But I can't get a nagging question out of my mind: If Myers were serious, wouldn't he offer to stabilize his building by sinking pilings to bedrock, as long as the city paid the extra cost of doing so?
The notion that the 80 Natoma project might be a political squeeze on the public treasury evokes a wide variety of conspiracy theories, theories made richer by Myers' decision to hire what seems to be the entire Willie Brown-era cadre of politically connected development lawyers, political consultants, and architects.
But the most intriguing public-private nexus of this odd project involves Richard Ressler, a former associate of junk bond felon Michael Milken, who's become an important protagonist in California political finance, while remaining all but invisible to the public eye.
A founder and part-owner of Hollywood-based CIM Group, Ressler has gone unnoticed in coverage of the 80 Natoma flap, though his firm is a significant presence behind the deal. Ressler, his family members, his companies, and his business associates donate heavily to state and national political campaigns. Ressler also runs a CIM Group fund that includes money from the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), and that provided Myers with $42 million by way of a special type of loan designed to allow the lender to ultimately become part owner of the firm set up to control 80 Natoma.
"It's not unusual for 'mezzanine' lenders to have special provisions for returns. I'm not going to go into that here," Myers says. He also will not say how much of his own money he has contributed to the project.
Which brings us back to San Francisco, our mayor, and, as one might expect, our former mayor.
Last year Monique Moyer, then Mayor Willie Brown's director of public finance and business affairs, voted to place between $150 million and $280 million of CalPERS money into the same CIM fund that's financing Myers' 80 Natoma project. At the time, she was substituting on the CalPERS board for Brown.
In May, Newsom named Moyer executive director of that massive real estate holding firm known as the Port of San Francisco.
Mind you, I've found nothing to prove our mayor is going out of his way to bolster the bottom line of a politically connected financier, or a CalPERS investment fund, for that matter. But this whole situation is convoluted enough to give pause: Wasn't Gavin Newsom supposed to be a different sort of mayor? The sort of mayor who didn't thwart the general interest while carrying water for developers? The kind of guy who wouldn't position former Willie Brown hacks to oversee San Francisco's lucrative public-private business deals?
Sadly, the 80 Natoma affair, and the new sinecures of Moyer and Blout, suggest otherwise.
As I finished this column, government agencies were hashing out some elements of the 80 Natoma-Transbay Terminal brouhaha. The Building Inspection Commission was considering a challenge to the validity of the building permit for Myers' condo tower but had not, by press time, reached a decision. As this issue went to press, the Board of Supervisors was scheduled to decide whether to approve environmental documents that would allow the Transbay Terminal to proceed with plans for the proposed transit complex. If the board were to accommodate a request by Myers and reject the environmental impact report, the subway project would suffer considerable delays.
Regardless of how those boards rule, the 80 Natoma-Transbay conflict raises the question of whether in Gavin Newsom we have one of those perennial Fresh New Faces under whom nothing changes.
I'm sure he'll make a good governor someday.
