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Dot-Com Havens Or Hazards?
California may be able to claim the title of "the dot-com state," but holding that title is not without its pitfalls.
Dot-com havens like Palo Alto and San Francisco are known for being tech hot spots. They have brought wealth and prosperity to thousands along with sleek new office buildings that dot the landscape. But the new look has been costly to some cities, and the costs have triggered a backlash against the dot-com revolution in high-tech areas across the country.
In Austin, TX, musicians are protesting Hire.com, which took over the area’s Opry House club, the former entertainment site for performers like Janis Joplin and Willie Nelson. In East Austin, tenants in several buildings were given a month to leave their apartments and make way for a new tech complex.
In Chicago, meanwhile, a massive ePort complex will replace the low-income housing project of Cabrini Green. And in Seattle, Smith Tower, once an icon for social activism, is home to Internet start-ups that took the place of county agencies and non-profits.
San Francisco has become ground zero for the fight between dot-commers and those who want to preserve the cities they once knew. Voters there will have the chance to weigh the costs and benefits of technology-related growth and wealth on Election Day. At the polls Tuesday, San Franciscans will face several ballot choices on how to help lawmakers and residents in high-tech areas address the problems that have been magnified by the dot-com revolution: overcrowding, skyrocketing rent and increased homelessness.
Propositions K and L attempt to address overcrowding by limiting office growth. Prop. L proponents argue that the initiative would "save San Francisco" by protecting diversity.
Backed by groups such as the California Nurses Association, various city officials and local Democratic and community groups, Prop. L would redefine office space to include multimedia and computer-based services such as software development, Web design and electronic commerce, and would limit or suspend further development in certain areas of the city. Prop. K would allow more metered growth in certain areas.
Prop. L backers have recoiled at media reports that they say portray them as trying to drive out dot-coms. Those involved with the "Yes on L" campaign say that is not true.
"The dot-com industry is being made to be the villain here," said Debra Walker, co-chair of the Prop. L campaign and a local artist and community activist. "It’s basically about bad planning," and the real-estate industry "is hurting everybody, including the dot-com industry. ... This is about a city that has tried to take the hype of all of the stock-market fires and spread it out to real estate."
Critics of the dot-com rush to the Bay area argue that dot-commers who have tried to move closer to work are to blame for increasing housing costs. That in turn, they say, has forced many local artists and low-income residents out of the area so that eager-to-please developers can break ground for more office space.
W. James Au, co-founder of HIP4SF.org (High-tech/Internet Professionals For San Francisco), said Mayor Willie Brown and developers are the main impetus behind the feeding frenzy to develop land for an industry where "investing is like sand." Developers have contributed more than $2 million to anti-L campaigns, while the Dot-Com Good Government Committee, which consists of companies like GCI and GCA Strategies, contributed more than $100,000 to Brown’s re-election campaign last year. Brown has been labeled pro-business by many Prop. L supporters.
Prop. L backers even include some tech workers, such as those in the Digital Workers Alliance (DWA). The group’s Web site says computer-industry workers in the San Francisco area are "caught between a rock and a hard place. We depend on the industry for our livelihoods, but many of us hate what the industry is doing to our city, especially since it is being done in our name."
DWA co-founder Sasha Magee said the industry is moving so quickly and having such a vast effect on the area that Prop. L is "really the only way, in the short-term, to get a handle on stuff." She calls the initiative a "stop-gap measure" rather than "a perfect proposition" but adds, "We need to do something fast."
The 100-member DWA was founded about a month ago to provide an alternate voice to the one in the industry that Magee says advocates sprawl. "Part of the reason we exist is to provide another voice for the industry ... saying we don’t need an office on every street corner ... and San Francisco is worth preserving, even at the cost that you can’t have your pool table and pinball machine in your office."
DWA members include workers from Macromedia and online animation company Wildbrain.com who want to be seen by Californians as something other than a "problem."
Walker said Prop. L seeks to enforce growth-control measures by planning boards and redirect growth to appropriate areas, such as those where workers can take public transportation. Walker argued that supporters of Prop. K, on the other hand, do not really care if that initiative passes.
She said supporters of that proposal, including the San Francisco Partnership (SFP) and Brown, introduced it merely to distract and "confuse" people, and to take votes from Prop. L. She added developers, rather than dot-commers, are the biggest advocates of Prop. K, which would allow for a bit more growth than Prop. L and would for a "growth czar."
"They have organization, but what it’s doing is focusing on killing [Prop.] L," Walker said.
But like Prop. L advocates, Prop. K supporters also blame the media for misinformation and worry that negative reporting on the initiative is causing sentiment against it to grow.
"Proposition K has been painted totally as this pro-business approach when it really isn’t," said Marie Jones, director of business assistance for SFP, which conducted a comparison matrix of Prop. K and Prop. L. "It’s measured growth control. San Franciscans are really concerned about high housing costs and traffic, and they think Proposition L is going to solve those problems, but it isn’t."
Jones added that the Bay area inevitably will grow, and if it is not allowed to grow controllably in San Francisco, the growth will spread and contribute to suburban sprawl. "We have two choices here. We can grow up or grow out. We don’t have a third option," she said.
Brown’s former economic planning director, Emilio Cruz, announced in September that he would take a leave of absence to campaign on behalf of Prop. K full time. Cruz did not return phone calls by press time.
Whatever the ballot outcome, many say the economy needs the dot-coms to survive. But they also say the industry also needs to retain the creative aspects that artists, musicians and the like can contribute — and that might just help slow the deaths of dot-coms.
"As San Francisco loses its creative capital, we lose our cutting edge," HIP4SF.org says at its site, which is geared toward members of the area’s tech industry who support local arts and culture. "The economic exodus caused by the success of San Francisco's Internet economy will ultimately undermine it, creating a ‘brain drain’ of future innovators who are already searching for more affordable places to live."
With hundreds of dot-commers being laid off every day, HIP4SF.org’s Au says the industry needs to rejuvenate the creative side of the Net economy and expand the Web’s focus beyond e-commerce. Back where it all began, in the early 1990s phase of the punk era — before the invention of the browser — many of what would have been considered "dot-coms" then were run by non-profit groups.
After Netscape invented the browser, Au said, "the whole world collectively went crazy ... and kind of forgot that the Internet was originally created and was originally intended for students and scientists. ... It’s kind of gone too far over to the other side where it’s totally commerce."
What’s On The Ballot
The National Conference of State Legislatures’ Web site has a complete database of the 204 measures that will appear on the ballots in 42 states on Tuesday. Some topics include tax policy, education, gaming, campaign finance reform, term limits and the use of tobacco-settlement funds. Only eight states — Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Texas and Vermont — will have no statewide questions on their ballots.
- by Liza Porteus
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