The Shameless Hilton Hotel

City College has struggled to meet the pressing needs of its students because it lacks a permanent Chinatown facility.

Over three decades, City College has lost access to 30 community sites to hold classes because community organizations needed the space for their programs. Responsive to this loss, three times, San Francisco voters overwhelmingly have approved bond funds to build a permanent facility in Chinatown.

Like other projects benefiting Chinatown, outside special interests are putting up barriers to deny Chinatown residents and workers, who typically earn less than $11,000 a year, what they deserve and need.

For the past half year, Justice Investors, the owners of the Hilton Hotel-Financial District, and their paid lobbyists have waged a mean-spirited campaign of deception to confuse and mislead the Chinatown community and general public about the proposed City College facility on the corner of Kearny and Washington Streets, across from the hotel.

This campaign of deception has purposely made up unsubstantiated, wild-eyed allegations that City College is going to build a "massive high-rise" that will negatively impact Chinatown parking, traffic and Portsmouth Square Park. To create the illusion of legitimacy to their campaign, these paid lobbyists have traipsed out State Senator Leland Yee as a "community leader," rallying Chinatown against this "high-rise."

What this campaign of deception does not disclose is that, according to public records, Hilton Hotel owners and their paid lobbyists and families have contributed tens of thousands of dollars to Yee’s political campaigns. Knowing that Justice Investors and their lobbyists are capable of contributing more, Yee has easily, and not surprisingly, kowtowed to Hilton Hotel’s interests, at the expense of immigrant educational needs. Pure and simple, Hilton does not want any building to block its hotel window views.

Hilton’s campaign of deception also fails to disclose that this so-called "massive high-rise" will not cast a significant shadow on Portsmouth park.

For a very limited period of time during the summer and no later than 7:45 a.m., the proposed Chinatown City College facility will shadow a narrow sliver of the northwest corner of the park. In contrast, the 31-story Hilton Hotel, 15 stories taller than the proposed City College building, casts a significantly larger shadow, much later into the morning and for many more days each year, on park users as they exercise and sit. Hilton Hotel, who’s calling the kettle black?

Its shameless campaign has sought to scare Chinatown businesses to believe that 6,000 "new" students will descend on the proposed facility during the same couple of hours every day, exacerbating traffic and parking congestion. Truth be told, these 6,000 students are already in Chinatown, dispersed in their classroom attendance throughout the entire day, on any given day of the week.

90 percent of all Chinatown City College students either walk or take public transportation to get to their classes. City College has always welcomed immigrant students, who may live in another neighborhood but work in or near Chinatown and find it more convenient to access bilingual classes and services, right before or after work.

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