ELECTION 2022
Yet again, San Francisco is going to ask itself whether there should or should not be cars along 1.5 miles of Golden Gate Park’s main drag.
After being closed to auto traffic since the early months of the COVID pandemic, JFK Drive’s future seemed to be settled after the Board of Supervisors voted in April to keep the road car-free and boost access with more amenities like a better shuttle service.
But a proposal to bring back cars, backed by the Corporation of Fine Arts Museums (COFAM) and District 10 Sup. Shamann Walton, qualified for the November ballot last week, according to its supporters.
[Correction: A previous version of the story misidentified the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF) as a sponsor. FAMSF and COFAM are both governing bodies for the de Young Museum and the Legion of Honor.]
A competing measure from supervisors Matt Dorsey, Rafael Mandelman, Myrna Melgar, and Hillary Ronen will ask voters this fall to codify the board’s decision to keep cars off the roadway for good.
And if that wasn’t enough, a third measure making its way toward the ballot would change management of Golden Gate Park’s underground parking garage, which could be the most important piece of this puzzle now being thrown in the public’s lap.
Because it will be up to the people to decide one of the city’s most contentious issues, there are questions to answer: What happens if both ballot measures pass? What does the garage have to do with this? And how did we get here again? Allow us to explain.
The JFK measures
At a meeting Monday, the Board of Supervisors’ Rules Committee weighed in on the situation.
“I still believe in what we did in April,” Sup. Rafael Mandelman of District 8 said about the marathon April 26 session that ended with a vote to keep JFK car-free. “My hope is that San Francisco continues to move toward what I think is our environmental future … but it will be up to the voters.”
JFK Promenade, as it’s now called, is a popular attraction. Leading up to the supervisors’ vote, about 70 percent of respondents in a Recreation and Park Department survey supported the car-free roadway.
But others are strongly opposed. Last month, a disability rights activist and a former SF police captain filed a measure to restore cars not just to JFK but also to the other car-free streets in Golden Gate Park and the Great Highway. It’s part of a backlash against pandemic-era efforts to make the city’s streets friendlier to pedestrians and bicyclists.
Diane “Dede” Wilsey, the high-profile socialite, philanthropist, and FAMSF chair emerita, donated $200,000 to the initiative. It is the only donation publicly recorded so far. (FAMSF president Thomas Campbell says the road closure has killed the de Young Museum’s attendance, although, as The Frisc has reported, nearby institutions are approaching their pre-pandemic levels.)
The competing measure, backed by four supervisors so far, is a clear shot across the bow, banking on voters to “readopt and reaffirm” public support to keep JFK slow and calm. If both measures pass, whichever measure gets more votes will go into effect, according to the city’s Elections Code.
The dueling measures — keep JFK a “promenade,” or bring back cars — are clearly in opposition. There’s little chance, as sometimes happens with overlapping ballot measures, that a confused voter would check both boxes. So why is there a third measure about the garage?
Underground movement
The de Young Museum has steadfastly argued that a car-free JFK, by removing free parking spots, restricts access to park attractions. Campbell made this point directly last week, and the museum hired a consultant last year to make a similar point in stealth. (Its opposition to a motorless JFK goes back much further, in fact.)
In its efforts, the museum has downplayed or ignored the fact that, on behalf of the de Young and neighboring institutions like the Academy of Sciences, voters said yes to an 800-space underground garage more than two decades ago. The garage has plenty of room, allows for free pickups and drop-offs, and is accessible from both sides of the park without the need for JFK Drive.
As The Frisc reported last spring, this garage is a central component of the JFK debate. Its construction was authorized by Proposition J in 1998, and its operations are still constrained by the 24-year-old ballot measure.
‘’At the time, the garage seemed like such an intrusion. But even people that fought against it, like me, have to realize that it has been really great.’
— David Miles Jr., aka the Godfather of Skate
To recap, Prop J says the city cannot spend money on the garage — no subsidies and no debt payment. That’s important, because debts to the construction firm and others total about $25 million, according to Sarah Madland, Rec and Park’s director of policy and public affairs, who was speaking at Monday’s hearing. That money, and the funds to operate the parking facility, must come from garage revenues. This stipulation means the city can’t demand lower rates or discounts.
Activists who saw the garage as privatization of park space fought to add that condition to Prop J, to make sure the city didn’t give handouts to the museums. They now wish they could take it back. “We fought that parking lot forever. At the time, it seemed like such an intrusion,” David Miles Jr., also known as the Godfather of Skate, told The Frisc last year. “But I think even the people that fought against it, like me, have to realize that the garage has been really great.”
Pi Ra, now transit justice director for the nonprofit Senior and Disability Action, was also involved. “That was the compromise: No city funds can be used to help pay for the garage,” Ra said in an interview earlier this year. “Now that’s kicking us in the ass. We never thought this would happen.”
Prop. J also created the Golden Gate Park Concourse Authority (GGPCA), a nonprofit to oversee the garage. GGPCA must repay debts on a set schedule and cannot take actions (for example, free parking or discounts) that would affect repayment plans.
Breed’s garage proposal would repeal Prop. J, dissolve the GGPCA — which Rec and Park’s Madland says has not met in years — and transfer management to Rec and Park. It would also authorize the city to spend money on the garage.
The hope is that more flexibility and cheaper options for San Franciscans who need to drive to the park will put the JFK Drive debate to rest once and for all. (The mayor submitted the initiative directly to the Department of Elections and does not need Board of Supervisors approval to get it on the ballot.)
Sup. Aaron Peskin said in Monday’s meeting that the measure made “abundant sense,” quipping that the few times he has paid “an arm and a leg” to park in the garage, it’s been half empty. He also noted that it has been, “how can I say this … not managed optimally.”
The supervisors tried and failed to change the garage situation through the legislative process last year. Now this key alteration will have to come via direct democracy. Our messy process allows one person to fund enough signature gathering to place a measure on the ballot, while legislators can have the public weigh in on their own initiatives.
SF voters are already facing a full ballot in November, with supervisor elections as well as new races for Board of Education members and district attorney, which have rippled into the national political conversation. Now we’re being asked to sort out competing measures and garage politics that seemed to be settled.
Expect more of the same sound and fury over a straightforward decision: a place in the park without cars.
Staff writer Max Harrison-Caldwell covers streets, open spaces, and more for The Frisc.
