Parkmerced in San Francisco California is at risk by dual development proposals by the Parkmerced "vision" project www.parkmercedvision.com and SFSU-CSU Masterplan www.sfsumasterplan.org which jointly divide and conquer one of the largest garden rental apartment communities in San Francisco, which is eligible for the local, state and national register. Parkmerced's Landscape was designed by Thomas Dolliver Church the "father" of modern landscape design. Every courtyard and open-space has elements of his design and style, and is UNIQUE as a vignette. The proposals to demolish the open-space, and regrade the entire site, is HIGHLY un-sustainable and is being touted under a veil of "green-$-greed" or "green-washing." Six national and local organizations including The Cultural Landscape Foundation, California Preservation Foundation, National Trust for Historic Preservation, have submitted a memo opposing the proposal which is based on predatory equity lending strategies we have seen emulated in the east coast developments by Stellar Management which just sold Parkmerced to Fortress Investments. Umbrella neighborhood organizations such as San Francisco Tommorrow (SFT), the West of Twin Peaks Central Council  (WOTPCC) and Coalition of San Francisco Neighborhoods (CSFN) have all raised concerns on the housing, transit, open-space, environmental impacts, and un-mitigated concerns raised by organizations prior. The lack of serious cummalative impact mitigation measures including preservation based strategies of "infill" or "transit first" policies on linking to BART and direct transit connections is circumvented by the EIR's for both projects, including avoiding cummalative analysis on the joint impacts of MULTIPLE projects on the masterplanned community of Parkmerced. The concern is amplified by removing (clear-cutting) all of the landscape, reducing through sell-off, and terming the gradation of tenants shared green space area as "courtyards" and the prior general open-space to relegate the areas for the developers convenience, and proposing this to be equal to a new washer-dryer-and-dishwasher for the new constructed units.  This ignores the carbon footprint of the project, its massive water use to re-grade, and replant an entire site of 191.2 acres prior, and the circumvention of state laws in the developer agreement on anything built post 1979 per Costa Hawkins, and other case law that states such agreements would be null in court. These projects also utilize SB375 and AB32 to circumvent adequate CEQA analysis and review of options/alternatives submitted by the public in the environmental impact reports.

Images of the site are available online at www.parkmercedlandscape.blogspot.com, and www.tclf.org Marvels of Modernism Landscapes @ Risk 2008 which was a travelling exhibition of the project through the Cultural Landscape Foundation. The tenants have started a new organization on Facebook the Parkmerced Action Coalition PmAC to collectively confront the efforts of the developer to thwart the tenants voice.

The hearings upcoming at the SF Planning Department and SF Board of Supervisors will be critical to demanding adequate independent analysis on the project and REQUIRING that the developer propose alternatives including SFSU-CSU that does not impact the site in such a large-scale redevelopment proposal on two sides.

The city is not in compliance in terms of a balanced housing development program that adequately provides rental housing in sufficient levels to ensure rental housing is available for the working class citizens of San Francisco. Parkmerced was built for this purpose and should remain so. The lack of essential housing was impacted when SFSU-CSU bought Stonestown Apartments and portions of Parkmerced for a loss of over 1,000 units of rent-controlled housing. The Memorandum of Understanding negotiated between city agencies and SFSU-CSU ignored the impacts on families, and neighbors in the increase in students on site. The lack of future family housing at an affordable level has impacted many families and displaced and gentrified the neighborhood in the flipping of the units due to their predominantly current student use.

Parkmerced is a national park, a national eligible site, and a unique landscape design that is one of only 4 such large scale planned endeavors by Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. in the post WW2 years. It is aged, but has many options to rennovate, restore, preserve, and protect. The lack of options that even include looking seriously at the structural existing conditions of the towers on site which received heavy damage during the 1987 quake requires proper and adequate analysis to determine if it would be better to replace the towers and preserve and protect the entire landscape portion of the site.

Send your emails to;

board.of.supervisors@sfgov.org

SF Planning Commission c/o Linda.Avery@sfgov.org

Thank you for your support in opposing wastefull demolition of significant urban planning in our city by the bay......