REAL ESTATE TRENDS
Upfront
by Samia Cullen
PUBLIC ART
Flood Insurance Rates Rise
Palo Alto to unveil ‘light sculpture’ Funding outlook is murky for 35-foot-tall, LED-laden tree sculpture
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two-year grassroots effort led by a Palo Alto father and his two young children to bring a 35-foot-tall interactive light sculpture to the city will come to fruition this weekend when it is unveiled in City Hall’s King Plaza on Saturday, Nov. 16. The sculpture, called Aurora, is an enormous metal tree adorned with 4,200 handmade copper leaves that hang from 200 branches, all lit by 40,000 LED lights. Anyone with a webenabled device, tablet or smartphone can log into a website that allows them to interact with the tree, controlling it via sliders that regulate elements such as color, brightness, sparkle and pulse. The tree was originally designed for Burning Man, the annual art and music festival held in Nevada, by San Francisco artist Charles Gadeken. It will reside in King Plaza for a year. Though in a sense the project, which started as two elementary children gathering petition signatures from their classmates, is approaching the finish line with this weekend’s unveiling, it’s still tens of thousands of dollars short of the total funds needed. “This is entirely grassroots funded,” said Harry Hirschman, whose children Sam, 11, and Julia, 9, decided they wanted to bring Aurora to Palo Alto two years ago after seeing pictures of the sculpture their father took at Burning Man in 2011. “Nickels and dimes in a jar; (the kids have) collected money on the street; they’ve gone into board meetings for art foundations.” The project has raised only approximately $35,000 of a total $100,000 needed to cover installation costs and extensive redesign of the sculpture. “A lot of people keep saying, ‘Why do you need money if it’s already made?’” Gadeken said. “One, there’s a big difference between putting something on sidewalk for a year and staging it for a two-day festival. So trying to make things that are weatherproof and publicly safe has just been very expensive.” Other costs have arisen, including buying all new light bulbs, replacing all the electronic connectors with waterproof ones, redesigning the software that allows onlookers to interact with the tree, and renting a crane and other items necessary for installation of the piece, which is taking place this week. “It adds up really fast,” Gadeken said. He has personally shouldered much of Aurora’s financial burden, putting in $15,000 to install the piece, he said. “Essentially, the artist is going into debt to finish the installation on schedule and to deliver everything that was envisioned,” Hirschman said.
by Elena Kadvany Though the City of Palo Alto expects that public art placed temporarily on city property be independently funded, the Public Art Commission occasionally decides to back a project, which it did with Aurora. Commissioner Trish Collins, whose two children also eventually became involved with Aurora, said the commission got on board despite initial reservations because it was a community-driven project. The commission approved the project last December, allocating $1,200 to pay for permit and insurance costs. It was expected that any remaining funds would be raised by Hirschman and Gadeken. “The Commission approved the installation so that they could move forward with fundraising, and offered to offset the permit and insurance costs,” Elise DeMarzo, public art manager for the city, wrote in an email. “Mr. Hirshman and Mr. Gadeken have decided to move forward with the installation before the completion of their fundraising — which is highly unusual.” The project recently launched a last-stretch Kickstarter campaign, aiming to raise another $35,000 by Tuesday, Nov. 26.
As of Thursday, with 11 days to go, the campaign has raised $13,178 from 145 backers. But because of the way the crowdsourced fundraising website works, if the project doesn’t raise the full amount, it does not get any of the funds. Beyond the Kickstarter campaign, the project will have to rely on private contributions. If Aurora doesn’t manage to raise the remaining funds, Gadeken is on the hook. He acknowledged that moving forward with the installation is a gamble, but said that “I do feel we’ll be able to get that money back.” Collins said the city has enough funds in reserve for dismantling Aurora. Sam, Julia and the other Palo Alto children who got on board with Aurora have become old hands at pitching their project to local companies and art foundations to bring in private funding. They also hosted a Maker Faire in May to raise money, during which participants created more than 200 copper leaves that will hang from the tree. The Aurora children will also (continued on page £Ó)
Last year Congress passed the BiggertWaters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012 (“Biggert-Waters”) that made major changes to the flood insurance premiums many homeowners pay. Under the new law, owners must pay the full-risk rate, the rate that accurately reflects the full risk of being flooded without government subsidies. Previously, the government subsidized the insurance of many homes and insurance rates were based on older flood maps showing lower risk. Provisions of BiggertWaters require the National Flood Insurance Program to raise insurance rates for some older properties in high-risk areas to reflect true flood risk. The bill went into effect on Oct. 1, 2013. Homeowners in some of the hardest hit areas saw their flood insurance premiums increase drastically. Therefore homes in the FEMA Flood Hazard Zones sold after October 1, 2013 will have full-risks rates. Buyers who are taking a loan to buy a property will be required by lenders to buy flood insurance and will be paying substantially more for
flood insurance than the current sellers. In addition if the property is located in a flood zone, unless provided by the seller, buyer will have to provide the insurance company an elevation certificate to ensure that the premium accurately reflects the flood risk by either a) asking the local floodplain manager if the property’s elevation information is on file and in which case the floodplain manager can issue an elevation certificate or b) hiring a surveyor at a cost of around $750 to conduct a survey and issue the elevation certificate. A bipartisan bill, the ‘Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act’ was introduced recently to delay further implementation of some rate increases in Biggert-Waters Act. This will allow the Federal Emergency Management Agency to complete an affordability study that was mandated by Biggert-Waters and propose targeted regulations to address any affordability issues found in the study. Contact your flood insurance agent for further details.
If you have a real estate question or would like a free market analysis for your home, please call me at 650-384-5392, Alain Pinel Realtors, or email me at scullen@apr.com. For the latest real estate news, follow my blog at www.samiacullen.com
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