Slowdown hasn't hit Bay Area

The San Francisco Bay Area continues to maintain its strength since the 2008 recession thanks to its economic diversity, including a heated real estate market. Any impact from China's economic slowdown has not yet appeared, said an industry expert.

"We talk about that (China's slowdown) a lot. We talk about what the motivations of the Chinese are to take money out of the country, and I doubt any of those have changed significantly," Michael Covarrubias, chairman of the Bay Area Council, told China Daily during the organization's annual outlook conference on Tuesday in San Francisco.

"We are not seeing a slowdown. So far, I don't think we've seen it," he said.

California, particularly the Bay Area, has been a major destination of Chinese investment. By the end of 2015, Chinese-funded projects under construction or planned totaled at least $15 billion, ranging from multi-billion-dollar mixed-use projects in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area to smaller-scale developments in secondary markets, according to a recent report by the Asia Society and Rosen Consulting Group.

Covarrubias said he was not surprised at the figures.

"They (Chinese investors) are pretty active. I would say it's a pretty good trend," said Covarrubias, chairman and CEO of TMG Partners, one of the Bay Area's largest mixed-use property developers, which sold the two-tower First & Mission development site for $296 million to China-based Oceanwide Holdings early last year.

The newest investment came in late February this year from Landsea Holdings, the US subsidiary of one of China's largest homebuilders. It paid $186 million for a 24-acre Sunnyvale site entitled for 450 townhomes.

"Bay Area is one of a kind; there's no other place like it on the planet," he said. "The Bay Area is where the university system is. It's the home of technology; it's the China connection to San Francisco."

To facilitate bilateral trade and investment activity between China and Bay Area, the Bay Area Council, a business-sponsored, public policy advocacy organization for the nine-county region, has set up offices in Shanghai and Hangzhou.

"We made a great effort to be over there" to assist businesses in the Bay Area expand into the Chinese market as well as help Chinese investors and businesses engage in the Bay Area economy, Covarrubias said.

According to the latest report by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, the Bay Area is the 21st largest economy in the world with 2014 nominal GDP registered at $577 billion, equivalent to a midsized European nation.

"Bay Area GDP growth has outpaced that of the US in every quarter since 2010, with a compounded annual growth rate of 3.1 percent, more than double that of a group of peer regions that includes New York, Los Angeles, Austin, Boston, Seattle and San Diego," says the report.

liazhu@chinadailyusa.com