A slight exaggeration. The Pearl site is only a 5-minute walk from the train station. Other than that yes, grossly uneconomical. As to your question "why": State of California mandate enforced on all incorporated cities, waste of money or no.
And this is why other ritzy areas have no interest in incorporating as cities proper. Rancho Santa Fe has a "Covenant" that performs usual city functions to the maximum extent legally possible e.g. private security guards, while dodging State mandates.
Care to contribute a "war story" -- carefully anonymized -- of some trade secret or patent business, that worked out especially well or badly?Here's one of my own. While working for a small, underfunded startup, I built some novel code. Another employee managed most of our dealings with the patent attorney. His summary of their talks: "X doesn't understand. I mean he really doesn't...