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technological leadership. And, many of their products and services are foundational to the overall <br />success of the Bay Area as a global center of innovative products. <br />An evocative example of a company's evolution in the district towards advanced manufacturing is INX <br />Digital (Fig. 27), located in a multi -tenant, architecturally -refurbished factory complex on Williams Street <br />that once housed Western Waxed Paper Company (Fig. 36). INX Digital is a specialty manufacturer of <br />inks and processes for high-resolution digital printing. It was spun off in 2002 from Triangle Coatings, a <br />paint and coatings manufacturer founded in Berkeley in 1932 which had moved its manufacturing plant <br />to San Leandro in 1984 and then its headquarters to Livermore 21. The brightly lit and spacious INX <br />facility is a research and development operation where the firm designs, prototypes and markets <br />custom large -format printers, inks, and processes to order for various clients and companies. It employs <br />highly trained engineers, chemists, industrial designers and lab technicians working in collaboration with <br />multinational team members in and outside the company. <br />2.2. Competitive Weaknesses of the districts include: <br />2.2.1. A minority of value-added activities. <br />As shown on Figure 11 in the appendix, most district properties have low employment density per <br />square foot. The high proportion of space devoted to warehouse and distribution also correlates to a <br />low "value-added" per square foot factor. The dominance of warehouse use and the scattered <br />locations of manufacturing firms contributes to the perception that not much manufacturing is going on <br />(Figure 19). Conversations with area real estate brokers also confirm this impression. <br />2.2.2. Legacy: Obsolescent buildings and streets. <br />The stock of very large floorplate industrial buildings (as large as 900' x 400' and more, with many in the <br />700' x 250' range) — many a legacy of 1950s and earlier eras - require extra risk and effort to subdivide <br />for smaller, non -warehouse tenants (which would provide potential incubation spaces for start-up <br />businesses, for example). With the high proportion of warehouse and distribution uses in the district, <br />consistent regional demand for them, and brokers' orientation to that demand, there are few incentives <br />to take on the costs and design complexities of non -warehouse tenant space subdivision. In most cases, <br />brokers will avoid those risks of speculative format re -development. Similarly, no comparable examples <br />or models of co -tenant manufacturing space facilities exist in the district that serve an analogous <br />function to the rise of "co -work" and incubator spaces for downtown office/tech firms. Many existing <br />buildings do not fit modern preferred height standards for warehousing with a 32 -foot minimum --most <br />are 28 feet in height or less (Table 4). For many industrial properties , especially older properties with <br />limited unbuilt area available for on-site parking , on -street parking is limited because of the number <br />and width of driveways. Some streets such as West Avenue 104th are lined with continuous rolled curbs <br />for truck dock access, eliminating curbside parking and weakening property convertibility as well as <br />walkability. <br />21 http://www.tricoat.com/our-history.htmI <br />10 <br />