Posted on 03/08/2007 8:06:48 AM PST by SmithL
Mayor Gavin Newsom's office is pushing the Navy to transfer ownership of Hunters Point Shipyard in San Francisco to the city in hope of accelerating a toxic cleanup of the property in time to meet the 49ers' 2012 deadline to build a new football stadium.
In a Feb. 16 memo obtained by The Chronicle, the city proposes to take ownership of the former naval base and assume responsibility for removing most non-radiological toxic material provided that the Navy covers the costs.
The Navy believes the transfer is possible. But questions remain about whether funding is available for a faster cleanup, the exact locations to be cleaned and whether the Navy can meet its obligation to rid the shipyard of radiological waste before turning it over to the city.
The city's responsibility would include dealing with chemical and petroleum contamination and other toxic wastes.
"Our primary objective is to expedite the cleanup and transfer of the shipyard so that we can create the public benefits the property holds, and one of those is the possibility of creating a stadium for the 49ers," said Newsom's base reuse director, Michael Cohen.
Cohen, who wrote the memo, said the Navy's current plan for the cleanup would take 10 more years. About $400 million has been spent so far, and another $500 million is needed to complete the work. The Navy believes a transfer to the city and faster cleanup would cost up to $75 million more. Cohen and Navy officials think Congress might provide that money.
The city wants title to the 500-acre former base as quickly as possible,...
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
I have a hard time understanding why any business stays in San Francisco.
Oh, *now* you want help?
Kiss my ditty bag.
Don't they play in South San Fransisco? That's a separate city IIRC.
I'm not sure where the city lines are, but the 49er now play at Monster Park (formerly Candlestick) just south of Hunters Point. Both sites are on the map in the original post.
About $50 per square foot.
They play in the city of SF.
How about the 49er's pay for it. Geez.
Shall we bid $850,000,000?
It's closing, regardless of what's to be done with the land. The problem is that the military is exempt from most environmental legislation, so the land has to be cleaned up before anyone else can occupy it.
When a military base closes, jobs leave with it. City officials want to open the land to new businesses that will create jobs. They have an agonizing wait while the military cleans up the site, an under-budgeted process that starts out as a five year plan and usually takes at least ten. I've talked to folks in Long Beach and Vallejo about their frustrations with that process (the Long Beach and Mare Island shipyards, respectively).
The request to the Navy is not unreasonable, and since San Francisco's own congresscritter is the Speaker of the House, the city might have the political juice to pull it off. Now, the reasonableness or wisdom of building a gazillion-dollar new stadium with taxpayer funds, that's a whole 'nother question.
As an Atlantan, this sort of debate just makes me want to kiss Billy Payne and Arthur Blank on the face.
He's probably running around yelling "who do I have to sleep with to get anything done around here?!?"
-PJ
-PJ
That wouldn't be out of line. In my post #71 I get a little into the challenges involved and the importance to the city -- we're talking tens of millions of dollars worth of real estate and thousands of jobs. Just dealing with the Presidio alone is a full-time job for at least five years. And the Pentagon is a unique beast, so a specialist would do the job better than a generic urban planner.
LMAO! SF Hates the navy, now they want help?
Hey...we're the government; and I don't want to give our valuable things away when our debt is already so damend huge!!!!!!
dame-nd
dam-end
da-mend
take your pick.
:-D
But. it's for the children...
Thanks. For years the Jeremiah O'Brian was kept at the pier near Red's Java hut, just south of the Bay Bridge. I knew they moved it but did not know where.
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