Almost every week it seems that another San Leandro business is receiving positive press coverage for a new innovation or expansion. Please check back here periodically for links to some of these exciting stories.
San Leandro Times - April 5, 2012
The City Council unanimously approved a development agreement on Monday night that would bring in a large hotel, restaurants, and residential development to the marina.
The city first hired Cal-Coast developers to oversee the revitalization of the marina in the the summer of 2008. Since then, Cal-Coast President Ed Miller has met with the City Council and the Shoreline Citizens' Advisory Committee many times. Last summer he virtually begged for a decision to be made about the marina's future so he could begin attracting potential clients to set up shop in his new development.
Read whole article here.
The Recorder - March 16, 2012
Pick just about any state political issue in the headlines these days and chances are Remcho, Johansen & Purcell is in the mix.
The battle over tax initiatives? The firm helped write rival school-funding measures, including one favored by the governor, headed for the November ballot.
Redistricting? The state Senate president hired the firm to pen an amicus curiaebrief supporting political maps drafted by a citizens commission.How about the new 49ers stadium in Santa Clara? Remcho, Johansen is in the game there, too, recently helping developers kill a referendum on a new $1 billion football palace.
It's a nice uptick in business for a political law firm that saw its litigation work ebb in a sour economy, said founding partner Robin Johansen.
"I've learned that when it's slow you should just enjoy it and the time off," Johansen said in a recent interview. "It's very hard to do, but I've gotten better at it because it's going to get crazy again."
Read the whole article here.
Wall Street Journal - March 14, 2012
Pat Kennedy believes high-speed communication is so essential to business that he is spending $3 million of his own money to build a fiber-optic loop in his hometown of San Leandro. The move is intended to help his software company expand and ramp up the technology industry in the East Bay.
Mr. Kennedy is chief executive of OSIsoft LLC, which does data monitoring for utilities, refineries and "anything with a smokestack." His company moves large amounts of data over the Internet each day and its data needs are growing.
Read the whole article here.
Atlantic Cities - March 14, 2012
Patrick Kennedy looked into the future, and he didn't like what he saw.
Kennedy is CEO of the software company OSIsoft, and he worried that his data-rich business would be increasingly limited by the capacity of his city's telephone-style internet infrastructure. What seemed fast enough today would most certainly be far too slow five years down the line.
So Kennedy took action. He lobbied city officials in San Leandro, California, to make the switch from copper wires to higher-speed fiber optic cables. The city had already dug up its streets to lay down conduits to link up all its traffic lights; snaking some fiber optic cables through wouldn't be too much more work, he argued.
Read the whole article here.
San Leandro Patch - February 21, 2012
"San Leandro is the ideal place to do business," founder says, citing location, transportation, other manufacturing and a city government that "makes it easy to operate here." A local startup has discovered how to disinfect wastewater without using toxic chemicals or costly electricity, while creating energy at the same time. Pasteurization Technology Group says it is the first and only company in the world to combine wastewater disinfection with renewable-energy generation. The San Leandro startup is getting attention. Last year PTG garnered the Popular Science 2011 "Best of What’s New" Award and the 2011 BlueTech® Go-To-Market Strategy award. It recently received a second $1 million infusion of capital from EIC Ventures to expand.
Now the company is ramping up staffing in San Leandro to keep up with the increasing stream of inquiries from prospective customers. PTG's patented technology uses digester gas (often referred to as biogas, a natural by-product of wastewater treatment) as fuel to drive a turbine that generates renewable electricity.
Read the whole article here.
San Leandro Patch - February 16, 2012
You’ve heard of hiding in plain sight. One of San Leandro’s largest industrial sites has been “hiding” at 14655 Wicks Boulevard for more than 40 years. The Coca-Cola Production & Distribution Center is a state-of-the art facility that employs more than 400 people who can Coke, Sprite and other carbonated drinks for sale throughout Northern California.
The local facility also plastic bottles Dasani water, which has been criticized by environmental groups, although the plant has won awards for waste reduction, as Patch has reported in the past.
Coke officials recently invited city and business leaders to tour the 500,000 square-foot plant (roughly the equivalent of eight football fields) to see their latest upgrade – the introduction of 56 fork lifts and pallet lifters that use hydrogen fuel cells to produce clean energy.
Read the whole article here.
Tech Company Touts Fiber-Optic Loop
San Leandro Times - February 9, 2012
San Leandro want to helps you get lit. An 11-mile fiber optic loop project know as "Lit San Leandro" was recently approved by the City Council. The loop will boost the industrial area with high-speed, high volume data transfers and the hope is that kind of capability will lure business to San Leandro that will pay to tap into the loop. On Tuesday afternoon tech company owner Patrick Kenndy hosted a workshop at his headquarters on Davis Street to hype the project. Lit San leandro is a public-private partnership between Kennedy's OSI soft and the city.
Read the whole article here.
San Leandro fiber optic loop begins with high hopes for a tech future
Daily Review - February 9, 2012
Optimism was high Tuesday at the Davis Street headquarters of OSIsoft, the company helping the city build a "fiber optic loop" that San Leandro hopes will be an economic boon to the city. Work crews have begun laying fiber optic cables in city-owned conduits under Davis Street and other thoroughfares as part of a project called Lit San Leandro. The project is a public-private partnership between the city of San Leandro and a company called San Leandro Dark Fiber, which was created specifically for the project by OSIsoft CEO Patrick Kennedy.
Read the whole article here.
Energy Recovery Inc Granted Record-Setting Number of New Patents
Wall Street Journal--Market Watch.com - Jan. 26, 2012
Energy Recovery Inc ERII -0.03% , a leader in the design and development of energy recovery devices and pumps for desalination and other industrial processes, today announced that it was granted four new patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in 2011, the most approved in any one year in the Company's history. All of the patents were related to Energy Recovery Inc's (ERI) game changing PX(TM) Pressure Exchanger technology, including its application into osmotic power production.
Read the whole article here.
Lit San Leandro On KQED
KQED Radio - Jan. 18, 2012
Please click on the following link to listen to Patrick Kennedy in a KQED Radio interview about how Lit San Leandro works and why San Leandro's manufacturing history is an asset for this project. PatrickKennedyonKQEDradio
San Leandro builds 'fiber optic loop' in bid to become a high-tech hub
Daily Review - Jan. 16, 2012
Construction begins this week on an ambitious project to wire up San Leandro with a "fiber-optic loop" in the hopes of attracting to town the kinds of businesses that have turned Palo Alto and Santa Clara into high-tech hubs. According to the U.S. Commerce Department, annual global Internet commerce for 2011 totaled roughly $10 trillion. City officials hope to gain a piece of that pie once an infrastructure backbone of high-speed fiber-optic cables is completed sometime midyear.
Read the whole article here.
Peterson Tractor Celebrates its 75th Anniversary
San Leandro Patch - December 16, 2011
At the end of the 1940’s construction on Peterson’s large headquarters in San Leandro was complete and the business moved into its current location at 955 First Avenue (now Marina Boulevard) where it remains today.
With 19 locations, it now has over 1000 employees. Approximately one third of its employees work at the Marina Boulevard headquarters.
Back in 1960, Good Year's BIG Magazine wrote in its February edition that the Peterson facility in San Leandro dwarfed virtually every other equipment dealership in the nation and was functional down to the last square inch. Its expansive showroom area displayed an array of farming and industrial machines offered to customers, housed within a 25,000 square-foot building. Along with the showroom there were sales and administrative offices and a front parts counter. Adjacent to that was a 32,400 sq-ft parts warehouse which backed up to a Southern Pacific railroad spur for easy equipment delivery from the factory.
Read the whole article here.
Orinda's John Martin, a lawyer's son, follows own path to brewing business
Oakland Tribune, Inside Bay Area - December 8, 2011
Growing up in Orinda, John Martin hiked the hills, diligently following in his father's footsteps. When it came time for college, he chose pre-law, just like his father and his father's father before him. But one day, his father told him the straight-ahead truth. "He sat me down and said, 'You really don't have the killer instinct,' " Martin remembers. "It was liberating, really. I'm so glad he said that because it changed everything."
Well, almost everything.
What it didn't change was a family legacy of independence. In addition to being a lawyer, his father had owned Martino's, a Berkeley restaurant where Martin learned to appreciate the camaraderie of good food and, especially, great beer.
Read the whole article here.
San Leandro Jumpstarts Waterfront Plan
San Francisco Business Times - December 2, 2011
Cal Coast Development has designed a conceptual master plan to redevelop San Leandro's waterfront into a bustling office, hotel and conference center.
The City of San Leandro hired Cal Coast as the master developer for a 52-acre area near the city's marina that could include up to 290,000 square feet of office, a 200-room hotel with a 15,000-square-foot conference center, 188 units of housing and a new space for retail and restaurants.
Read the whole article here.
San Leandro Retail Project Seeks 2012 OK
San Francisco Business Times - November 25, 2011
After developing a 235,000-square-foot office plaza in downtown San Leandro, David Irmer of the Innisfree Cos. has set his sights on bringing in new retail. The developer is working on a 28,000-square-foot shopping center on 1.7 acres at East 14th Street that is slated to include a Fresh & Easy grocery store, Peet’s Coffee & Tea, Chipotle, AT&T store and a full-service restaurant. The project, known as the Village Marketplace, will feature a large outdoor seating area and clock tower.
Read the whole article here.
CEO Wants "Dark Fiber" to light up East Bay City
San Francisco Business Times - November 18, 2011
J. Patrick Kennedy has grown OSIsoft LLC into one of San Leandro’s largest employers over the last three-plus decades, with 750 employees.
Now Kennedy wants to help the city where he lives and works reinvent itself and attract tech jobs. He is spending several million dollars of his own money to run more than 10 miles of fiber optic cables capable of transmitting mind-boggling amounts of data at incredible speeds through a municipal conduit that rings the city.
It is very costly to dig up the ground to lay fiber cables, and key to Kennedy’s plan is accessing a conduit through which the city controls street lights and cameras — something the city has already approved.
Read the whole article here.
Medshare Celebrates Shipment of 700th Container of Medical Supplies
San Leandro Patch - September 3, 2011
"MedShare marked a milestone Friday as volunteers, employees, board members and city leaders gathered to commemorate the shipment of the organization’s 700th container of surplus medical supplies.
MedShare’s program makes use of excess medical supplies from area hospitals and clinics that would otherwise go to a landfill.
These supplies are then sorted at the warehouse in San Leandro and are made available to organizations, clinics and medical personnel in the Bay Area and around the world.
The 700th shipment, a tractor-trailer-sized container, is on its way to Libya. It carries five tons of more than 1,000 items such as hospital beds, gurneys, exam lights, exam tables, a ventilator for pediatric and adult patients, surgical packs, syringes, gloves and oxygen masks."
Read the whole article here.
Energy Recovery Inc Consolidates Operations in San Leandro
BusinessWire - July 13, 2011
"Energy Recovery Inc, a leader in the design and development of energy recovery devices for desalination and other industrial processes, today announced the planned consolidation of its North American manufacturing operations. Under the plan, the company will move its operations in Michigan, where its pumps and turbocharges are currently assembled, and relocate those activities to its existing headquarters and production center in San Leandro, California. ERI expects the consolidation to significantly reduce costs, improve efficiencies and enhance research and development efforts, positioning the company to experience increased profitability in subsequent years."
Read the whole article here.
OSIsoft Announces Its Selection As Microsoft Sustainability Partner Of The Year
BusinessWire - July 10, 2011
"OSIsoft, LLC, the leader in real-time data infrastructure solutions, today announced its selection as a 2011 Microsoft Partner of the Year Award Winner. From nearly 3,000 partner entries submitted this year for the Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) 2011 Awards program, OSIsoft's PI System was selected by Microsoft judges as the winner in the category, Sustainability Partner of the Year. This is the inaugural year for Microsoft to present the Sustainability Partner of the Year Award, a category which recognizes exceptional partners who have delivered software and technology innovations built on the Microsoft platform that help organizations around the world reduce their impact on the environment."
Read the whole article here.
Cleaire Wins Cleantech Award for Emissions Reduction Technology
San Francisco Business Times - June 17, 2011
"Cleaire filtration systems have been installed on 1,400 transit buses in San Francisco and some 10,000 vehicles across the state; no less than 80 percent of the company’s business is in California, providing “good jobs, all local jobs. You can’t export these jobs,” says Plummer, who now plans to expand sales across the Northeast, Southeast and Rustbelt regions where levels of particulate matter are especially high."
Read the whole article here.
Global Access Forum Helps San Leandro Businesses Reach New Markets
The Global Access Forum on Friday, May 20, at San Leandro's new Senior Community Center was attended by approximately 100 business and municipal leaders. The Forum brought together professionals from Ex-Im Bank, the SBA and the U.S. Department of Commerce to educate local companies on how to export goods and services to foreign markets. Attendees learned about federal financing mechanisms created to increase exports, and federal trade resources for identifying new markets. The panel of local business owners, including Hans Peter Michelet of San Leandro based Energy Recovery Inc., shared how they have used these programs and resources to increase their sales.
For video of the forum, please click below:
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