Public Angered by Revised Presidio Museum Scheme

From the Presidio Historical Association

December 8, 2008

Public groups that strongly condemned the Presidio Trust’s first attempt to take over the Presidio of San Francisco’s Main Post Historic District for a massive contemporary art museum, upscale hotel and multiplex theater are disappointed and angered by the Trust’s newest proposal.

That new proposal for an art museum sponsored by Gap founder Donald Fisher, was disclosed last Friday, following the preceding week’s disclosure of three new alternate proposals, apparently now abandoned.

The Trust conceded that its original proposal — which it had advocated for more than a year — would not meet regulatory requirements. But the Trust’s newest proposal would still place a huge contemporary art museum at the center and top of the historic parade ground on the Presidio’s Main Post and leave the Trust’s massive, upscale hotel and movie theater plans largely unchanged.

Gary Widman, President of the Presidio Historical Association, said that, “The new proposal has almost the same problems as the old. It is unlikely to meet standards for National Historic Landmarks for many of the same reasons that disqualified the first plan. It also fails to meet the public’s most significant and repeatedly stated concerns — the Trust’s failure to safeguard or support the National Park and Historic District entrusted to it, failure to meet requirements of law that the size of new buildings be controlled by the dimensions of buildings removed, and failure to observe realistic traffic and vehicle limitations by placing facilities that will attract over 500,000 additional new visitors a year into an area with very limited parking and street access in the Presidio and in nearby neighborhoods.

“The Presidio’s Main Post is already expected to have an additional 300,000 to 400,000 visitors per year to its new Disney Museum. But it is most upsetting that art museum sponsor Don Fisher and the Trust think that the public can be easily manipulated by publicity and so-called “new” plans that continue to ignore the problems of the old plans.”

Critics of the controversial new proposal to build the Fisher contemporary art museum objected to misleading statements appearing in local media that the redesigned museum is “downsized” when it appears to be 5,000 sq. ft. larger than the original proposal.

“Why the Trust and Mr. Fisher want to pursue building these massive, invasive structures which are so strenuously opposed in the Main Post, when they could be built elsewhere with praise rather than condemnation, escapes us. The near-unanimous public opposition is not going away, and each week’s new Trust proposals appear designed to stimulate public confusion and years of new litigation,” Widman said.

The Presidio of San Francisco, a National Park with its 230-year old fort site previously governed by Spain and Mexico, was called the” Plymouth Rock of the West” by California’s State Historic Preservation Office.

Widman adds that the Trust’s last-minute design changes to the Fisher art museum announced Friday afternoon have created confusion and anger among opponents who have spent hundreds of hours studying and preparing comments on the Trust’s 332-page Draft Supplemental Impact Statement (DSEIS) issued last June.

The Trust’s public comment meeting, now open to comments both on the old and the new proposals, will be held TOMORROW, Tuesday, Dec. 9th at 6:30 pm at San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts.

“David Bancroft, a founder of SaveThePresidio.org, called the Trust’s new plans “a complete disappointment,” adding that, ” We will still have a huge contemporary art museum and large hotel smack dab in the middle of the historic Main Post, top center, overlooking the entire Main Parade Ground. This is progress? A National Historic Landmark District should not be made into a suburban mall or a culture quad.”

Lori Brooke, President of San Francisco’s Cow Hollow Association added, “The Trust’s new plans do nothing to answer our major concerns that the museum is at odds with the integrity of a unique historic setting and will seriously damage the heart of this National Park. The significant increase in visitors without adequate public transit will create traffic, parking, congestion, noise and pollution problems, damaging the setting as a National Park.”

Boyd de Larios, representing Descendants of Anza & Portolá Expeditions, said of the Trust’s latest proposal, “This is still an attempt to hijack a National Park, just repackaged and with a new spin. Who will tell the next gazillionaire that he can’t house his Rembrandt collection or baseball cards at the Presidio? The Presidio is a National Park because of its natural beauty and historic significance. The Presidio Trust should be focused on preserving our western American heritage, not unrelated eclectic development.”

FCJ Editor

More Posts