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Indybay Feature
Garage Developers Threaten Golden Gate Park's Music Concourse
Republican financier Warren Hellman and his Music Concourse Community Partnership threaten to start construction in early March on their unfunded, 800-space underground parking garage in the heart of Golden Gate Park. Lawsuits were filed against the Bechtel-designed Garage in San Francisco Superior Court in December and January. Yet, an emerging PR campaign against the public interest litigation defending the Park, has prompted calls to the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors to stop all construction while the garage issues are deliberated in court.
The ground lease created by Warren Hellman's secretive Music Concourse Community Partnership (MCCP) to transfer Golden Gate Park land into their control for 35 years, provides that CEQA environmental complaints against the Bechtel Garage Plan shall halt the project until those concerns are decided in court.
Over the past two weeks corporate media coverage of the garage lawsuits has been turned up noticably. So have attempts by garage proponents to deliberately mislead and misinform readers. Along with the media hit pieces against the public interest litigation, there is a coordinated effort by the downtown corporate lobby, SF SOS, to further misinform and mislead the voters to consider the lawsuits to be frivolous and insincere. ( If you read any ot these sources, please respond to their articles with a couple of short comments of your own.)
The following three articles appeared last week in the corporate news dailies, the San Francisco Chronicle and the SF Examiner:
On Monday, February 16, 2004 the SF Chronicle published: More grief for parking garage plan - 3rd group sues to block project set to start in Golden Gate Park.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/02/16/BAG2751OP41.DTL
On Wednesday, February 18, they published: EDITORIAL S.F.'s revolving door (by Ken Garcia)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/02/18/EDGLU510U51.DTL
Last Friday, February 20, the SF Examiner printed: Garage suits represent minority view
http://www.examiner.com/article/index.cfm/i/022004op_editorial
What the SF Chronicle left out of Monday's article:
There is a huge difference between a "free garage," a current gift to the City paid for by private donations, and a publicly financed project requiring a $54 million revenue bond plus interest, and concourse privatization for 35 years. Why don't the directors of the Music Concourse Community Partnership discuss their financing scheme in public, before the full Board of Supervisors, if it's so good for the City?
Trees Not Cars and Katherine Roberts filed a citizen's suit to enforce City compliance with the provisions of Prop J: The Golden Gate Park Revitalization Act of 1998, and compliance with the City Charter which prohibits the transfer of public park land without a vote of the public.
Their suit complements the CEQA, Prop J and Due Process suit filed by the Alliance for Golden Gate Park, and Save Golden Gate Park!
It's highly misleading for SF SOS and Wade Randlett to go green bashing, slamming the "Gonzalez-Daly extremists," when the Supes can do nothing about it now. It is after all, in the courts, and that's where it will be decided ultimately.
Stephen Willis, Save Golden Gate Park! 415-621-3090
*************************************************************
http://www.sfsos.com
The following letter was sent out to members of "SF SOS" (http://www.sfsos.org), a phony grass roots lobby funded by Warren Hellman, Diane Feinstein, and Don Fisher.
------ End of Forwarded Message
Reply-To: <info [at] sfsos.org>
From: <info [at] sfsos.org>
etcc...cut...out....
Please Urge the Board of Supervisors to Unanimously Support the Golden Gate Park Concourse Project
Democracy Works Best When Citizens Are Actively Involved
Dear SF SOS Supporter,
We urgently need mainstream San Franciscans like you to stand up against yet another obstructionist ideological maneuver to keep the City's Quality of Life from improving.
Yet again, the Gonzalez-Daly extremists are trying to thwart the will of the voters and keep the City from placing underground the surface parking around Golden Gate Park's wonderful cultural facilities. As was reported in today's Chronicle, the phony group "Trees Not Cars" has filed suit to ensure that cars, not trees, are what citizens see when using the concourse near the M.H. De Young Museum and the music concourse near it. Their ridiculous goal is to halt the imminent groundbreaking on the project that would take surface-level parking and put the spaces in a new, philanthropy-financed underground garage.
This is a subject we lobbied hard to support in 2003 and our efforts paid off when the Board of Supervisors, voting last November, agreed to move forward with the project by an 8-3 margin. Here is a brief history of the Project and our reasons for supporting it:
The measure, Proposition J, was supported by 58% of the voters in the 1998 election; The entire $50 million project is funded by private donations and will be donated to the City as a permanent improvement; The plan calls for parking currently situated above-ground to be built underground, eliminating clutter and eyesores and making our park more beautiful and pedestrian-friendly; Removal of the surface parking will add 6 acres of green space to the Music Concourse (which makes the name of this latest "public interest" challenger particularly ironic); With every fiscal quarter of delay to the Concourse's opening, the de Young Museum will lose $15 million, and may face ultimate fiscal instability without auto access (the museum cannot reopen until the project is completed); Any further delay will cause the de Young to miss the 2005 summer season, which means it will be unable to stage the major Egyptian exhibit it organized jointly with the New York Met.
It is critical that this issue is put to rest once and for all. In order to send a clear message that no further delays will be tolerated, the Board of Supervisors needs to unanimously support the measure, which means that Supervisors Gonzalez, Daly and Ammiano must reverse their earlier positions and get on board in support of the Concourse.
We are asking you to please send a petition to the Board of Supervisors, expressing your support for the Golden Gate Concourse Project. These few Gonzalez-Daly obstructionists cannot hold hostage the entire City's Quality of Life.
>>Click here to send a petition to the Board of Supervisors
Sincerely,
Wade Randlett
President, SF SOS
*************************************************************
A Little History about SF SOS and their Gra$$ Root$$ Origins
September 15, 2003 BOMA San Francisco Advocate http://www.bomasf.org/pdf/adv/advocate_092203.html
Business leaders organize to seize greater role in city's future
http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2002/11/04/story1.html
Feinstein to the rescue
(Don) Fisher's role is no accident. According to aides on Feinstein's staff, SFSOS was sired after the senator's limo got stuck in traffic in the Mission district in late summer. She saw a homeless man defecating on the street. Infuriated, she placed a call to Fisher, who has a long history of pressuring for change. Fisher and Hellman each put up a reported $300,000 to $500,000, and SFSOS was born.
Fisher began hosting groups of up to 45 people in the art-filled board room at Gap Inc.'s headquarters to introduce the concept. He usually left the room, allowing Wade Randlett, a political consultant who has become SFSOS' president, to lay out the group's agenda.
"We think there's a big market of people terribly frustrated with the current quality of life who, given the opportunity to speak for themselves, will do it," Randlett said.
Though business leaders are fueling the latest effort, including donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop the organization, some of them say they do not want to play a dominant role.
"Big business is more and more irrelevant," Hellman said. "Instead of worrying about what the large businesses think, we have to go to the people who don't have an opportunity" to make a difference in the outcome of issues. "My hope is that (SFSOS) is taken over by neighborhood leaders."
...
"The business community is concerned about a seat at the table?" said Chris Daly, regarded as one of the most liberal members of the Board of Supervisors. "The business community has owned the table for 50 years. It looks like a political move to fight against neighborhood power in San Francisco."
http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2003/03/31/story3.html
Leaders set to turn SOS into action - Eric Young
SFSOS is not the only political group in San Francisco to draw considerable business backing. But it differs from other groups in that organizers hope its issues and message resonate among a broad swath of city's voters, giving SFSOS "grassroots" cachet. That grassroots appearance could be difficult to achieve, SFSOS organizers said, given the group's origins.
http://www.namebase.org/books23.html
Miles, Sara. How to Hack a Party Line: The Democrats and Silicon Valley. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001. 248 pages.
Sara Miles is a progressive San Francisco-based writer who once worked for Mother Jones magazine. Portions of this book have appeared in Wired, Wired News, San Francisco Focus, and the New York Times Magazine. On the surface, this is a witty study of a bagman for the Democratic Party, Wade Randlett, as Miles follows him around Silicon Valley during the late 1990s. Randlett is a power-hungry backroom operator who is trying to funnel Silicon Valley's wealth into the coffers of Clinton and Gore, by organizing astroturf committees and attending parties given by rich people. His only ideology might be called "opportunistic centrism." Miles finds him interesting and appalling at the same time.
http://www.sfsos.org/signalflag/vol1number28_09-23-03.htm
Golden Gate Concourse Plans Moving Forward (more SF SOS Propaganda)
___________________________________
Now, call your Board Supervisor and Mayor Newsom and ask them to Save the Historic Pedestrian Tunnels by stopping the MCCP from going forward with construction while litigation continues.
They plan to begin in March.
Save Golden Gate Park! is a legal defense committee which has filed suit against the City and the Music Concourse Community Partnership (MCCP).
Over the past two weeks corporate media coverage of the garage lawsuits has been turned up noticably. So have attempts by garage proponents to deliberately mislead and misinform readers. Along with the media hit pieces against the public interest litigation, there is a coordinated effort by the downtown corporate lobby, SF SOS, to further misinform and mislead the voters to consider the lawsuits to be frivolous and insincere. ( If you read any ot these sources, please respond to their articles with a couple of short comments of your own.)
The following three articles appeared last week in the corporate news dailies, the San Francisco Chronicle and the SF Examiner:
On Monday, February 16, 2004 the SF Chronicle published: More grief for parking garage plan - 3rd group sues to block project set to start in Golden Gate Park.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/02/16/BAG2751OP41.DTL
On Wednesday, February 18, they published: EDITORIAL S.F.'s revolving door (by Ken Garcia)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/02/18/EDGLU510U51.DTL
Last Friday, February 20, the SF Examiner printed: Garage suits represent minority view
http://www.examiner.com/article/index.cfm/i/022004op_editorial
What the SF Chronicle left out of Monday's article:
There is a huge difference between a "free garage," a current gift to the City paid for by private donations, and a publicly financed project requiring a $54 million revenue bond plus interest, and concourse privatization for 35 years. Why don't the directors of the Music Concourse Community Partnership discuss their financing scheme in public, before the full Board of Supervisors, if it's so good for the City?
Trees Not Cars and Katherine Roberts filed a citizen's suit to enforce City compliance with the provisions of Prop J: The Golden Gate Park Revitalization Act of 1998, and compliance with the City Charter which prohibits the transfer of public park land without a vote of the public.
Their suit complements the CEQA, Prop J and Due Process suit filed by the Alliance for Golden Gate Park, and Save Golden Gate Park!
It's highly misleading for SF SOS and Wade Randlett to go green bashing, slamming the "Gonzalez-Daly extremists," when the Supes can do nothing about it now. It is after all, in the courts, and that's where it will be decided ultimately.
Stephen Willis, Save Golden Gate Park! 415-621-3090
*************************************************************
http://www.sfsos.com
The following letter was sent out to members of "SF SOS" (http://www.sfsos.org), a phony grass roots lobby funded by Warren Hellman, Diane Feinstein, and Don Fisher.
------ End of Forwarded Message
Reply-To: <info [at] sfsos.org>
From: <info [at] sfsos.org>
etcc...cut...out....
Please Urge the Board of Supervisors to Unanimously Support the Golden Gate Park Concourse Project
Democracy Works Best When Citizens Are Actively Involved
Dear SF SOS Supporter,
We urgently need mainstream San Franciscans like you to stand up against yet another obstructionist ideological maneuver to keep the City's Quality of Life from improving.
Yet again, the Gonzalez-Daly extremists are trying to thwart the will of the voters and keep the City from placing underground the surface parking around Golden Gate Park's wonderful cultural facilities. As was reported in today's Chronicle, the phony group "Trees Not Cars" has filed suit to ensure that cars, not trees, are what citizens see when using the concourse near the M.H. De Young Museum and the music concourse near it. Their ridiculous goal is to halt the imminent groundbreaking on the project that would take surface-level parking and put the spaces in a new, philanthropy-financed underground garage.
This is a subject we lobbied hard to support in 2003 and our efforts paid off when the Board of Supervisors, voting last November, agreed to move forward with the project by an 8-3 margin. Here is a brief history of the Project and our reasons for supporting it:
The measure, Proposition J, was supported by 58% of the voters in the 1998 election; The entire $50 million project is funded by private donations and will be donated to the City as a permanent improvement; The plan calls for parking currently situated above-ground to be built underground, eliminating clutter and eyesores and making our park more beautiful and pedestrian-friendly; Removal of the surface parking will add 6 acres of green space to the Music Concourse (which makes the name of this latest "public interest" challenger particularly ironic); With every fiscal quarter of delay to the Concourse's opening, the de Young Museum will lose $15 million, and may face ultimate fiscal instability without auto access (the museum cannot reopen until the project is completed); Any further delay will cause the de Young to miss the 2005 summer season, which means it will be unable to stage the major Egyptian exhibit it organized jointly with the New York Met.
It is critical that this issue is put to rest once and for all. In order to send a clear message that no further delays will be tolerated, the Board of Supervisors needs to unanimously support the measure, which means that Supervisors Gonzalez, Daly and Ammiano must reverse their earlier positions and get on board in support of the Concourse.
We are asking you to please send a petition to the Board of Supervisors, expressing your support for the Golden Gate Concourse Project. These few Gonzalez-Daly obstructionists cannot hold hostage the entire City's Quality of Life.
>>Click here to send a petition to the Board of Supervisors
Sincerely,
Wade Randlett
President, SF SOS
*************************************************************
A Little History about SF SOS and their Gra$$ Root$$ Origins
September 15, 2003 BOMA San Francisco Advocate http://www.bomasf.org/pdf/adv/advocate_092203.html
Business leaders organize to seize greater role in city's future
http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2002/11/04/story1.html
Feinstein to the rescue
(Don) Fisher's role is no accident. According to aides on Feinstein's staff, SFSOS was sired after the senator's limo got stuck in traffic in the Mission district in late summer. She saw a homeless man defecating on the street. Infuriated, she placed a call to Fisher, who has a long history of pressuring for change. Fisher and Hellman each put up a reported $300,000 to $500,000, and SFSOS was born.
Fisher began hosting groups of up to 45 people in the art-filled board room at Gap Inc.'s headquarters to introduce the concept. He usually left the room, allowing Wade Randlett, a political consultant who has become SFSOS' president, to lay out the group's agenda.
"We think there's a big market of people terribly frustrated with the current quality of life who, given the opportunity to speak for themselves, will do it," Randlett said.
Though business leaders are fueling the latest effort, including donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop the organization, some of them say they do not want to play a dominant role.
"Big business is more and more irrelevant," Hellman said. "Instead of worrying about what the large businesses think, we have to go to the people who don't have an opportunity" to make a difference in the outcome of issues. "My hope is that (SFSOS) is taken over by neighborhood leaders."
...
"The business community is concerned about a seat at the table?" said Chris Daly, regarded as one of the most liberal members of the Board of Supervisors. "The business community has owned the table for 50 years. It looks like a political move to fight against neighborhood power in San Francisco."
http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2003/03/31/story3.html
Leaders set to turn SOS into action - Eric Young
SFSOS is not the only political group in San Francisco to draw considerable business backing. But it differs from other groups in that organizers hope its issues and message resonate among a broad swath of city's voters, giving SFSOS "grassroots" cachet. That grassroots appearance could be difficult to achieve, SFSOS organizers said, given the group's origins.
http://www.namebase.org/books23.html
Miles, Sara. How to Hack a Party Line: The Democrats and Silicon Valley. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001. 248 pages.
Sara Miles is a progressive San Francisco-based writer who once worked for Mother Jones magazine. Portions of this book have appeared in Wired, Wired News, San Francisco Focus, and the New York Times Magazine. On the surface, this is a witty study of a bagman for the Democratic Party, Wade Randlett, as Miles follows him around Silicon Valley during the late 1990s. Randlett is a power-hungry backroom operator who is trying to funnel Silicon Valley's wealth into the coffers of Clinton and Gore, by organizing astroturf committees and attending parties given by rich people. His only ideology might be called "opportunistic centrism." Miles finds him interesting and appalling at the same time.
http://www.sfsos.org/signalflag/vol1number28_09-23-03.htm
Golden Gate Concourse Plans Moving Forward (more SF SOS Propaganda)
___________________________________
Now, call your Board Supervisor and Mayor Newsom and ask them to Save the Historic Pedestrian Tunnels by stopping the MCCP from going forward with construction while litigation continues.
They plan to begin in March.
Save Golden Gate Park! is a legal defense committee which has filed suit against the City and the Music Concourse Community Partnership (MCCP).
For more information:
http://www.sfpix.com
Add Your Comments
Comments
(Hide Comments)
Re: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/02/18/EDGLU510U51.DTL
San Francisco's Revolving Door - an editorial by Ken Garcia
Dear Mr. Garcia,
While it is understandable that you have space restrictions that prevent a full response, one would hope you might use some of your space to answer substantive questions about the legality of the $54 million municipal revenue bond to pay for park garage.
Why not explain how the ground-breaking for the garage can proceed in March, if the revenue bonds haven't even been sold yet??? Who's going to buy them with litigation proceeding for the next year or longer???
The Concourse Authority and the Music Concourse Community Partnership have jointly transferred control and management of Golden Gate Park into private hands. Commissioner John Rizzo has stated publicly that this is the case. Yet you claim the Authority complies with Prop J and provide no examples.
"It's too bad that a small band of naysayers can put the brakes, even temporarily, on a plan approved by the vast majority of city voters and elected officials." - ken garcia
When you make this assertion, you clearly imply that the "plan" (the Bechtel garage design sacrificing the historic pedestrian tunnels, Warren Hellman's 35 year ground lease, and a $54 million municipal revenue bond) which was approved by the Board of Supervisors and the Planning Department, was also approved by the vast majority of city voters. This is simply not the case. The voters were kept in the dark.
The voters have not had the benefit a single publc hearing before the Board of Supervisors to discuss the $54 million revenue bond. The bond measure was contained in the ground lease approved in early December which illegally privatizes and transfers control of public park land in violation of the City Charter. Why don't you address this fact, Ken?
The voters approved Prop J in 1998 which provided that any proposed garage would be funded "entirely by one or more philanthropic donations." Had San Francisco voters been asked to approve a municipal revenue bond on June 2, 1998, Prop J would have failed. David Binder stated last May 17, 2003, that had voters been asked to approve a bond measure for the garage, Prop J would have gone down to defeat.
Binder also stated that had voters been told that the concourse roads and cross park commuter traffic were NOT going to be removed to create the promised auto free Pedestrian Oasis, Prop J would not have been approved by voters.
You stated, "The garage is a necessary element for the success of the new de Young Museum and the soon-to-be rebuilt California Academy of Sciences." If that were true, one would think that Hellman's Music Concourse Community Partnership and the Planning Department would have produced an Environmental Impact Report that addressed the interdependency of the institutions and their garage. But they did not. They chopped a massive $500 million development into three parts and willfully avoided a comprehensive environmental review of the project. Why don't you address that?
As it reads now, the Concourse Garage EIR, which was produced by EIP Associates and funded with $700,000 in misappropriated State Prop 40 - Clean Water, Clean Parks funding, is absolute garbage. It illuminates nothing and obscures everything. Much like your editorital hit piece against our citizen's right to sue in the public interest.
Stephen Willis
Save Golden Gate Park!
*********************************************************
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/02/18/EDGLU510U51.DTL
"Garcia, Ken" <KGarcia [at] sfchronicle.com> wrote:
Dear Mr. Willis:
There are no factual errors in the editorial. It is true that space does not often allow us to go into the merits of lawsuits and complaints, but if you go back into the paper's archives you will see the arguments of the lawsuits over the years laid out in full detail, some of which were briefly summarized in the editorial.
Yes, voters did not approve the EIR. That was up to the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors. The editorial never suggested otherwise. But yes, the voters did approve the garage and the creation of the concourse authority and it has received full due process and proper approvals.
It's up to the courts to decide if the lawsuits have merit. But our editorial position, so far, is that the concourse authority has met the obligations that the voters set in approving Prop. J.
Thanks for your time and consideration.
Regards,
Ken Garcia
*******************************************************************
The following letter is our original response to Ken's column:
Editor,
We take exception to the Chronicle's disparaging tone and factual errors in its editorial 'S.F.'s Revolving Door.' Labeling us as "a small band of naysayers" obscures the fact that we were joined by many of the City's most eminent civic groups in opposing the Concourse Garage Environmental Impact Report (EIR): American Society of Landscape Archittects, the Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board, Walk San Francisco, Rescue Muni, San Francisco Tomorrow, Sierra Club San Francisco Group, San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, San Francisco Architectural Heritage, Rails to Trails Conservancy, San Francisco Beautiful, and many neighborhood associations.
Our suit addresses concerns that we raised repeatedly over the past five years: compliance with past voter initiatives' intent, the destruction of the historic pedestrian tunnels, increased traffic congestion within the park, the second automobile entrance at the Concourse, the lack of transit alterna tives, and the illegal appropriation of public monies to finance this boondoggle.
These are serious i ssues of public policy -- not mere " naysaying." We request a respectful airing of the issues in this newspaper as we seek adjudication of our claims in court.
Stephen Willis
Save Golden Gate Park!
Note: Editor, this is in response to your commentary in Wednesday's edition:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/02/18/EDGLU510U51.DTL
San Francisco's Revolving Door - an editorial by Ken Garcia
Dear Mr. Garcia,
While it is understandable that you have space restrictions that prevent a full response, one would hope you might use some of your space to answer substantive questions about the legality of the $54 million municipal revenue bond to pay for park garage.
Why not explain how the ground-breaking for the garage can proceed in March, if the revenue bonds haven't even been sold yet??? Who's going to buy them with litigation proceeding for the next year or longer???
The Concourse Authority and the Music Concourse Community Partnership have jointly transferred control and management of Golden Gate Park into private hands. Commissioner John Rizzo has stated publicly that this is the case. Yet you claim the Authority complies with Prop J and provide no examples.
"It's too bad that a small band of naysayers can put the brakes, even temporarily, on a plan approved by the vast majority of city voters and elected officials." - ken garcia
When you make this assertion, you clearly imply that the "plan" (the Bechtel garage design sacrificing the historic pedestrian tunnels, Warren Hellman's 35 year ground lease, and a $54 million municipal revenue bond) which was approved by the Board of Supervisors and the Planning Department, was also approved by the vast majority of city voters. This is simply not the case. The voters were kept in the dark.
The voters have not had the benefit a single publc hearing before the Board of Supervisors to discuss the $54 million revenue bond. The bond measure was contained in the ground lease approved in early December which illegally privatizes and transfers control of public park land in violation of the City Charter. Why don't you address this fact, Ken?
The voters approved Prop J in 1998 which provided that any proposed garage would be funded "entirely by one or more philanthropic donations." Had San Francisco voters been asked to approve a municipal revenue bond on June 2, 1998, Prop J would have failed. David Binder stated last May 17, 2003, that had voters been asked to approve a bond measure for the garage, Prop J would have gone down to defeat.
Binder also stated that had voters been told that the concourse roads and cross park commuter traffic were NOT going to be removed to create the promised auto free Pedestrian Oasis, Prop J would not have been approved by voters.
You stated, "The garage is a necessary element for the success of the new de Young Museum and the soon-to-be rebuilt California Academy of Sciences." If that were true, one would think that Hellman's Music Concourse Community Partnership and the Planning Department would have produced an Environmental Impact Report that addressed the interdependency of the institutions and their garage. But they did not. They chopped a massive $500 million development into three parts and willfully avoided a comprehensive environmental review of the project. Why don't you address that?
As it reads now, the Concourse Garage EIR, which was produced by EIP Associates and funded with $700,000 in misappropriated State Prop 40 - Clean Water, Clean Parks funding, is absolute garbage. It illuminates nothing and obscures everything. Much like your editorital hit piece against our citizen's right to sue in the public interest.
Stephen Willis
Save Golden Gate Park!
*********************************************************
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/02/18/EDGLU510U51.DTL
"Garcia, Ken" <KGarcia [at] sfchronicle.com> wrote:
Dear Mr. Willis:
There are no factual errors in the editorial. It is true that space does not often allow us to go into the merits of lawsuits and complaints, but if you go back into the paper's archives you will see the arguments of the lawsuits over the years laid out in full detail, some of which were briefly summarized in the editorial.
Yes, voters did not approve the EIR. That was up to the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors. The editorial never suggested otherwise. But yes, the voters did approve the garage and the creation of the concourse authority and it has received full due process and proper approvals.
It's up to the courts to decide if the lawsuits have merit. But our editorial position, so far, is that the concourse authority has met the obligations that the voters set in approving Prop. J.
Thanks for your time and consideration.
Regards,
Ken Garcia
*******************************************************************
The following letter is our original response to Ken's column:
Editor,
We take exception to the Chronicle's disparaging tone and factual errors in its editorial 'S.F.'s Revolving Door.' Labeling us as "a small band of naysayers" obscures the fact that we were joined by many of the City's most eminent civic groups in opposing the Concourse Garage Environmental Impact Report (EIR): American Society of Landscape Archittects, the Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board, Walk San Francisco, Rescue Muni, San Francisco Tomorrow, Sierra Club San Francisco Group, San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, San Francisco Architectural Heritage, Rails to Trails Conservancy, San Francisco Beautiful, and many neighborhood associations.
Our suit addresses concerns that we raised repeatedly over the past five years: compliance with past voter initiatives' intent, the destruction of the historic pedestrian tunnels, increased traffic congestion within the park, the second automobile entrance at the Concourse, the lack of transit alterna tives, and the illegal appropriation of public monies to finance this boondoggle.
These are serious i ssues of public policy -- not mere " naysaying." We request a respectful airing of the issues in this newspaper as we seek adjudication of our claims in court.
Stephen Willis
Save Golden Gate Park!
Note: Editor, this is in response to your commentary in Wednesday's edition:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/02/18/EDGLU510U51.DTL
For more information:
http://www.sfpix.com
The essential PR spin against the garage litigants focuses on portraying a costly delay to garage construction due to the intemperate and unreasonable demands of a small group of garage detractors. Never mind our civil rights to litigate.
Rather than answer a single question related to the many violations of Prop J, or the California Environmental Quality Act, or the City's General Plan, City Charter or Transit First Policy, this alleged SF Resident repeats some of the basic lies that have characterized the SF SOS and the MCCP.
"The underground walkways were leaky, and dangerous in dim light."
There have been no reported crimes in any of the three concourse pedestrian tunnels. This foul mischaracterization began with Bechtel's Garage Study, 1999.
"You can stamp tiny feet all day insisting that everyone HAS to take public transit to the park. This is unfair and unlikely."
The litigants must be childish, unfair and unreasonable, according to this SF Resident, who is most likely an employee of one of the lying PR firms associated with the MCCP and the Garage, like Don Solem & Associates, or Public Affairs Managemenent (PAM).
"That museum is a regional facility, and people from outside SF enjoy it and have every right to access it via public roadways."
There are over 5500 surface parking spaces in Golden Gate Park, and plenty for all of the museum patrons, disabled, children and families that may choose to drive to the park. It's the cultural institutions who want to remove 200 surface spaces in the Concourse, but add 800 underground, for a net increase in the concourse area of 600 spaces. The surface spaces throughout the park were free, and the MCCP proposes $2.50 to 3.00 per hour parking fees if their unfunded and ill-advised boondoggle were to ever actually open for business, which is not looking very likely at this point.
"The elitism of the anti-car people is horrific. Not everyone is 22 and willing to ride a bike in the rain. Grow up and deal with reality"
Talk about elitism. The MCCP is an elite group representing the deYoung Museum and the Academy of Sciences. They promise all kinds of things which combined would result in an environmentally friendly paring garage, and an auto free Pedestrian Oasis free of dangerous cross park speeding commuter traffic.
But they were lying. It was all about Greenwashing their stinking garage, and now they're in trouble because they don't have the money to build the garage they promised wouldn't cost the taxpayers one dime.
Let's hear the SF Res, who probably lives in Marin, address the broken promises made by the City and the Concourse Authority and Warren Hellman's little investor group.
Until then, you know you're just dealing with another flack who will enlist ad hominum attacks and circular reasoning and every other linguistic technique to avoid the real questions surrounding the underground garage scam.
Since the garage proponents failed to explain their ground lease and municipal revenue bond to the voters before it was approved by the Board of Supervisors, and since both violate the terms of Prop J, 1998, these issues will be decided in the courts.
The City and the garage proponents are engaged in a bold attempt to perpetrate a fraud on the voters and taxpayers, and it will not succeed. But they will keep on trying until all of their public funding dries up. And it will dry up when the voters wise up to the waste taxdollars that have already been thrown at this project.
Save Golden Gate Park!
Rather than answer a single question related to the many violations of Prop J, or the California Environmental Quality Act, or the City's General Plan, City Charter or Transit First Policy, this alleged SF Resident repeats some of the basic lies that have characterized the SF SOS and the MCCP.
"The underground walkways were leaky, and dangerous in dim light."
There have been no reported crimes in any of the three concourse pedestrian tunnels. This foul mischaracterization began with Bechtel's Garage Study, 1999.
"You can stamp tiny feet all day insisting that everyone HAS to take public transit to the park. This is unfair and unlikely."
The litigants must be childish, unfair and unreasonable, according to this SF Resident, who is most likely an employee of one of the lying PR firms associated with the MCCP and the Garage, like Don Solem & Associates, or Public Affairs Managemenent (PAM).
"That museum is a regional facility, and people from outside SF enjoy it and have every right to access it via public roadways."
There are over 5500 surface parking spaces in Golden Gate Park, and plenty for all of the museum patrons, disabled, children and families that may choose to drive to the park. It's the cultural institutions who want to remove 200 surface spaces in the Concourse, but add 800 underground, for a net increase in the concourse area of 600 spaces. The surface spaces throughout the park were free, and the MCCP proposes $2.50 to 3.00 per hour parking fees if their unfunded and ill-advised boondoggle were to ever actually open for business, which is not looking very likely at this point.
"The elitism of the anti-car people is horrific. Not everyone is 22 and willing to ride a bike in the rain. Grow up and deal with reality"
Talk about elitism. The MCCP is an elite group representing the deYoung Museum and the Academy of Sciences. They promise all kinds of things which combined would result in an environmentally friendly paring garage, and an auto free Pedestrian Oasis free of dangerous cross park speeding commuter traffic.
But they were lying. It was all about Greenwashing their stinking garage, and now they're in trouble because they don't have the money to build the garage they promised wouldn't cost the taxpayers one dime.
Let's hear the SF Res, who probably lives in Marin, address the broken promises made by the City and the Concourse Authority and Warren Hellman's little investor group.
Until then, you know you're just dealing with another flack who will enlist ad hominum attacks and circular reasoning and every other linguistic technique to avoid the real questions surrounding the underground garage scam.
Since the garage proponents failed to explain their ground lease and municipal revenue bond to the voters before it was approved by the Board of Supervisors, and since both violate the terms of Prop J, 1998, these issues will be decided in the courts.
The City and the garage proponents are engaged in a bold attempt to perpetrate a fraud on the voters and taxpayers, and it will not succeed. But they will keep on trying until all of their public funding dries up. And it will dry up when the voters wise up to the waste taxdollars that have already been thrown at this project.
Save Golden Gate Park!
=v= The astroturf corporate front group San Francisco SOS (Senator Feinstein and The Gap's P.R. flunkies) has taken notice of Trees Not Cars, only to call us "phony?" How richly ironic.
We're not phony, though we do tend to toil in obscurity. It's a thankless and often fruitless tasks to try to save trees in San Francisco, as you wind through a labyrinth of Catch-22s, each of which leads to the inexorable destruction of trees. We're the third group (that I'm aware of) who's taken on this task.
For more information:
http://www.scorcher.org/tnc/
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