Neighbors Say Golden Gate Park Garage EIR Flawed

By Carol Dimmick

In January dozens of Sunset and Richmond district residents told the S.F. Planning Commission that the Environment Impact Report (EIR) for a controversial plan to build a parking garage beneath the Music Concourse in Golden Gate Park is deeply flawed and ignores problems that will negatively impact their neighborhoods.

The $500 million, 800-space facility has been the center of controversy since 1998 when voters passed Proposition J which approved building a garage and authorized other transportation improvements in the park.

Because of concerns that the garage would tear up the Music Concourse, the area located in front of the Bandshell, it was designed in two sections that will be connected by an underground roadway. One section of the garage will be built under the roadway in front of the California Academy of Sciences on the south side of the concourse and the other under the roadway in front of the new M.H. de Young Memorial Museum on the north side. The garage will have two entrances, one at Fulton Street and 10th Avenue in the Richmond District and one on Music Concourse Drive near Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.

Since the passage of Prop. J in 1998, the garage has become a focal point for residents who flocked to a Jan. 23 meeting of the SF Planning Commission to express their frustration - they say the EIR ignores the impact the garage will have on parking and safety issues in their neighborhoods.

Stephen Abrams, a traffic consultant hired by the North Park Neighbors Association to study the EIR, told commissioners that the neighbors have legitimate concerns and that more traffic studies are needed.
"This (EIR) is a simplistic review. It says there will be no significant impacts on Fulton Street, but if you are removing 1,300 parking spaces from the park it impacts the surrounding neighborhood.

Mitigation measures are not included in the EIR that address the parking issue," Abrams said. Sunset residents who live near the proposed Ninth Avenue entrance to the garage told commissioners that parking and traffic gridlock will occur in their neighborhood as a result of the plan. They also urged commissioners not to approve the EIR for the garage until more traffic studies are completed.

Lisa Orsaba, a business owner in the Inner Sunset, said the EIR failed to include traffic studies along critical business corridors on the south side of the park.

"Only one study was done - of Lincoln Avenue," she said. "The Ninth and Irving intersection is critical. We will continue to object to the EIR until sufficient traffic studies are included."

John Rizzo, a commissioner at the Golden Gate Park Concourse Authority, the body responsible for overseeing the design and construction of the facility, agreed that more traffic studies concerning the south side of the garage are needed.

"There needs to be language (in the EIR) about the south side of the park. The Ninth Avenue and Lincoln Way side needs to be treated more equally," he said.

Rizzo also criticized the EIR for not including an alternative plan for the garage. Still others said the EIR failed to adequately consider a broader range of issues.

Marianne Miller, a Sunset resident and member of the Alliance for Golden Gate Park, an organization formed to fight the garage, said the EIR is flawed because it fails to take a comprehensive approach to analyzing the impact the garage and other new projects, like the new de Young Museum, will have on the Music Concourse.

"Nowhere are there cumulative impacts. S.E.Q.U.A. requires it. The document is fallacious and it should be sent back for more work," Miller said.

Despite the neighbors' concerns, Jill Wynns, president of S.F. Board of Education and a member of Keep the de Young in the Park, urged the commissioners to move the project forward quickly and reminded them that the garage was the key to keeping the de Young Museum and the California Academy of Sciences in the park.

Several employees of the Academy of Sciences expressed concern that the plan fails to provide access to the facility for vehicles traveling through the Music Concourse.

"We need access for busses and vehicles to bring school children," said Martha Crop, chairman of the board of directors at the Academy of Sciences.
The Planning Commission meets in a couple of months to consider whether or not to certify the garage EIR.

At that same meeting commissioners will determine whether the design of the garage is consistent with the city's General Plan.