In 2006, after decades of protests over environmental racism and its health impacts, PG&E closed down the Hunters Point Power Plant, “the largest stationary source of air pollution in Bayview Hunters Point” according to the EPA.
Ten years later, PG&E finished remediating the site. The first step into a new era was to build a shoreline trail lined with history markers that acknowledged the past — including the community’s fight to shut down the plant.
All that’s left now is an electrical substation, a thicket of wires that you can hear crackling when you walk past it.
After several years of community engagement designed to build bridges between the predominantly Black community and PG&E, it seemed like a shared vision for the 31-acre site was starting to emerge.
There was a pause when PG&E, which continues to own the property, declared bankruptcy in 2019, but this summer there was movement again. PG&E unveiled the design for a new, neighborhood-friendly substation and said it would move down the street by the end of 2023.
With the substation out of the way, perhaps a vision of 1,500 new homes and other amenities on the main site, sketched out in a 2018 report commissioned by PG&E, would seem less distant. In addition to desperately needed housing, the concept called for businesses and retail to provide local jobs, one of residents’ strongest requests during the years of feedback PG&E had solicited.
What’s more, the new site would help with the revitalization of this corner of San Francisco. Heron’s Head Park is just to the northeast, the rebuilt Hunters View public housing and new parks to the southwest, and the ambitious India Basin Waterfront Park to the south, all built to address the systemic injustice — including a lack of green space — that made the old power plant the subject of protests for so many years.
Now everything’s on hold, yet again.
PG&E told The Frisc this week that the substation move is delayed. Spokesperson Matt Nauman sent this statement: “As we continue to focus on improving the safety and reliability of our electric system, we are re-evaluating some projects. The Hunters Point substation project is one of these, and we have paused work on the project through 2023. We informed our contracting partners about this pause last week.”
For one community member who fought for the power plant’s removal, the delay stirs up lingering suspicions. “I think PG&E is still working to get out of their commitment to the Bayview Hunters Point community and trying to make decisions without involving us, “ says G.L. Hodge, 70. “Are they going to try and sell the land out from under the community? Are they going to put in housing where people are going to be able to afford to stay in the community? We already went through gentrification in the Fillmore. We’re not going to let these things happen again in the Bayview.”
No shortage of ideas
Back in 2010, when the plant was being demolished, some neighbors began dreaming about a very different shoreline at India Basin.
The SF Redevelopment Agency had a blueprint, and a neighborhood association fleshed it out with a vision of restaurants and businesses, and an amphitheater on the plant site to buffer the neighborhood from the city’s recycling center and other industrial uses to the north. “We tried to present it to PG&E, but they turned us down,” says Jill Fox, 68, an India Basin Neighborhood Association board member.
A few years later, PG&E launched what would become a multi-year listening campaign. Its then-new environmental remediation department commissioned Berkeley architecture firm Envelope to design a shoreline trail and some temporary uses for the site. Envelope launched a series of on-site events called NOW Hunters Point to solicit preferences and ideas for the trail as well as the larger site.
The NOW Hunters Point report highlighted community priorities: housing and recreation, venues for job training, and performing arts. Another key need was a grocery store.
“We didn’t want the traditional process where you do a series of community meetings and check the box that you talked to people,” said designer Liz Ogbu, who served as a consultant to Envelope.
One highlight was setting up a StoryCorps interview booth to record residents. “One of the first things we heard was the history and the vibrant neighborhood it had been, and their concerns that all would be lost through gentrification and erasure. So we made [commemoration] the core of the shoreline trail design,” Envelope architect Douglas Burnham explained.
The path, completed in 2017, serves not only as a connector between Heron’s Head and the new park at India Basin, but also as an outdoor museum with historical information and personal reflections on plaques and benches.
Ogbu, a social justice advocate known for her work on community-centered spaces, said with PG&E’s “unclear stewardship,” it was critical to keep a record. The NOW Hunters Point data went into a report and highlighted community priorities: housing and recreation, venues for job training, and performing arts. Another key need was a grocery store.
“We wanted people to feel like the site was theirs,” Ogbu said. “So regardless of who comes in as a developer or decision-maker, the community has ammunition to hold them accountable and advocate for what they want.”
A vision of 1,500 new homes
At the same time, PG&E tapped urban design consultants urb-in to craft a detailed plan for the site. Finished in 2018, the 156-page document (“Beyond Remediation: A Vision for the Hunters Point Power Plant Site”) presented a mixed-use neighborhood with 1,500 units of housing and various amenities that the community wanted.
PG&E emerged from bankruptcy in 2020 with new leadership, billions of dollars in cash and stock pledged to wildfire victims, and promises of improved safety.
This summer’s short blip of hope only reinforced the sense that PG&E doesn’t consider the site a high priority. It still has not formally presented “Beyond Remediation” to the public, although it’s posted on the ur-bin website.
Recently, urb-in principal Jonathan Manzo lamented the situation in an article he wrote for the architectural journal On Site Review: “The most ambitious piece, the Vision Document that provides a framework for the equitable redevelopment of the site, has not yet made any meaningful impact, seemingly lost in the shuffle as the utility rebuilds from its bankruptcy.”
PG&E spokesperson Nauman declined to answer questions about the site, except to confirm the substation relocation has been delayed. The lack of detail leaves folks like community activist Hodge and architect Burnham to speculate about PG&E’s intentions.
PG&E committed to community involvement with the earlier design efforts, but Burnham questioned the company’s resolve with the next phase — actually developing the project — seeing how an attempt to rezone the site for housing and more seem to have been abandoned. “My sense is that this process ended up being more complex and costly than PG&E anticipated, and they shelved it,” said Burnham. “There will need to be some sort of public process to get any large project — or series of projects — approved,” and it remains to be seen if “the process minimizes community input or [if it’s] a community-engaged process.”
San Francisco could have more say over the site’s future. In the deal that led to the plant demolition, the city received right of first refusal, which means it gets first dibs to purchase the site. It can also buy the site under the same terms of another offer and avoid a bidding war, according to Anne Taupier, director of development in the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development.
With redevelopment pushed even further into the future, Fox of the India Basin Neighborhood Association wants stronger leadership from the Board of Supervisors and better coordination between all the projects in the area. (Board president Shamann Walton, who represents Hunters Point and the rest of District 10, did not respond to a request for comment.)
Even before the new substation and timeline briefly emerged this summer, only to be pulled back abruptly, Hodge knew that tearing down the plant was only the first step. In a 2021 conversation, he summed up all those years of activism with this: “What happens now is the fight.”
Lydia Lee writes about architecture and urban planning for various publications. Previous stories for The Frisc included an interview with architect David Baker and a profile of Dexter Greene, who has spent two decades living on SF’s streets.