The jury is out, San Francisco is better than you.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
SF is better than you
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Ramparts
The Bay Area needs to believe again. It needs to believe there is something that has their back.
Ramparts Magazine was the quintessential poor man’s magazine. When I say poor man, I’m ultimately referring to the underdog’s magazine – the left man’s magazine.
The publication was started in 1962 and rapped its cover just 13 years later. It saw the civil and social uprisings of the 1960’s along with the blood soaked war in Vietnam.
The direction of the magazine was simple: Write the facts, the facts that people should care about and know about, the facts that were true, and the facts that would make every American citizen want to question their country and their social surroundings.
Many of Ramparts’ editors and founders went on to create some of the most read publications in the United States, from Rolling Stone to Mother Jones.
These people, from Robert Sheer to Brit Hume, have become some of the biggest political mind-shapers of our time.
Where are the Ramparts’ of today? Is it the San Francisco Bay Guardian? Is it 7 X 7? Could it even be San Francisco Magazine? The answer is no.
You could go on journey of speculation as to why the Bay Area doesn’t have a modern-day equivalent, but the answer might be more simple than most would think – people aren’t as pissed off as they used to be.
What made Ramparts successful, were the times. Ultimately, in 1975, the magazine shut down – after most of the civil and social rights fights were declining due to winning the battle.
However, the Bay Area could use a magazine like Ramparts no matter what time it is. We need a Ramparts to publish letters by Al Qaeda, we need a Ramparts to be concerned about the health care bill, and we need a Ramparts to let us know it’s okay to question the things are skeptical about.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
My life flashing before my eyes
I'm riding down the pavement with my eyes closed, and I'm about to die.
At first I wasn't sure what happened, and then I thought, “I'm about to fly off a bicycle into Muni tracks.”
I didn't have time to think about what was going on, I only knew that I wasn't wearing a helmet, and there was an oncoming trolley - not 400 feet away.
My right arm hit the asphalt first, followed by my legs and finally my head.
I can't feel my arm; I know I'm bleeding.
I lie there, completely vulnerable - and then the oncoming J-line street car comes to a screeching halt 20 feet from my head.
"Are you okay honey?" Yells the Muni operator who sticks her head out through the side window of her train.
"Yeah, I'm okay, I can't feel my arm, but I'll live." I respond in agony. I quickly pick myself up and head over to the nearest driveway, collapsing on my back.
The train speeds off while everyone on board looks at me with empathy because they see me, they see my bicycle, and they see the obvious pain I'm in.
"What just happened?" I keep asking myself while I lay in the driveway, and then I realize I could have died.
I remember talking to my father last month about bicycling, and in the middle of our conversation he made me promise him to wear a helmet – no matter what. I could hear the worry in his voice. My old man in his prime was an avid rider in the East Coast – he’s seen his fair share of head injuries from not wearing a helmet.
Head injuries account for more than 60 percent of bicycle related deaths in the United States, according to the Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute.
However, I was not destined that night to become another statistic. Perhaps because I hit my arm first, ultimately softening further impacts between my body and the ground, but I’m not a doctor.
As I lay on the driveway, I remember something about my front wheel getting caught between the pavement and the Muni rail. There just had to be a space between the two that is the exact same width as my front wheel.
The first drops of rain this season began to fall as I stared into the night sky. I was certain now that I hadn’t broken anything as I began to stiffly move my right arm – and then I became bathed in light by a sheriff’s patrol car.
“Are you okay? I completely saw what happened,” the officer yelled from his car.
“Yeah, I just need to breath, and I’ll be alright,” I said, more conscious than I’ve been since I fell.
He began to explain the numerous times he’s fallen as a kid growing up in the area because of getting his bicycle wheel caught on a Muni rail. We chatted for a bit; he made sure I wasn’t seriously injured and then swiftly advised me to get a helmet before patrolling along.
Why don’t I wear a helmet if I know what the consequences are? Is it because I don’t want to carry it around with me? Could it be because it looks stupid on me? Or is it because I feel like “it’s not going to happen to me?”
Whatever the reason, it’s trivial not to wear it, but I still don’t strap one on. I tend to think I don’t ride reckless and aggressively, but I don’t exactly come to a complete stop at a stop sign.
It’s about 3 in the morning by the time I start walking my bicycle home; luckily I live a couple blocks away. As I walk, I think about what could have happened if I had a serious head injury.
The words: hospital, vegetable, medical bills, and suffering come to mind. You could use statistics to prove anything, but how can wearing a helmet hurt your chances from staying off a gurney?
The safety institute says the direct costs if cyclists’ injuries due to not wearing helmets are estimated at $81 million a year with indirect costs totaling to about $2.3 billion annually.
I start thinking about my friends and family who would have to take care of me if I became a vegetable, the hospital bills and relentless sadness – just because I couldn’t be bothered with wearing a helmet.
It’s not something anyone should have to go through.
I walk through my door, lie down on my bed, and call the girl I like just because I want to hear her voice.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Compost or Break the Law
There’s a new law in town, telling San Franciscans what to do with their compost – a law for which there is hardly any enforcement.
Last June, the Board of Supervisors in a 9-2 vote, approved Mayor Gavin Newsom’s proposal for the country’s first mandatory composting and recycling law, which the city hopes will decrease greenhouse gas emissions and divert refuse from landfills in the coming years, according to Joanne Wong, residential zero waste associate with the Department of the Environment.
Beginning Oct. 21, all homes and businesses within San Francisco must have three separate bins for refuse: Black for trash, blue for recycling, and a new green bin for composting.
Failing to properly separate trash will result in several warnings, ultimately leading to potential fines of $1,000 in egregious cases, according to the environment department.
This really makes me think about the paper bag in my kitchen full of coffee grounds and partially eaten pizza – if it wasn’t there would I really have to pay a hefty price for it? Wong says otherwise.
Individual tenants will not be fined and only property managers and business owners will have to answer to the city’s monetary consequences for not composting their organic refuse, she said.
“If the fines don’t affect me, then I don’t care,” Zack Tell, an environmental studies major at SF State said. “I’d be willing to compost, but I won’t be willing to be fined for not doing it.”
The 21-year-old said if his landlord is responsible for non-composting fines, then they should incorporate a clause in the lease requiring him to compost, but until that happens, he feels noncommittal in adhering to the new ordinance.
I’m not so sure that everyone will follow his example, but I’m certainly going to continue to throw my food scraps in the compost regardless of the law’s ambiguity.
To even further their laxity of the law, the city currently has a hold on fining anyone until July 2011 in order to get people used to the change, according to the environment department.
Also, the new ordinance does not allocate any money for new trash inspectors to keep an eye on who’s composting and who isn’t, according to the department.
However, there have been green-friendly people fighting for an initiative such as this one for years.
“He’s making the right decision to fine people,” Emily Naud, the student center sustainable initiatives coordinator at SF State said of Mayor Newsom’s proposal. “People won’t do it on their own.”
I do it on my own and so do a lot of other people in this city. Creating an illegitimate punishment for people who don’t compost might deter them even more, ultimately making this new recycling law counterintuitive.
Wong hopes the new composting ordinance will cut about two-thirds of the roughly 600,000 tons of waste the city sends to landfills annually.
“People are still affected by [not composting], but they don’t realize that they are,” Naud said of the attitude many have towards not caring about composting if the fines don’t directly affect them.
A poll on http://sfgate.com displays that 42 percent of voters believe the composting law is too “Big Brother” for San Francisco, while 33 percent believe it will be one more law that won’t be enforced.
“I see how people can think it’s Big Brother-ish, but Americans produce so much waste.” Naud said. “I don’t feel sorry for anyone about it.”
San Franciscans are notorious for their love of boasting their progressive lifestyles, but living up to one’s own convictions is another matter entirely. It’s somewhat ironic that the city has adopted a law, which requires people to be environmentally savvy, yet hold off on their enforcement.
If 33 percent of poll voters assume this will be one more law not enforced, perhaps the law will get the attention it needs – people raising eyebrows toward the city, and others questioning what they put into their trashcan. Either way, people will think about the situation, whether or not they’re forced.
Photo: Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Johnny Ironic
Friday, September 11, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Large Housing Landlord can't Refund Security Deposits
One of the largest residential landlords in San Francisco allegedly "hid" millions in rental security deposits - potentially affecting thousands of tenants, according to lawsuits.
Tenants, claiming security deposits were not returned, filed a class action lawsuit this past month against CitiApartments and their related companies.
"They've blatantly violated the law," Brian Devine, an attorney who is representing former tenants, said of CitiApartments. "They really don't have a defense."
Last Friday, CitiApartments and 78 individual defendants failed to formally answer questions posed by the class action suit, which Devine says he hoped would provide answers for his clients.
The average security deposit is between $1,800 and $2,500. About 5,500 units remain in control of CitiApartments and their companies spread throughout San Francisco says Devine, which means more than $10 million in deposits owed to San Francisco tenants have disappeared.
Joy Anderson went into the offices of CitiApartments with her 8-year-old son and demanded her rental deposit back after weeks of unanswered calls - she and her son were escorted out of the building, according to the complaint filed on her behalf.
"I was counting on that money," Anderson said of her $1,800 deposit that was not returned to her until months after she moved out of her San Francisco apartment at 300 Buchanan Street. "To a single mother, that amount of money is very significant."
Anderson picketed CitiApartments' headquarters on Market Street last month directly after she received her deposit check to warn other tenants of the company's capriciousness.
CitiApartments and their partnered companies, comprising of the Lembi Group, Skyline Reality, Trophy Properties, and Ritz Apartments, have a combined mass of properties in San Francisco that was estimated of last year to include 307 buildings, according to Devine.
"We're not sure how widespread this practice has been and what the inner-relationship of these companies is like," Devine says of what he calls CitiApartments' "limited liability companies" that each have an ownership over a housing property in San Francisco.
"It appears to be a shell scheme to hide money," he said. "The money could be swaying back to the Lembi family, who owns CitiApartments, or to buy more buildings."
CitiApartments and the Lembi Group refused to comment after numerous calls and emails for this story. However, they formally filed their denial of the initial complaint of unreturned rental deposits last Friday, according to Devine.
"We're trying to have the complaint dismissed," Daniel Stern, an attorney representing Trophy Properties, said.
Stern says his clients were not involved in non-refunded security deposits. However, Trophy Properties was named in the class action suit filed on behalf of the tenants who haven't received their deposits.
In all, 51 properties were foreclosed by the Union Bank of Switzerland and more than 60 extra buildings are currently under foreclosure proceedings, according to filings from the San Francisco Superior Court.
A separate lawsuit made by the Laramar Group, who acquisitioned the 51 buildings from the Lembi Group, alleges as to why CitiApartments and their associated companies didn't pay up, according Steve Boyack, vice president of asset management for the Laramar Group.
"The Lembi Group did not have any money left," Boyack said.
"The prior management apparently commingled security deposits with other funds in their operating accounts," the lawsuit says. "[The Lembi Group] used those security deposit funds to pay monies owed."
Boyack says the Lembi Group, when it transferred properties to Laramar, failed to give security deposits for the 1,100 housing units spread over those 51 buildings.
Devine says many tenants have received rental deposit checks from CitiApartments that have bounced.
"It looks like a messy situation," he says describing CitiApartments' lack of responsibility. "It's just the tip of the iceberg."
Devine's law firm, Seeger Salvas LLP, is currently representing only two tenants. However, he says dozens of people, ranging from college students to the elderly, have contacted him regarding unreturned deposits.
The outcome of this situation might not appear as bleak as it sounds. Some tenants have already gotten their deposits back.
"Residents should not be concerned about receiving their security deposits," Boyack declares of those tenants who are worrying.
UBS whom reclaimed the foreclosed properties from CitiApartments have set aside a fund for its residents who did not receive their deposits, he said.
The people who kept calling CitiApartments asking for their deposits back and those who knocked on doors eventually received their money, but Devine attests that this is a very small percentage of the potentially thousands of tenants who are possibly affected.
California civil code section 1950.5 states tenants are entitled to damages and refunds worth three times the amount of the original deposit if it's withheld for more that 21 days by a landlord acting in bad faith.
The law mandates [CitiApartments] to pay back the tenants before it can pay back its creditors says Devine on the legal priority the rental company is facing.
San Francisco Tenants Union Director Ted Gullickson says some current tenants might want to think about not paying their last month's rent in lieu of not receiving their deposit money.
Current tenants can look at the list of all 138 properties under CitiApartments' control at the Seeger Salvas LLP class action lawsuit website: http://apartmentlawsuit.com/properties.
Devine says he is not sure how long the litigation will take, but that the case is strong against CitiApartments and their companies.
"They've still got rent money coming in - it's going somewhere," he says.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
City Declares War on Grime with Eco-Blitz Cleaning
The grimier streets of San Francisco are getting a major scrub down as part of a city-wide cleaning blitz that hopes to draw awareness to cleanliness.
The Department of Public Works, in an effort to raise awareness on waste issues throughout the city, has commenced cleanups for the most heavily used corridors in town, reaching from the Richmond to the Mission, according to DPW spokeswoman Christine Falvey.
The cleanups are being called "Super Eco-Blitzes," which consist of intense three-day concentrated efforts on specific streets where crews steam sidewalks, remove graffiti, pick up debris, repaint curbs, fill potholes, and change street signs that have been damaged, Falvey said.
"Crews removed 1,000 pounds of debris," Falvey said of an 8-block stretch of Mission Street during a cleanup earlier this month. "We'll probably do it again."
Since property owners are responsible for the sidewalks directly in front of their property, they must pay for everything city crews do, from repaving to sidewalk steaming or they must properly maintain those areas themselves -- which Falvey said leaves them bitter, hoping people will help them out by leaving their sidewalks and streets clean.
"We're trying to improve the neighborhood," said Andy Thompson, owner of Marian's, a clothing store, as he took a break from scrubbing the sidewalk outside his business.
"Hopefully we can get more people down into the Mission district."
After three days scrubbing Mission Street, the Eco-Blitz crews reported and cited 63 businesses and residential properties that did not have garbage service and in turn were overusing city trash cans -- an act that encourages people to toss their litter on the sidewalk and street, according to Falvey.
The fines could be up to $300 per incident, she said.
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said the issue is behavioral, since people can use trash cans to throw away their uneaten burritos instead of littering. If this consciousness is used, Falvey said, property owners will have less of a problem.
"The purpose is to educate merchants and property owners," Falvey said. "We want to show them how to fix the neighborhoods."
The next "Super Eco-Blitz" is happening Aug. 25 - 27 on Stockton Street from Sacramento Street to Columbus Avenue, according to the DPW.
The complete 2009 "Eco-Blitzing" schedule may be found at http://www.sfgov.org/site/sfdpw_page.asp?id=108821.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Housing in Wake of Church's Demolition
St. Peter’s Episcopal Church is a small, red-bricked masonry building surrounded by over-grown grass and stray cats. The storm gutters have long since collapsed, hanging from the roof while the wooden boards in place of St. Peters’ windows flap in the wind.
The Mayor’s Office of Housing has voiced that the city does not provide enough housing for developmentally-disabled. A problem, according to the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center’s Housing Director Kevin Kitchingham, that isn’t being solved.
The Center, a non-profit organization that helps develop affordable housing for low-income adults and people with disabilities, has been working steadily with Rickey for the last four years to coordinate the church’s deconstruction and the housing development.
The demolition of the church is scheduled to start summer this year with housing to begin construction in December, according to William Ho, Bernal’s project manager.
Father Rickey, who’s been with the church since 1997, says the process of figuring out what the land could be used for has been a long and arduous journey.
“It wasn’t enough to say how do we get our space, but who do we serve,” the 62-year-old father says of his discretion in choosing to build housing for the disabled, and working with the Bernal Center to begin development.
Kitchingham says the housing units will house the “lower 30 percent of median low-income developmentally-disabled adults” – roughly a group that makes lower than $24,000 a year.
The organization provides a buffer between the church and the city’s socio-political bureaucracy says Kitchingham. They arrange meetings between architects, contractors, the Mayor’s Office of Housing, and the U.S. Department of Urban Planning and Development (HUD).
“There’s only two other places in this city for them to stay,” Rickey says of adults with developmental disabilities who urgently need housing. “There’s little housing for them.”
One set of apartments for disabled adults is in North Beach while the other is in the Tenderloin according to Rickey.
Developmentally-disabled adults refers to people with muscular difficulty, limited intelligence and motor functions, according to Rickey.
At first, Rickey says they considered building housing for seniors or teachers, but they didn’t know how to pay for the construction costs of building a parking lot underneath the units. Housing for developmentally-disabled adults doesn’t require parking lots Rickey says.
“It was serendipitous for them to come,” he says of how well the disabled adults’ situation fit in with the timing of St. Peters’ deconstruction and the space’s rebirth. “It solved our problems.”
The church first started working with developmentally-disabled adults since 2003, when it began renting out its basement to Opportunities Unlimited, a day program that teaches life skills to English- and Chinese-speaking adults with developmental disabilities Rickey says.
After spending time with the clients of the developmentally-disabled adult program Opportunities Unlimited, Rickey says he began to realize how few housing units for these clients there were in San Francisco, prompting him to acknowledge their need for housing.
St. Peters is using $2.7 million from HUD to build the housing units. The building will become part of the federal Section 8 housing subsidy program, whereby residents pay 30 percent of their income as rent, and the federal government will pay the remainder to the landlord according to Kitchingham.
Rickey says St. Peter’s and the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center have formed a nonprofit to serve as the landlord for the apartments.
They city has agreed to pay $584,000 to help spur housing for developmentally-disabled adults and the church is applying for a $3 million state grant, says Kitchingham.
The value of the lease is $1.6 million and the income from leasing the land will allow St. Peter’s to improve their parish and church offices, Rickey says.
“The compassionate conservative elemental emphasis on helping the developmentally-disabled has caused the city to intervene,” Kitchingham says. “They require of minimum of this element.”
“You go where the land is, where the deals are,” Kitchingham says of how the Bernal Center creates and nurtures housing in San Francisco.
The entire cost of the development is estimated at $10 million, half of which is reserved for construction alone, according to Ho.
“We’re not sure what to expect at this point,” Ho says of the project’s current situation, as the Center is about to start accepting bids from construction firms for the demolition and construction of the units.
Ho says right now HAZMAT remediation, which involves the removal of chemicals and addressing environmental concerns, is taking place.
Walking through the church, the heavy stench of asbestos can be sensed even though Rickey confirms it has all been removed.
“The entire building violates the building code,” Ho says. “They’re currently occupying a space in the Presidio.”
Rickey says that his congregation is planning on staying at a Chapel in the Presidio they’ve been worshiping at for the past year instead of building a new church.
The Richmond neighborhood’s church was built in 1913 on top of compacted sand dunes, which subsequently led to its damaging during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The city declared that the church violated the building code and was condemned, but the building continued to operate until 2007 when the damage finally caused the church to become unusable.
“The people who built this church didn’t read the bible, they built it on sand,” says Rickey as he walks through his decaying church’s corridors.
He points out cracks in the brick walls and foundation, boarded up windows, and a carpet saturated with rainwater due to a rotting roof. Even on a bright sunny day, the inside of the church feels more like a dank tomb than a place of worship.
In San Francisco, this problem is not uncommon at all. Many old buildings in the city bear the weight of being destroyed because of their structural inadequacies and irreparable damage due to earthquakes.
The city has declared many of these buildings to be in violation of building codes, but it also recognizes the underlying need for housing space in a constantly gentrifying town according to Kitchingham.
“You can find a number of buildings that are under [St. Peters’] problem,” says Kitchingham.
Buildings that violate the building code in San Francisco are required to be torn down. Demolishing buildings frees space for associations such as the Bernal Center to secure money for the development of affordable housing for low-income adults according to Kitchingham.
Overcrowding and the sacrifice of medical expenses have caused many developmentally-disabled adults to loose housing and look for more affordable accommodations Kitchingham says.
“We’re trying to make the price at a level they can afford,” he says.
“This project is vitally important,” said Opportunities Unlimited director David Lau. “Many of our clients come from low-income immigrant families that are living in small apartments with up to seven or eight family members.”
Lau says he’s seen an increase in the amount of clients in his organization that need places to live because the people that normally take care of them can’t afford to any longer.
The housing provides homes for developmentally-disabled adults who can’t afford to live anywhere else, Rickey says.
“I was around them all the time,” Rickey says. He was always passing them around the church and he had his office across the hall from where they would have classes he says. “They’re beautiful people.”
Rickey says he hasn’t encountered any threatening opposition to the housing project yet.
“There was one person who didn’t know if it would be safe to have those kind of people around him,” Rickey says. “He’s just got major problems.”
Rickey has stressed the idea of serving others during the entire planning and development process of the housing project. He says these people have a right and a need to have a place to live for which they can afford.
“The importance is serving others,” Rickey says. “By reaching out to other people, you actually find the answers.”
Sources
Kevin Kitchingham
415-786-2661
kkitchingham@bhnc.org
William Ho
415-206-2140
who@bhnc.org
David Lau
415-387-8405
David Rickey
415-336-1097
Mayor’s Office of Housing
www.sfgov.org/site/moh_index.asp
Department of Housing and Urban Development
Hud.gov
The Land of the Lost
On April 28, California non-profit organization, Save the Laguna Street Campus, filed a public interest California Environmental Quality Act lawsuit against the city of San Francisco according to Cynthia Servetnick, a member of the non-profit group.
She says that her organization is currently waiting for a decision to be handed down regarding the zoning of an already built-upon Hayes Valley lot, which after, they will have 60 days to file for an appeal.
The goal of the lawsuit, according to Servetnick, was to challenge the Board of Supervisors’ final decision last spring that called for a “mixed” zoning of 55 Laguna St., meaning that the area will be used for commercial, public, and private use.
“It’s been in public use for over 150 years,” Servetnick said. “The Board of Supervisors made the wrong decision in zoning.”
The 5.8-acre site, surrounded by Laguna, Buchanan, Haight, and Herman streets, has been an active area of San Francisco since the Gold Rush era according to Helene Whitson, an Archivist Emeritus at San Francisco State University.
She says a Protestant orphanage occupied the lot during the 1800’s and after the 1906 earthquake, San Francisco Normal School moved to the Laguna Street location.
In the early 1950’s, San Francisco Normal School changed its name to San Francisco State University and considered moving its campus to the university’s current location near Lake Merced according to Whitson.
“The campus was declared a surplus to SF State in 1957,” Servetnick said. She says that UC Berkeley acquired the site in 1958 for the purpose of creating an extension campus.
“The Attorney General granted UC ‘state agency status’ for the purpose of acquiring the site, but said UC did not have to comply with the same real property disposition process state agencies are required to go through in order to dispose of the site,” Servetnick said. “UC made a unilateral decision to ‘cash out’ in 2003 and moved the extension to its new downtown location at a cost of about $2 million per year.”
Servetnick says UC Berkeley awarded A.F. Evans Development the right to negotiate for the development of 450 units of market-rate housing on the campus in 2005, following their relocation of the extension campus.
“The UC doesn’t care,” Servetnick said. “They’ve always wanted to sell it and make money off of it.”
Servetnick says negotiations broke down last winter when the San Francisco Board of Supervisors agreed to provide money for the development of 100 units, instead of 450 units of housing that would be affordable to people at 50 percent of median income that is welcoming to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender seniors; the remaining housing units will be 15 percent affordable to all other demographics.
“We think housing--especially market rate housing--can be built anywhere, but this campus is unique architecturally and from a land use standpoint,” Servetnick said. “The Market and Octavia Area Plan will double the number of housing units in the neighborhood and won’t have the parking requirements creating significant development pressure on historic resources and creating a demand for more open space, recreation and cultural uses.”
Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, whose district five encompasses the Laguna Street Campus says his constituents in Hayes Valley have voiced concern over the Mixed Use Project.
“We don’t want a suburb in Hayes Valley,” he said. We want to see something with merit that will benefit the people who live there.”
Mirkarimi says he wants to see the site used for educational purposes that will help the public.
However, Servetnick says she is concerned over the ramifications from zoning the site for mixed use.
“Our group’s main mission is to preserve the public use and historic resources of the Laguna Street Campus,” Servetnick said.
She says the main issues in the Board of Supervisors approved, Mixed Use Project for 55 Laguna St. were that the city of San Francisco, UC Berkeley, and A.F. Evans Development did not provide substantial evidence showing that preservation alternatives were economically infeasible, and the analysis of the 55 Laguna St. Mixed Use Project's affects on the use of historical buildings were inadequate.
“We want to see the historic district maintained,” Servetnick said speaking on behalf of the historically recognized buildings in the lot. “This project will destroy it.”
“The Mixed Use Project proposes to demolish two of the five contributory buildings on the site,” Servetnick said. “It’s unnecessary to demolish these structures.”
She says the Planning Commission previously voted not to landmark the site and the Landmarks Board itself appealed their decision to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors who voted to landmark only the three buildings the developers wanted to keep.
A.F. Evans wanted to demolish the same two buildings on the site, Middle Hall, and a section of Richardson Hall because they would cost too much to retrofit, Sarah Zahn, a former project manager said.
SF State Archivist Helene Whitson says many of the current existing buildings on the campus were built during the New Deal era using Spanish colonial architecture along with WPA artists and contractors.
“There’s wonderful artwork there,” Whitson said. She says Maxine Albro, the designer behind San Francisco’s Coit Tower and a protégé of Diego Rivera, created a mosaic from marble left over from the city’s 1915 World’s Fair, which can be found under the stucco in Woods Hall’s entry on Buchanan and Haight streets.
The 55 Laguna St. site is located in the heart of the Hayes Valley neighborhood, a district of the city that has gone through very positive gentrification since the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake according to Whitson.
In 2005, Octavia Boulevard was opened as a main thoroughfare in the city to replace the double-decker freeway that inhabited the area - a freeway that had been damaged by the earthquake and needed to be demolished.
“It used to be ghetto,” Natallie Mollaghan, an employee of Timbuk2, a bag store on Hayes Street said of the condition in the Hayes Valley neighborhood in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s.
“Hayes Valley is completely different from anything that was there 15-20 years ago,” Jasper Rubin, an assistant professor in the Urban Studies and Planning Department at SF State said.
Rubin says that the freeway’s disappearance in Hayes Valley made the neighborhood more attractive to small businesses.
The annexing of a place such as 55 Laguna St. for public use is important to the people of Hayes Valley given the neighborhood’s revitalization according to Whitson.
“We’re not a school for the wealthy, we’re a school for the working people,” Whitson said on behalf of SF State’s original stake in the educational origins of 55 Laguna St.
“The neighborhood is full of professional people. Working class people,” she said. “Why can’t this site continue to be what it was – it was designed for the public.”
Whitson says the people she has met in Hayes Valley really care about the effect that not having 55 Laguna St. as a public institution for education is going to have on their neighborhood.
“They’re passionate. They know how rejuvenated their neighborhood is from what it was,” She said. “They wanted to see that space remain educational and benefit the community.”
“The possibilities are unlimited,” Cynthia Servetnick said of how to use 55 Laguna St. for public use.
After she files for an appeal once a decision has been made regarding her and her non-profit’s lawsuit, Servetnick says she will continue litigation in order to turn site into a job training center and cultural facility to educate people and engage them in environmental remediation.
“The site could be used to develop and promote capital, trade and carbon credits, new materials and methods of green building, and job training for SF residents,” Servetnick said.
“It has to be used for education,” Whitson said of the site. “Job training is education.”
“There’s a lot of young people that live in Hayes Valley that could greatly benefit from having a public job training center,” she said. “So many people are getting laid off right now.”
The average age of a person living in Hayes Valley is between 21 and 40 years of age according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
“I want to see an area that has stores, housing, and public use, such as a school,” Ray Andersen said. “The people that live here already have places to shop, they need places to learn things too.”
Andersen says that the neighborhood has moved away from the blight it once had a little over a decade ago. He says it now needs to focus not on just making money, but making sure its residents receive skills to help them in the future.
“I can imagine people there, and being taught and being the future of California,” Whitson said. “That place has had such an impact on California, and it serves the needs of the people.”
Sources
Cynthia Servetnick
415-794-0566
Cynthia.servetnick@gmail.com
Helene Whitson
510-849-4689
hwhitson@sfsu.edu
Ross Mirkarimi
415-554-7630
ross.mirkarimi@sfgov.org
Jasper Rubin
(415) 405-3495
mjrubin@sfsu.edu
Natallie Mollaghan
415 252 9860
hayesvalley@timbuk2.com
Ray Andersen
415-436-9933
realgrooves@gmail.com
Sarah Zahn
510-891-9400
afeco@sfevans.com
Tar or Tree
“The community wants to see it all. Not just transit, not just green growth, but everything,” Kris Opbroek, the Department of Public Works’ project manager for the Van Ness Avenue Enhancement Project said.
The Van Ness project is part of the Great Streets Capital Streetscape Project, which is a five-year project funded by a multi-year transportation bill called SFETEA along with other state and federal grants amounting to more than $20 million to make improvements to various city streets that are in need of restoration according to Opbroek.
Public Works has coordinated with the Municipal Transportation Authority's (MTA) Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project. Their designs include dedicated bus lanes, transit signal priority, pedestrian improvements, and transit platform improvements according to Judson True, spokesman for the MTA.
"We want the improvements to benefit motorists as well as people who ride public transit," True said about the conjunction between the BRT and Van Ness project. “All city departments are working together.”
The main confliction between both the BRT and Van Ness projects stems from two proposed designs for the center median along the San Francisco street.
The Van Ness project hopes to enhance tree growth along the center median through widening a two-block section of it to a little over 14 feet according to Opbroek.
Opbroek says the BRT project suggests three different designs on the street for loading passengers on public transit vehicles. One of the proposed designs includes center median loading, where passengers enter and exit transit vehicles from the center of the street as they do on Market Street.
“The enhancement project on Van Ness is less important that the BRT project,” Jason Henderson, Planning Coordinator for the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association said of the contradiction over Van Ness Avenue’s center median.
Henderson says making Van Ness Avenue more inviting through green growth revisions would be a good thing aesthetically, but if major changes to the center median are to be done in confliction with the BRT’s proposed designs it will create a problem.
Henderson says the BRT project needs to take the street down from three lanes in each direction to two lanes in order to fit buses down the center median of Van Ness.
“If it’s to sacrifice a couple trees in the median of Van Ness, it would be worth it,” Henderson said. “We can save more trees in the long run if we reduce sprawl.”
Opbroek says that she is also involved with the BRT (Bus Rapid Transit Project), which is a large-scale project on the street whereas the Van Ness project is localized to a six-block stretch of Van Ness Avenue between Market and McAllister Streets.
The BRT derives its $75 million funding federally from the FTA (Federal Transit Authority) and from other local sources according to Tilly Chang, Deputy Director for the San Francisco County Transportation Authority.
“The entire project compliments the BRT project,” Opbroek said of the design features of the Van Ness project. “Whatever happens in the roadway doesn’t affect the sidewalk.”
Most of the design features of the Van Ness project include revitalizing the sidewalk through adding newer more historic looking lighting posts and increasing the green growth according to Opbroek.
The BRT project along Van Ness Avenue is currently under environmental review and has yet to reach a consensus on the location of where passenger loading will occur for buses according to Opbroek.
Opbroek says the designs for the Van Ness project are 100 percent complete and the project is currently waiting for funding from federal earmarks and the $20 million general funds set aside for the project in 2005.
The Van Ness project is estimated at $1.2 million with construction scheduled to start as early as next April and have a duration of six to eight months according to Opbroek.
“I like bringing more trees to our city,” Frances Neagley, President of the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association said. “I’m not sure how feasible it is.”
“Some love it, some hate it,” Neagley said, understanding of Hayes Valley’s attitude toward the project on Van Ness.
“It’s better to keep pedestrians on the sidewalk,” Opbroek said speaking on behalf of safety issues she says play a major role in the project.
“The street has been effectively turned over to the automobile,” Henderson said of the absence of pedestrian safety. “It needs to be more pedestrian friendly.”
“Pedestrians need a safe haven,” Neagley said of the section of Van Ness to be worked on. “They need to feel secure.”
The disruption going to be caused by both projects vying over the center median will affect commuters as well as transit riders according to Opbroek.
Jason Henderson says he estimates between 35 to 40,000 motorists who use Van Ness Avenue daily.
Opbroek says there will be lane closures on Van Ness Avenue if the Department of Public Works needs to construct median work for landscaping. However, she says she doesn’t anticipate there to be much traffic since the lane closures will be minimal and restricted between Hayes and Fell Streets.
“They’ll get hysterical about it,” Neagley said about the anticipated construction. “People won’t be upset anymore about that construction than any other construction.”
Opbroek says she is concerned over the differences between the two projects, but seeks resolution.
“How do we maintain all these problems at the same time,” Opbroek said. “It’s not an easy solution, but I’m all about balance.”
Sources
Jason Henderson
415-255-8136
jhenders@sbcglobal.net
Judson True
415-701-4582
judson.true@sfmta.com
Kris Opbroek
415-558-4045
kris.opbroek@sfdpw.org
Tilly Chang
415-522-4832
tilly.chang@sfcta.org
Frances Neagley
415-531-8426
president@hayesvalleysf.org
Hail Market Street
"We're going to look at the possibility of banning cars or making auto restrictions on Market for a long term," Tilly Chang, Deputy Director for Planning at the SFCTA (San Francisco County Transportation Authority), said. "We're just at the very beginning stage."
"I have introduced a request," Daly said of his proposal, which he submitted last July to the city's district attorney.
The request asked for a closure of Market Street to private vehicles between Octavia Blvd. in Hayes Valley to Embarcadero – roughly a 2-mile section.
Two weeks ago, city Supervisor Chris Daly asked Chang to initiate a SAR (Strategic Analysis Report) to make findings on the impact of a partial Market Street closure to private vehicles according to Daly.
Chang said the findings from the SAR will help the Transit Authority examine the rationale and feasibility for restricting private auto traffic on a section San Francisco’s main thoroughfare.
Chang says she is already meeting with various city agencies including the Municipal Transportation Authority, the Advocacy and Merchant Group in an effort create a bilateral partisanship between city leaders and Supervisor Daly over his initiative.
The SAR will take 6 to 8 months to complete and once it's submitted to Supervisor Daly and processed by him and other city officials, it will take another 6 to 8 months for the report to become public according to Chang.
Chang says the earliest that major physical changes on the street could happen if approved would not be until late next year.
The cost of the project is unknown at the moment due to its elementary stage but the SAR itself cost $15,000 to produce according to Chang.
The current proposal to ban private traffic along the San Francisco street is not an original idea according to Carolyn Diamond, executive director of the Market Street Association.
"It's come around the corner six times in the last 20 years," Diamond said of the reoccurring city legislation. "It used to be a proposition that raised huge red flags for businesses on Market Street."
However, past car ban proposals for the street have all been denied by the Board of Supervisors due to weak arguments for making a stretch of Market Street free of private cars according to Diamond.
"Everyone wants to see Market Street work better," Diamond said of her commitment to the street. "We're looking for alternatives."
"It's time to take a look again, it's 2008," an eager Supervisor Daly said of his initiative to secure a 2-mile stretch of Market Street to only pedestrians, bicyclists, and public transit vehicles.
Nathan Ballard, spokesman for Mayor Gavin Newsom, says the mayor is not going to be supporting Supervisor Daly's proposal to close Market Street to private traffic.
"Chris Daly doesn't have a fully formed plan to accommodate the negative impact," Ballard said. However, Ballard was quick to call Daly's proposal "intriguing."
"Supervisor Daly has failed to address the economic impact," Ballard said, speaking on behalf of Mayor Newsom. "There is currently an economic meltdown and now is not the time to be discouraging the businesses along Market Street.”
“I don’t like people telling me what to do,” Ray Andersen, owner of Grooves Records, a music retailer said of being prohibited to drive on the San Francisco street.
Andersen says he must transport things in bulk with a car for his business and a closure of Market Street would inhibit his ability to run his business.
“We’re a nitch business,” Andersen said. “People go funny places to get what we have.”
The threat of revenue from businesses declining along Market Street as a result of a closure to private traffic is already having some other city leaders poised to decline Daly's latest proposal. The plan's pending submission is leaving some proponents and opponents in a state of confusion about its success.
"The full closure of Market Street would be prohibitive to drivers and retailers," Diamond said. She went on to say she believes small merchants will be affected the most. "They rely on people in cars just passing their stores."
"My business would suffer greatly," Ron Ansley, General Manager of Flax, an art supply store on Market and Gough Streets in Hayes Valley, said.
Ansley says he is a proponent of public transit, but most of his customers come to his store by way of their own cars. Flax has both a front and back parking lot, but because the store is just inside the closure boundary, the lots would not be accessible to private cars.
"Who really drives on Market Street," James Sine, owner of Isotope, a comic book lounge a few blocks North of Market Street in Hayes Valley said of Daly's proposal.
However, Sine says a closure of Market Street to private traffic would be good for businesses on Market considering an increase in the flow of pedestrians with an absence of autos.
"It is premature for [opponents] to oppose," Daly briskly said of city leaders who have been skeptical of his private vehicle ban on Market Street. "It's a good policy," he said, “which will create a safer Market Street.”
Daly says that he hopes a closure of Market Street to private traffic will increase pedestrian safety, improve transit times, and could generate pedestrian economic development.
"Look at 16th Street in Denver," Daly said defending his position that pedestrian growth throughout a major section of Market Street could help stimulate economic expansion.
Daly says that the 16th Street Mall plan in Denver contributed as a positive economic impact on the city.
Diamond raises many questions as to how successful the private car ban could be. However, she says she understands the importance of the SAR to answer her questions.
"I want to see what happens if there's a full prohibition of automobiles. What's the ripple effect of it going to be on the city," Diamond said questioning the validity in Daly's plan.
"If it's a convincing argument that [Daly's proposal] works better without a private automobile, let's try it," Diamond said of her possible actions given findings that show positive effects on the city with a private car ban. "It may be an idea whose time has come to investigate it."
"There's not that many automobiles on Market to begin with," Diamond said. She says her rationality is not undermined by her curiosity in Daly's plan. "It has to be laid out carefully and has to have some sort of goal."
Sources
Chris Daly
415-554-7970
chris.daly@sfgov.org
Nathan Ballard
415-235-6283
mayorspressoffice@sfgov.org
Carolyn Diamond
415-362-2500
Carolyn@marketstreetassociation.org
Tilly Chang
415-522-4832
tilly.chang@sfcta.org
James Sine
415–621-6543
james@isotopecomics.com
Ron Ansley
415-552-2355
www.flaxart.com
Ray Andersen
415-436-9933
realgrooves@gmail.com