Editor,
Now that South City has accepted a $1 million “corporate contribution” from Genentech to contribute to a company named “Hello Housing,” I do believe the time has come for SSF to change the message on “Sign Hill” from “SSF — The Industrial City” to “SSF — The Company Town.”
As Hello Housing’s function will be to “help” residents “develop” their single-family zoned neighborhoods into multiunit “urban cities,” I believe that we can now fully appreciate how a solid ‘industrial tax base’ can be so “beneficial.”
Having seen many “heavy industries” close or move away during our lifetimes, we were quite proud to welcome “the birthplace of Biotech” here. But now, we also bear the burden of the “baggage” it has brought along.
Never since the postwar boom, when the many truck farms and other open expanses of land were developed into R1-zoned neighborhoods, have we seen such a transformation. But here we are.
And now, “the company” is dictating a new way of life as there are, apparently, no more “expanses of land.” (Has anyone considered “developing” golf courses?)
While we wish to be proud of being an important part in/of our world’s health and in the part that biotech plays, I believe our city’s own health is slipping away.
And while we struggle with our new “transformation,” I dare say that South City should also contemplate resurrecting and taking a new name from the one we were tagged with so many years ago: “Butchertown.”
Quite a sad time.
Hello Hell.
John Petrovitz
South San Francisco
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