S.f. Law Blocks Tech Boom Expansion

The problem is that while there is no shortage of demand at the moment - companies like Google, LinkedIn, Dropbox and Pinterest seem to have an insatiable appetite for expansion space - developers are bumping up against Proposition M, a 1986 San Francisco voter-approved law that caps the amount of new office space allowed at 875,000 square feet per year. During periods of modest growth the space bank can grow - the amount available under the cap typically swells to 4 million or 5 million square feet in down markets - but becomes a factor during boom times like the dot-com bubble of 1999 and the current tech explosion. Right now the San Francisco Planning Department is inundated with proposals like never before: 10 million square feet of tech-friendly space that would transform the look and feel of SoMa corridors along central sections of Townsend, Brannan, Bryant and Harrison streets. The high volume of the proposed buildings pouring in is being driven by the city's current rezoning of Central SoMa, an effort to create space for jobs along the Central Subway project, which will link the Caltrain Station at Fourth and King streets to Chinatown. At Fourth and Townsend, Tishman Speyer is proposing to build upward of 1,000 housing units on a property that is home to two restaurants, the Creamery and Iron Cactus, as well as the furniture showroom HD Buttercup. [...] the developer, which built such office towers as 222 Second St.