Tower for Rent, with Million-Dollar Views
A plan to open iconic Coit Tower for private parties has sparked debate
Last Friday, a group of about 60 writers, artists, Telegraph Hill residents and community activists gathered in a North Beach art gallery to hear seven poets wax lyrical about that oh-so-San Francisco landmark, Coit Tower — and protest a proposed plan by city officials to open the top floor for private parties.
Lincoln Bergman, a San Francisco poet, captured the fervor of the crowd with his verse in praise of the New Deal-era artwork inside the tower:
The beautiful murals that meet us,
In the tower some teens call Coit-us,
We must make agitation
To fund preservation
Unified, no one can defeat us!
The event was “a classic North Beach happening,” said Jon Golinger, president of the association Telegraph Hill Dwellers and the leader of the Protect Coit Tower effort, which is a reaction to what some residents say is a disturbing trend toward public space being commercialized.
Over the past few years, in response to deep budget cuts, the city’s parks department has become increasingly focused on finding ways to raise money from its property holdings. Many of those efforts have led to neighborhood skirmishes.
“Privatization is bad,” said John Rinaldi, an author and activist known as Chicken John, who led an effort to keep food trucks out of Dolores Park last year. “Our park system is not supposed to be a revenue generation system.”
Golinger’s group is planning to turn in signatures on Monday to get a measure on the June ballot that would strictly limit “commercial activities and private events at Coit Tower” and also require the Recreation and Park Department to earmark more money from admission fees to maintenance of the tower, which was built in 1933. The city earns around $650,000 a year, largely from the $7 entrance fee.
The department is seeking a new vendor to run both the tower’s gift shop and the new event program, which it hopes will begin by summer.
For Golinger, the concern is that using Coit Tower for parties would transform “what is one of San Francisco’s most iconic public spaces.”
Phil Ginsburg, head of the parks department, disagrees.
Richard Rothman
While there were 26 artists who work on the murals at Coit Tower only two of then worked with Diego Rivera. The SanFrancisco City Guide gives tours at Coit Tower every Wed and Sat at 11 am.
Lincoln Bergman
As the poet whose limerick is quoted in the article, just wanted to note that I and many of the others who read at the event are part of the Revolutionary Poets Brigade, a growing national and international organization. Among those from the RPB who read that great evening were Rosemary Manno, Neelie Cherkovski, Bobby Coleman, Dottie Payne, and Jack Hirschman. For those who like limericks and who love the Coit Tower murals, here are two more:
Oh, what a wonder Coit Tower
Where WPA murals did flower
For their saving let’s plan
Good folks of San Fran
For they represent people’s power!
On the skyline Coit Tower still stands
On its walls working people grasp hands
Justice, peace, art, and freedom
Goddess knows how we need ‘em
All over the world, in all lands!
And there's more where those came from!
Lincoln Bergman
Lincoln Bergman
Oh and in the limerick in the article, the word coitus should best be hyphenated co-i-tus and of course pronounced to rhyme with "meet us" and "no one can defeat us," so co-ee-tus.
Lorraine Woodruff-Long
You are confusing the Beach Chalet playing fields improvement plan with privatization in this article. The same improvement was made for the Crocker Amazon Fields by the same philanthropic organization (City Fields.) The result is a rebirth of athletic and community activity in a San Francisco neighborhood that was previously underused, and in fact, shunned. The Beach Chalet fields currently sit idle and unused because SF Rec & Park's budget cannot adequately sustain necessary maintenance.
You should know that the City Fields focus on field improvement was born from a "wish list" by City of SF Rec & Park officials in 2005, when asked what could they do for parks to make a significant improvement in access to fields and healthy outdoor activity. City officials requested these field improvements as something that, with declining budgets and revenues for SFRPD, would have a huge impact and that was increasingly unlikely to ever be provided through City budgets. It was not imposed on the City or SFRP from an outside entity - in other words, it is not privatization.
SF Ocean Edge
The proposed Beach Chalet athletics fields project is a major construction project. This project will rip out over 7 acres of meadow and topsoil and replace them with artificial turf -- a gravel base, plastic carpet, and ground-up tire waste. This is an area larger than Candlestick Park!
It will also install 10 banks of 60 foots lights -- 150,000 watts of light that will stay on from sunset to 10:00 p.m. every night of the year. The lights will shine over the low trees that line the Great Highway. To get an idea of what the lights will look like, go to 40th Avenue and Wawona any evening after dark. The lights are visible all the way down to La Playa.
Over 55 trees will be cut down - part of the Park's all-important windbreak. The current parking lot will be expanded, despite San Francisco being a transit-first city. Add to this bleacher seating for over 1,000 people and more lighting for new concrete paths.
This development project will have a major, negative impact on the wildlife habitat and the naturalistic and historic character of the western end of Golden Gate Park. The Golden Gate Audubon Society described this project as the environmental equivalent of installing a 7-acre asphalt parking lot in Golden Gate Park.
There is a direct link between this project and the unilateral privatization movement by the Rec and Park Department. At night, the fields will be rented out for fees to adult soccer leagues, many of them from out of town. The Recreation and Park Department has hired a great many 6-figure upper management staff over the last few years, but somehow never replaced the gardener for the Beach Chalet who retired.
The western end of Golden Gate Park is not shunned. In our outreach, we talk to people all over San Francisco. In fact, this area is appreciated and used by the neighbors and by visitors to the Park as the park was intended, as naturalistic parkland.
Before the fields were fenced in 1998 (without public input or choice), many people used the fields for picnicing, hiking and kite flying; there was even a concert there to celebrate the 60's! Today, many people hike the trail between the newly restored Murphy Windmill and the Beach Chalet, and enjoy the birds and other wildlife in the area. The western end of Golden Gate Park was designed to be left this way -- we recommend going on-line and reading the eloquent Golden Gate Park Master Plan to understand the overall plan for the Park and why the western edge is so important.
We support youth soccer, but this is the wrong place for this project. We hope that everyone wil support the Compromise Alternative -- renovate the Beach Chalet fields with natural grass, good drainage, gopher controls, and state of the art irrigation and NO night lights. Use the rest of the $10 million in funding for other playing fields in San Francisco -- thereby giving kids more places to play.
Come to our website to learn more! sfoceanedge.org
U Ragazzu
Privatization usually happens from within, in this case, Rec & Park (Wreck our Parks). Its push to pave, build and plasticize in the open spaces of our parks are 100% at odds with the city's original intentions.