San Francisco Votes Down Curb on New Offices

Final results released Tuesday in a battle over runaway dot-com development here show that voters narrowly rejected a ballot measure to enact tough limits on office construction, officials said.

Results certified by the San Francisco Department of Elections show Proposition L, backed by slow-growth activists but strongly opposed by Mayor Willie Brown and major business interests, failing, 49.8% to 50.2%, a margin of 1,278 votes.

The election-day tally showed the measure ahead, but its lead shrank steadily as officials completed the vote count, said Christiane Hayashi, a spokeswoman for the Department of Elections.

She said the turnaround came after several thousand absentee ballots were counted. “Is this like Florida?” she said. “I hope not.”

Proposition L, backed by activists who contend that the city’s dot-com development is exiling artists and nonprofits, sought to suspend office construction in some neighborhoods and ban it in others. It also attempted to close a loophole by legally defining all dot-com “live-work” lofts as office space--bringing new high-tech projects under a citywide cap on construction.

By a much larger margin, San Francisco voters defeated a less stringent growth control alternative favored by Brown, which would have doubled the amount of new office space approved next year. Proposition K called for less stringent building moratoriums on dot-com companies.

Brown’s office said the mayor believes that the two sides must now meet to reach a compromise.

But Proposition L spokesman Calvin Welch said that slow-growth advocates distrust Brown after what they call low-blow election tactics, including a $2.3-million, developer-funded campaign to sink the measure.

Welch said the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has expressed interest in enacting a two-year moratorium that would slow dot-com development in some neighborhoods. “What they’re considering is 70% of what we were seeking with Proposition L, so we may win after all,” Welch said.

But Frank Gallagher, a spokesman for the No on L campaign, said the supervisors would never go for such a measure.

Gallagher said business advocates are willing to meet with the slow-growth crowd. “Neither side operates from the position of power,” he said. “Now the job of hammering out a consensus awaits us.”