fan of Greene and Greene. Pitt contributed a photo essay to a book about the restoration of the Blacker House in Pasadena, also designed by the brothers, which was being undertaken by his architect, a leading Greene and Greene scholar, Randell L Makinson.
For now, Earnest is taking personal responsibility for small tasks such as fixing the broken lock on the fold-down desk in the Thorsen House living room. He and his roommates might be frat boys, he says, but “we like to think we are upstanding”.
Tours of Thorsen House can be arranged seven days a week. For more information, e-mail questions@thorsenhouse.org.
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Published: San Francisco Chronicle, January 4, 2009
Green Condo Homes Have a Tale to Tell
Every house has a story to tell, but when the home is newly built you don’t expect it to be a very long one. Architect and builder Maurice Levitch is determined, however, that whoever buys one, or both, of his recently completed condos on Seventh Street in West Berkeley will know as much as there is to know about the history of the land and whatever it is that came before them.
“I like to acknowledge the past in a new home,” he says. “It gives the structure a story and places it in the context of its location.” This focus on heritage also sits well with Levitch’s desire to build homes that salvage and reuse materials as much as possible and have a minimal impact on the environment.
A visit to the two four-bedroom, three-bath townhouses at 1411 and 1413 Seventh St. therefore includes the opportunity to see a small display of the artifacts unearthed during their construction, as well as information on the 240-square-foot home that was built on the site in 1895. It is believed to have belonged to Jennie Morris, dressmaker, which may well explain the rust-encrusted hand iron that can be examined in the mini-exhibition.
The two units, which have been on the market since mid-November, stand out architecturally on a street that is a mix of unprepossessing Victorians, low-rise boxy condo units and a smattering of light industrial buildings.
Tucked behind an open-slatted wooden fence, they are clad in a blend of cement fiber siding softened with board and baton finish on the upper floors and a dark gray stucco underneath. The homes have been designed to maximize natural light with walls of glass, skylights and clerestories, and each one has double-height living areas, three outside decks and loft space.
Because they are on one lot, there is a communal aspect to the houses, with a shared entrance and courtyard, complete with fountain, although the home to the rear can also be accessed separately by an alley that runs behind the site.
The homes score high on the GreenPoint rating program instituted by Build It Green, a California nonprofit that promotes sustainable building practices, and they boast a plethora of eco-friendly features with an emphasis on energy efficiency and a healthy environment. The radiant heating and water heating systems are solar-powered, a ventilator filters fresh air and the homes are both Energy Star qualified.
Although the look is contemporary, Levitch has injected warmth into the design with the use of natural materials such as wood for the window frames, kitchen units and built-ins, cast-in-place concrete for the fireplace surrounds and pebble floors in the shower rooms.
The inclusion of exposed beams, baseboards and pitched roofs is a nod in the direction of the traditional Craftsman style.
Echoes of the original dressmaker’s house also add interest and patina to the new homes.
Levitch says he designed the front porches to mirror the style of the old structure, which was deconstructed, rather than demolished, with salvaging in mind. The stair banisters and plant shelves on the mezzanines were made with joists from the old house, and reclaimed bricks from a kiln found on the site were used to create the yard paving.
The location of the new eco-homes will no doubt give some prospective buyers pause. Berkeley is dealing with the controversy surrounding the possibly harmful pollutants being created by Pacific Steel Casting, whose plant is five blocks away from the homes. And Levitch is the first to admit that this part of West Berkeley, originally known as Ocean View before it was annexed to Berkeley in 1878, is “transitional.”
“The heritage of this area is of a working-class neighborhood with a mix of homes and industry,” he says.
Address: 1411 and 1413 Seventh St., Berkeley
Architect/Builder: Maurice Levitch ( www.levitch.com)
Details: Both 4-bedroom/3-bath, 1,999-square-feet each, wheelchair accessible.
Eco credentials: Include solar thermal water and heating systems, radiant heat, thermal mass strategies, low VOC paint, cross ventilation, Energy Star appliances, many salvaged and reused materials, FSC certified flooring, drought-tolerant landscaping, efficient use of lot.
Projected GreenPoint rating: 200 (minimum 50 required).
Prices: $918,000 (no. 1411) and $936,000 (no. 1413)
Walk Score: 91/100 - “walkers’ paradise.
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Financial Times, December 13, 2008
“Live, Work, Shop”: Homebuyers are finding a blend of retail and residential property increasingly desirable, reports Tracey Taylor
For the past five years Christmas shopping has not been a problem for photographer Frank Anzalone. He simply rolls out of bed and walks out of his apartment directly into an open-air mall with 70 high-end shops, including Burberry, Sur La Table and Bang & Olufsen. His home is in Santana Row, a surburban retail-residential community that is increasingly being replicated around the US and the world.
“I enjoy this time of year when the lights sparkle and there is a fun holiday energy at the Row,” Anzalone says. “It feels more like a small hometown community than a bustling shopping mall and I really enjoy talking to the different merchants. It’s nice when you’re on a first-name basis and not treated as just another sale. People are friendly and the atmosphere is safe and comfortable. I hope to be here for another five-plus years.”
A few decades ago living above the shop was seen as a rather pedestrian existence; former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher used to cite the fact that she was born above her father’s grocery store in Grantham, Lincolnshire, eastern England, as a reminder of her humble roots. Now, however, residential and retail property are being blended together for the opposite reason. Developers are persuading homebuyers to see living above the shop as something to aspire to – especially when the establishment in question is operated by Gucci or Salvatore Ferragamo.
This phenomenon can be seen in new-build developments and regeneration projects around the world, especially in city centres. There are older neighbourhoods, such as Soho in Hong Kong and Le Marais in Paris, with apartments above trendy stores and restaurants, and modern malls with housing attached, such as Avenue K in Kuala Lumpur and Westfield in White City, London. Going forward, we can only expect more of the same. European developer Uplace, for example, wants to roll out its “experience destination” communities, where people can shop, work, play and live, to cities across the continent.
“The industrial age was marked by the construction of single-family homes [but] the hallmark of the new spatial fix will be denser use of land and increased compactness,” says Richard Florida, professor of business and creativity at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, Canada, whose latest book, Who’s Your City?, focuses on the “where to live” question. “The demand for central locations is motivated by people’s desire to conserve time – by eliminating commuting, for instance.”
But, perhaps not surprisingly, it is in the consumerist US where the retail-residential concept is really taking off. Developers are bringing it not just to cities but to towns and suburbs, manufacturing entirely new, upmarket communities around pre-packaged, open-air malls. Call it instant yet sanitised urbanism – with a focus on shopping.
Santana Row, five miles from the nearest city, San José, is an ideal case in point. Designed to resemble a large urban block with a main street running through the centre, it has 70 retailers, 20 restaurants, nine spas and salons and more than 1,000 residents on its 42-acre footprint. Having opened in 2002, it has become the go-to spot for young professionals looking for upmarket shopping, a vibrant restaurant scene, a buzzy nightlife and, crucially, a convenient place to live.
The location of the development is significant. San José is California’s third largest city and, as the capital of Silicon Valley with its concentration of high-tech industries and wealth, its inhabitants rank among those with the highest median incomes in the country. But it has long drawn unfavourable comparisons with San Francisco, 50 miles north, for its lack of animation. And, if anything, the vibrancy of Santana Row has exacerbated the situation, luring not only shoppers but also homebuyers with its promise of a new kind of community.
“I’m addicted to the convenience. Everything is at your fingertips,” says Casey De Carlo, a software company sales executive and former suburbanite who now lives in The Heights, a Santana Row apartment building flanking an open courtyard with a swimming pool. “I made more friends here in six months than in six years in the suburbs and I could write a book about what goes on around the hot tub,” he adds wryly.
To walk the streets of Santana Row is to confront a melange of architectural styles and cultural references. Jan Sweetman, a vice-president at developer Federal Realty, says designers were sent to France and Europe to source ideas before blueprints were drawn up. Several architects were contracted to work on different buildings to avoid a “Disneyland-type product”. There are fountains imported from Barcelona, grassy plazas, fragments of ironwork and distressed stucco from Tunisia and Italy and Gaudi-esque pillars encrusted with broken tiles. The façade of a 17th-century French chapel is affixed to the front of a wine bar.
At the heart of the community people sit under mature oak trees; there’s a fire pit, chess tables and live music. A concierge is on hand to make restaurant reservations or secure transportation and residents can also take advantage of a regular onsite farmers market, “mommy and me” events and jazz evenings. Staff seem to appear from nowhere to sweep up the first hint of a discarded coffee cup or ice cream wrapper. And the streets are patrolled 24/7 by private security firms in addition to being overseen by the San José police department. As the San Francisco Chronicle put it when reviewing the development in 2006: “It’s as if San José, having surpassed San Francisco in population, decided one day to catch up on the urban lifestyle thing but without the gridlock, the grime or the poor people.”
Carlos Dunlap, a former resident of Los Angeles who moved to northern California five years ago intending to settle in San Francisco, is now on his second Santana Row home. He first bought an open-plan loft, then switched to a three-level town house with views of the nearby hills. His office is a 10-minute drive away and he says he loves the fact the Row is both “immaculate” and safe. “There’s something going on here all the time for everybody,” he says.
Property prices vary depending on size and location. A three-bedroom, two-and-a half bathroom, 2,161 sq ft town house across the street from The Valencia, the development’s boutique hotel, is listed at $1.8m while $3.3m will buy an extra 1,600 sq ft, cathedral ceilings and a balcony and terrace. Monthly rental rates for flats range from $2,700 to $4,000.
Federal Realty has built several other surburban retail-residential developments on the US east coast, including the Village at Shirlington and Pentagon Row, both in Virginia, and Bethesda Row in Maryland. And the formula is being mirrored all over California. Outside Los Angeles, in Glendale, there is the Americana at Brand, marrying high-end stores such as Tiffany & Co and Barneys, luxury condominiums and the amenities of a five-star resort, in a project that developer Rick Caruso says was inspired by Newbury Street in Boston. And west of San Francisco in Emeryville there is Bay Street, a development where more than 1,000 residents live above 60 retailers, 10 restaurants and a 16-screen cinema.
These new communities don’t appeal to everyone. Former suburbanities can be put off by the crowds, says Mike Pynn, residential manager at Santana Row. “Some of our first customers thought they wanted the urban experience but then complained about the noise and left,” he says. And, perversely for a place focused on walkability, most outsiders arrive by car, keeping valet parking attendants busy.
Those used to a traditional city will have the opposite problem. As John King, architecture critic of the San Francisco Chronicle, points out, Santana Row and its sisters are “artificial urbanity”. “For people who define the idea of a cosmopolitan urban scene as essentially a stage set to live the sort of life they want to live, it’s a terrific stage set,” he says. But “it’s not part of San José. It’s like suburbia with an urban jolt. If it was parachuted into lower Manhattan there would be a sense of ‘Why do we want it?’” Even residents of a small town might question where the post office, fire station and library are.
Richard Florida also thinks manufactured “urban villages” are better if they are linked to a historic neighbourhood, rather than “out in the middle of nowhere”. He points to SouthSide Works in Pittsburgh, which saw the addition of high-end housing units, retailers and restaurants to an old mill site, and the Distillery District in Toronto, a pedestrian-only village with Victorian architecture that dates back to 1832, as examples.
But it’s difficult to argue with Santana Row’s thriving retail trade and 98 per cent residential occupancy rate. And the development is expanding: construction began on a 95,000 sq ft glass-and-steel building for offices and more retail space this summer.
Whether growth can be maintained in the current economic downturn remains to be seen. But Pynn is optimistic. He says he still gives regular tours of the Row to goverment officials and developers from all over the US who say they are looking for inspiration on how to fashion the perfect community. “Everyone wants their MTV and everyone wants their Santana Row,” he says.