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 In the grand scheme of things, the fact that the San Francisco Presidio is getting a Starbucks isn't exactly a big deal. After all, the Presidio was created as a self-funded National Park --- one that is rapidly being filled with much larger private and/or commercial intrusions than a mere Starbucks.
I'm sharing the appended article because it is important, because I'm quoted and because it provides an opportunity to share this quote from the Director of the National Parks Service, ca. 1950.
"If we are going to succeed in preserving the greatness of the national parks, they must be held inviolate. They represent the last stands of primitive America. If we are going to whittle away at them we should recognize, at the very beginning, that all such whittlings are cumulative and that the end result will be mediocrity." - Newton Drury
Scott
---- begin quoted ---
December 12, 2007
Presidio gets a Starbucks
Farewell, Perk Presidio -- the bane of local beaneries is moving in.
By Erica Gies
First came the troubling mandate that the Presidio needed to break even
financially, a new model for a national park area. Then came the
Starbucks. That's right: the Guardian has learned that a Starbucks will
open next month in the Presidio's Letterman Digital Arts Center,
replacing locally owned Perk Presidio.
The new Starbucks — and all it represents — has raised the ire of both
park and city activists. Scott Silver, executive director of Wild
Wilderness, based in Bend, Ore., is concerned that the Presidio's
self-funding requirement is a harbinger of things to come across
federal land management agencies. He says other properties following
the Presidio model include Fort Baker in Marin, Sandy Hook in New
Jersey, Valles Caldera National Preserve in New Mexico (Forest Service
land), and Fort Monroe in Virginia.
"It brings the entire standard of our national park system down from a
high pedestal to a pretty base commercial reality," Silver said. "I
just look at the Presidio as the first in what I fear will be a long
chain of national parks that move away from the model of a publicly
funded public good to a privately funded, largely commercial extension
of our commercial world that's really not in any way what we associate
with national parks."
City activists point to Proposition G, which passed by a healthy 16
percent margin in 2006, requiring formula retail stores to get
conditional use authorization from the Planning Commission before
opening in neighborhood commercial districts. Richmond District
residents demonstrated the power of this legislation in September by
blocking a Starbucks slated for Fifth Avenue and Geary.
Dean Preston, a neighborhood activist and attorney launching a
statewide organization called Tenants Together, said, "The law
specifically applies to neighborhood commercial districts, but I think
those same people who live in neighborhood commercial districts are
using the Presidio, which is here in their backyard. I think that
whether or not [Letterman Digital Arts] is subject to local law on the
issue, they should be taking into account that city sentiment when
deciding what kind of businesses to lease there."
Raul Saavedra, leasing director for Letterman Digital Arts, told us he
didn't know about Prop. G but that the company is aware that some
people have opinions about Starbucks. That's why the LDA originally
selected Perk Presidio for the space. "We wanted someone like that to
be successful," Saavedra said. "And they weren't, unfortunately."
So the LDA decided to look for a new vendor, considering sole
proprietors and local and national chains. Saavedra said the smaller
operators he considered had credit issues and concerns about making the
location successful. He said the key factors in selecting Starbucks
were its strong credit, good service, and solid sustainability program.
Dana Polk, the Presidio Trust's senior adviser for government and media
relations, said that as master tenant, the LDA is free to sublet that
space to any company it chooses. Nevertheless, Saavedra indicated that
the LDA anticipated possible concerns with choosing Starbucks: "We went
to the trust before we signed the deal with Starbucks, because we knew
that there would probably be some opinions. And at that time there was
no problem."
This will not be the first national park area to host a Starbucks. That
dubious honor goes to the San Francisco Maritime National Historic
Park, which since October 2004 has housed a Starbucks as a subtenant of
Kimpton Resorts in its Hazlett Warehouse, according to Shelley
Niedernhofer, chief of administration and business services for the
park.
However, National Park Service concessions program specialist manager
Jo Pendry confirms that these Starbucks are the first examples of
formula retail throughout the 391-site national park system.
Kim Winston, Starbucks manager of civic and community affairs for the
western region, claimed that revenues from the Starbucks help fund
National Parks Service operations, but Niedernhofer said of the
Maritime Park, "We don't receive any revenue directly from Starbucks."
The Presidio arrangement will be similar.
But Preston isn't mollified. He said, "To have a Starbucks go into the
Presidio with no real public review right after a Starbucks is nearly
unanimously blocked [by a Board of Supervisors' vote] in the Inner
Richmond does seem like a real contrast. The fact that there's
absolutely no public process for putting a Starbucks in such a visible
spot is really a problem." *
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- Privatization 
