Downtown calls the shots

EDITORIAL

The latest mess over downtown parking demonstrates exactly what's wrong with the leadership of the City Planning Department — and how Mayor Gavin Newsom is allowing big developers to set his land-use agenda.

It's a classic San Francisco political story, one that's been repeated over and over for decades. But in this case it involves a mayor who has promised to run a clean, open administration — and who insists he will let the planning professionals take the lead on land-use decisions.

It started several months ago, with environmental activists led by Tom Radulovich, director of Transportation for a Livable City, approaching Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin with the idea of placing strict new limits on downtown parking. The idea: Reduce congestion (and all the negative impacts of car traffic) by telling developers that new housing projects could only have half as many parking spaces as apartments. That would make it less likely that people living downtown would have cars. The proposal also sought to limit new downtown parking lots and commercial parking structures.

Peskin and Sup. Chris Daly picked the idea up, and a couple of different bills emerged. In the end, Peskin wound up carrying the final legislation, and it went to the Planning Commission for review. On Nov. 17, the commission recommended that the board approve the ordinance, with a few minor changes, and Dean Macris, the planning director, sent the supervisors a letter Dec. 1 saying the commission was on board with the plan.

Then, as Steve Jones reported Feb. 8, downtown interests caught on to what was going on and demanded a meeting with the mayor. On Dec. 19 Don Fisher, founder of Gap and political power broker — along with developer Oz Erickson; land use attorneys Bob McCarthy, Michael Yarne, and Steve Vettel; lobbyist Sam Lauter; and top representatives from the Hotel Council, the Committee on Jobs, the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA), and Shorenstein Co. LLC, convened in Newsom's office and won a promise that he'd veto the bill.

The only problem: Newsom would be directly contradicting his own handpicked planning director. So to fudge the issue, he got Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier to offer an alternative, watered-down version of the bill.

On Feb. 7 the supervisors were set to approve the Daly-Peskin bill when, out of nowhere, Alioto-Pier produced what she said was a new letter from Macris, backing off his earlier support. The letter wasn't on Planning Department stationery and wasn't signed; it just had Macris's name typed at the bottom. But Macris was out of town, and nobody could figure out exactly what had happened.

The item was supposed to come back to the Planning Commission Feb. 16 but mysteriously didn't appear on the official agenda until activist lawyer Sue Hestor raised a fuss and got it added — and the Mayor's Office started scrambling to figure out what to say.

In the end Macris admitted to the San Francisco Sentinel that he hadn't written the letter at all; it had been drafted in the Mayor's Office and was, the planning director said, inaccurate.

Macris didn't return Guardian phone calls seeking comment.

What happened here is clear: The mayor, bowing to developers and downtown interests, not only tried to scuttle a progressive land-use bill, but also tried to force his own chief planner to change positions on the measure. It's the most blatant sign yet that Newsom, for all his progressive moves on social issues, is very much in the pocket of downtown when it comes to land use and economics. Peskin, Daly, and the progressives on the board shouldn't let this issue go away: If Newsom vetoes the bill, they should demand a full investigative hearing on how the deal went down, with public testimony from Newsom, Macris, and everyone else involved.

SFBG