Checking in on my grandmother early one morning last week in San Mateo, I picked up the local paper to read the news: Oracle had bought the local Marriott hotel. If you spend time on Bay Area roads, you’ve driven by it, near the intersection of the 101 and the 92.
Ho-hum news, until a column in the San Francisco Chronicle revealed the reason: Oracle needs the hotel because it can’t find space to train new employees.
That’s right—one of America’s richest companies, in America’s richest region, can’t find space to train its employees. What better example of California’s total failure to build housing, facilities and all kinds of infrastructure to keep up with its growth?
Oracle told the Chronicle that the hotel will stay a hotel, but by buying it, they can make sure the place is available for training sessions, and to house the new employees during training.
If it’s that hard to find space for the richest corporations among us, what chance do the rest of us stand?
It is well past time to ease and speed new building in California – because we need space, and because speedier building means cheaper places to stay and train. That is a heavy lift—given the essential NIMBYism of Californians and the widespread popular misconception that we have too many people and too much housing already.
But someone who can figure out a way to build, and rebuild, California will own the future.