Frost once observed. Tell it to
Pixar, Bob:
The red-hot computer-animation company (“Finding
Nemo,” “Toy Story”) may add 1,300 jobs in a US$325-million, 20-year
expansion of its San Francisco-metro headquarters in Emeryville.
Then again, Pixar may pack up and leave town.
And much of that decision hangs on a wall.
An 8-ft. (2.4-m.) wrought-iron fence surrounds
Pixar’s 215,000-sq.-ft. (19,350-sq.-m.), 730-employee headquarters.
The City Council approved a wall-encircled campus in 1998, when
the company first decided to come to Emeryville after outgrowing
its space just up the freeway in Richmond.
Nonetheless, Pixar’s partition has become
a lightning rod in a very public ruckus. And that’s underscored
some other lines from Frost’s famous poem: “Something there is
that doesn’t love a wall/that wants it down.”
Pixar Director of Facilities Tom Carlisle
has been at the firestorm’s epicenter.
Carlisle probably expected a semi-routine
evening at one City Council meeting this summer. After all, city
officials had recommended approving the plan, and the council
had already OK’d some details. But things fell apart fast that
night. It started with City Planning Commissioner Jim Martin,
who’d previously submitted a report suggesting that Pixar’s physical
walls alone should be fence enough. Unexpectedly, Martin reiterated
that point.
“We all bought into that you guys need a
fence,” chimed in council member Richard Kassis. “But for the
life of me, I cannot understand why a brick building cannot serve
as a secure fence. I find myself constantly defending the fence.”
Then, in a totally unanticipated turnaround,
the council voted 3-2 to postpone any action.
That left Pixar dangling, without key approvals
that included construction timetables. So Carlisle took the offensive.
“This [fence] is very important to [Pixar
CEO] Steve Jobs,” Carlisle told the council. “My job is on the
line here. We’re giving you things you didn’t have before.”
Pixar had indeed already agreed to move part
of the fence back seven and a half feet (2.3 m.), three times
farther than in its original expansion design, Carlisle pointed
out. And, he added, it was going to install a bike and pedestrian
path, a landscaped area, trees, and benches.
The wall, he explained, wasn’t simply to
keep out standard-issue curiosity-seekers.
“Now that we’re a more successful company,
people want to get into Pixar,” Carlisle said. “We get people
who want to steal our intellectual property, our ideas.”
Then he dropped a bombshell: “This is really
disheartening for Pixar. If the city takes away our fence, we
will not stay in Emeryville.”
The City Council’s delay re-energized anti-expansion
activists, including the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy
and the Sierra Club. “Mr. Jobs, take down that wall,” one Emeryville
resident insisted at the next council meeting, evoking a famous
Ronald Reagan line.
Activists also renewed demands that night
for Pixar to sign a “Community Benefits Agreement.” That contract
would require job training for low-income residents, local hiring
for some expansion construction jobs, and contributions to local
child-care and affordable-housing funds.
But Pixar was already a good neighbor, other
residents countered. It’s the No. 1 donor to both the city’s food
bank and a foundation supporting local schools, they explained.
What’s more, Pixar has deposited almost $1 million in the local
low-income housing fund.
Finally, after accepting what Kassis deemed
an “ultimatum,” the council voted 5-0 to approve the expansion
plan. Pixar and its fence, it seemed, were staying in Emeryville.
But not necessarily. After opponents collected
enough signatures to require a referendum to approve the expansion,
the issue is now headed for resolution “California style” — via
ballot box — with the vote slated for Nov. 2. Pixar initially
planned to begin its expansion before the end of 2005.
In a July 2004 interview, Peter Laanen, CEO
of Expression College for Digital Arts and chairman of the Emeryville
Chamber, told Site Selection, “As a Chamber we fully support Pixar.
The people living in Emeryville should be fully aware of what
Pixar and the Chamber members are doing for Emeryville in terms
of schools, library, the needy and elderly and so on. Without
that support, the school district probably would have been closed
already.” Even before the dispute arose, the Chamber was forming
a PAC to offer further support to its members.
Asked for comment in late July, a company
spokesperson refrained. But at an earlier council meeting, Carlisle
addressed demands for contractual community benefits.
“Pixar is very involved in the community,”
he said. “We do it because we like doing it, not because someone
is telling us.”
