The Presidio's progeny

Right-wing Republicans are moving to privatize national parks. Guess where that idea started

By Matthew Hirsch

Republicans in Congress are mounting an assault on the national parks system that introduces the threatens development of vast tracts of untouched land.

Bay Area representative Richard Pombo sponsored legislation this year that could have put as much as 350 million acres of land on the auction block. The proposal, which was part of a larger congressional budget bill, had activists fearing the worst: condos in the Grand Canyon, ski lodges in Tahoe National Park, maybe a strip mall in Yosemite.

And although he withdrew the bill under immense pressure Dec. 13, nobody expects Pombo or Nevada representative Jim Gibbons, who first proposed the land sale, to throw in the towel just yet.

"[Gibbons] wants open lands to be developed. He thinks the land is there to be developed," Sean Hecht, executive director of the UCLA Environmental Law Center, told the Bay Guardian.

Meanwhile, Rep. Mark Souder, an Indiana Republican, has lined up almost 60 cosponsors for a separate bill that seeks to gradually replace public funding for national parks with corporate sponsorships and private contributions.

This strategy bears all the markings of a classic Republican maneuver: Shrink the size of government and enrich corporate coffers in one swoop. And though it's at the top of the Republican agenda right now, it's an experiment that actually started in San Francisco, when Rep. Nancy Pelosi and other high-ranking Democrats led Congress to create the first privatized national park, at the Presidio.

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In 1972 Congress passed a law by the late San Francisco representative Phil Burton (D-SF) that established the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, a 74,000-acre swath of pristine land stretching from Tomales Bay and the Marin Headlands across the Golden Gate Bridge and south, all the way to San Mateo County. Included in the law was a requirement that the Presidio Army base become a national park should the military give it up.

"We expected it to be a national park like any other," said Amy Meyer, who supported Pelosi's plan and later served on the board that manages the Presidio.

The Army finally left in 1994, but before the National Park Service assumed control of the land, Republican leaders in Congress said they wouldn't cover the cost of converting and running the Presidio.

Pelosi, with the encouragement and support of San Francisco's downtown business leaders, responded with a plan that would split management of the Presidio between the Park Service and a private trust. The trust would lease out historic buildings inside the park and use the proceeds as revenue, and the federal government would gradually reduce funding until 2013, when the Presidio would completely pay for itself (see "The Presidio Power Grab," 1/12/94).

It was a radical plan: Never in history had a national park been required to pay its own way by developing and leasing real estate. But with Pelosi pushing the bill, along with the likes of Gap founder Don Fisher and then-mayor Willie Brown, congressional Democrats fell in line with a proposal Republicans were only too happy to approve.

Today the National Park Service oversees coastal areas in the Presidio adjacent to the Pacific Ocean and the bay. The remainder of the land, about 80 percent of the 1,480-acre property, falls under the control of the Presidio Trust, whose board members are appointed by the United States president and are accountable to no other local or national constituency.

Among those who were initially named to serve on the seven-member board were real estate specialists and Fisher, who hoped to eventually lease property in the Presidio.

Meyer told us the board considered leasing space only to nonprofit organizations, an idea that was popular with many of the Presidio's current critics, but decided against it because there wouldn't be enough tenants for all the Presidio's historic buildings – and because renting to nonprofits wouldn't have raised enough money.

These days, even though some park programs have won praise (the vegetation management plan, for example), real estate development in the Presidio has activists fuming. And nothing stirs up discontent over private influence in the Presidio better than the Letterman Digital Arts Center, a 23-acre production studio and commercial office complex run by filmmaker George Lucas.

John Rizzo, an elected Sierra Club leader, told us that after meeting with Presidio Trust officials about development in the park, he believes the trust saw its work as a real estate development project. "That's certainly how Don Fisher saw it," he said.

One of the Presidio's more strident critics, Rizzo now calls the Presidio Trust a "tax-exempt, private enclave." He says the Presidio spells danger for other national parks in the country, because it shows Congress that maybe this idea can work in other places. Public parks shouldn't be judged based on how much money they can raise, he said.

"It's only successful in the model that they set up, but that shouldn't be how you measure the success of a national park," Rizzo told us.

That's exactly what Representative Souder has in mind. His bill, HR 1124, would replace much of the current park funding with private donations. His plan dovetails with moves the Bush administration is already making: According to Environmental News Service, the Park Service has issued a draft directive loosening the rules on corporate naming rights in parks.

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There are obvious differences between the public-private management of the Presidio and the direct sale of land Pombo's bill would have allowed. Even though sections of the Presidio are cordoned off from the public, nothing in the park can be completely sold off. The land under the $350 million Lucasfilm invested in the Letterman Digital Arts Center is technically the property of Uncle Sam.

But the danger is that the Presidio will give privatization backers a model to use in promoting plans that reduce or eliminate public funding for parks.

"It's certainly possible that privatization on a case-by-case scenario could erode support for public land," said Hecht, the UCLA law professor.

Back when she introduced her bill, Pelosi argued that the Presidio Trust was the only alternative to allowing the park to slowly deteriorate for lack of funding. And with Republicans controlling everything in Washington these days, the prospect of parks without adequate maintenance or staffing is very real.

But as Republicans threaten the future viability of the national parks, the Presidio represents the first step toward removing public land from public control.

E-mail Matthew Hirsch at matthew@sfbg.com.