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If BART is extended to SFO and Millbrae, Eugene Friend will almost certainly benefit financially. Feinstein's press secretary insists that Blum has no interest in the Millbrae land, but it is clear that the senator's husband and Friend have long-standing business connections.
According to multiple press accounts of disclosures made during Feinstein's unsuccessful 1990 campaign for governor, Blum listed "Eugene L. Friend and family partnership" as a client of his investment management firm, Richard C. Blum & Associates Inc. A Friend family partnership -- Friend, Friend & Friend -- is the registered owner of a large block of land cater-corner from the future Millbrae BART station and a half-block south.
Deed records describe Friend, Friend & Friend as a "California partnership." But the partnership is not registered with the California secretary of state or with the San Francisco or San Mateo county governments; it is, therefore, unclear from the public record whether Blum's firm holds current ownership in the partnership.
It is clear that the 80-year-old Friend -- who reportedly gave Richard Blum his first job, in a men's clothing store -- owns at least $100,000 of Blum's investment partnership. That ownership stake is listed in a 1997 disclosure Friend filed as a city commissioner.
The obvious question about Blum and Friend involves cross-ownership and conflict of interest. Even if Blum holds no interest in the Friend land in Millbrae, should Feinstein be lobbying for a public works project that would bring large profits to an owner of her husband's primary business?
Friend did not return telephone messages. However, his son, Robert Friend, a partner in Friend, Friend & Friend, denies any connection between Blum and the Friend family land in Millbrae.
Robert Friend also says he was unaware that a BART station was even planned for Millbrae. "This is the first I've heard of it," he says.
Mayor Brown's transformation into a BART-to-SFO supporter is remarkable.
Thanks in no small part to a ballot measure, Proposition I, which Brown opposed, BART-to-the-airport came to mean BART-into-the-airport. Prop. I called for extending the transit line inside an airport terminal, so long as the extension did not require San Francisco tax monies. Voters approved the proposition in a lightly attended 1994 election, even though Brown, then speaker of the Assembly, had signed a ballot argument against the plan and, newspapers reported then, called it a "white elephant." Brown also labeled Prop. I a "divisive, bloated proposal," according to contemporaneous news reports.
But on Aug. 7, 1995, Brown, then a candidate for mayor, appeared at a press conference with state Sen. Quentin Kopp to embrace the project. Brown explained his flip-flop on the BART extension as merely part of his pledge to carry out "the will of the people."
Four months later, at a crucial point in Brown's mayoral campaign, Anthony Chan, who represents owners of land across the street from the BART station planned for Millbrae, came to Brown's aid. On Oct. 31, 1995, one week before the general election, Chan contributed $1,500 to the Willie Brown for Mayor campaign. At the time, Brown was in a hotly contested three-way race with former Supervisor Roberta Achtenberg and then-Mayor Frank Jordan. On Nov. 28, 1995, two weeks before the runoff election between Brown and Jordan, Chan dumped another $1,500 into Brown's mayoral campaign.
Presumably because of local campaign contribution limits, Chan used four separate partnerships or corporations to donate the money: Wealth Properties Inc., Capitol Square Partners, Worldco Inc. (the mailing address for the property taxes assessed to the Millbrae land), and Action Management Inc. of Bellevue, Wash. All contributions were listed on Brown's campaign filings as having come from Anthony Chan.
As a transit project, BART-to-SFO has had a rocky life. The merits of the $1.2 billion project -- which hinges on congressional approval of $750 million in federal funds -- are sharply debated.
If funded, the project would extend BART tracks south 8.2 miles from the town of Colma to Millbrae. A branch of rails would veer into the airport six miles south of Colma, in a configuration known as the "Y."
Taking BART into the airport itself requires the Y, as well as an extension of the BART line past SFO to Millbrae. Airport officials insisted that BART could not simply end at the airport, because of airport parking problems and traffic congestion, among other reasons.
Opponents of the BART-to-SFO plan note that a BART station could be built outside the airport, and be connected to terminals with the airport's own "people mover," for hundreds of millions of dollars less than would be spent on the current extension plan. Such a configuration would also eliminate the need for a Millbrae BART station.
The Millbrae station would be one of four necessitated by the current extension plan -- and by far the biggest. It would be a combined facility for riders of BART and CalTrain, the commuter rail service from San Jose to San Francisco, as well as a transfer depot for the region's bus service, run by the San Mateo County Transportation District. Some 33,000 passengers would pass through the station each workday, if official estimates pan out.
Transit activists and environmentalists have lambasted the project as a wasteful government boondoggle. As a private real estate deal, however, it could be judged less harshly.
The city of Millbrae expects the 16-acre BART station to serve as an economic catalyst, igniting a transformation of the sleepy bedroom community on the outskirts of SFO into a contemporary commercial, employment, entertainment, and transportation hub, located midway between San Francisco and Silicon Valley.
