Tony DeLorio was driving south on Interstate-280 late last month when something out of the ordinary caught his eye: Amazon vans, a whole fleet of them, parked out in the open on a lot in a warehouse district off of Cesar Chavez.
DeLorio is the principal officer with Teamsters Local 665, which organizes UPS drivers as well as parking-lot attendants and a host of other blue-collar workers. The Teamsters have made it extremely clear that Amazon, with its infamous union-busting practices and its $17.25-an-hour warehouse jobs and $21-an-hour independent contractor delivery driver gigs, is their bête noire.
But until his recent drive-by, DeLorio was under the impression that Amazon was focusing on its new $200 million property on Seventh Street, or its smaller warehouses in Bayview and Potrero. “I go, ‘What the hell is going on? What are all these Amazon vehicles doing here?’” he recalled. “I figured we would have heard something.”
DeLorio took the nearest exit and headed back north. Taking the Chavez offramp, he approached the property at 2000 Marin St., and there they were: about “50 Amazon vans” in a recently repaved parking lot dotted by what looked like newfangled solar-powered streetlights, he said in an interview.
DeLorio asked his union’s research team to do a little digging. As they found out, the problem wasn’t so much that Amazon managed to snap up even more San Francisco real estate without anyone noticing; it was that the real estate Amazon snapped up, in this case, is city property.
And nobody at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which has owned the 2000 Marin site since May, 2020, and became Amazon’s landlord sometime thereafter, either noticed or did anything about it — despite a contract provision and a point of city law regarding wage and labor standards that should’ve prevented Amazon from using this land.
For critics like DeLorio and the rest of organized labor, this latest breakdown in the city’s oversight process — a failure that ultimately benefited Amazon, of all companies — raises serious questions that, so far, remain unanswered. Did the PUC manage to somehow not notice a fleet of Amazon vans on its property that, by all rights, should not have been there? Or did the PUC know all about it — and, for whatever reason, looked the other way? “It’s hard to know which is worse,” DeLorio said.
“What the hell is going on? What are all these Amazon vehicles doing here?”
Tony DeLorio, Teamster
What is known is that the PUC acquired this site two years ago from real-estate giant Tishman Speyer in a land-swap deal related to the proposed relocation of the flower mart, according to city property records.
Eventually, the PUC plans to build a new headquarters for its water division at 2000 Marin.
But when the PUC took over this land, under the leadership of then-General Manager Harlan Kelly — who has since been hit with a bevy of federal charges in the city’s ongoing corruption probe — the PUC also took over a lease.
On April 29, 2020, about a month before the swap became official — but with the terms largely finalized and approved by the Board of Supervisors — Tishman Speyer leased out 2000 Marin St. to United SF Parking, which operates a number of local garages and lots in the city, according to a copy of the lease obtained by Mission Local.
Sometime after — nobody involved, including Amazon, will say when — United SF Parking turned around and subleased 2000 Marin Street to Amazon.
Neither Tishman Speyer nor United Parking responded to requests for comment.
In a blistering March 10, 2022, letter, DeLorio and his union demanded the PUC immediately cancel the lease.
To its credit, the PUC, under new General Manager Dennis Herrera, was one step ahead. The day before, on March 9, the PUC fired off a termination notice to United Parking, informing the company that its last day — and, by extension, Amazon’s — would be May 31.
Exactly when Amazon arrived is still unknown, PUC spokesman John Coté said in an email. “We did not review or consent to any sublicensors per the terms of the license, and at no time did we receive copies of any paperwork between United SF Parking and the sublicensors,” he wrote.
In other words: Tishman Speyer did what it wanted with the PUC’s land. So did United Parking. And at least according to the PUC’s side of the story, the PUC had no idea.
But to the PUC’s detriment, albeit under previous management, none of this was supposed to happen in the first place.
The lengthy agreement the city inked with Tishman Speyer prohibits anyone from entering “into any binding lease or contract … or construct[ing] any improvements on the Property without first obtaining” the other party’s written consent.
Yet both of those things happened, and the PUC has, thus far, been unable to produce any documents indicating it knew Tishman was leasing to United Parking, let alone that it gave written permission to do so.
What’s more, as DeLorio pointed out in his letter, union-negotiated “prevailing wage and benefit” standards for workers on public property should have prohibited an entity like United SF Parking, which pays its workforce less than the union standard wage, from leasing the PUC’s new property in the first place.
Taken together, those two provisos definitely should have prohibited Amazon, who also notoriously underpays its workers, from renting the property.
“That’s a breakdown in the real-estate shop at the PUC … they’re supposed to monitor their properties.”
Supervisor Aaron Peskin
Meanwhile, the PUC was still cashing rent checks from United SF Parking to the tune of $30,000 a month, according to the lease. And, presumably, United SF Parking was renting out to Amazon for much more.
And there the vans were, in plain sight, operating without care or concern until Tony DeLorio happened to spy them out of the corner of his eye. If he hadn’t?
“All’s well that ends well … but this obviously raises a lot of questions about the professionalism of [the PUC’s] real-estate department,” said Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who peeked into the deal earlier this month after being alerted by the Teamsters. “The big question in my mind is, how in the hell did Tishman Speyer enter into an agreement 30 days before they transferred the land to the city?”
“It’s bizarre,” Peskin added. “That’s a breakdown in the real-estate shop at the PUC … they’re supposed to monitor their properties.”
According to a company spokeswoman, Amazon merely uses the site for parking: Amazon employees (or third-party contractors who drive the company’s ubiquitous delivery vans) park their private vehicles on the property and then switch to the vans, which are stored there at night and presumably loaded up with boxes stuffed with toilet paper, electronics and books somewhere else.
There are signs the company, or someone else, planned to stay on this site for a while, and to use it to deliver packages. According to 2000 Marin’s building permit history, the city approved $165,000 worth of tenant improvements: putting up the lights and re-striping the parking lot. And the site’s use was changed from “accessory parking” to parking for “parcel delivery service” — that is, someone like Amazon.
For DeLorio and the Teamsters, the 2000 Marin St. affair isn’t over yet. It’s yet another slight from the supposedly labor-friendly city of San Francisco.
Shortly before his February drive down 280, DeLorio sat in a City Hall conference room across from Mayor London Breed. He says she professed total ignorance of a 2021 negotiating agreement the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development inked with Amazon for the company’s proposed last-mile delivery center at 900 Seventh St.
Amazon’s plans for Seventh Street are now on indefinite hiatus, after the Board of Supervisors on March 22 unanimously passed a moratorium on new parcel distribution sites. But the company is clearly hungry for land; anybody’s land, the public’s land. This has DeLorio wondering who’s watching the shop, and where Amazon might pop up next
“I told [the mayor] straight up,” DeLorio said. “‘How can you not know about this?’”
“There are a lot of trust issues with the city right now.”
“…a 2021 negotiating agreement the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development inked with Amazon for the company’s proposed last-mile delivery center at 900 Seventh Street…” OEWD was secretive about that negotiating agreement when I contacted them in 2021 as a community reporter writing about Amazon’s plans for 900 Seventh Street for The Potrero View. They didn’t want to talk at all with the press.
SFUSD shut down it’s own warehouse department where furniture could be sorted/stored and moved around the district as needed by union employees. Now schools are told to just buy what they need from Amazon. It would be great if someone looked into that and shut the flow of taxpayer’s dollars to Amazon through the school district.
Why not?
The vast majority of San Franciscans use Amazon.
Now you have a vested interest, i.e. the Teamsters, trying to hang on to power and not recognizing that the online platform delivers a service that is valued and used by most citizens. Demand that they pay better wages, yes. But whine about where the vans are parked, that’s just sad.
So you are OK with private companies taking over public property? Nope, I strongly disagree.
Great reporting!
I hope the unions can bust Amazon’s main-street-destroying-ass out of SF.
Tony Delorio deserves an award. I have had it with the corruption in San Francisco that masquerades as innocence.
GOOD LUCK my friend ! San Francisco is BUILT on corruption since the Barbary Coast and the Gold Rush in 1849. It has ALWAYS been based in deep greed, corruption , promiscuous indulgence & shady politics. Called the city of fruits & nuts, where anything goes. The New Orleans of the West. It’s who we are and where you are my friend. Glamourous scoundrels!That’s why we love it .
Ahhh…Mayor London Breed “profess[ing] total ignorance.” She has found a niche she is quite good at! It resulted in nearly $23,000 in ethics violation fines in 2021 – let’s see how much she can rack up in 2022.
The best part is that she’ll sail on to another term i.e. she’ll serve the triumphant 8th term of Willie Brown’s never-ending mayorship – which will bring great riches to all his established friends and partners. Whatta town!
“There are a lot of trust issues with the city right now.” That goes without saying. The PUC deals that were inked by the former director keep coming back to bite City Hall. There must be names on those building permit applications issued for the 2000 Marin property. That would be a good place to start investigations into who knew what and when.
Am I wrong or are they also renting out SFUSD property on Toland near SCRAP? Or was that sold to them. What gives?
Welcome to one of the MOST CORRUPT CITIES in the USA! I don’t know for a FACT that the “vast majority of San Franciscans use Amazon” and, hopefully, SF residents know better than to purchase products tooted by Amazon to be the real deal (ie, actual AirBuds manufactured by Apple, etc. – because my experience (3x) as been that NO! The so-called Apple products I bought from Amazon were the manufacturer’s product). Regardless, I do not have a “vested” interest in Amazon, however, I will go with the Teamsters any and every day over white elitist MUSK!
As to Toland Street- when SF Opera was renting one of those warehouses, I was told the landlord was the Goodman’s Lumber family. Goodman’s was on Bayshore, on the site now occupied by Lowes. Due to a family split, the SF Goodman’s closed, & one family member opened Discount Builders on Mission & 13th. The Marin Goodman’s is still open. I wonder who owns those Toland St warehouses now? Does Scrap rent or own?
Amazon.