Issue 319___Will you want to live in San Francisco - tomorrow ___April 2008

Join us May 21, 2008
at SFT’s Annual Awards Dinner honoring
Harold Gilliam Kathy Devincenzi Brent Plater

San Francisco Tomorrow invites you to join in celebrating the accomplishments of three of the City’s environmental stars at its 37th Annual Awards Dinner on Wednesday, May 21,6:30 p.m. at Castagnola’s Restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf.This year we spotlight the San Francisco Chronicle’s long-time environmental columnist Harold Gilliam, who wrote to protect the beauty and livability of the City -- starting with his news reports that helped prevent more filling of San Francisco Bay and defeat freeways proposed through Golden Gate Park and on the northern waterfront. He will receive the Jack Morrison Lifetime Achievement Award.

SFT will also honor two Unsung Heroes:
Kathy Devincenzi, an attorney whose legal challenge caused the UC Regents to abandon plans to convert an office facility in the Laurel Heights residential area into a major biochemical research lab with 150 exhaust stacks. She also won a Court decision that required an environmental impact report for historic changes to the Housing Element of the City’s General Plan.
Brent Plater, who came up with the idea of highlighting the biological diversity of the Presidio by making 2008 the GGNRA Endangered Species Big Year. His concept attracted wide publicity to the plight of the 33 endangered species in the Presidio. Brent, a former director of the Center for Biological Diversity, teaches environmental law at San Francisco State and Golden Gate universities
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The May 21 event will start with a reception at 5:30 PM, with dinner at 7:00 and the awards program from 8:00 to 9:00. Donations for the event are especially important in supporting SFT’s efforts to protect the urban environment, fight for strong public transportation, and work with responsible and responsive public officials to achieve our environmental goals.

Dinner tickets are $50 each, with Sponsors asked for $80 with dinner and Patrons for $120 with dinner for two. Advanced reservations are requested, with checks mailed by Friday, May 16, to San Francisco Tomorrow, 41 Sutter Street. No.1579, San Francisco CA 94104-4903. Patrons and Sponsors will be listed on the dinner invitation. Please invite your friends to come.

Questions? Call SFT President Jennifer Clary at 585-9489
or Dinner Chair Jane Morrison at 564-1482.

SFT ENDORSEMENTS FOR THE JUNE 3, 2008 ELECTION
State
Assembly member, District 13 – Tom Ammiano
Proposition 98 – Support
Proposition 99 - Oppose

Local
Support Proposition A – School Parcel Tax
Proposition E – Appointments to the Public Utilities Commission
Oppose Proposition G – Lennar development at Candlestick and Hunters Point Shipyard-
Proposition H – Limits on Campaign Contributions from City Contractors

Tom Ammiano is running unopposed, but we urge you to support him both politically and financially in his new career in Sacramento!
Propositions 98 & 99 are similar initiatives only to the extent that they amend current law regarding the use of eminent domain by government agencies. Proposition 98 essentially gives private property the upper hand over government in all regulatory arenas, including public health & safety, environmental protection, and rent control. Proposition 99 limits the use of eminent domain to acquire an owner-occupied property for conveyance to a private person or entity, addressing the problem created by the 2005 US Supreme Court Decision Kelo vs. New London.
Important Note – if both measures pass, the one with the most votes will become law. Therefore it is urgent that you vote NO on 98 and Yes on 99.
California’s per pupil spending has dropped to 46th in the nation, and with the current state tax mess, it is unlikely to change soon. Proposition A proposes a annual tax of $198 per parcel to supplement teacher salaries and increase staff training. SFT supports this measure to retain the best teaches and support our schools.

Proposition E is a charter amendment that sets qualifications for SFPUC Commission seats, and requires that the Supervisors proactively approve their nomination (by the Mayor) by a majority vote. Sitting commissioners will need to be reappointed and approved by August of this year.
Passage of Proposition E will help ensure that qualified commissioners are making critical decisions and setting policy for the organization, and that the Mayor and Supervisors both fully support the commission.

Proposition G asks voters to approve the proposed Lennar development of Candlestick Park – in concept. While SFT supports the neighborhood, this measure contains few guarantees. It also okays taking part of the existing Candlestick Point State Recreation Area for the development and for construction of a roadway and bridge across South Basin. That bridge would essential wall off the neighborhood from the Bay (kind of like the Central Freeway walled off Hayes Valley!). We request that voter approval be sought when the proposal is ready for review – and when we understand the environmental trade-offs that are being sought, and the true balance between Lennar’s profits and the neighborhood benefits being provided.

Presidio Open Space Around-the-Park Tour

The Presidio’s great outdoors include 1,000 acres of rare wildflower meadows, hidden gardens, and majestic forest that are cared for and enjoyed by many. A tour of sites where exciting work is underway will be held on Thursday, May 1, from 5:30 to 7:45 pm. Highlights include: the restored Coastal Bluffs, Dragonfly Creek, new scenic overlooks, the Spanish chapel archaeology site, and a new trail near the Golden Gate. There are two ways to participate: Shuttle Tour (2hrs); space is limited. To register, please contact Judy Nichols at jnichols@presidiotrust.gov or (415) 561-5357 by April 21. Or visit on your own by contacting Judy Nichols for a map (see above) and find staff to guide you at showcase sites around the park.

San Francisco’s Golf Courses, long considered a major source of permanent open space in the city: some views have lately been heard urging the conversion of certain of the courses to other recreational uses. One golf course, at Sharp Park, managed by San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department, is a spectacularly beautiful site located in Pacifica. However, strapped by funding shortfalls in recent years, Recreation and Parks has been looking at many of its properties as real estate, capable of yielding financial returns. A few years ago when the Recreation and Parks Commission raised greens fees and effectively discouraged lower income and senior golfers, criticism began to be heard that golf was an elitist sport and that only an elite could play. (That seemed to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.) Sharp Park needs restoration and upgrading and is so steep in placed that it might never be fit for national tournament play (a perceived money-maker) so it has been targeted for extinction; proponents of Natural Areas point to the presence of some fine stands adjacent to the golf course that preserve native California plants. However, at Sharp Park, relocation and/or reconfiguration of just a few holes could achieve protection and enhancement of the native plants at the perimeter of the course.
An advisory group called the Recreation Alternatives at S.F. Golf Courses Taskforce has been created by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. It consists of golfers who regularly play at the City's courses plus recreation advocates and non-golfers. If you are interested, you may want to attend one of the Task Force's meetings on the following dates: May 1, May 8, May 22 and June 5. All meetings are at McLaren Lodge in Golden Gate Park (Fell & Stanyan Streets) from 6 pm to 8 pm.

OPEN SPACE AND PUBLIC USE versus
MAXIMIZING HOUSING UNITS

This case rubs raw the perennial dilemma continually being addressed in a dense, mostly built-out city like San Francisco. The balancing act between retaining public space for public use and the demand for more housing on what was perceived as “an underutilized site” was very carefully weighed. When the Planning Commission approved the 450-unit mixed-use project at 55 Laguna, it permitted the development of the former UC Berkeley Extension site for private use; 5.8 acres of public land had been officially listed on the National Register of Historic Places in early January and 15 percent of the site is owned by the City.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transexual affordable housing activists persuaded the Planning Commission, the Board of Supervisors and City Hall to make one of the buildings, 110 units to be built by OpenHouse, 100 percent affordable to very low income seniors. The City’s usual affordability levels would be met in the remaining 340 units. With the intervention of State Sen. Carole Migden, Assemblymember Mark Leno, Matt Franklin of the Mayor's Office of Housing, and LGBT and affordable-housing activists, more than double the affordable units from the original 16 percent to an overall total of 37 percent of the 450 proposed housing units.

The proposed project would result in the demolition of two of the five Natural Register contributing buildings—Middle Hall Gymnasium, the oldest building on the campus, and Richardson Hall Annex. Project sponsors state that the proposed plan will "preserve the historic buildings on the site by transforming them into market-rate and affordable rental apartments housing and a public community center.

Is everybody happy with this compromise? Historic preservationists said they would continue to try to save all the buildings in order to protect the National Register Historic District. They will also encourage UC, project developers A.F. Evans and the OpenHouse team to modify their design to prevent demolition of any of the buildings.

BREAKING STORY! National Park Service Cites “Adverse Effect” of Proposed Art Museum on Presidio’s Main Post. In a letter dated April 4 to the Presidio Trust, which manages the Presidio’s buildings, NPS official Brian O’Neill detailed Park Service concerns regarding the “adverse effect” of new construction, including a contemporary art museum proposed by Gap founder Donald Fisher, a hotel and a movie multiplex, being located on the Main Post of the Presidio, a national park. The scale, location and design of the modernistic Fisher museum have sparked negative responses from thousands of groups and individuals nationwide. The NPS made “strong” recommendations to the Presidio Trust, including building the museum in a more appropriate location “so that it does not dominate the historic setting.” The National Park Service is responsible for helping ensure that landmarks such as the Presidio’s Main Post retain their historic integrity. Read the rest of this story in SFT’s February and March newsletters and at sftomorrow.org

San Francisco City College Chinatown Campus Development
Architects have recently presented the latest revision of the design for the San Francisco City College Chinatown Campus. Instead of the campus housed in one building on the corner of Washington and Kearny Streets across from the Hilton Hotel, the new campus design is two buildings: a 14-story, more than 200-foot tall rectangular building and a second smaller building of five stories immediately adjacent to the now famous, historic Colombo Building at the corner, but divided in proximity from the main building by several existing retail buildings. The larger building would be set on a podium with two-story windows on two sides of the building. To give it some distinguishing character, the architects have chosen to decorate it with white aluminum louvers that can be modulated both to take certain shapes and give the facade some sculptural depth and also shade and disperse light.

However, these same aluminum louvers will shade the façade of the smaller building on Washington Street, which seems totally incompatible with the Colombo Building, a handsome classical revival building that has been the center of an historic preservation effort for many years. In addition, some of the louver pattern will be left out to make room for an outdoor mega TV showing a loop of college activities.
.The louvers are sculpted like a Mondrian painting, but all in white, in order, said the architects, to diminish the horizontal character of the new building and thus distinguish itself from the large surrounding buildings such as the Hilton Hotel or the newly built International-Hotel Senior Housing. Comments from the historic preservationists who have demanded protection for the Columbo Building will likely be heard once again.

The Community College Board of Trustees had minimal questions after a closed session meeting talking about litigation regarding the campus design as violation of a host of regulations such as CEQA and the Public Resource and Education Code. A meeting is set for this adoption on April 25, 2008.

Many believe that the design is in violation of San Francisco General Plan, especially its priority principles (originally passed by the voters as Proposition M in 1986), as well as the City’s Building Code and Park code. A 68-page Writ of Mandate and Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief was filed in February and is scheduled for hearings before a judge in May 2008.