Art and History vie for Presidio spot
History museum proposed by Presidio Historical Association
Art museum proposed by Don Fisher
Last night at the Officer's Club about 200 Marina residents gushed over Gap-founder Don Fisher's plan to put a 100,000 square foot museum in the Presidio to house his art collection. For the most part they gave a demur nod to the Presidio Historical Association's alternate proposal for a history museum. The two museums are vying for the same slice of real estate at the head of the Main Parade Ground, facing north toward the Bay where a bowling alley and tennis courts are currently located.
The historical association made a case for the site as a place where the history they’d be presenting actually went down, and said the grounds surrounding the museum would be a part of the museum itself. “The Main Post area is the most historically sensitive area,” said Gary Widman of the Historical Association. “It’s where San Francisco really started 1n 1776 and it’s an area that has buildings from almost every major period since that time.”
The only historical connection Mr. Fisher could come up with was the original plan for the Main Parade Ground, which called for a significant building at its head to anchor the site. He was firm in saying he could think of no other possible place for his museum. “This is the only location that works for us,” he said. “Nothing like that is available anywhere else in the Presidio.” In fact, he said he was planning on gifting his art to some other, already established museums until he was approached by the Presidio Trust, which suggested he consider building his own museum in the park instead.
Before the two plans were presented, Mayor Newsom offered some very diplomatic remarks suggesting a great compromise. "These don't have to be competing projects," he said, adding that he’d appointed a staff member (Kyri McClellan, 554-6123) to this project. “My office wants to participate in this process from the beginning.”
The plans agreed on one issue -- parking would go underground. After that, they differ radically.
The history museum has a more subtle façade and adopts many of the dimensions and design elements (tiled roofs, stucco walls) seen on the buildings that would be near it, and the plan is for a cluster of structures so different groups could visit simultaneously. A glassed atrium with photovoltaic film windows would provide heat and electrical power for the galleries and sod roof gardens would insulate parts of the buildings and “make them disappear.” The museum would be governed by a consortium of representatives from the Presidio Trust, the National Park Service, University of California, Stanford, SF State, and other interested groups, and funds for the plan would need to be raised.
Fisher, on the other hand, plans to foot the entire bill for his building and also promised $10 million – whether his plan is accepted or not -- for a separate plan to convert the Main Parade Ground from asphalt parking lots to green space, which would also include some historical interpretations, some commercial enterprises, and a "lodge." (Hotel?) The $10 million gift would cover almost a quarter of the proposed cost of the new landscaping.
As far as the museum is concerned Fisher’s decided to keep his name away from the plan, and it now has a very Gap-ish moniker, “Camp.” (Contemporary Art Museum at the Presidio.)
The front of Camp would include a café, topped by a glass-walled gallery with a view of the Parade Ground and ocean. The designer, Richard Gluckman, called it the “living room,” although with an abundance of austere white walls and glass windows, it didn’t exactly have a homey feel. Richard Serra sculptures would flank the building and an event space along its eastern edge. The Camp plan also includes rehabilitating the nearby Montgomery St. barracks building #101, which would house a bookstore, offices, and studio space for painting, ceramics, and photography.
The mayor stayed to view the proposals, and during the break expressed enthusiasm for both plans. “Except for that idea [of them being in the same spot] I think that is relatively speaking, easy to resolve. The question is obvious – people’s appetite for a large contemporary art museum in this setting?”
When I asked which museum he thought would be appropriate for the site, he said, “I like the idea of the history museum and I think it belongs in the Presidio. My personal opinion is the contemporary art museum in the Presidio is an appropriate location.”
The mayor split at the start of the public comment session, where dissent came in the form of some citizens suggesting that a contemporary art museum could be sited in a number of places, but a historical museum focused on the Presidio, the Golden Gate, and the Westward expansion was uniquely suitable for the site in question.
A handful of citizens also expressed concerns about the fact that a national park is supposed to service the entire country. Boyd de Larios, an Anza descendant who came up from South San Francisco to speak at the meeting said, "This is America's park." He went on to read the Presidio Trust's stated mission to preserve the environmental and cultural history of the park, and asked how a contemporary art museum met those goals. "The Trust has not made any moves to bring history alive."
After he spoke, de Larios said to me, "The wider this situation is known outside of San Francisco, the more problems there are going to be."
Perhaps. I happened to note, as I was riding my bike down Arguello into the Presidio right before the meeting, that they didn't have the "Public Meeting" signs up that they've posted for every other Presidio Trust meeting I've attended over the last two years of covering this beat. I wonder why, since it was the largest, yet most homogeneous turnout I've witnessed to date. Several people remarked to me that they'd only found out about the meeting that afternoon.
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News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - March 14, 2008
For More Information, contact:
Gary Widman (415) 435-0360
Whitney Hall (707) 778-6975
www.presidioassociation.org // www.savepresidio.blogspot.com
PRESIDIO TRUST CONSIDERS NEW MOVIE MULTIPLEX THOUGH PUBLIC OPPOSES URBANIZING HISTORIC NATIONAL PARK
The Presidio Trust's announcement that it is considering a plan to build a new movie multiplex in the park’s most historic district, near the proposed site of a controversial art museum and large hotel, has drawn strong criticism from the Presidio Historical Association, a nonprofit watchdog group.
Project renderings of the multiplex show a modern-style, 18,000 sq. ft. annex to the historic 1930s-era Main Post theater that once served U.S. Army families stationed at the old base.
The Trust, which governs the Presidio of San Francisco, a National Park, recently has moved swiftly and contrary to nearly unanimous public opposition from diverse groups to advance plans for a large contemporary art museum and hotel that would commercialize the historic park's grounds.
"Standards that apply to National Historic Landmark Districts such as the Presidio make all three of these proposed modern buildings unacceptable,” said Gary Widman, President of the Presidio Historical Association.
Widman suggested the Trust was acting like an urban renewal agency in a blighted area rather than a public entity entrusted with preserving a publicly owned, irreplaceable historic site.
Last summer, the Trust selected a contractor for a proposed 80,000 sq. ft. hotel. In January 2008, the Trust announced that it was moving forward with plans for a highly controversial 100,000 sq. ft. contemporary art museum proposed by Gap Store founder and former Trust president Donald Fisher to house his private art collection.
All three structures are to be built on the Presidio's most historic site, the Main Post, founded as a garrison by Spain in 1776 as the cornerstone of San Francisco. They would add a total of 198,000 sq. ft. of new construction -- the equivalent of over three football fields -- to the Main Post, home to the Spanish, Mexican and later American military from 1776 to 1994. More than 30,000 U.S. soldiers and their families are buried less than a mile away.
“In more than a decade since it assumed control of the Presidio, the Trust has failed to take any action to interpret the Presidio’s rich history for its visitors,” he noted. The park has not had an onsite history museum since 1997. The Presidio Historical Association proposed a history center as a more suitable alternative to Fisher’s museum. Since then, the Trust has floated a sketchy plan for a history “museum without walls”, in addition to the Fisher Museum, hotel and theater
The Trust has not held public hearings to discuss the theater metroplex. Two public meetings on the Fisher museum and history center alternative were held during last December’s busy holiday season, generating hundreds of written public comments to the Trust. The vast majority of these comments opposed the Fisher museum and its intended location. Newspapers and internet blogs were filled with letters from the general public as well as history, military, environmental and neighborhood organizations criticizing the Trust's actions in support of Fisher’s plan.
In January, the historical association formally requested that the National Trust for Historic Preservation include the Presidio on its 2008 list of “Most Endangered Historic Places" due to the threat posed by the Fisher and hotel proposals. The movie metroplex will only further damage the park, said Widman.
“The Presidio Trust's support for such incompatible, massive modernistic
structures in the heart of a designated National Historic Landmark District it is charged with protecting, shows insensitivity to 230 years of American history and a willingness to sacrifice forever the Presidio’'s most historically significant site for a profit," Widman said.
If built, the movie metroplex will sit on the Presidio’s historic Main Post across the street from the massive Fisher art museum, a few hundred yards from the 100-room hotel, according to Trust documents. The movie complex, proposed by the San Francisco Film Institute, is double the size of the 1930s-era Post Theater now located on the site.
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Founded in the 1950s, the nonprofit Presidio Historical Association (PHA) has worked in cooperation with the National Park Service and Presidio Trust since 1994 to advocate for preserving the integrity of the Presidio’s National Historic Landmark District, located within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA). PHA created a museum for the Army when it was based at the Presidio. Earlier, PHA helped restore historic Fort Point at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Posted by Gary Widman | March 15, 2008 12:54 PM