Maverick’s surf competition on for Sunday, developer unveils gigantic plan for Pier 70, investigators say South Bay millionaire’s murder linked to a prostitute, more.
- California home prices rose more than 20 percent in December compared to a year earlier, with the Bay Area seeing its sharpest increase in at least two decades. AP
- The Maverick’s big-wave surf contest, always heavily-dependent on surf conditions, will be held Sunday at the famed break off Pillar Point in Half Moon Bay, with an 8 a.m. start. Chronicle
- Developer Forest City is proposing as many as 1,000 housing units to go along with 2.2 million square feet of office space it wants to build at Pier 70 on the San Francisco waterfront. SF Business Times
- Investigators say the home invasion robbery in which a South Bay millionaire was killed in November happened after a prostitute gave information about his mansion to an East Oakland gang, one of two gangs police have tied to an outbreak of recent violence. Chronicle
- At a state Public Utilities Commission hearing, a PG&E official defended the utility’s “lost its way” ad-campaign before the 2010 San Bruno disaster, saying it referred to a loss of “basic operations” and not specifically to safety problems. Chronicle
- The Chronicle takes a look at Umami, the popular Los Angeles-based burger chain that opened a store on Union Street in 2011 and plans to open two others, in Palo Alto and Oakland, by summer.
