Another Hastings?

City College parking garage angers city officials, neighborhoods

By Camille T. Taiara

Sup. Gerardo Sandoval and City College of San Francisco chancellor Philip Day are butting heads in a turf war over one of the largest remaining pieces of undeveloped land in the city. The future of the Balboa Park district may rest on who emerges victorious.

The larger issue behind the battle is the level of community control San Franciscans can exert over a state agency's megadevelopment project that is certain to impact residents, small businesses, the environment, and the character of the city's neighborhoods.

The property in question is the Balboa Reservoir, a 28.56-acre paved hole in the ground about the size of nearly 29 football fields, across the street from City College's main campus. It's been neglected for more than 50 years and doubles as a student parking lot.

The old reservoir is currently divided into two sections. The city handed the northern side over to the college in 1991. The southern section remains under the control of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.

But the SFPUC has been awfully slow in doing anything with its parcel. Meanwhile, City College has been buckling under the weight of skyrocketing enrollments and is eyeing the property across the street as the natural site for expanding its main campus.

Earlier this month the SFPUC agreed to topple the current levee, change the property lines by dividing the reservoir into an eastern and a western section, and give to the college the eastern side (the one closest to it). The deal grants City College some choice terrain flanking Phelan and Ocean Avenues. It also safeguards the western, landlocked section for use by the SFPUC, which plans to build a water-holding tank.

City College's blueprints for its section of the old reservoir include a cultural, performing arts, and visual arts center; a complex where administrative offices, student services, and child care can reside under one roof; and an advanced technology center. "I've got more students than I know what to do with," Day says. "Our computer courses and some of the engineering courses are taught in broken-down bungalows. Our child care center is located in a bungalow."

But there's a hitch. City College's schematics also include a vast, two-story, underground parking lot that would expand the college's on-site parking capacity by at least 10 or 15 percent, according to Day. That idea directly clashes with a city-sponsored, interagency development plan that seeks to minimize traffic in the already too congested area. The city's plan calls for building a world-class public transportation hub at the site of the Balboa Park BART station, just across Ocean Avenue from City College, including renovations to the station, a platform over Highway 280, and extra room for buses to pick up and drop off passengers.

"I don't think we need to apologize for extending educational opportunities to people just because it causes a little bit of a traffic problem," Day says. "There are people that are hoping the revitalization of Ocean Avenue leads to more traffic that stays in the neighborhood. City College has a significant economic impact on this community. I don't regard that as negative."

Regina Blosser, a member of Oceanview, Merced, and Ingleside Neighbors in Action who lives less than two blocks from the college, says the only thing it has contributed to the neighborhood is surplus congestion. Blosser is one of numerous urban-development watchdogs who think the college should be required to cooperate with city agencies and the local community. "If City College were so great for us, Ocean Avenue would look like Telegraph Avenue," she argues.

Some city officials want formal veto power over the college's plans, and Day is fighting their efforts tooth and nail.

"Why should the city hand over any land without a say in how it's used?" asks Sandoval, who fears City College's development plans could re-create problems similar to those caused by Hastings College of the Law, which tried to build a parking garage in the Tenderloin over community opposition.

Sandoval wants to require that City College move forward in tandem with the city's agenda – including the Balboa Park transit station project – and follow local zoning and land-use laws. He also wants the city to act as the lead agency in preparing the project's Environmental Impact Report. And he's asking both City College and the SFPUC to consider additional development options for their respective portions of the old reservoir, including housing (on the eastern plot) and recreational or open-space uses (e.g., the development of a park over the SFPUC's water-holding tank).

The land transfer must be approved by a majority of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Sandoval says he's confident he has the votes to force City College to agree to his terms.

In the meantime, Day argues that involving the city would subject the college "to two levels of bureaucratic reviews" and could cause unnecessary delays that might jeopardize state funding revenues. He has retained land-use attorney David Cincotta – who often represents big developers – to look into the matter. Cincotta issued an opinion stating that formal city involvement might violate state laws.

Some observers point to precedents in which other state agencies have worked with the city on projects without any trouble.

"The University of California at San Francisco agreed to a planning process consistent with the planning codes and height controls of the City of San Francisco," says Calvin Welch, longtime Haight-Ashbury activist, in reference to UCSF's Parnassus campus and Mission Bay developments. "Since that time, the University of California has developed other sites within San Francisco that are consistent with the policies of the city, and there's been no opposition."

E-mail Camille T. Taiara at camille@sfbg.com.