Modera The Alameda, a 168-unit apartment building on The Alameda near the SAP Center and Diridon train station, is a step closer to transformation into an affordable housing complex following a unanimous vote by the San Jose City Council.

A $100 million package of tax-exempt bonds to finance the purchase of Modera The Alameda is the funding centerpiece of the affordable housing conversion.

The city’s decision paves the way for the anticipated future owner of the property to pursue the financing for the apartment complex at 787 The Alameda.

The $100 million financing package would be used for “the acquisition, rehabilitation, improvement, and equipping of 167 apartments and one manager’s unit to transition to an affordable housing development,” a city staff report states.

The California Municipal Finance Authority, an agency jointly established in 2004 by multiple government agencies, is slated to issue the bonds for the purchase of the Modera apartment complex.

“This will allow the Modera development to move forward with its current financing plan and create much-needed affordable housing,” the city staff report stated, referring to the financing package to convert Modera into affordable housing.

The California Municipal Finance Authority acts as a conduit for tax-exempt bonds to finance an array of projects to promote economic development.

“San Jose lacks a sufficient amount of affordable housing to meet residents’ needs,” the city staff report states.

The conversion proposal sketches out a plan whereby Catalyst Impact Fund, a nonprofit, would purchase Modera, the city documents show. Catalyst Impact would buy Modera the Alameda from current owner AEW Capital Management.

Once the apartments are converted to affordable housing, they would be set aside for very low-income and low-income individuals and families.

People who live in Modera typically pay monthly rents that range from a low of slightly more than $2,300 a month to nearly $4,600 a month, apartments.com reports.

“To avoid displacement of any current market-rate residents, units will transition to affordable upon move-out,” the city staff report states. “Existing residents who income-qualify will be offered affordable rates upon lease renewal.”

Of the 168 units, 34 units will be set aside for people at the 50% area median income level and the remaining 134 units will be restricted to people at the 80% area median income level, city officials say.

“The 2023 income limit for households with 50% area median income is $62,450 to $89,200 a year and the 80% area median income is $96,000 to $137,100 a year,” the city staff report stated.

Modera’s current assessed value is $101.7 million, county documents show.

The proposal would remove Modera from the property tax rolls — which means the complex would no longer generate property tax revenue once the new owner takes over.

About $1 million a year in property tax revenue would be wiped out as a result of conversion to affordable housing.

Despite the loss in property tax revenue, a conversion makes sense, in the view of Bob Staedler, principal executive with Silicon Valley Synergy, a land-use consultancy.

“Existing units can be purchased for less than the exorbitant cost to build new affordable housing,” Staedler said.

Ryan Christopher, a San Jose resident, wrote an email to city staffers that raised questions about the wisdom of the conversion to affordable housing, especially if a significant hit to San Jose’s revenue from property taxes is in the offing.

“It appears to me that the 80% area median income rents are very similar to the current rents at the property,” Christopher wrote in a Nov. 14 email to the city. “As such, it seems questionable that there is a public benefit, and certainly questionable that we should forgo tax revenue to support this.”

But a recent study conducted by Kantar on behalf of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) found that both parents and teens are not only aware of GAI but also mostly optimistic about its impact. The study included teens (13-17) and their parents completing an online survey with 1,000 participants in each of three countries: The U.S., Japan and Germany. I’ll focus mostly on the U.S. responses, which, for the most part, were similar to those from the two other countries.

Familiarity and use

When it comes to awareness, U.S. teens (69%) and parents (74%) are mostly familiar with GAI with 25% of parents saying they “know a lot,” compared with 22% of teens, which itself is different from most other tech issues where teens tend to be more aware than their parents. But what’s most surprising is that 45% of U.S. teens agreed that their parents know more than they do about GAI while only about a third (32%) of teens said that they know more. Parents concurred, with the same percentage saying their teen knows more compared with 43% saying “I know more than my teen.”

The report didn’t speculate why parents feel more clued-in than teens, but I’m guessing it has something to do with extensive news coverage of GAI and the fact that parents are more likely to consume mainstream news than are teens. Teens are more likely to get their news from digital sources, including social media.

Even though parents are more likely to say they are aware of GAI, U.S. teens are slightly more likely (67%) than parents (64%) to “have used or tried using genAI.”

Nearly three-quarters (73%) of U.S. parents and 63% of teens say they mostly use GAI for its analytical tools while 67% of parents and 61% of teens have used it for creative tasks. The report said that teens are more likely (74% vs. 59%) to use GAI “to be more efficient at tasks including proofreading and creating synopses of longer works.”

Only about a third (34%) of American parents feel that they “don’t have enough information and education about genAI,” compared with 47% in Germany and 73% in Japan.

Top concerns

Respondents were asked to rate their top concerns, and both parents and teens picked job loss as No. 1, followed by the spread of false information. Parents picked “loss of critical thinking skills” as No. 3, while teens were more likely to worry about “AI surpassing humans.” The teens picked “new forms of harassment” as their fourth concern, but that didn’t make it on the parents’ top 5 list. Both groups rated “growing dependency on genAI” as No. 5.

“Teens,” said the report “are acutely aware of the potential for genAI to be used for more sophisticated means of bullying, or to create new or intensified forms of harassment. From parents’ perspective, many express trepidation that their teens will lose opportunities to engage in deep analysis, original ideas and meaningful thinking.”

Parents were asked if they need more information to help them guide their teens, and 55% of U.S. parents said they wanted to know more about the potential risks vs. the benefits. Just under half (49%) picked benefits. Fortunately, these are not mutually exclusive. ConnectSafely is currently working on a parents guide to GAI which will focus on both risks and benefits.

Perceived vs. actual risks

It’s important to remember that a survey measures perceived risks, not necessarily actual ones. GAI is still very new, and we don’t yet know what the real risks are. It’s not yet clear, for example, whether GAI will result in a net loss or a net gain in jobs, though it’s likely to have a negative impact on some job categories. We know that GAI can result in misinformation, but there are efforts in place to use it to help combat that very scourge. The same can be said for bullying and harassment. Time will tell, and we might be surprised to find that some of our fears don’t turn into major problems, while other problems may emerge that we are not thinking about right now. I know this from personal experience as the author of the1994 booklet, “Child Safety on the Information Highway,” which was written before there was a lot of research and well before some problems emerged that I wasn’t able to anticipate nearly 30 years ago.

Generally positive perceptions of GAI

Despite concerns and plenty of negative press, parents do feel positive about their teens’ use of GAI. Two-thirds (66%) of U.S. parents said they felt positive, compared with 70% in Germany and 59% in Japan.

About two-third of parents (66%) and teens (65%) agreed that “Using genAI tools will be a vital skill to have to remain competitive in school or career. About 60% of both groups also feel that “GenAI will augment or supplement humans, but we’ll still need human creativity,” vs. “it will surpass human capabilities and take over many tasks,” while 55% of parents and 57% of teens say it “will make it easier to stay connected with others,” vs. “it will make it harder to stay connected with others.”

Trying it out

Although this survey sheds light on how adults and teens are using GAI and paints a reasonably optimistic picture of how it’s perceived, the best way for you to learn about GAI is to try it. Google Bard, Microsoft Bing and ChatGPT all offer free access to GAI services that make it easy for anyone to ask questions or create content. I find it fascinating to try out different scenarios on these services and have used them in my work to generate ideas and recently used ChatGPT’s Dalle2 image-generation tool to create artwork to accompany some of my blog posts. I understand that it can make mistakes, so I never rely on it without verifying information. I also have an ethical responsibility to do my own work in my own words, so I use it mainly for ideas and research rather than a shortcut to wordsmithing. But, just as I can’t imagine going back to my old typewriter, it’s now hard to imagine doing creative work without getting at least a little help from Generative AI.

Larry Magid is a tech journalist and internet safety activist. Contact him at larry@larrymagid.com.

“Numerology” tries to find reality within various measurements of economic and real estate trends.

Buzz: So, what might it take to get California homebuilders to ramp up their construction efforts?

Source: My trusty spreadsheet looked at California building permits for single-family homes dating back to 1990 and compared those patterns with home-selling data from the California Association of Realtors and some other economic stats.

Fuzzy math: It’s easy for the industry to blame explain a lethargic construction pace on bureaucratic difficulties in planning and executing homebuilding in the state. It’s not that their complaints aren’t true, but builders also can be picky about when they choose to build.

Topline

When you review 34 years of real estate activity by slicing the months into thirds based on 12-month changes in California permits, you find construction plans grew annually at an average 27% pace in building booms (the top third) and declined 25% annually in construction busts (the bottom third).

Or, looking at those periods in terms of month average permits: 6,150 permits in booms vs. 5,030 in busts – that’s 1,120 extra plans for new residences or 22% more.

Details

How do those California booms and busts compare with other yardsticks gauging real estate and the broader economy?

Well, it seems builders like overall homebuying momentum.

Sales of California’s existing single-family homes grew 6% a year on average in homebuilding booms vs. dropping at a 5% pace in construction busts.

And those old homes go swiftly. Days on the market, a metric of selling speed, dropped 15% a year during booms vs. expanding by 21% in busts.

Like any seller, appreciation is appreciated by builders. California’s median selling prices of those single-family houses rose annually at an 11% clip in booms while dropping 3% in busts.

Limited competition also appears to be appealing. Inventory of California’s single-family homes for sale dropped 16% annually on average in booms vs. growing 24% in busts.

Builders also appreciate good vibes. Consider two national confidence yardsticks from the Conference Board.

Of course, builders also seek steady, growing paychecks.

California job growth averages 1.6% in booms vs. 0.2% in busts. And the statewide unemployment rate typically falls by 0.4 percentage points in booms vs. rising 0.7 points in busts.

Curiously, financing costs don’t seem to be a factor. Since 1990, mortgage rates dropped by tiny amounts in both booms and busts.

Bottom line

Builders don’t want to get stuck with gobs of unsold inventory – as was the case in the early 1990s and mid-2000s.

So increasingly, they’ll build swiftly only when economic conditions are nearly perfect.

On one hand, that’s understandable as they’re profit-seeking entities.

On the other hand, that thriftiness doesn’t help shrink the state’s housing shortage.

Jonathan Lansner is business columnist for the Southern California News Group. He can be reached at jlansner@scng.com

Blackstone Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Schwarzman and Visa Inc. CEO Ryan McInerney will also join them at the soiree in San Francisco, according to people briefed on the matter. Pfizer Inc. CEO Albert Bourla earlier confirmed he would attend the event, as he spoke on the sidelines of a summit that’s part of this week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ meetings.

Technology CEOs including Qualcomm Inc.’s Cristiano Amon and Broadcom Inc.’s Hock Tan are also on the guest list, said the people, who asked not to be identified sharing details of a private event.

Xi will have the chance to talk up China’s economy to some of the world’s most-powerful foreign investors at the event, after a post-pandemic reopening expected to spur global growth failed to deliver. The Chinese leader will go into the dinner after wrapping an afternoon of talks with US President Joe Biden, aimed at stabilizing a tumultuous bilateral relationship that’s also troubled investors.

China is a major market for consumer electronics, accounting for about one-fifth of sales for Cupertino, California-based Apple. Qualcomm and Broadcom are among the world’s largest makers of chips for mobile phones, and their components are used in millions of handsets sold across China. Representatives of Apple, Qualcomm and Broadcom either declined to comment or didn’t respond to requests for comment.

China sees investment by international companies as key to upgrading its faltering economy and has stepped up efforts to attract foreign investors this year. Its tightening of national security controls and messaging that foreign actors pose spy risks, along with years of policy crackdowns, have left some skeptical of that message.

“The Chinese economy is clearly weakening. There’s no question,” said Derek Scissors, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “But if you need to stay in China, and you’re worried about your position because of Chinese government behavior, it’s even more important to be able to talk to Xi.”

Details around the dinner have been closely guarded. Its hosts, the National Committee on U.S.–China Relations and the US-China Business Council, had in recent days remained silent even over which Chinese leader would attend the event, as well as its location.

Shortly before the event — being held at a San Francisco hotel where crowds gathered in support and in protest of China — the official program was available to attendees: Xi would address the dinner following an introduction from Chubb Ltd. CEO Evan Greenberg, chair of the committee.

Representative Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican who chairs the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, claimed at an anti-CCP rally on Saturday that attendees were paying $40,000 to sit at Xi’s table. The Chinese leader is also expected to deliver an address to the dinner.

A group of Xi’s “old friends” from Iowa have also been invited to the dinner, Bloomberg earlier reported. The group hosted Xi during a visit to the US to learn about agricultural practices some 38 years ago, when he was a little-known Chinese Communist Party official.

–With assistance from Fran Wang, Gabrielle Coppola, Aisha Counts, Dawn Lim, Silla Brush, Mark Gurman and Ian King.

(Adds details on program starting in ninth paragraph.)

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

©2023 Bloomberg L.P.

All 30 owners of Major League Baseball voted Thursday morning in favor of approving the Oakland A’s relocation to Las Vegas.

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred is scheduled to meet with reporters later this morning after the vote’s completion at the owners’ meetings in Arlington, Texas.

The owners’ approval — it required 23 votes to pass — was the final step for A’s owner John Fisher as he looks to move his club 550 miles southeast, leaving the Bay Area behind after the team’s nearly-60-year run in Oakland.

If completed, it will mark the second relocation for an MLB team in the last 52 years, and the first since the Montreal Expos moved to Washington, D.C. to become the Nationals in 2005.

Las Vegas would become the fourth home for the A’s since the franchise began playing in Philadelphia in 1901. The A’s moved to Kansas City in 1955, then to Oakland to begin play in 1968. No other MLB franchise has had four different cities to call home.

“We are disappointed by the outcome of this vote,” Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao said in a statement. “But we do not see this as the end of the road. We all know there’s a long way to go before shovels in the ground and that there are a number of unresolved issues surrounding this move.

“I have also made it clear to the commissioner that the A’s branding and name should stay in Oakland and we will continue to work to pursue expansion opportunities. Baseball has a home in Oakland even if the A’s ownership relocates.”

It remains undetermined when the A’s will leave Oakland, however.

The A’s proposed ballpark in Las Vegas wouldn’t open until 2028. The club secured $380 million in public funding from the Nevada legislature in June, and it is believed the A’s were finally able to provide their own private financing plan to reach the estimated $1.5 billion cost for a new retractable-roof stadium. But the A’s have not yet explained where they will play until the stadium is ready.

Club president Dave Kaval has publicly stated that the three most likely options would be to extend their lease in the Coliseum, share Oracle Park with the San Francisco Giants or borrow the A’s Triple-A stadium in Vegas, where the 10,000-seat ballpark would require renovations before it could earn the approval of the MLB Players Association.

If the A’s complete the move, it will put an end to the club’s years-long effort to get a new stadium built in the Bay Area.

It was back in 2001 that city officials began publicly discussing efforts for a new ballpark for the A’s. Over the next decade, ideas were tossed around about new ballparks in Oakland, Fremont and San Jose, but none came to fruition. When the A’s turned their attention inwards and thought about rebuilding on the Coliseum site, those efforts failed, too. They missed again when trying to build on land owned by Laney College.

Then there was the Howard Terminal project, a $12-billion plan to build a ballpark as well as both commercial and residential real estate on the waterfront.

Renderings were released and last September, an 82-page preliminary document plan was shared between the A’s and the city, according to the document released by Thao this summer.

Thao has said that the city raised more money than the A’s asked for to help fund the new stadium and off-site infrastructure. It didn’t matter. In April, the A’s announced that they were done negotiating with Oakland and had agreed on a deal to move the team to Las Vegas.

Kaval later explained to The Nevada Independent that the A’s didn’t think the Howard Terminal project would be complete for another 15 years. Thao responded by saying a stadium could’ve been fast-tracked with construction beginning in 18 months, while “a whole grand scheme” could’ve begun construction in two years.

The disconnection was crystal clear in July, when Thao flew to Seattle to have a secret meeting with Manfred, hoping she could convince him that the city did its part to get a stadium deal done. But over and over, Manfred and the other owners have contended that Oakland hasn’t been a realistic possibility.

Without a lease extension, the A’s will have one more season in 2024 to finish their relationship with the Coliseum, their home since 1968.

Thao has said she won’t extend the agreement without some guarantee from MLB that Oakland would receive an expansion franchise. It’s not unusual for a city to get a replacement team after losing its original club to relocation. MLB is hoping to add two expansion teams as soon as the A’s and the Tampa Bay Rays get new stadiums.

Manfred has not yet made any public remarks about the viability of Oakland as an expansion site.

An ownership group led by former A’s pitcher Dave Stewart is seen as a favorite to land an expansion team in Nashville, while Portland, Salt Lake City, Charlotte and Montreal are other cities said to be in contention.

There is no known ownership group trying to lead expansion efforts in Oakland, but Warriors owner Joe Lacob told the San Francisco Chronicle last year that he has had a standing offer to buy the A’s for a decade. Fisher has shown no desire to sell the team.

Stewart thinks time is running out if Oakland is going to be a viable expansion city.

“Expansion is moving,” he told the Bay Area News Group in September. “It’s not going to wait for a group out of Oakland to show themselves in 2025. It’s my belief by 2025, expansion will be down the road and Oakland will have missed out.”

For A’s fans hoping the team is forced to rethink its departure, the only hope remaining should rest in the hands of a Nevada teachers’ union.

“Schools over Stadiums,” a political arm of the teachers’ union, is pursuing two separate paths to restrict public funding from reaching the A’s. Tuesday, the union announced it was pursuing litigation against the Nevada legislature. The teachers argue that any bill increasing taxes must be passed with a two-thirds supermajority vote, but this bill did not reach that threshold. The teachers believe the bill is unconstitutional.

The union is also pursuing a petition that could create a referendum on the ballot next November, giving taxpayers a say in whether or not they’d like to fund Fisher’s stadium. If the teachers can find a way to stop the funding, it could delay the move to Las Vegas long enough to put the A’s in a bind.

A long shot, it might be. But at this point, it’s all that’s left for local baseball fans who aren’t ready to say goodbye.

Apex Development of Calabasas last paid rent in September 2022 and owed more than $600,000 to Caltrans, according to court records.

Apex and owner Ahmad Anthony Nowaid rented the property — and three others along the 10 — through California’s “airspace” leasing program, which rents out state land under and alongside freeways to fund mass transportation projects.

The 10 Freeway fire and the long-standing conditions that fueled the inferno have now raised concerns about the Department of Transportation’s ability to oversee such leases statewide.

“There needs to be an investigation,” Assemblymember Miguel Santiago said. “Caltrans should move at lightning speed to inspect all of these facilities and all our airspaces to ensure that they’re in compliance, to ensure public safety is upheld and to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom at a press conference Monday, Nov. 13, indicated the fire was likely intentionally set by an arsonist and noted the state would be reviewing other airspaces as a result. Four of the state’s leases with Nowaid are along the 10 Freeway, records showed. The leases allowed for the “parking of operable vehicles and open storage,” according to copies included in the eviction cases.

Caltrans did not require Nowaid to obtain fire insurance.

Several of the sites appeared to be in violation of their leases with piles of flammable materials and damaged cars visible from the street.

The original lease between Apex and Caltrans for the land at 1361 Lawrence St., where the freeway fire occurred, expired in 2015 and transitioned to a month-to-month agreement at the time, yet the state didn’t start the eviction process until August this year, records show. The following month, California filed a lawsuit against Nowaid, two of his companies and a slew of small businesses illegally subleasing that site and four other freeway properties, according to the court records.

Apex blatantly violated its lease at the Lawrence Street property for more than a decade, even before the company stopped paying rent. Images captured by Google Maps over the years show flammable materials stacked against freeway columns in nearly every year since 2009. Caltrans issued strict storage guidelines in 2018 requiring materials to be kept 20 feet from columns following a fire that collapsed a portion of Interstate 85 in Atlanta.

Nowaid allegedly crammed a dozen businesses onto the 49,000-square-foot site where stockpiles of wood pallets, cardboard and leftover hand sanitizer eventually ignited to shut down one of the busiest freeways in the country. More than 300,000 commuters use the 10 daily and officials estimate it could take three to five weeks to repair the damage.

Caltrans did not respond to a series of questions about its lease with Apex, its inspections, or the revenues earned from airspace leases in general.

Based on the past-due rent, Caltrans made about $600,000 per year from all five properties leased to Nowaid and his companies, according to court filings.

Squalid conditions

Interviews and the state’s eviction filings suggest Nowaid operated the state-owned land with little scrutiny, offering below-market rates to the handful of businesses willing to operate in sometimes squalid conditions. One of Nowaid’s tenants estimated he made $23,000 per month off of the Lawrence Street property where the fire originated, though Caltrans charged him $6,518 per month, or $78,000 per year, to rent it.

Rudy Serafin moved his business, Serafin Distribution, onto the property in 2009, just a year after Nowaid obtained his first lease from Caltrans. The lease prohibited subleases without Caltrans permission and required Nowaid to pay half of any extra rent from a sublease to the state. Neither seems to have happened.

A state employee came by about once or twice a year to inspect the property, but never raised any concerns about the flammable materials stacked next to freeway columns, Serafin said. The multiple businesses operating on site, including a mechanic, a recycler, and a pallet company, were obvious and the Caltrans employee seemed to be aware that Nowaid was subleasing, he said.

Both would have been clear violations of Apex’s lease and the state’s safety guidelines.

Drawn by low rent

Though the conditions could be problematic, Serafin said the $4,500 he paid in rent outweighed the negatives. A similarly sized building would have cost three times as much, something he couldn’t afford with the narrow margins he made. The low rent and the close proximity to the freeway and to his clients, particularly in the fashion district, made the location valuable for his business, he said.

“We’re the kind of people that really work to eat the next week,” Serafin said. “We don’t have a lot of savings, we don’t have a lot of money. I had it all in my business.”

Serafin buys hangars, boxes, tape, elastic and other in-demand supplies — such as hand sanitizer and masks during the pandemic — in bulk and then sells the pieces off, sometimes one at a time. He estimated he had about 50 to 100 bottles of hand sanitizer left when the fire hit early about 12:30 a.m. Saturday near East 14th and Alameda streets.

“That’s how we make our money, we buy 100 and we sell it one by one,” he said. “I wasn’t hoarding anything. I wish I could have sold it.”

Serafin estimates he lost $800,000 worth of product in the blaze. None of it was insured. No insurance company would offer him a policy, he said, because of the conditions in the surrounding community, where homeless encampments and smaller fires were frequent. The police rarely responded to calls about the problem, he said.

Conditions precarious

In the last two years, the conditions had become noticeably more precarious, he said.

Individuals from a homeless encampment roughly a block away regularly dumped buckets of feces into the drains outside of Serafin’s business. Hoards of rats swarmed at night and the smells, and flies, during warmer weather made it impossible to eat lunch on site during the summer, he said.

Luis Cartagena of Eagle Wood Services, one of the companies named in Caltrans’ eviction lawsuit, told the Associated Press that he stopped using the property for his wood pallet business more than a year ago because he was losing so much to theft.

Serafin and others learned that Nowaid allegedly hadn’t paid rent since February 2020 from a Caltrans employee inspecting the property in May. The employee said Nowaid owed more than $2 million.

Caltrans did not respond to questions about the discrepancies in dates.

Nowaid, however, denied he was delinquent when Serafin and the other business owners reached out to him. It was some kind of mistake, he reportedly told them.

“We told him he needed to fix it, or we wouldn’t pay the rent,” Serafin said. “He came over with a bunch of guys, closed the doors, kicked people out — grabbed them and threw them out.

“Honestly, my livelihood was in there, so we just paid him,” he said.

The group continued to pay rent until they were each served with the Caltrans lawsuit in late October. When Nowaid sent someone to collect in November, Serafin told the man he had check stubs verifying that he’d been paying rent the entire time.

“A week-and-a-half later, our place was burned down,” he said.

Nowaid called Serafin the night of the fire to verify that it was the lot. Then Nowaid asked if there would be an investigation, Serafin said.

Serafin said yes. “He hung up,” he said.

Nowaid and Apex could not be reached at three different numbers listed for the business.

Serafin and the others weren’t allowed back on the property following the fire. He doesn’t know if his computer with Serfain Distribution’s accounting survived, but he isn’t getting it back either way, he said. He is now tallying up debts and outstanding bills from emails and other scraps of information, he said.

He always viewed the business as his retirement plan, he said. Now, he has to start all over again.

Multiple A’s fan groups spent the summer calling attention to the plight of their team, which Fisher intends to move to Las Vegas. A vote on the proposal is expected Thursday at a meeting of Major League Baseball owners in Arlington, Texas.

Jorge Leon, Jared Isham and Gabriel Cullen, leaders of a fan group called the Oakland 68s, decided to go the extra 1,700 miles. They crashed the scene, booking a hotel room at the site of the meetings to avoid being chased off by security.

And it was there, in the hotel bar, that they encountered Fisher, the reclusive A’s owner, on Tuesday night.

Interestingly, it was Greg Johnson, the Giants’ chairman of the board of directors, who the 68s credit with helping set up their unexpected confab with Fisher.

“He first went over and warned him about us,” Cullen said. “The first thing we see Greg go over and kind of like stop him. And then we see Fisher turn his head around this big pillar, look at us and then pull back. Then he kind of walked away, so we were like, ‘Ok, he’s probably not going to come over.’

“Then he came back, shook our hands and talked to us for 10-15 minutes.”

During that 15-minute conversation, Fisher told the group he’d been trying for 18 years to get a new ballpark for the A’s in the Bay Area. And even if the team and Oakland had a deal, he said, a new ballpark wouldn’t be completed until 2031.

Fisher,  who bought the team in 2005, thanked the 68s for their passion. He also told them: “It’s been a lot worse for me than you.”

The exchange, first reported by USA Today and confirmed Wednesday morning by Leon, Isham and Cullen, became another viral moment in the A’s saga on the level of this summer’s Reverse Boycott and “Sell The Team” chants.

Efforts to reach Fisher for comment were unsuccessful, as they have been for the entirety of his 18 years of ownership.

The group had a second encounter with Fisher on Tuesday night, when they saw him having dinner at the hotel restaurant.

“I yelled out, ‘Do the right thing!’ I was telling him the whole night, do the right thing,” said Leon, the president of the 68s.

Fisher didn’t respond directly to Leon, but according to the San Francisco Chronicle, Fisher told someone in his dinner party: “I am doing the right thing.”

The 68s learned of Fisher’s comment later in the night. They said they appreciated meeting with Fisher, but were not surprised by his stance.

“I feel like he lives in his own little world, and so he thinks that he’s coming off as genuine. But he’s not. He’s tone deaf,” Leon said.

The trio gained social media traction in the morning when a plane they chartered buzzed the site of the meetings with a banner that read: “A’s belong in Oakland – #VoteNo.”

They rubbed shoulders and pitched the “STAY” in Oakland message they wore on their green t-shirts with multiple team owners — and whoever would listen — for more than 12 hours.

The 68s said their message was mostly well received in the lobbies, bars and restaurants they patrolled most of Tuesday. They also distributed Oakland A’s “gift” boxes to owners with a DVD and other items explaining why the A’s belong in Oakland.

Leon said the owners weren’t surprised to see them.

“When I spoke with John Fisher and said I was with the 68s, he said, ‘Yeah, I’m well aware,'” Leon said. “We know we are in their heads.

“Even if he didn’t talk to us, the trip still would have been worth it. The point was being visible and that we’re not going to go away easy.”

San Francisco International Airport was ranked No. 6 among large airports, the survey compiled and released by the Wall Street Journal determined.

“If you want to get where you’re going, there’s never been a better place to start, or end your journey than San Jose International Airport,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said in comments emailed to this news organization.

Here are the top 10 mid-sized airports in the nation, according to the Wall Street Journal’s research:

— 1. San Jose

— 2. San Antonio, Texas

— 3. Sacramento

— 4. Indianapolis

— 5. Houston

— 6. Portland, Oregon

— 7. Santa Ana (Orange County)

— 8. Oakland

— 9. Kahului, Maui, Hawaii

— 10. Tampa, Florida

“The 2023 U.S. Airport Rankings rate the 50 busiest airports in the country based on measures of reliability, value and convenience,” the Wall Street Journal stated. “Each airport is evaluated on 30 factors that span the trip, from buying a ticket to arriving at a final destination.”

Oakland Airport officials said they were proud to receive the high rating for mid-sized airports in the Wall Street Journal survey.

“We know that our passengers appreciate the convenience that comes with flying the East Bay Way,” said Craig Simon, the Port of Oaland’s interim aviation director. “Our team is dedicated to continuously evaluating and improving passenger experience at our facilities.”

The mayor of San Jose believes the airport rankings provide fresh evidence for what some city leaders believe is an upswing for the Bay Area’s largest city.

“San Jose has a lot of things to brag about,” Mahan said. “We are the safest city in the Bay Area, the most innovative place in the world, and have some of the best weather on the planet. And those who have visited us for one of those reasons know that we also have the most reliable, convenient airport in the nation.”

The big-box retailer has decided to permanently shut down three Bay Area stores, located in Oakland, Pittsburg and San Francisco, in the wake of thefts and crimes that afflicted the trio of retail sites.

That move also has erased 238 Bay Area jobs as a result of the permanent shutdowns, with dozens of layoffs at each of the three store sites.

Here are the details of the Target layoffs that arose from the store shutdown decision:

— Pittsburg, 4301 Century Boulevard, 106 job cuts

— Oakland, 2650 Broadway, 69 layoffs

— San Francisco, 1690 Folsom Street, 63 job cuts

“Our team continues to face an unacceptable amount of retail theft and organized retail crime,” Brian Cornell, Target’s chief executive officer, said in a conference call with Wall Street analysts in August.

Within a month of that conference call, Target disclosed it would close nine stores in four states, including three in the Bay Area.

The employees affected by the Bay Area layoffs are not represented by a union. The workers also do not have the right to displace, or “bump,” employees with less seniority. Target stated the store shutdowns would be permanent in WARN letters the retailer sent to the state Employment Development Department.

Despite the pending job cuts, which were scheduled to begin Nov. 9 and be complete by the end of this year, Target held out hope that employees might land jobs at other Target stores, details contained in the WARN letters show.

“Target separately provided information to employees about the opportunity to transfer to another Target store or receive separation pay,” Sonia Kumari, Target human resources business partner, said in the WARN letters.

The terminations will officially occur by Dec. 30 for those employees who choose not to transfer to another store or who are not eligible for a transfer.

“Target anticipates few involuntary terminations,” the retailer stated in the WARN notices.

HAVANA — Until recently, the space was the one-car garage of a private home in Cuba’s capital, Havana. Today, it is a well-stocked, if small, grocery store whose big board at the gate entices shoppers with such offerings as cooking oil, tomato sauce, Hershey’s cocoa powder, Nutella, shampoo, cookies and jam — a treasure trove in a country that is short of supplies.

The nameless shop in the residential neighborhood of El Vedado is one of dozens of tiny grocery stores that have sprung up around Cuba in recent months. Locals refer to them as “mipymes” — pronounced MEE-PEE-MEHS. The name derives from the Spanish words for the small- and medium-sized enterprises that were first allowed to open in 2021.

By allowing the new businesses, the Cuban government hoped to help an economy in crisis and strengthen local production. The almost 9,000 enterprises approved so far include the likes of sewing workshops, fisheries and construction firms, but it is small retail shops like the one in Vedado that seem to be setting up the fastest.

They also have greater visibility among the population because they offer many products not available elsewhere and usually operate out of private homes or garages.

Yet despite their modest setup, their prices are far from affordable, even for a doctor or a teacher, who make about 7,000 Cuban pesos a month (about $28 in the parallel market).

For example, one kilo (2.2 pounds) of powdered milk from the Czech Republic costs 2,000 Cuban pesos (about $8). A jar of Spanish mayonnaise goes for $4. Two and a half kilos (about 5 pounds) of chicken imported from the U.S. cost $8. There are also less essential goods: a jar of Nutella for $5, a bottle of bubbly Spanish wine for $6.

The customers able to use these small shops include Cuban families who receive remittances from abroad, tourism workers, diplomats, employees of other small- and medium-sized businesses, artists and high-performance athletes.

“This is a luxury,” Ania Espinosa, a state employee, said as she left one store in Havana, where she paid $1.50 (350 Cuban pesos) for a packet of potato chips for her daughter. “There are people who don’t earn enough money to shop at a mipyme, because everything is very expensive,” she added.

In addition to her monthly state salary, Espinosa makes some additional income and receives remittances from her husband, who has lived in the U.S. for a year and a half and previously lived in Uruguay.

A few yards away, Ingracia Virgen Cruzata, a retiree, lamented the high prices at the shop. “I retired with 2,200 (Cuban pesos a month or $8.80) last year and I can’t even buy a package of chicken,” she said.

Most of the products found in these stores are imported directly by the entrepreneurs through state-run import agencies, a system that has also opened the door to the emergence of bigger, better stocked stores.

In recent weeks, a private store, accessible only to those who own a car, opened on the outskirts of Havana, featuring giant shelves full of imported products such as Tide detergent, M&M’s candy and Goya brand black beans. Because of its size (it’s at least 10 times larger than the store in Vedado) — and diverse offerings — it has come to be known as the “Cuban Costco.”

The ration books that allow Cubans to buy small quantities of basic goods like rice, beans, eggs and sugar each month for payment equivalent to a few U.S. cents continue to be the basis of the model, allowing families to subsist for about 15 days. The rest of their diet must be acquired through other outlets, including state-owned stores and now the mipymes.

There are also state-run businesses offering a little more variety to complete domestic needs, but they charge in local debit or international credit cards. The novelty is that the small shops like the one in Vedado and bigger bodegas like the “Cuban Costco” are entirely private and accept payments in Cuban pesos.

“For the first time in 60 years, small- and medium-sized private corporations are now authorized by law. Now the challenge is for them to prosper in a very arid landscape for private initiative,” said Pedro Freyre, an analyst with the Florida-based Akerman Consulting and professor at Miami Law School.

“Cuba is a socialist country. The fundamental ideology has not changed. That’s still there. But I think that Cuba is in a very difficult economic moment and that has opened a door,” Freyre added.