Congratulations to Mayor Gavin Newsom

The SFCED joins the many well-wishers congratulating San Francisco’s new mayor on his inauguration. We look forward to continuing our partnership with the mayor, the city, and the board of supervisors to help attract new jobs and businesses to San Francisco.

Innovative San Francisco: Jeans, Genes, and TV

Since the founding of the city, San Francisco has given rise to tremendous innovations which in turn have spawned new technologies, ways of doing things and society-changing industries. To name just a few: Levi Strauss’ “Jeans Revolution” in the 1800’s and the “Genes Revolution” started by Herbert Boyer’s development of recombinant DNA technology in the 1970’s at UCSF (Boyer founded Genentech). More recently at UCSF, researcher Cynthia Kenyon is changing our understanding of aging and longevity in profound ways. Indeed, San Francisco has altered the way we look at the world both figuratively -- and because of the invention of television at Green and Sansome Streets in the 1920s -- quite literally. These innovations have extended across the spectrum of human achievement, and have made San Francisco a place where great ideas and great companies are born. And also a place to which they return...

An Innovator Comes Home: Design Within Reach

Design Within Reach is coming back to San Francisco where it was founded in 1999. The company signed a 10-year lease for the historic Standard Oil building and has moved its headquarters to San Francisco from Oakland this month. This innovator pioneered the effort to give “lay” customers the ability to easily and directly access furniture that only designers, architects and other professionals typically could obtain. It has not hurt that the company has been featured prominently on the television show “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” as a good place to purchase quality furnishings. The company is glad to gain back a premier San Francisco address for its headquarters. Says CEO Wayne Badovinus, in the following article from the SF Chronicle, “We sense that we have the wind at our back”

The Virgin and The Giants

It takes more than a village to attract a major new company -- it takes an entire region and state. Word was announced in December that the SF Bay Area made the short list of finalists to serve as the headquarters location for Virgin USA, the low-cost carrier to be started by Virgin Atlantic Airways’ founder Richard Branson. Boston and Virginia are on the list as well.

In the Bay Area, Virgin USA quickly identified a San Mateo County location for its potential headquarters location because they wanted to be adjacent to the airport. San Mateo’s economic development group SAMCEDA has very actively marketed its locale.

But Virgin’s expressed interest in San Mateo never stopped San Francisco from pulling out the stops to help bring the company and its thousands of jobs to our region. Then Mayor Willie Brown was seen visiting with Richard Branson at the Virgin Megastore on Market St., Chamber of Commerce President & CEO Lee Blitch made his pitch to Virgin USA executives, and airport officials toured them extensively. Governor Schwarzenegger also made calls.

Even the Giants did their part. On a pristine game night near season’s end, the Giants hosted Virgin executives along with Roberta Achtenberg and Todd Ewing representing the event organizer, the SFCED.

The warm San Francisco night at the ballpark must have made an impression, because Virgin told the Boston Globe newspaper about it. Furthermore, as reported in the Globe: “Virgin officials say that San Francisco [Bay Area] offers many of Boston's perks -- especially its workforce -- but it has cheaper prices for commercial real estate.” Let’s hope the “Curse of the Bambino” extends further than baseball.

SFCED Names Executive Director

The SFCED is redoubling its efforts and growing its staff. Dennis Conaghan, Chamber senior vice president, has been named executive director. Todd Ewing will continue as managing director.

The SFCED is housed at the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. Visit its website at www.sfced.org. If you have any questions, please contact tewing@sfced.org.