Take back the Presidio

DOES ANYONE NOW doubt what Joel Ventresca, Angela Alioto, the Preserve the Presidio campaign, and the Bay Guardian were sounding the alarms about a few years back when Rep. Nancy Pelosi and the Burton machine were helping Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and its development allies steal the Presidio and take it private?

First, there was the unprecedented move to allow PG&E to steal the public power system at Presidio National Park – eight decades after San Francisco allowed PG&E to steal the city's public power from the Hetch Hetchy Dam in Yosemite National Park.

Second, there was the unprecedented move to privatize and then plunder what ought to have been one of the greatest urban national parks in the world.

Third, there was the unprecedented move to smash a blockbuster office building (for Lucasfilm) into this privatized park, an out-of-scale complex that will help ruin the park and that is unneeded and unfair competition in a city with growing chasms of available office space.

Fourth, there was the unprecedented move to put a tourist hotel (yes, dammit, a tourist hotel) in Crissy Field, virtually across the street from the wetlands area trumpeted for wildlife and birds with millions of public and private dollars and much publicity. (The Bay Guardian broke that story July 4, 2001, with "The Hotel Presidio" – which detailed the Presidio Trust's plans to move forward with building a luxury hotel near the waterfront – and an editorial, "Stop the Presidio Hotel.")

Even the San Francisco Chronicle, which has blacked out or belittled the real story from the outset, quoted Brian O'Neill, superintendent of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and an unfortunate early supporter of the park privatization, on two key points on the new folly in its April 11 story. O'Neill said that the Presidio Trust's plans for a hotel, cafés, and museums at Crissy Field had "the potential to change the Presidio's northern waterfront from an area of respite from urban pressures to an extension of the city itself." He said further that these plans also threaten the park's designation as a National Historic Landmark District.

The Chronicle story also concluded with a telling point: that critics are questioning the wisdom of offering tourist lodgings when there are 25 hotels, motels, and B&Bs between Van Ness Avenue and the Presidio's Lombard Gate. And it quoted Jahid Agrawala, general manager of a Days Inn a few blocks from Lombard Gate, as saying, "Tell them at the Presidio, we are already dying. Once it was lucrative. Not anymore."

You get the picture. The development-oriented Presidio Trust is unilaterally, in secret, with no city input and no accountability, moving to wreck the Presidio before our very eyes. If you have any doubts, just look at the symbolic mess of rubble left by the demolition of Letterman Hospital.

To hell with that. Every politician running for public office in San Francisco must from now on be forced to answer crucial questions: Do you stand against Presidio development? Will you work for a resolution in City Hall and a bill in Congress to take back the Presidio? The move is on.

P.S. More on the shame of Hearst: Without blushing, the Chronicle proudly announced in its March 3l edition, under the head "Editors Group Cites Coverage of PG&E, Tech, Biotech Firms," that the Society of American Business Writers and Editors had named the Chronicle's business section as one of the top five among the nation's largest newspapers. Impertinent question: How can the Chronicle apply for, much less accept, journalism awards for energy and PG&E coverage when it has for years blacked out the big local scandal stories on PG&E and the Presidio?