ExS.F. zoning chief helped shape the city
Bob Passmore, a 40year San Francisco city planner who was instrumental in applying and enforcing the zoning code during an era when a new downtown master plan was devised, died Sept. 15 at his home in Napa. The cause of death was Crohn’s disease, said
Carolyn Passmore, his wife of 56 years. He was 86.
From May 1960 until July 1999, Passmore worked for the city and was charged with the often impossible balancing act of bringing builders and developers who wanted to keep the city growing into
activists who wanted to preserve the essential charm of San Francisco.
Passmore held the official title of zoning administrator for 21 years, including during the 1980s, which was a time of accelerating change to the downtown landscape as office development was shifted from the Financial District north of Market Street to the new hub South of Market. During his tenure, the Tenderloin was rezoned and Mission Bay got its start, while the historic quadrants of Chinatown and North Beach were protected.
“Anyone who can be in charge of administrating the zoning code for that long and serve so many mayors has to have what Bob had, which was a high level of integrity,” said retired Planning Director Dean Macris. “He was an absolute master in applying the code in the fairest possible manner, and in a spacetight city like San Francisco, that is an extremely important job.”
A city planner is not an elected or appointed official. The highprofile decisions are made by the seven appointed planning commissioners who are selected by the mayor and the president of the Board of Supervisors. They serve fouryear terms and come and go. Passmore was a civil servant and he stayed and stayed, as both his beard and the city’s planning codes grew and grew. When he joined the Planning Department in 1960, the planning code was less than a quarterinch thick. By the time he retired, 3 inches of thickness had been added to it. Meanwhile, the general plan, or master plan, had grown to 2 feet in thickness.
“Bob was the ultimate referee in how you apply the words of a document that is well over 1,000 pages,” Macris said.
Zoning administrator is a job built for criticism from both sides, and Passmore got it. He was often criticized for favoring development.
“He’s the right name,” a fellow planner once quipped. “He’ll pass more projects.”
Upon his retirement in 1999, Passmore was saluted by the San Francisco Examiner’s esteemed urban planning writer Gerald Adams in an article titled “The Man with the Plan.”
“He’s the tall fellow with the white beard. Pokerfaced and mostly silent, he sat near San Francisco planning commissioners at their weekly sessions and spoke only when spoken to. But when he opened his mouth, it was the voice of an oracle.
“Depending on the words that Robert Passmore chose to deliver from that seat, towers could rise, new houses gain an extra bedroom, backyards could shrink, and apartments could be transformed into hotel rooms. He was a man of impenetrable integrity and proof of that is he was respected by developers. “Or not.” Robert Walter Passmore was born Oct. 15, 1933, in State College, Pa., where he grew up. His father was a high school principal who died young and his mother was incapacitated, leaving Robert to be raised by his paternal grandmother. One of his main interests was scouting, and he earned the rank of Eagle in the Boy Scouts. He worked all forms of odd jobs to pay his way through Penn State University, where he graduated with a degree in architecture. Passmore then came to UC Berkeley as a graduate student in urban and regional planning. He earned his master’s degree and went straight to work for the city and county of San Francisco in 1960.
In November 1963, Passmore returned to State College to sell the home where he grew up. On a blind date, he met Carolyn Hazlett, from rival school the University of Pittsburgh. They overcame that difference and were married after a fourmonth courtship and both returned to San Francisco. They bought a home on Cumberland Street near Dolores Park and lived there for 50 years, while raising three sons — Walter, Matthew and Steven. Both Walter and Matthew are adopted.
“He was a child of the Depression, and one of the values that his grandmother instilled in him was this ethic of hard work, and I think that lasted his entire life,” said Walter Passmore, an urban forester for the city of Palo Alto. One of his small acts of rebellion was a beard, which he used to joke about as cover for his lack of a chin. That was the extent of his style consciousness. Passmore was known to wear hand-me-downs from coworkers. It did not matter to him if they were out of style.
Though he worked in a strictly urban environment, he was a backpacker and could handle a twoman canoe. He became involved in Troop 14 of the Boy Scouts of America, and guided all three of his sons through Eagle status, an eightyear commitment.
“He just had tons of energy,” said his wife.
When the Loma Prieta earthquake hit in 1989, the Passmore home lost a total of one dish. The Passmores fared worse after leaving the city and buying a home in Napa in 2014. That earthquake cost them two brick chimneys. By that time, Passmore was mainly retired but still worked as a consultant. He slowly whittled his hours down down from 60 a week for the city to maybe five hours a week before he finally retired on his 80th birthday.
Survivors include his wife, Carolyn of Napa, and sons Walter of Redwood City, Matthew of Berkeley and Steven of Napa.
“He was an absolute master in applying the (zoning) code in the fairest possible manner, and in a spacetight city like San Francisco, that is an extremely important job.”
Dean Macris, retired S.F. planning director