Word filtered back to Cort that del Portillo had passed on acquiring the Bay View Bank building a long time ago (it went on the market six months before the district purchased the New Mission Theater), specifically because she didn't want to be the one to tell scores of politically connected groups and individuals that they would have to find new offices in a market where commercial vacancy rates are the lowest they've been in 15 years, and the rents have never -- ever -- been higher.
When it became clear that del Portillo, who is central to any decision about the new campus, wasn't going to allow the college district to buy the Bay View Bank building, Cort should probably have relented.
Instead, the irresistible force kept pushing against the immovable object.
Cort entered into a purchase agreement with the owners of the bank building and started calling college officials, asking them to come down and take a look.
Because she was suing the district, she could not engage in discussions with its representatives. So she enlisted the help of her brother, who works as a broker with Starboard Commercial Real Estate. Robert Cort Jr. recruited two of his colleagues, one a real estate financing specialist, to offer insight and guidance.
Cort Jr. did this quite against his better judgment and only -- only -- out of sibling fealty.
"I told my sister she is crazy," he says. "My folks think she is crazy. This is my crazy sister's crazy crusade. I told her, 'Let them tear the fucking theater down.' They say we are doing it for our own reasons, like we want to make a killing or something. That's bullshit. Honestly, if City College moves across the street, it will improve our property."
Still, Cort Jr. and his Starboard colleagues called Peter Goldstein, the chief financial officer for the college district, and offered to structure a deal.
Goldstein said it was useless to talk about a deal until district officials, especially del Portillo, looked at the site. A tour of the site was scheduled. No one but Goldstein showed up. He stayed for a few minutes and left, refusing to discuss any possible financing schemes.
In an interview last week, Goldstein told me the building's interior structure is all wrong. He said the pillars are too close together, and the hallways and the rooms are too small. And besides, he said, at $9.8 million, it's too expensive.
All these objections are valid -- but irrelevant.
What Goldstein and other district officials did not know and couldn't know (because they have stubbornly refused to have any substantive discussions with Debbie Cort or her pro bono team of commercial real estate professionals) was this: The Corts are willing to do anything to accommodate the college district.
Anything.
Robert Cort Jr. puts it this way: "We would develop it at no cost to City College. We would waive the development fee. If they called us right now and said they wanted the Bay View Bank building, we would buy it. We would get the financing for it. We would develop it. We would put classrooms in there to their specifications. We would do anything they wanted or needed to make it happen for them. We would rent it to them with an option to purchase, at whatever it cost us. And we would open our books to prove to them we are not making a profit."
No one turns his or her back on someone willing to do anything to be of assistance without some pretty compelling reasons.
I'd bet the real reason the community college district is not interested in the Bay View Bank building has nothing to do with the sale price, or the space between pillars, or the size of hallways -- though I trust Goldstein when he says the building is not particularly amenable to collegiate uses.
I'd say the real reason has to do with $35 million in bond funds the college district expected to get from the state. With that kind of money to build a new campus, del Portillo could dole out contracts that would make a lot of political supporters, and potential political supporters, happy.
Now, though, del Portillo and her fellow college district administrators face an unexpected financing problem: The state community college chancellor's office has turned down the San Francisco district's request for money to build its new campus. It seems that the college district made a not-so-minor error, failing to buy the site for its new campus quickly enough. The deadline to qualify for state bond money was January 1998. The district didn't buy the theater and an adjoining building until July 1998.
San Francisco's community college chancellor, Philip Day, is trying desperately to convince the state chancellor to give up the $35 million anyway. But things don't look good for San Francisco. And without that money the new campus would seem to be indefinitely stalled.
But that's OK, Chancellor Day: I know a temperamental real estate developer with a bad reputation who wants to talk deal. If you don't mind crawling into bed with a family Hispanic leaders consider racially insensitive, and if you don't mind losing out on a sweet, $35 million kitty of construction contracts, you might give her a call.
George Cothran (gcothran@sfweekly.com) can be reached at SF Weekly, 185 Berry, Suite 3800, San Francisco,
