The Presidio is at fiscal crossroads
Trust plans move of headquarters to set up offices for leasing to tenants
The Presidio Officers’ Club is a sedate presence, with white plaster walls and a red tile roof that shades the heavy timber front door. Though the Spanish Revival look is from the 1930s, portions of the outer walls contain adobe blocks more than 200 years old.
These days, the landmark that anchors the Main Post of San Francisco’s unusual national park also symbolizes the debate over what it should become.
Until the pandemic, the spacious building was reserved for public use, including a museumlike Heritage Gallery at the rear beneath a second floor reserved for gatherings. But the federal agency that manages the Presidio now plans to move its headquarters into the back half of the complex, so that its current home can be leased to private tenants.
The shift upsets both park volunteers now in limbo and critics who fear cultural aspects of the park could be lost because of such changes. Park management, meanwhile, says the financial blow of the coronavirus makes it necessary to scale back — even though that means cuts that are painful to people inside as well as outside the organization.
“I love this building and how it has elevated the history of this place,” said Michael Boland, who leads planning efforts at the Presidio and oversaw the club’s meticulous $19 million restoration that was completed in 2014. “But our first priority is to save the Presidio.”
The Presidio Trust, which manages the 1,491acre national park at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge, revealed Wednesday evening that it expects to lose $17 million in 2021 because of longterm impacts of the pandemic. That is on top of $36 million in losses since March, when efforts to contain the virus brought lockdowns across the state.
The Presidio closed such revenueproducing attractions as two lodges, a popular golf course, event facilities and the visitors center at the opposite end of the Main Post Parade Ground from the officers’ club. The golf course reopened in May, and the inns reopened this month, but overall park income is expected to lag for at least another year.
While the Presidio is not the only public entity facing red ink right now, its predicament is unique — the trust is an autonomous federal agency required by law to be financially selfsufficient. It manages 870 buildings inherited from the Army in 1994, as well as an aged infrastructure that has an estimated $400 million in needed upgrades.
As early as April, the trust announced its would lay off 20% of its employees and cut back entire programs, including the education effort that brought schoolchildren into the park. The annual budget has been trimmed from $139 million prepandemic to $114 million for the fiscal year that begins in October.
“We have made, and we need to continue to make, very tough decisions,” trust CEO Jean Fraser told the park’s board of directors Wednesday evening at a virtual public
meeting. “We expect that what’s ahead will be our worst year financially, and then we’ll claw our way back to a better condition.”
The officers’ club shows the tradeoffs being made.
A classroom added during the 2014 restoration could be replaced by exhibits on the Presidio’s history that now fill the Heritage Gallery. Other exhibits might move into the oldest portions of the building, which look out toward the Main Post’s parade ground.
The gallery space itself, which includes high ceilings and a small theater, would become office space. So would the upperfloor meeting hall that includes a veranda with panoramic views. They’re both contained within the annex, which was built in the 1970s.
Wednesday, Fraser emphasized that the conversion would pay off for the trust — allowing it to vacate a statuesque 1897 barracks that, she said, is expected to bring $2 million in leases annually.
But she also suggested that relocating the exhibits, which now are down a long hallway and up several stairs, could catch the eye of visitors.
“A lot of people don’t even know it’s there,” she said of the gallery.
Boland made the same point earlier in the day.
“The idea is to bring the vitality to the front,” he said. “There are a number of ways we can do that.” Critics aren’t so sure. One is Stephen Voris, who was a major at the Presidio in the 1980s and has been a docent at the officers’ club since it reopened. He responded to the planned changes last week by sending a letter of protest to members of the trust board — a poem that parodies Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” with such couplets as “some of us are horrified/ and others smell a rat.”
This week, Voris said he understands the trust’s financial bind. But he’s dismayed that the museumlike specifics of the gallery would be jettisoned.
“Was it visited as much as we’d like at times? No. But it was starting to become a destination,” Voris said — singling out the popularity of a special exhibition on the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, which was still running when the pandemic hit in March.
Fraser on Wednesday acknowledged the affection for the “beloved” gallery. At the same time, she was blunt in stressing that — for now — the economic challenges are front and center.
“We are a business,” Fraser said at one point. “We need to continue earning revenues.”
The presentation to the board was informational. More than once, though, board Chairman William Grayson sympathized with the protests that he heard.
“Our list of what we would like to do as the board and staff is enormous,” Grayson said. “The constraint is money.”