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Hudson Bay Capital the Hedge Fund is NOT Hudson's Bay Company (HBC aka 'The Bay') the Retailer.
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Hudson Bay Capital is the successor to Gerber Asset Management LLC founded by Sander Gerber.
Just wanted to clarify before too many people get excited over The Bay potentially buying BBBY.
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More likely, it’s straight up horseshit.
[Discussion] silly plan to fund a new bay rail crossing
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"Where are you gonna come up with several billion dollars?" -- well, a housing unit near a subway station in SF-Oakland downtown areas is worth about $1M, so assuming we make a little profit, we need to build 20k-30k units to clear that.
The idea is for a public entity (hereafter the "Entity") to buy up a lot of property near where you're going to put new transit stations, build the rail line, and sell the property. The profits on all of this real estate can then be used to pay back the cost of building this subway. As an added bonus, if the Entity can build some new housing on this property, it can sell that, too.
So the new problem is: where are we going to get room for twenty thousand goddamn units? Treasure Island and West Alameda.
You're probably thinking: "those are both really contaminated with toxic waste", but that's a potential opportunity: could you roll soil remediation and subway entrance/exit construction into the same project and save money? Seems to me you already have to dig up a lot of the land on TI and Alameda in order to clean it, and that's gotta happen sometime. Also, I think there's already a budget for it. Don't quote me on that.
To achieve this, I think the cheapest way (guessing!) is for the rail line to be alongside (or on) the Bay Bridge from San Francisco to Yerba Buena Island, probably ending in SF at the Transbay Terminal. Then at YBI it turns northwest and follows the road to Treasure Island (on a dedicated RoW) where it goes underground from Treasure Island to the old Navy base on Alameda. From there it looks like you have room for surface rail following the north shoreline of Alameda and going behind the ferry terminal, marked by a green line:
https://s17.postimg.org/vz2vcd5vz/alameda.png
then you could go underground again somewhere near the red "x", probably adding a stop here since there's a Target and plenty of parking, and there's already a tunnel here (for the road) so you might be able to expand that for the train or something, anyway, the line can roughly follow the blue line to have a stop at Jack London Square station, which is useful because riders on those lines will now have an easier time riding the new line than the old BART crossing, so we should successfully divert at least some of the trans-bay traffic to the new line. Then it continues from JLS to Lake Merrit BART, at least in theory, I think Oakland would like a connection there anyway.
With rail like this planned, you now have transit availability to justify pretty significant housing development on TI and West Alameda, and if the Entity has already purchased most of this land, it can turn a significant profit by selling housing on it, the proceeds from which can be used to fund the subway. Estimates for construction on both TI and West Alameda post-remediation have been in the 10k unit region, so taken together that's 20k-ish units (and a new rail line). With a subway station in both places you might be able to bump it up to 30k. If the Entity turns a $200k profit per unit that's six billion dollars. OK, not exactly the $10B currently estimated, but we can imagine there's some revenue from the riders.
The goal of all this was to find some money laying around somewhere that could be used to fund building the Second Crossing while we're all still alive, and surprisingly I think I did it. The additional benefit is that by using a bridge for part of the crossing and some (dedicated) surface RoW on Alameda, you can build much less subway and cross many fewer utility lines and so forth, saving money. The downside of the plan is that the Second Crossing thus described wouldn't be quite as fast as a direct tunnel (presumably 3 stops between Lake Merrit and Transbay, where BART currently has 2), but I think that serving these areas that BART skips by is a goal worth pursuing and could reduce congestion in the general area.
of course I have no power to do this, but that's why it's on sanfrancisco
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That routing is just not so wildly different from the bart line, though. Most of the other fantasies are about a more southerly crossing.
But I'm glad to see your fantasy involving treasure island. My fantasy -- for a long time -- was that we should bung in a bart stop there on the island, and build all the sports stadiums there. All the major-league-sports yahoos are concentrated in one place, out of the way of the rest of us.
The bridge exits are police-controlled on game days/nights, so if you wanna go support your team, you must take rail transit. Bart runs back to back to back 10 car trains, so you can get 40,000 people on/off the island in 25 minutes.
Anyway, that's the vision I've had for a few decades.
Lunada Bay Protesters Stand Up To 'Trust Fund' Bullies At Hostile Surf Spot- huffpost is terrible, but any press is good press
Main Post: Lunada Bay Protesters Stand Up To 'Trust Fund' Bullies At Hostile Surf Spot- huffpost is terrible, but any press is good press
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Jesus who wrote this? They quoted sarcastic Yelp comments as if they were legit.
A Yelp review page for Lunada Bay, however, contains mixed reviews. Some claim that "the best [thing] about this spot [is] the locals" and that "everyone is welcome."
Maybe I know it's dripping with sarcasm because I'm a surfer, but come one Huff Post. Try harder please.
Sterling Bay asks Chicago teachers' pension fund to rescue Lincoln Yards
Main Post: Sterling Bay asks Chicago teachers' pension fund to rescue Lincoln Yards
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For those that did not read the article, they are not asking for a handout, but rather for the Chicago Teachers' Pension Fund to become the main investor of the development. The fund is a multi-billion dollar trust that has many diverse investments including real estate investments.
That does not mean that this is a good deal for the CTPF. Investing in this development seems to be getting riskier by the day and Sterling Bay may have bitten off more than they could chew. It would not surprise me if the whole thing is dead in the water.
Emergency Fund-BA style
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Just curious, given high rents and what that means in terms of liquid assets, what does your emergency fund consist of?
"Six months" expenses is often kicked around but just wondering how many people keep a good $12k+ on hand not doing much..
Edit: I agree in principle with everyone so far, just curious what different people's personal emergency fund looks like and whether they've chosen a small amount because of the high dollar counts involved required to be liquid.
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The Bay Area isn't different from anywhere else in this regard. You can still be fired, come down with something, get booted out if renting...if anything, it's more important to set up an Oh Shit Fund here.
The people who don't should not be living here long term IMO. Life is going to give them a kick in the ass at some point and they're in for a world of hurt.