From The Presidio Historical Association
June 20, 2008
The Presidio Historical Association (PHA), a nonprofit group, has asked the Presidio Trust to extend the public comment period for their recently released Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) from 45 days to 150 days. The Cow Hollow Association and Marina Community Association, neighborhood groups, have also asked for an extension.
The Trust’s 318-page draft SEIS, released last week, describes the historic and natural impacts of several highly controversial proposals, including a 100,000 sq. ft. contemporary art museum proposed by Gap founder Donald Fisher; a 90,000 sq. ft. hotel, and movie multiplex being considered as new additions to the Presidio’s grounds.
“The length, complexity and controversial nature of the Presidio Trust’s Environmental Impact Statement require far more than the legal minimum of 45 days for the public to study and adequately comment upon it,” said PHA’s past President Whitney Hall.
The Trust, a federal agency which manages real estate in the historic national park, also announced it has suspended an ongoing consultation on the negative impacts of these proposals, a process that is required under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. Critics believe this move is designed to push through the Trust’s building plans before the public can respond to the findings of the historic preservation review.
The massive new construction — whose square footage is approximately that of three football fields — is planned for the most historically sensitive site of San Francisco’s birthplace and center of activity in the early West, dating back to the Presidio’s founding by a Spanish expedition in 1776. The Presidio was the nation’s longest-operating military base until it became a national park in 1994.
The entire Presidio, part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA), is designated a National Historic Landmark District, a status that the National Park Service has said is threatened by the “adverse effect” of the scale and location of the Trust’s proposals.
The Presidio Trust has scheduled one public meeting for citizens to comment on the SEIS and its proposals for Monday, July 14, 6:30 pm at the Presidio Officers’ Club. Written comments to the Trust are due on July 31st.
The Hunger Site
June 21, 2008 at 9:11 am
The principal here is more than “Should a rich man get his way with public land.” It is more: how protected really are all of our national treasures supposedly protected by their National Park status or their being selected as rare National Historic Landmarks. The Presidio is both.
Should a contemporary art museum and a hotel be built on Gettysburg or Yosemite? The answer is clear to anyone. Why then, is the National Park and National HIstoric Landmark called the Presidio of San Francisco any different? Of private influence and wealth can break the protection we have for the people’s treasured sites, then all our historic and natural treasures are in danger.
The Presidio Trust, a Bush-appointed group of wealthy developers for the most part, has issued misleading and ridiculously argued documents to support their pre-ordained approval of these travesties. Get them, read them, and write the Trust and Pelosi with your opinion.
June 21, 2008 at 6:13 am
Pelosi’s long range plan to privatize the Presidio and turn it into a playground for the Robber Barons and their ilk continues. This is just the latest chapter in her goal of Disneyfication which began when she did not listen to the many creative ideas and programs that would have turned this public property into a self sustaining jewel that could have served the needs of the public and helped avert many of the problems of unemployment and homelessness that we are dealing with today, we could have truly turned swords into ploughshares.
The fact that we should even be considering creating a monument to the crimes and avarice of a man who built, and continues to expand, his fortune on the backs of child slave labor, raping our forests etc; is unconscionable. Do you suppose Goebbels and his cronies contemplated building similar monstrosities to house their spoils after they had finished ransacking the museums of Europe. We defeated them, we can stop this. Maybe the Fisher family should consider selling of some of their acquisitions and setting up a fund to house, clothe, feed and educate the millions of children in need of the basic neccessities of survival, and a project to replant the pillaged forests which are the lungs of our world.
Fat chance, the fat cats get fatter and more obscenely bloated while the people starve.
Patrick Monk.RN. Noe Valley.