“Sup. Mirkarimi, in response to my email, writes: “[T]he entire plan [for 55 Laguna] successfully emerged from the Land Use Committee on Monday. It now goes to the full Board next week where it’s poised for strong support.”
Since I live in the Haight, I go by the campus every day on the bus and on foot, and something about that big, blank, street-deadening wall really bugs me. So I’ve been following this saga pretty closely, and while it’s been frustrating to watch the planning process drag on for so long, all the haggling does seem to have produced a decent project. My impression is that, as usual, Mirkarimi played a key role in bringing everyone to the table.
So I guess the lessons to be learned are twofold: (1) Elect good supervisors, and (2) Don’t let the loud anti-everything minority be the only voice they hear once they’re in office.”
[Editor’s Note: And perhaps: (3) It pays to get plugged-in.]
∙ Supervisor Peskin Engineers An End-Run (And Ending) For 55 Laguna [SocketSite]
∙ 55 Laguna: Approved On Appeal And In Front Of San Francisco’s BOS [SocketSite]
Was this “end run” even real? The land use committee is only composed of Peskin, Maxwell, and Sandoval, (the others often follow his lead) so it seems to me that assuming this was even possible, he would have had a good chance to get his way if this was true.
I am really excited about this. I live a couple of blocks west of the campus and I always thought it was a big waste of space. I wonder what effect a new development will have on the commercial block just west of Laguna on Haight Street? It’s funky little area but could use some spiffing up– which might happen if there are more customers in walking distance of the strip.
I am SO pleased the ideologically strained argument for preserving “public” zoning here is being discarded in favor of the pragmatic re-use of a blighted parcel of land. Logic and common sense wins the day, for once. Maybe now that it’s “privatized” I’ll actually have a reason to set foot there (in the new public park).