Assignment #3

Daly City borders the City/County of San Francisco. Its closeness would imply a strong relationship to San Francisco, so I sought to delve into what sort of relationship this could be. The city was named after John Daly, who began to work on a farm at around age 13 in what would become San Mateo County. He was able to become a successful business man and purchased a large amount of land on the “top-of-the-hill.” In the 1890s, the streetcars from San Francisco began to come to Daly City, over “Daly’s Hill,” and Daly moved to San Francisco in order to procure better education for his children. He still kept his business, however. Daly donated a lot to the Daly City community, helping to establish a bank and donated funds for the first library. In the 1906 earthquake, many San Francisco residents rushed to Daly City for help, and John Daly even allowed his farmlands to be used by the refugees, supplying the San Franciscans with food. As the community began to grow, there was an increasing amount of support to become a city. The community decided to name it Daly City, and was incorporated in 1911. “Prior to the earthquake, dog racing was a big attraction, with trains and streetcars bringing thousands to the sparsely-populated hills of the area across the county line. Boxing matches were held in quickly-built arenas near the edge of San Francisco, where gambling was less restricted than in the City” (dalycityhistory.org).

After World War II, Henry Doelger, a developer from San Francisco, bought “600 acres of sand dunes and cabbage patches that occupied much of the land between the original Daly City’s westerly edge to the ocean. He built a community called Westlake, which was annexed to Daly City in 1948” (dalycityhistory.org). Doelger continued to develop Daly City, and the city only began to grow larger. It has “emerged as a shopping mecca for San Francisco residents. The combination of plentiful free parking space (compared to the constrained and expensive parking options in San Francisco) and San Mateo County's historically slightly lower state sales tax rate (http://www.boe.ca.gov/cgi-bin/rates.cgi?LETTER=S&LIST=COUNTY) have contributed to this trend. Many big box retailers that are unable to operate in San Francisco due to real estate prices, space restrictions, or political / community opposition have opened stores in the Serramonte and Westlake neighborhoods.”
According to dalycity.org, approximately “51% of Daly City’s employed labor force works in San Francisco, about 17% work in either Daly City or South San Francisco and the remainder work in other Bay Area communities.” This is an example of San Francisco’s importation of labor from other areas. San Francisco comes up repeatedly in Daly City’s history, in which San Francisco residents often come to Daly City to exploit what is unavailable in their own city: either earlier on, when gambling was popular in Daly City, or currently, where they go to shop. It was used as a place of refuge during the earthquake, and San Francisco still grasps the city in its (sort of symbiotic) parasitic embrace.


http://www.dalycity.org/

Pretty much anything you could ever want to know about Daly City, you can find here. I looked chiefly at the “Overview” (http://www.dalycityhistory.org/overview.htm) and “City Profile” sections (http://www.dalycity.org/about/city_profile.htm). There is an amazing amount of information.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2002/02/08/BU76188.DTL

An article about Daly City’s Serramonte Center being sold for $119 million. Says that Serramonte is a “solid performing property” with “$400 of sales per square foot per year, above the $300 industry average.”