EDITORIAL Not long after the US Army announced it no longer needed the Presidio for a military base, a group of powerful San Francisco business leaders began eyeing what would become the first privatized national park in America. Among the businesses aiming to grab a piece of the immensely valuable real estate were Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and Transamerica Corp.; among the individuals was the founder of the Gap, a Republican named Don Fisher.
Fisher helped then–US representative Nancy Pelosi pull off an astonishing feat: she took more than 1,200 acres of land earmarked by federal law as a national park and handed it over to real estate developers (see "Stolen Base," 5/8/96). Fisher, who became one of the first members of the private board that manages the Presidio, was around to help George Lucas build a massive business park on the site — and pick up a $60 million tax break in the process.
Now Fisher, who along with his billions has amassed a pretty impressive collection of contemporary art, wants to build a gigantic private museum right in the heart of the park, at the site of the old post. His plan would drop a 100,000-square-foot Battlestar Galactica on the old parade grounds, wiping out a sizable amount of open space.
The museum would be on public land, but he'd run it himself, in his own way, with no public oversight.
This is a terrible idea, and San Franciscans ought to be up in arms about it.
According to reports in the San Francisco Chronicle, Fisher has been looking for some time for a way to display his art collection, and he has talked to people at the existing big museums, the Museum of Modern Art and the de Young. But those talks broke down — in part, we're told by sources, because Fisher didn't want the professional curators and museum directors calling any shots. He wanted complete control over the art — control over where it was hung, when it was displayed, who got to see it, etc. The folks who run those cultural institutions are too polite to say so in public, but they don't generally go for that sort of demand. So Fisher did what billionaires around the country are starting to do: he decided to build his own museum.
That's his right, of course, and if he'd sought a spot, say, South of Market near SFMOMA, it might not be a bad thing. But the Presidio is entirely the wrong place for this sort of institution.
For starters, there's no easy way to get there. Transit to the main post at the Presidio is very limited — one Muni line, which runs infrequently. No BART, no light rail — nothing of the sort of access you would want for a major public attraction. Car access is through the crowded Marina neighborhood, and the museum would no doubt build a huge parking garage, meaning the park and the surrounding areas would be inundated with cars. That alone would be a violation of the spirit of all the nation's parks, which are trying desperately to reduce the number of car visits. There are no other cultural attractions around, so visitor traffic to Fisher's museum would have no spillover benefits for any other museums.
And he's talking about a whopper of a structure. There's no way to gently insert a building that big into the park; it can't blend in with the existing structures or the natural scenery. It's just going to stick out like a bloated, gangrenous sore thumb, ruining the view and the historical nature of the area.
The ...
New York's Met was created to house the personal collection of railroad tycoon John Taylor Johnston. It was moved in the 1880s to public lands in Central Park. Part of the deal between the city and the Met was that the Met must never require an entry fee. To this day, the Met has a "suggested" admission price. If you don't want to pay anything at all, they'll give you your little metal button and in you go.
Unfortunately our governments today are willing to give a lot more away than they did in the 1870s. Personally, I oppose any corporate development of the Presidio. But I hope that if the Presidio Trust allows Fisher to build his museum, they extract out of him commitments like the ones New York extracted out of the Met.
New York's Met was created to house the personal collection of railroad tycoon John Taylor Johnston. It was moved in the 1880s to public lands in Central Park. Part of the deal between the city and the Met was that the Met must never require an entry fee. To this day, the Met has a "suggested" admission price. If you don't want to pay anything at all, they'll give you your little metal button and in you go.
Unfortunately our governments today are willing to give a lot more away than they did in the 1870s. Personally, I oppose any corporate development of the Presidio. But I hope that if the Presidio Trust allows Fisher to build his museum, they extract out of him commitments like the ones New York extracted out of the Met.
I would like point out the following inaccuracies in this editorial.
“His plan would drop a 100,000-square-foot Battlestar Galactica on the old parade grounds, wiping out a sizable amount of open space.”
Currently the space proposed for the new museum is not open, it is occupied by three buildings, one being a bowling alley, and a tennis court. The bowling alley is by far the biggest existing building on the site.
“There are no other cultural attractions around, so visitor traffic to Fisher's museum would have no spillover benefits for any other museums.”
Ft. Point, Chrissy Field, trails, nature, restaurants, the history of the Presidio itself. Along with future developments including the Disney Museum. I am not the authority on culture but there is a lot on the Presidio that interests me now.
“There's no way to gently insert a building that big into the park; it can't blend in with the existing structures or the natural scenery. It's just going to stick out like a bloated, gangrenous sore thumb, ruining the view and the historical nature of the area.”
Can the SFBG provide a precedent for making this statement? Certainly they would have to ignore the Letterman Digital Arts complex as well as countless other remodels of existing structures for which the Trust implemented. They would have to somehow marginalize or spin into non-existence the Trust employed cultural resource personnel who enforce with an anal fervor the Trust’s policies of maintaining cultural integrity on new and remodel construction. Perhaps they could name just one structure or one case of fact to substantiate their claim.
“The private Presidio Trust has sole discretion over the proposal, but city officials can speak up, loudly.”
1) The Presidio Trust is a federal government agency. By definition that makes it a public entity, and 2) the Trust has issued a notice of intent to file an Environmental Impact Statement concerning the proposed museum and will be seeking public comment on it, as it has for all developments on the Presidio. Just go to their website and read all about it. As far as the power of public comment look at what public comment did to the Public Health Services Hospital development plans. Started out as a 350 unit development that was reduced to around 150.
There are so many other more worthy targets that SFBG can take there random and misguided swipes at. Why attempt to tarnish an entity that is the only thing standing between the Presidio as it exists now and the unscrupulous developers who are standing at the boundary waiting for it to fail? Unless of course you have a stake in that bunch.
As an aside, if the editorialists at the SFBG truly cared about traffic on the Presidio they would be screaming bloody murder over the proposed Doyle Dr reconstruction which includes a freeway off ramp directly into the Main Parade Ground area of the Presidio. This in effect will give thousands of cars per day instant access to the Presidio greatly increasing its current traffic load and destroying the current serenity that exists there. SFBG? Anything?
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