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Talkback
Paving the parkI am writing to correct factual inaccuracies contained in a recent editorial, "Don't Pave the Park," 11/17/04. Martin Luther King Drive is not being "doubled in width," as your editorial states. Under the option approved by the Concourse Authority, a short expanse of Martin Luther King Drive, from Ninth Avenue and Lincoln Way to Academy Drive, will be widened by 4 feet – from 40 feet to 44 feet – to satisfy a court order requiring a dedicated access route (vehicle lane) to the voter-approved underground garage near the Music Concourse. As part of this work, three intersections in the park will be narrowed and improved and made compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Three new stop signs are being added, and six crosswalks are being refurbished. As a result, the park is going to reclaim 1,000 square feet of asphalt for walking paths and new plants or grass. The article also inaccurately states that there has been "little community discussion" on this matter. In fact, I and other members of the design team have participated in 11 public discussions of the options being considered, including: . Five discussions at the Concourse Authority Board
In addition, I have also participated in several meetings with neighborhood and civic organizations to discuss the proposed options. Michael Ellzey Executive director, Golden Gate Park Music Concourse Authority San Francisco Tim Redmond responds: The proposal would widen MLK Drive to four lanes, from two. It's not the physical dimensions that matter – it's the amount of traffic this new stretch of roadway will carry and the impact that will have on the park and the surrounding neighborhoods. This was, of course, the problem all along with the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum's underground garage – it was bound to cause congestion, traffic, and safety problems no matter how people got in and out. That's exactly why a parking garage doesn't belong in a public park. And given the far-reaching impacts of this plan, I don't think there's a single community activist who thinks it's had adequate public discussion. Hongisto's legacyI enjoyed your story – albeit an obituary – on Richard Hongisto ["Dick Hongisto, the Notable Exception, 1936-2004," 11/10/04]. Nineteen seventy-one was my first year in San Francisco, and I met Mr. Hongisto at a candidates night in Potrero Hill, where I lived. (A three-bedroom flat for $160 per month!) I voted for Hongisto (who won) and for Proposition T, the anti-high rise measure, which lost. My favorite Hongisto story is the time he released a matchbox full of cockroaches at a Board of Supervisors meeting to emphasize conditions in the city jail. (A Life magazine study of big-city jails in the late '60s found S.F.'s among the worst in the country.) Although as the years went by, he became somewhat of a political gadfly, I believe he will leave an enduring legacy. David McLaughlin San Francisco Planning is the problemLike people in Potrero, we in the northeast Mission like our mixed-use neighborhood and want to keep it this way ["The Potrero Land Rush," 11/17/04]. We do not want to see controls imposed from the outside that will try, unsuccessfully, to turn back the hands of time to heavy manufacturing. With few exceptions, those firms are gone and will never come back. Little of this has to do with zoning, and much has to do with the difficulty in running a business in San Francisco. The dot-com industry is gone for good. Interim controls did not help but hurt the neighborhood. This was apparent to anyone who saw the vacant storefronts. Only with the lifting of the interim controls has there been a tentative reemergence of small businesses. The really bad interim zoning regulations are so rife with contradictions that nothing, not even affordable housing, such as that proposed by Citizen's Housing, can be built in the Mission. Is this what we want for the rest of the city? Curtis Eisenberger San Francisco |
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