Having been thoroughly panned by the Presidio Trust’s staff, the singular proposal to redevelop the 30-acre Fort Winfield Scott campus in the Presidio has been revised and refined (as expected).

From the revised proposal:

The Presidio Trust Preliminary Staff Report and feedback from the Presidio Trust board at the April 24 public presentation focused on four major issues:

● Fort Scott must be a mission driven campus for the duration of the lease.
● All required site and infrastructure improvements must be funded by the project.
● Relocation of the Park Police must be funded.
● Adequate transportation access must be provided and funded by the project.

The following summarizes the efforts of the Campus for Change (C4C) team since the April 24 board meeting to address these concerns.

This effort has included meetings with Trust staff, SFMTA, Plant Construction and various consultants as needed to discuss transportation, infrastructure, police relocation and financing issues. We have also had numerous internal discussions with the C4C team to refine how we structure the ownership and financing of the project to support additional costs and better assure the Trust of our commitment and ability to maintain the mission-driven foundation of the Campus for Change. The result of these efforts has culminated in a thoughtfully revised proposal that addresses the Trust’s core concerns by:

● Creating a new C4C Nonprofit to enter into the master lease with the Trust and govern the development, long-term leasing and operations of the Campus for Change to ensure mission, purpose, and values drive decisions.
● Funding increased SFMTA and Presidio transportation costs through a combination of increased ridership revenue and Fort Scott parking revenues.
● Funding all required infrastructure costs based on current updated construction cost estimates of $65.5 million (and nearly $100 million with soft costs, escalation and contingency).
● Developing new police facilities at the Stables or other approved location with funding secured by a combination of historic tax credit equity and bank financing, supported by rent paid by the Park Police.

The proposed C4C structure:

The rough transportation plan and assumptions for handling an additional 2,570 employees and 1,145 visitors to the site, resulting in an estimated 10,570 trips, each day:

“Through a robust Transportation Demand Management Plan, we intend to utilize incentives and provide enhanced facilities to encourage walking and the use of bicycles which we conservatively estimate will account for 13% of employee trips each (primarily internal trips). Because parking is limited, we have assumed a maximum utilization of 25% of our daily trips being served by automobile. We estimate 14% of those coming to Fort Scott will arrive by TNC (Uber or Lyft, although none are assumed to be employees- all will be visitors). The remaining 35% of trips will be served by transit (Muni, Golden Gate Transit or PresidiGO). Based on our discussions with the SF Bike Coalition, and others in the transportation community, we believe these are realistic estimates.”

The revised proposal is now slated to be presented to the Presidio Trust Public Board of Directors on June 19, with time allotted for another round of public comments and the Board’s decision expected that evening.  Keep in mind that the Trust’s estimated budget for restoring, improving and redeveloping the campus has been running closer to the $200 million mark.

And once again, the proposing team has been aiming to secure control of the Fort Scott Campus by the fourth quarter of 2021, start work by the end of that year and complete the redevelopment in the fourth quarter of 2023.  We’ll keep you posted and plugged-in.

11 thoughts on “Refined Pitch for Presidio Redevelopment”
  1. thats too many automobile trips into the presidio. we need to protect the park from increased traffic.

    1. honestly, i think they need to guarantee less than 500 new auto trips per day. they are now stating that it will be around 4000, and im sure they are underestimating. this would be outrageous to approve this many new car trips into a national park. that segment between the marina gate and presidio blvd is already jammed with traffic at rush hour.

  2. Yikes!
    That’s a huge amount of new traffic and people! If this plan is approved, the Presidio will cease to be a recreational asset for current residents and instead become a glorified office park. Goodbye urban oasis, hello rows of idling Googlebuses.

  3. also curious how they came up with 13% of trips by bike since only 3.9% of people commute by bike to work in SF (to get to the original data, go to US Census and then search S.F. or Oakland, and then the commute data is under the “business and industry” tab).

    U.S. Census figures for 2017 show the commuting population of San Francisco at 495,315. It shows the cycling rate at 3.9 percent. However, the number was 20% from the Mission.

    Its reasonable to assume the people using WeWork in the Presidio will not come from the Mission as there is plenty of wework locations on market street which is a much easier commute from the mission. So in theory, the bike commuting will be less than 3.9% based on these numbers. that would put the car commuters (own car) over 35%, as well as 14% from lyft/uber per their data (probably low too). That’s 49% of trips by car. 49% of 10,570 is 5180 new car commutes in presidio every day. that’s insane!

    the post says there is time for another round of public comments. Where do we provide those?

    1. Written comments will be accepted through June 11, either by email (fortscott@presidiotrust.gov) or post (Presidio Trust, Attn: Josh Bagley, 103 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA 94129). And as noted above, the Board meeting on June 19 will include a call for public comments as well (immediately after which the Board is expected to render its decision).

    2. I’m also skeptical about that 13% estimate. The Presidio is quite hilly and that will limit bicyclists to only those fit enough to endure the climbs. I’d love to see 13%+ happen though.

      1. Except that isn’t QUITE what it says: more precisely “walking and the use of bicycles …for 13% of employee trips each (primarily internal trips)”; IOW, toddling across – or laps around – the parade ground…the hilly-ness is pretty much avoided.

        1. Thanks. Really odd that they would count these “internal trips” of a site so small as part of their transportation analysis. Seems like by far the biggest impacts are people going to/from the site from other locations within the city. I’d expect internal trips to be 90%+ walking on a site where the longest trip is about a quarter mile, or a five minute walk. Few people would even think of driving such a short distance.

  4. Connecting these fragmented development pieces in the Presidio by shuttle to each other and to trunkline SF transit is certainly a better response than doing nothing, but the shuttles are both hostage to – and contributors of – street congestion. I wish that a bolder, higher-order vision of transit connectivity were a fundamental of the future Presidio.

    The Central Subway is undergoing an alignment study that will include its possible extension to the Lombard Gate/Letterman area. If this were integrated with the Main Post and terminated in the vicinity of the Toll Plaza, it would transform transportation not only for downtown commuters and Presidio employees/residents, but also for every tourist who wanted to get to the National Park, the Palace of Fine Arts, Crissy Field and especially, the Bridge. Fort Scott is a very short walk from the Toll Plaza. I don’t see this transit vision being precluded by this proposal, but I don’t see it being embraced either.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *