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Friday, September 17, 2010

UPDATE AND CALL TO ACTION

There will be a Presidio Trust Board meeting Sept. 22, Wednesday at 6:30 at the Golden Gate Club (next to the Presidio National Cemetery.)

Be there. It is your last chance to speak directly to the Trust Board before they approve a large hotel in the middle of the parade grounds. If they can explain why a commercial hotel is needed in a historic National Park surrounded by 33,000 hotel rooms in the city, I would be surprised. If they can explain why the Trust plans to build this hotel which its own studies admit will have an "adverse effect" on the historic integrity of the 220 year old site, integrity that the Trust is required by law to protect, then they will speak with forked tongue. It's crunch time. Come and speak your mind.

There will be more interesting and, I hope, good stuff at this meeting. The Park Service and Trust agreed in a formal document months ago to work together to get a real visitors center on the Presidio, so people can understand the richness of its layered history from the birth of San Francisco to the Pacific Coast in World War Two. Finally, we will get an update at this meeting and hear from the new person who has been hired to lead this vital program.

By the way, did you notice that Dave Grubb, the Trust Board President who led the charge for the Fisher Museum Fiasco and then was replaced by the Secretary of the Interior is now REAPPOINTED to the Trust Board. Do those folks on the Trust contribute big time to politicians? Are they tight with Pelosi?

I apologize to the many who have commented on this blog without a response. Presidio Pal has been up to his what'sit writing and researching tangled historic preservation laws and regulations to write the documents that have made a difference. We got the hotel cut back from 95,000 square feet (humongous) to 70,000 of new construction (merely huge). Best, the height is now 30 feet instead of a towering 45 feet. But, there is no place for a nonessential commercial hotel in a National Historic Landmark District...NO WAY, NO NEED !

If you enjoy self-abuse, go to the link to our formal statement about the hotel and other technical stuff. It is in the press release on the first page of www.presidioassociation.org. Important but dull technical matters we have been slaving on for the past months explain the process and who's who.

See you Wednesday, 6:30, Golden Gate Club

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