Presidio's Plan for Hospital Housing Draws Fire

By Carol Dimmick

The rhetorical temperature climbed in April when Richmond District neighbors threatened to bring a lawsuit against the Presidio Trust to stop it from converting the historic Public Health Service Hospital into a large housing project.

Claudia Lewis, president of Richmond Presidio Neighbors (RPN), announced that her organization would not hesitate to use the courts to block the Trust from turning the former hospital into a 350-unit apartment building they say is inappropriate for the site and detrimental to the neighborhood.

"We will leave no stone unturned," Lewis warned the board of directors at an April 14 community meeting held to solicit the neighbors' input on a recently released environment study of the project.

The former hospital sits on a 42-acre site in the Presidio alongside the affluent Lake Street neighborhood near 14th Avenue.

Lewis implied that a lawsuit might be the only way to block a project that neighbors say will escalate traffic and safety problems that are already at unacceptable levels.

"There has been no meaningful response to our concerns," she said.

Craig Middleton, executive director of the Presidio Trust, said he heard the neighbors concerns, but emphasized that his goal is to negotiate a final outcome that is good for everyone.

"I want to make the most money I can from a project that is appropriate for the national park and a city neighborhood," Middleton said.

The tension between the community and the Presidio Trust spiked after Trust officials announced their preference for the largest of four plans studied in a recently-released environmental study of the site.

The plan would allow a developer to rehabilitate the historic buildings on the property, as well as the non-historic wings of the hospital, and would allow up to 350 residential units to be built

According to Trust officials, the plan was crafted to capture the proposals of The John Stewart Company and Forest City Development, two developers competing for the right to develop the property. Trust officials, who chose Forest City to work with, describe the plan as a starting point for negotiations and not the final project.

Other alternatives studied in the environmental report include a plan to develop a 210-unit project with an additional 190,000 square feet for education use; a plan favored by the neighbors to build a 230-unit project that would remove the non-historic wings of the hospital; and a plan to build a 269 residential unit project, about half of which would be built at the environmentally-sensitive Battery Caulfield.

The announcement of a possible lawsuit that could stall development of the property puts additional pressure on Trust officials as they enter a sensitive six-month period of negotiations with Forest City.

The hospital is being restored as part of a comprehensive management package designed to put the Trust on a solid financial footing by 2013, the date set in an agreement reached with Congress when the Presidio was turned over to the Trust.

If negotiations proceed as planned, by the end of 2004 the Trust expects to sign a ground lease with Forest City that will bring more than $1 million a year in fees. After a deal is struck, the Trust will hold a series of public workshops to solicit community comment on the project.

More than 100 people, including elected representatives, came to express their opposition to a large project at the mid-April meeting.

The traffic that a large project would generate is one of several major issues raised by more than 100 Richmond residents who attended the mid-April community meeting.

Ron Miguel, president of the 1,600-member Planning Association for the Richmond, told board members the environmental report on the project is incomplete and should be expanded.

"The environmental assessment is deficient because it fails to describe adequately the differences among the different plans," Miguel told the Trust.

Middleton did not rule out the possibility of an expanded study and said he would make a decision sometime after the April 30 deadline for public comment.

At the mid-April meeting Trust officials also learned for the first time that a number of influential members of the affluent community might withhold financial support from future Presidio project if a plan is approved that the neighbors cannot support.

"How this is worked out with the community will set a precedent for other projects to come. The spirit of collaboration could effect philanthropy in the future," warned Amy Meyer, a member of People for a Golden Gate Recreation Area and a former member of the Trust.