Organized Labor

Demonstrations usually produce more heat than light. Our demonstration 21 April at the San Francisco Democratic Party Unity Luncheon certainly did. As a result, and despite my explanations, both the mainstream and alternative press misreported that we were protesting the failure of the Board of Supervisors to appoint Larry Mazzola, Jr. to the Board of Directors of the Golden Gate Bridge and Transportation District.

Fortunately at least some of the Supervisors understood that we were in fact protesting a particular version of legislation to rewrite Sections 10 and 11 of the Planning Code, and we succeeded in knocking that legislation off its fast track to passage and in advancing public discussion of it. The legislation purports to be a necessary result of last November’s Proposition J, which established a new Historic Preservation Commission. The Supervisors know now, on the contrary, that other rewrites that satisfy Proposition J are possible and available.

The press can hardly be blamed for not grasping how something as abstruse as details of the Planning Code can bring us to protest so vehemently. On the other hand, Building Trades members who were protesting that day before the Sir Francis Drake Hotel may not have been able to answer the questions of the press on exactly what they were protesting, but they understood – and we all understand – that our future is written in just such details.

At our “Rally for Jobs” 5 May across from City Hall I tried to shine more light on just how the proposed version of the Sections 10 and 11 rewrite is a problem for us by offering concrete examples of its effects. These were so dire that they may have seemed just rhetoric. To demonstrate that they were justified by a reading of the rewrite, here are chapter-and-verse explanations.

I said that a project could be stopped cold and delayed for months or completely eliminated by a small group of San Franciscans who nominated a building to be demolished for the project as historic, even if the building had sat empty for years, even if the project sponsor had spent years and hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in design and in obtaining City approvals, even if contractors had been signed up and had put in calls for dispatch from our hiring halls, right up until permits for the project were issued.

Section 1005.3 of the rewrite reads, in part, “In the case of a proposal for the nomination of a landmark … an organization which has historic preservation as a stated goal in its by-laws … may request the designation of a historic resource as a landmark….”

No requirement for the filing or approval of by-laws is given. A few folks could declare themselves an organization and draw up by-laws some evening at a kitchen table, then start nominating buildings, gardens, even entire neighborhoods as historic.

Nomination by itself clearly doesn’t mean that a building is actually historic. Nonetheless Section 1005.4 reads, in part, “… any historic resource that has been nominated … shall be subject to the restrictions … of this Article, … as if it were a landmark.... These provisions shall apply as to any permit application filed prior to the date of such nomination so long as the City has not issued the permit on the date the nomination was made.”

The proposed rewrite then spells out time spans for the review of the nomination, and it gives possibilities for appeals that could delay a project further even if the nomination is rejected.

What financial institution would invest in a project subject to such disruption? It was not an exaggeration when I said at the rally: This kills us. Coupled with severe limits in the rewrite on interior rework of historic buildings, it brings an end to much – maybe even most – private sector construction in San Francisco.

I went on to discuss how the rewrite would affect even public sector projects. I said that if the old Academy of Sciences or DeYoung Museum were still standing in Golden Gate Park, we could not have torn them down and replaced them.

Section 1005.1 reads, in part, “A nominated individual historic resource … including appurtenances and environmental setting, shall [my emphasis] be added to the San Francisco Register as a landmark if the Board of Supervisors finds … that the requirements set forth below are satisfied:

“The nominated resource meets one or more of the following criteria….”

The rewrite then lists seven criteria. One is, “Important Part of City’s Heritage. It possesses a special character or special historical, architectural, cultural, economic, social or other aspect of the heritage of or historic value significant to San Francisco….”

No one could dispute that the old Academy of Sciences or DeYoung satisfied this criterion. Under this rewrite of Sections 10 and 11, the Board of Supervisors would then have been obliged to protect them as landmarks.

I pointed to the Asian Art Museum and said that we could not have done the interior demolition necessary to that project under the rewrite. I said that we could not have done the Ferry Building remodel either, because it required substantial interior demolition.

Section 1005.1 reads, in part, “The interiors of all publicly owned landmarks and contributing resources that are subject to review as of the date of enactment of this Article are hereby designated as ‘significant interiors’ and shall be subject to the restrictions and conditions applicable to significant interiors under this Article.”

“Significant” is the highest level of historic value. Demolition of a significant historic resource is virtually forbidden. No building in San Francisco could have been more of a landmark than the Main Branch of the San Francisco Public Library that the Asian Art Museum replaced or than the Ferry Building. Under this rewrite, we could hardly have touched their interiors.

The examples I gave at the rally do not exhaust the damage the rewrite would do to us. They don’t touch at all on the damage that the rewrite would do to many a property or business owner in San Francisco.
The rewrite’s defenders in the press and in the blogs claim that it is a protection of renters and of the poor and working class in San Francisco. This defense is based on the notion that physical preservation of building stock is the same as preventing displacement of those groups. Anyone who has watched the Mission District in recent years sees immediately the fallacy of this defense. They have seen that sometimes the limitation of building stock that results from restrictions on construction results in greater economic pressure on the existing stock. This is not at all to say that more construction will achieve protection of those groups; the truth is far more complex.

It says, instead, that although historic preservation can be made to serve “progressive” values, however these may be defined, there is nothing inherently “progressive” in historic preservation. By any ordinary definition of either term, they are in fact opposed. Historic preservation is by any ordinary definition deeply conservative.