Fantasy Island

IN THE FILM The Gods Must Be Crazy, a band of South African Bushmen become the hapless inheritors of an empty Coca-Cola bottle, which falls to earth after being tossed out the window of a passing airplane. Once brought back to camp, the Bushmen, who naturally assume it to be a gift from the gods, discover that the bottle has many valuable uses, from carrying water to stretching hides to milling grain. Problem was, there was only one bottle. It was impossible to replicate it, and everyone soon realized that there was no way to fairly distribute its use. This was dangerous for a society which was totally unaccustomed to concepts like scarcity or ownership, and it soon caused such discord in the camp that the Bushmen elders decided to give their best hunter the task of disposing of the hellish thing, either by finding the gods to give it back to, or by tossing it off the end of the earth. In the film, this provides the basis for two hours of amusing if ethnocentric entertainment. However, the dilemma of the Bushmen in The Gods Must Be Crazy may also have a prescient message for San Francisco, as we have a Holy Coke Bottle of our own: it’s called Treasure Island.

TREASURE ISLAND was created from landfill during the New Deal Era; a macroengineering project built on the cheap to support the Golden Gate International Exhibition of 1939. The Exhibition, as spectacular as it was, was a temporary affair, which ended the following year. Thereafter the island was used as an interim airport for China Clipper flying boats, another temporary affair. When the Japanese Empire attacked US forces based in Hawaii, the Navy took control of the island and used it as a training center to supplement needs ordinarily filled by larger facilities in San Diego and Great Lakes. Like many large bureaucracies, the Navy soon regarded its temporary use of Treasure Island as a permanent one, and kept control of it until its demobilization in 1997.

When that demobilization was first announced in 1995, the City became witness to a flurry of anticipation regarding possible uses for the island. Much of this became intertwined with the politics of that year’s Mayor’s race. The San Francisco Business Times demanded that condos be built on the island. Then-candidate Willie Brown played with a number of ideas, including a plan for a high-end, "Monte Carlo-style" casino complex, which was universally ridiculed. Then-Mayor Frank Jordan didn’t articulate a clear policy for Treasure Island, but did make clear that gambling would never be an approved use.

After the election of Mayor Brown in 1995, plans were made to create a special development authority for Treasure Island. The Treasure Island Development Authority (TIDA) was finalized in 1997 as a single-purpose authority adhering to public trust principles, acting in open meetings governed by the Brown Act, and guided by an advisory committee with significant environmental representation. Oversight and approval of major contracts is by the Board of Supervisors. Parallel with the formation of TIDA were successful initiatives by San Francisco’s Legislative delegation to legalize City authority over TI. TIDA then turned to its main goals of leasing island facilities to generate revenue to cover annual maintenance costs. Long-range development ideas floated by Brown have included a luxury hotel and golf course, and a number of theme park plans. In the mean time, lots on TI have been leased to movie and TV studios, industrial uses, as well as to the Job Corps, which maintained a number of training facilities on the island, including a cooking school. What residential uses there are on the Island - the existing former military housing - are slowly falling into dormancy. The Unified School District recently decided to close Treasure Island's only school out of safety and staffing concerns.

Nevertheless, both TIDA and Brown’s policy on TI was the subject of much media criticism, most of which has revolved around policy gaffes related to the usual San Francisco political cronyism and a perceived lack of public input in the redevelopment process. This all came to a head very quickly in late 1997 when then-State Senator Quentin Kopp and perennial political poltroon Clint Reilly sponsored Proposition K, an initiative which would abolish TIDA and turn TI’s approval process over to the Port and Redevelopment Agencies. Although the initiative passed, the Board of Supervisors never implemented it.

Much of the argument in favor of Proposition K was permeated with the notion that Willie Brown was more interested in developing Treasure Island for personal rather than public benefit, something that has never been substantiated. The Brown administration had attempted to strike a deal with Disney to develop TI as a theme park and resort complex. The plan evaporated as the fractious politics around City Hall gave the media giant a terminal case of cold feet.

There is an implicit notion in much of the debate over Treasure Island that its proper future was development for permanent residential housing. This is a very tempting notion for a City facing continual housing supply contraction. But is Treasure Island the proper place to create permanent housing? Can you build a sustainable neighborhood there?

The answer is, probably not. There are a number of daunting obstacles present to making TI suitable for residence. Although State representatives have been successful in amending existing laws to allow development, there are a number of more practical considerations. The largest one is the seismic condition of the island. As stated before, TI is almost completely landfill. The costs of shoring up this landfill area are comparable to those for building a whole new island. Then there is the question of providing the level of services that residents of such a community would require. TI is very isolated – as any sailor who has been billeted there can tell you. The experience is akin to living in a very large lighthouse. While rudimentary service infrastructure already exists, it will have to be greatly expanded upon to serve any large residential development. This means that the costs will be very high. It is more than conceivable that such high service fees will eventually lead to TI residents suing for – and probably receiving – property tax relief. Thus San Francisco would be inducted into the dubious sisterhood of municipalities throughout the West contending with the deleterious effects of gated communities on their revenues and abilities to provide services.

These problems have yet to be addressed even now. Instead, Treasure Island has become something of a sinecure for inconvenient political figures who wish to cash in juice with the administration. When Brown was re-elected in 1999, he appointed the perennial political millstone Annemarie Conroy to be the nominal head of the city development effort. When current mayor Gavin Newsom needed to free up a seat on the Board of Supervisors, he moved Conroy to the directorship of the Emergency Services Office (which was then still considered a policy backwater), and placed the obstructive Neanderthal Supervisor Tony Hall as head of Island operations.

Hall turned out to be a loose cannon. His overly outspoken and free-spending ways soon led to clashes with City Controller Ed Harrington and, last month, Hall got the boot. And some consider the move to have come just in time: Hall’s idiotic shake-em-down attitude towards the film industry and his personality clashes with Navy officials ran the risk of TI being transferred back to other Federal agencies, or being sold back to San Francisco at a higher price.

Unfortunately, recent events have obscured any discussion of concrete plans for Treasure Island. And mind you – whatever plan is agreed upon, it’s going to require a lot of concrete.