Embarcadero plaza loses name of Justin Herman
San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Commission voted 4-2 Thursday to strip Justin Herman’s name from the plaza on the Embarcadero that’s borne the name of the controversial and once-powerful bureaucrat for more than four decades.
It’s the second time in less than a month that the commission has voted on the issue in response to growing criticism of Herman’s contentious legacy and calls to rededicate the plaza to a less divisive public figure.
An unusual clerical error at the commission’s Oct. 19 meeting forced the second vote. Before
departing the commission’s October meeting early for another engagement, Commissioner Eric McDonnell stated his clear support for renaming the plaza, but he left before a roll-call vote was taken.
The commission’s secretary improperly counted him as voting in favor of changing the plaza’s name, however, as instructed by commission President Mark Buell. Without McDonnell’s vote, there was actually a 3-3 tie, meaning no action could be taken. Buell apologized for the “confusion around the vote.”
Herman served as the influential executive director of the city’s Redevelopment Agency from 1959 until he died in 1971. The plaza was dedicated in his honor in 1972.
Herman’s vexed history in the city traces back to him spearheading the razing of 60 square blocks of the Western Addition in the 1960s in the name of urban renewal. The program had particularly dire consequences for that neighborhood’s African American and Japanese American communities — thousands were displaced as their homes and businesses were leveled.
Board of Supervisors President London Breed, who grew up in the Western Addition and has been a vocal proponent of removing Herman’s name from the plaza, said she was glad the commission “got it right this time around.”
Until a new name is chosen for the space, which could take months, it will be known as Embarcadero Plaza.
Buell and Commissioner Gloria Bonilla voted for a second time against changing the plaza’s name. Buell, who worked with Herman in the late 1960s and 1970, has said that Herman was being unfairly “demonized” for a set of admittedly misguided policies for which he was not alone responsible. Bonilla said she found Buell’s arguments persuasive and that she didn’t believe the commission had “deliberated sufficiently on this matter.”
Commissioner Kat Anderson voted against changing the plaza’s name in October, but switched her vote Thursday. She said that she had supported renaming the plaza but opposed the placeholder name of Embarcadero Plaza, calling it “generic” and selected without input from the public.
Commissioners Allan Low and Tom Harrison also voted to remove Herman’s name. Commissioner Larry Mazzola was absent.
Calls to scrub Herman’s name from the plaza intensified in recent months. In September, the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution urging the park commission to rededicate the space.
Efforts to rechristen the plaza have waxed and waned for years. In 2001, then-Supervisor Chris Daly proposed removing Herman’s name from the space, but the issue did not come to a vote. In 2015, a citizens’ campaign to rename the space after poet Maya Angelou failed to gain traction.
Also Thursday, the commission approved $8.9 million in upgrades for McLaren Park, the city’s second-largest patch of open space. The funds will be used to build a restroom and multiuse courtyard and for improvements to the Jerry Garcia Amphitheatre, among other upgrades. A plan to spend $2 million to close some of the park’s trails and widen others to accommodate cyclists was met with strong opposition from some of McLaren’s most strident supporters.
The park department said the trails need improvements to accommodate more users and to protect the park’s natural habitats. Critics are concerned that any tampering with the trails would diminish the park’s untamed character. An unofficial online petition opposing the park department’s plans for the trails has gathered more than 900 signatures.
Exactly which trails would be closed or widened has yet to be determined by park department staff, which will return to the commission at a later date with more detailed plans.
“This is a park in our system that has long been neglected. It’s unfortunate that it’s taken so long to get here,” McDonnell said.