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Activists Storm Leno’s Office,
Demand Schwarzenegger Veto Privatization Bill

Written by Luke Thomas. Posted in News, Politics

Published on October 10, 2009 with 8 Comments


Activists representing POWER entered the San Francisco offices of Senator Mark Leno yesterday
to protest legislation he authored that would transfer State parkland to a private developer.
Photos by Luke Thomas

By Luke Thomas

October 10, 2009

One of several activists was arrested for trespassing yesterday during a protest of legislation authored by Senator Mark Leno that would transfer portions of Candlestick Point State Recreation Area to the Lennar Corporation.

Carrying placards that read “Bayview Not for Sale,” “Parks for the People,” and “Governor, Veto SB 792 – Save Candlestick Park,” the activists entered Mr. Leno’s San Francisco district offices and erected makeshift condominium towers topped with a sign that read “Leno: Do you miss your office? We’ll sure miss our park.”

“Bayview community organizations and residents are outraged Senator Mark Leno is pushing to sell one of the only parks in Bayview and the only State Park in all of San Francisco to Lennar Corporation to expand a controversial condominium development in the neighborhood,” a statement released by People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER) states.

As part of the protest action, the activists taped off portions of Leno’s office and symbolically offered it for sale for private condominium development, “to see how Leno would feel to lose a similar part of his own area, to illustrate the impact of losing such a large portion of something precious.”

The legislation is controversial largely because Florida based Lennar Corporation, which was levied a $515 thousand fine by the Bay Area Quality Management District in October 2008 for its failure to monitor and control the release of naturally occurring asbestos dust into the surrounding neighborhoods, is expected to develop a mixture of mid-rise and high-rise market rate condominiums as well as luxury family homes on prime waterfront parcels, further gentrifying a once predominantly African-American low-income district in San Francisco.

Following months of negotiations with Leno, the Sierra Club, Arc Ecology and Friends of Candlestick upgraded its opposition of SB 792 to neutral.

According to Leno, the legislation would transfer 20.5 acres of mostly “dirt and rubble parking lot and 2 acres of grassland” for the sum of $50 million, monies that would be used to double the size of the park’s usable recreational area as well as provide a $600 thousand annual annuity “in perpetuity for operations and maintenance of the park.”

sb792_land_xfer.jpg
Aerial view of Candlestick Point State Recreation Area
showing existing boundary line (magenta) and SB 792 proposed boundary line (blue) .
(Click here for original PDF file).

“Currently, about 40 acres are used for recreation,” Leno said. “As a result of $40 million of investment in bike paths, bike trails and hiking paths, habitat restoration, habitat protection, planting, construction of piers so there can be more water recreation, will double the current 40 acres of use, which will remain untouched, to 80 acres of use.”

“We’re going to double the use of the park,” Leno added.

Leno said legislation amendments negotiated by former Mayor Art Agnos and Friends of Candlestick requires proceeds derived from the 23-acre land transfer to be used solely to improve the park.

“The language says that (the proceeds) can only be spent for the improvement of the State park,” he said.

The City of San Francisco will initially take ownership of the transferred land from the State, but Lennar is the City’s intended recipient. It is uncertain, however, if the subsequent housing will be subject to a 35 percent affordable housing requirement as set forth by the passage of Proposition G. Proposition G, passed by voters in November 2007, precedes SB 792 and there is no expressed language in SB 792 that mandates a 35 percent affordable housing requirement.

Leno, however, said all the housing developed by Lennar under Proposition G and SB 792 is subject to a 35 percent affordability requirement.

“The exact height of the buildings, I can’t tell you,” Leno said, “but the development requires 35 percent to be affordable housing.”

“The bottom line,” Leno added, “this bill will save the State park because it is otherwise on the chopping block. It is perennially on a list of State park closures and there will be park closures because of our budget crisis.”

Reacting to POWER’s protest action, Leno said: “It’s been a little frustrating. There just isn’t an interest in hearing the facts and acknowledging the facts, so this idea that our State park is being sold off to a developer? No. Twenty acres of dirt will be sold, and the benefit is going to be extraordinary.”

Leno rebuffed criticism of SB 792 being an example of disaster capitalism in which private interests exploit economic or natural disasters to privatize public assets at depressed values.

“Quite honestly, respectfully, that’s just rhetoric,” Leno said. “Look at the facts. You’ve got a park that’s underfunded, under-utilized and about to be closed by the State. We’re getting $50 million to improve it, to sustain it in perpetuity.”

SB 792 has the support of District 10 Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, the San Francisco Labor Council, San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, Pastor Arelious Walker, Bayview Merchants Association, Bayview Hunters Point Multipurpose Senior Center, Alice Griffith Tenants Association, Asian Pacific Democratic Club and the San Francisco Housing Action Coalition. It is opposed by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, Senator Leland Yee, Supervisors John Avalos, David Campos, Ross Mirkarimi, Chris Daly, and Eric Mar, and over 1000 Bayview residents who signed a petition opposing SB 792.

Asked whether he has, or will, personally benefit from carrying SB 792 for Lennar, Leno said: “It is a very reasonable question and the answer is absolutely no. I’ve never taken a penny from Lennar. I will never take a penny from Lennar. I’ve never had a conversation with (Lennar) directly. All of our negotiations have been with the City and the City has done the negotiations with Lennar.”


California District 3 Senator Mark Leno

Though SB 792 has been passed by the State Senate and Assembly, it awaits being signed into law or vetoed by Governor  Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Update, 10/11/09:  Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today signed SB 792 into law.

Luke Thomas

Luke Thomas

Luke Thomas is former software developer and computer consultant who proudly hails from London, England. In 2001, Thomas took a yearlong sabbatical to travel and develop a photographic portfolio. Upon his return to the US, Thomas studied photojournalism to pursue a career in journalism. In 2004, Thomas worked for several neighborhood newspapers in San Francisco before accepting a partnership agreement with the SanFranciscoSentinel.com, a news website formerly covering local, state and national politics. In September 2006, Thomas launched FogCityJournal.com. The BBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, New York Times, Der Spiegel, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Magazine, 7x7, San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Bay Guardian and the San Francisco Weekly, among other publications and news outlets, has published his work. Thomas is a member of the Freelance Unit of the Pacific Media Workers Guild, TNG-CWA Local 39521.

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  • Ann Garrison

    Big up to the P.O.W.E.R. activists. Time for Mark Leno to go back to his sign business. On KPFA, he kept repeating that the “land exchange” would give Lennar 18, not 23, acres—except that he developed an allergy to the word “Lennar.” I called Leno’s staff, including Carlos Machado, his lead legislative aide on S.B. 792, who told me he himself couldn’t imagine what Leno thought he was talking about when he kept saying 18 acres.

    If the City hands over this parkland to Lennar, it will be rewarding one of the biggest mortgage lending criminals who triggered the financial meltdown. Lennar’s mortgage lending subsidiary is UAMC, a former Lennar-Lehman collaboration, till Lehman went bust. UAMC has been very very active in California and the San Francisco Bay Area, and everyplace else Lennar does business. It exists to push as much Lennar property as it can, as fast as possible, at the highest prices possible, with absurd “incentives,” and, then to securitize and sell off the debt to feckless municipalities and pension funds dazzled by Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s, and Fitch’s phony AAA bond ratings. (Purchased by UAMC.) And, then UAMC doesn’t have to worry about it anymore.

    Or, that, at least, is how it worked in recent years that led to where we are now. Rules are a little tighter now but the pain is still rippling through California and the U.S., getting worse, promising to get a lot worse, and hammering municipal budgets from here to Lennar’s home base, Miami.

    So what do Mark Leno and Lennar’s other local boosters propose to do? Reward Lennar with 23 acres of pristine parkland to bolster their debt to equity ratio, while homeowners, including many on the Southeast Side, and City property tax revenues, go down.
    http://www.sfbayview.com/2009/privatizing-california-senate-bill-792/

  • Patrick Monk

    Just to further illustrate the insanity and venality of all those involved, this is not only a racist land-grab of the peoples park but also the larger urban renewal boondoggle being proposed for BVHP. I enclose the following page from the report recently issued by the SF Bay Conservation and Development Commission.

    http://tinyurl.com/yz2c5oa

    Leno has his head so far up his arse and his hands so deep in Lennar’s trouser pockets that he, along with Newsom and the rest of Lennar’s lackeys, will probably spin this and claim that they can provide the leadership to protect us from the effects of Global warming, or join the flat-earthers and deny the probability.

    As Phil Bronstein recently asked in his ‘disappeared’ article, “Where is our next generation of leaders”.

    For all our sakes dont entrust our future and that of the children to spineless, co-opted opportunists like these two losers.

    Patrick Monk. RN. Noe Valley.

  • bayview community voices

    Who are these people?
    It is remarkable to see people harassing Senator Mark Leno as part of their process for opposing Senate Bill 792. While the harassment is remarkable, what is even more remarkable are the unfamiliar faces. They are not Bayview residents. It might be that perhaps one (Yes, just1 person, because as a resident, I don’t recognize them.) might be a resident, but not the majority.

    But first about Senator Mark Leno. Mark Leno has been an ally of the Bayview Hunters Point Community for as long as he has been a public servant. He has been an ally since his days as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and through his career as an assembly member and more recently as a Senator. He has responded to all calls for his leadership in matters of social justice. When the community holds press conferences to address community violence or an economic crisis, Mark Leno has been a consistent and supportive voice.

    Senator Leno has required only a request from our community to hear and to help solve our policy problems so that our quality of life might be improved. It is very disheartening to see the harassment he is currently experiencing as he moves the agenda of the Bayview Hunters Point community forward.

    The unfamiliar faces: It is more disheartening to see an old tactic being used. “Stacking.” The process of “stacking” creates a scenario in which there are enough bodies connected to a single issue that show up at a meeting or hearing to display a “crowd” of support for a particular issue. This display is meant to present to the media “people” from the community expressing their opinion, but they aren’t. We are people from the community and we have expressed our opinion. The media photographers see a “play” or a “demonstration” of activism that implies representation of the people.

    Unfortunately, the group P.O.W.E.R. did not do their homework and is using this tactic against the people. The people they are working against are my family and my neighbors. They don’t seem to care if they ever become employed or empowered through economic opportunity. It seems to me that it is fine for us to be poor and for them to “lobby our cause” but when we say through our voices and through our votes what we want….suddenly we don’t know what is best for ourselves. What does that say to me? It says they like seeing my family remain poor and DISemP.O.W.E.R.ed.

    If I were P.O.W.E.R., I would question who is behind this strategy? Who has decided to harass our Senator in an effort to derail our progress? Is it the 4 or 5 (and I do mean 4 or 5) who do not live in our community but have made our community their “stomping grounds?” Out of 70,000 district residents (or the 750,000 plus) San Francisco residents that have implemented this strategy, the P.O.W.E.R. group has decided that the 4 or 5 residents have more value than the tens of thousands? Could it be that they enjoy seeing our community suffer and they enjoy calling our community poor, or they question our ability to self determine?

    Who are these people in the photographs?

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  • michaeleboyd

    If Senator Mark Leno cared about Bay View Hunters Point he wouldn’t be giving the most evil corporation in America (Lennar) the community’s precious parkland. This move will have unfortunate implications for any chance of future voter approval of same sex marriage in California and reduces the chance that Gavin Newsom will be elected California’s next Governor. This give away to Lennar will be long remembered by the Southeast San Francisco poor community of color when Leno and Newsom return asking for votes from the same people the intentionally harmed by giving their park to Lennar. P.O.W.E.R. did do their homework and based on the truth and community support the confronted Senator Mark Leno about his clearly discriminatory legislation did the right thing. The picketing of Leno is a constitutionally “protected activity”.

    See http://www.eeoc.gov/types/retaliation.html

    Protected activity includes:

    Opposition to a practice believed to be unlawful discrimination

    Opposition is informing an employer that you believe that he/she is engaging in prohibited discrimination. Opposition is protected from retaliation as long as it is based on a reasonable, good-faith belief that the complained of practice violates anti-discrimination law; and the manner of the opposition is reasonable.

    Examples of protected opposition include:

    * Complaining to anyone about alleged discrimination against oneself or others;
    * Threatening to file a charge of discrimination;
    * Picketing in opposition to discrimination; or
    * Refusing to obey an order reasonably believed to be discriminatory.

    Mr. Leno needs to deal with his own bad karma for serving Lennar instead of his constituency.

  • Ann Garrison

    “Bayview voices.” Who might that be?

    This is far from being solely a Bayview Hunters Point Issue.

    Lennar and its mortgage lending subsidiary, UAMC, which exists to close deals on Lennar properties by any means necessary, are major players in the ongoing foreclosure crisis that triggered the meltdown still devastating lives in San Francisco, in California, and well beyond.

    The foreclosure crisis now promises to get so much worse that much more homelessness, high crime rates, and civil unrest seem almost unavoidable, short of a radical collective response.

    And how do Mark Leno and Gavin Newsom propose to respond? By privatizing our urban state park and rewarding Lennar for its miscreance, with 23 of the most desirable waterfront acres in town.

    S.B. 792 is the local version of the legislation awarding billions, trilions, or whatever the number’s up to now, to failed mortgage banks and derivatives dealers, and, to Government Sachs, which, with Deutsche Bank, now seems to be holding, and foreclosing, on most of the distressed mortgage debt in the country.

  • Ann Garrison

    Here’s why everyone should care about the deepening foreclosure crisis that Lennar has played such a huge role in, even people who rent, or feel otherwise secure in their home:

    Budgets for public services shrink with property tax revenue. This is not only still true, since August 2008, but more so every day, as the crisis deepens:

    http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20080811/ai_n28039560/

  • http://groups.yahoo.com/group/patmonkrn/ Patrick Monk

    “Bayview Community Voice et Al”

    FYI, the above voice is that of Al Norman, a Bayview contractor with strong ties to Lennar. Likewise, the above mentioned “Rev’ Aurelious Walker is one of a number of irreverends who make up the Tabernacle Development Group that has a vested financial interest in Lennar’s boondoggle. Although Norman doesn’t specifically name this group here, he has identified with them frequently and used them as an example of ‘community support’. Ironically, to the best of my knowledge, none of this group lives in BVHP, though some do maintain churches there as a power base and revenue source. If I mis-speak I encourage Mr Norman to publicly correct me.

  • http://groups.yahoo.com/group/patmonkrn/ Patrick Monk

    PS.
    I would also encourage and welcome a response from Mr Norman, and any other proponents of Lennar’s Urban Renewal proposal, to the SFBCDC link I posted above.

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