The Vision Ignored

by Diana Scott

An amendment made to the Presidio Trust Act in 1997 included a General Management Plan (GMP) for the Presidio. The goal of creating a global center was the ostensible reason for converting into the Presidio into a national park.

Adding the General Management Plan to the Presidio Trust Act is a mixed blessing, for while it lays out the vision of environmental and ecological sustainability (not to be confused with financial sustainability or self-sufficiency), it's a rather diffuse planning blueprint -- long on vision and short on steps for implementation.

In its 150 well-designed, amply illustrated pages, the General Management Plan notes the former base's exceptional cultural, natural, and recreational resources. It outlines key planning issues and concerns and identifies four "broad, interrelated program areas" best suited for the park's facilites, setting, and purpose: stewardship and sustainability; cross-cultural and international cooperation; community service and restoration; health and scientific discovery.

The GMP, with sections on ecologically-sound transportation strategies, and sustainable design and conservation practices, goes so far as to link environmentally-sustainable concepts and actions to 13 "planning areas" throughout the park. But it goes no further. Instead it turns implementation over to an envisioned "federally chartered management partner with skills and authorities that supplement National Park Service expertise, particularly in professional areas that are not widely represented in the agency, such as financing, capital improvement, programming, and leasing."

That partner, which is now the Presidio Trust, has already modified guidelines by giving the nod in its requests for development proposals to high tech, market-based uses over less lucrative environmentally sustainable ones, and has explicitly ignored the GMP recommendation, stated on page 72 of the plan, that Letterman/LAIR remain a scientific research and education complex "to improve human and environmental health...and understanding and manage the interdependence of health and the environment."