Alumni Notes: BAD R/E JUJU

There was a cute guy a couple years behind me at Saint Ignatius High School named Sangiacomo, that’s how the name entered my mind.

In years to come I’d see the name more and more, always associated with real estate somehow. I gradually became aware that Angelo Sangiacomo, (prob the dad of the cute kid at school) was a major developer in San Francisco.

I wasn’t aware how vilified he is among political progressives in San Francisco. Angelo Sangiacomo is sometimes called the “father” of SF’s rent control ordinance. Rent control was sparked in significant part, according to activists, by Sangiacomo’s rapacious landlord practices.

He’s also called a slumlord.

The story this morning is about a step forward in the approval process for a major residential redevelopment of a piece of property that currently houses lower income largly Filipino tenants. Sangiacomo is the developer.

There have been nasty battles between the Filipino tenants and the Sangiacomo family. According to Beyond Chron, the Sangiacomo’s turned off the water heater on their Filipino tenants on a Christmas eve.

To close out 2005, the Sangiacomo family -- and I have deduced it was Susan Sangiacomo who actually gave the order this past year -- shut off the hot water on the afternoon of 12/24 and it was not restored until late Monday, 12/27. One of only two repair persons for the large complex stated on Monday afternoon that "the pilot light accidentally blew out on the boiler" on the afternoon of 12/24 when Trinity Management closed the office for the long three-day weekend...

The article complained, Aren’t the Sangiacomo’s supposed to be Catholics?

Of course they are, as featured in the latest edition of Genesis, St Ignatius High School’s alumi fundraising claypaper quarterly, upper right photo.

There he is with two of his SI-student grandkids. The blond babe on the right is SI’s Assistant Principal for Student Affairs. The goofball on the left is a “motivational speaker” whom old man Sangiacomo paid to speak to SI kids.

The title of the speech was NOT: How to Lose Those Last Twenty Pounds.

The Jesuit tradition is to serve the spiritual needs of all people, rich and poor alike. Presumably a Christmas midnight mass could be attended by Sangiacomo and his family, and by poor Filipinos who wish they could have bathed for the occasion.

The actual piece of property mentioned in the Beyond Chron stories has some questionable juju associated with it. It looks pretty good in the photo.

It was originally built by the notorious Del Webb (wikilink).

Del Webb, like so many private entrepeneurs, made his stake off the U.S. government, notably with the construction of a WWII relocation center where 17,000 Japanese Americans were unlawfully detained.

Along the same line he built the prototype retirement community, Sun City, in Arizona. He built the Flamingo for Bugsy Siegel and later owned two Las Vegas casinos himself. Nuff said.

In the go-go 1960s Webb built a motor-hotel, Del Webb’s TownHouse, in the semi-blighted Civic-Center stretch of San Francisco’s Market Street. It was a gamble that didn’t pay off, and after a few years the project became apartments and gradually deteriorated.

Enter Angelo Sangiacomo.

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