On September 22, a small crowd congregated on Treasure Island’s western shore to celebrate the installation of “Signal,” a public art piece fashioned from steel salvaged from the old Bay Bridge. Tom Loughlin, the San Francisco artist behind the piece, brought a small ladder to help those in attendance climb atop the sculpture.
Loughlin said he wanted to make an interactive piece that would compel people to consider humanity’s place in nature. For him, this spot on Treasure Island perfectly lent itself to that kind of contemplation, with its sweeping sea-level views of the Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, Angel Island, downtown San Francisco, and all the water in between.
Loughlin built his 22-ton sculpture, topped by a red light from the old span and enhanced with a foghorn-like rumble from a hidden speaker, specifically for Treasure Island. But its future is uncertain: “I’d love to make it permanent here, but Treasure Island’s got this whole redevelopment thing happening,” he says.
If Loughlin’s uncertain about his sculpture’s fate, imagine how residents of the island— one of San Francisco’s lowest income neighborhoods and its most isolated — are feeling.
By the “whole redevelopment thing,” Loughlin means the construction of 8,000 new units of housing, three hotels, retail, entertainment, parks, and new infrastructure including a ferry terminal on the artificial island, which was a naval base for half a century.
Amidst a housing and homelessness crisis, San Francisco sees Treasure Island as a linchpin of future growth, exploding from 1,800 current residents to more than 20,000 by the year 2035.
But at what price? Everyone can stay while new housing is under construction, but roughly one third of current residents will be forced to leave the island in a few years, throwing into doubt their ability to stay in San Francisco with its shocking rents, let alone the Bay Area. The potential impermanence of Loughlin’s “Signal” is almost too ironic to be true.
There are no public schools, pharmacies, or gas stations, and only two markets. But public art — not to mention a new playground, a community garden, and a DIY skate park — now adorn Treasure Island’s windswept post-industrial landscape.
Restaurants, wineries, and other booze makers have also opened in anticipation of a denser neighborhood. But many of the old neighbors might not be around long enough to enjoy all the new amenities.
Development and detours
Originally constructed for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, Treasure Island is an extension of the natural Yerba Buena Island, which separates the two spans of the Bay Bridge. The U.S. Navy seized it in 1942 and for the next 30 years buried radioactive material on the island.
Despite the possibility of more toxic surprises, the first new units should be ready in mid-2021, according to the Treasure Island Development Authority (TIDA). Work will ramp up after the Navy, still in charge of cleanup, transfers ownership of the residential neighborhood, now tentatively scheduled for 2022. The entire project is supposed to be complete by 2035.
The development has already turned the island’s street grid into a maze of dead ends and detours and, for some residents, has caused plenty more disruption. Bill Jenkins, who lives on Treasure Island with his wife and one-year-old child, says “almost everything” about the island has changed since he first moved there in 2014.
“They’ve torn up the street that I live on and closed it down for seven months,” Jenkins says. “They’ll turn off the water to the island, or to sections of the island, for up to 12 hours at a time. We’ve had power outages and the internet has gone out for 18 hours before due to construction people hitting a cable underground.”
Brooklynn Villanueva, who moved to Treasure Island from Arcata in August, says the vibrations from heavy construction sometimes shake her bed at night.
Most troubling to many residents and business owners is the plan for a toll to get on and off the island to discourage auto use as the population grows. For many residents and workers, driving via the Bay Bridge is the only option. (The only public transit is the unreliable San Francisco Muni 25 bus.) Toll revenues are supposed to fund ferry operations to and from San Francisco, a bus link to BART in the East Bay, an on-island shuttle, and a bike share program on the island.
Current residents and businesspeople say tolls will make it harder to afford to live or work on the island. And if they end up leaving, they say, it’s doubly unfair: the fees they pay will build improvements they won’t be around to enjoy.
“It’s a means of eviction. They’re not going to say it, but it’s pushing people out who won’t be able to afford to live here,” says Paris Hayes, who has lived on Treasure Island for 15 years. “We’ll be paying for something we never even use.”
The SF Board of Supervisors was set to approve a toll last December but shelved the plan under pressure from residents like Hayes and business owners.
It’s far from dead. Last week, consultants working on the island transit plan met with residents and business owners to provide updates. Little was resolved. Walking through scenarios, the consultants used a $7 toll as an example for a round trip, but no figure has been set. “It’s still a work in progress,” says TIDA director Bob Beck.
When asked if residents or workers might receive a waiver or subsidies, Beck says that “no recommendations have been made or adopted.”
Concerns about a toll to enter and exit one of San Francisco’s lowest-income neighborhoods is part of a larger uncertainty that mirrors the dilemma so many of the city’s residents face: Can the people eligible to stay on the island actually afford it?
Who moves, who doesn’t
The city’s 2011 development agreement (DDA) lays out the rules governing residents’ rights to stay on the island, which also includes up the hill on Yerba Buena, where the first wave of demolition took place in 2015, and where the project’s first new condominiums start construction next year. Current residents are broken into three groups:
- Residents who moved to the island before the 2011 agreement (pre-DDA) can choose between on-island relocation at their current rate, which is under rent control, a buyout, or down payment help if they choose to buy a market-rate unit on the island. Of 650 households on the island, 189 are pre-DDA, according to TIDA.
- Those who moved to the island after 2011, post-DDA, will have to leave in three to five years without the right to relocation or a buyout. There are roughly 140 households in this category. They will receive “advisory services,” which Beck declined to describe. There’s a twist, however. TIDA and the city are talking about giving post-DDA residents some rights to stay, as well. Beck says he hopes to finalize terms before the end of the year.
- There are currently 250 units on the island managed by nonprofit such as Catholic Charities and Swords to Plowshares to house homeless or formerly homeless people. Those residents have the right to stay on the island if they’re in permanent housing — that is, not part of a “halfway house” or transitional situation. They do not have the option of a buyout. There are supposed to be at least 435 units for this population on the new Treasure Island as part of the 2,173 units designated as affordable.
All told, about two-thirds of current residents should be eligible to stay. But on what terms? A common refrain is frustration with a lack of information from TIDA.
Photographer Chris Henderson once lived in an apartment on Yerba Buena that was among the first to be demolished. He now lives in a rent-controlled townhouse near the “Signal” installation. Because of his “pre-DDA” tenure, he should be eligible to buy a Yerba Buena condo when they’re ready but has no idea if he’ll have the wherewithal, even with assistance: “I’d like to buy if I can, but they’re not telling us what the prices are.”
Hayes, who wants to stay, says the uncertainty makes life-planning difficult. “My wife and I are trying to figure it out. They want an obligation from us, but they won’t tell us what we’re obligating ourselves to.”
Gene Pascua is also eligible to stay and would love one of the Yerba Buena condos. He commutes into the city every day to work in advertising and design, and has been on Treasure Island since 2005. “It’s quiet and kind of exclusive,” he says. He and others in his building are tight-knit, but “most people aren’t going to be able to live on the island,” he says. He’d love to see a lease-to-own plan to ease people into a mortgage, but that’s not among the financial options.
Having arrived in 2014, Bill Jenkins has no choice. “As it’s currently formulated, we’re probably going to get 60 days notice and have to move out,” Jenkins said. “It is what it is. If I have housing security for a few years ahead of me, I try to feel fortunate for that.”
When asked about evictions, TIDA director Beck declines to use the word. He says residents will have plenty of notice — 90 days if they’re being relocated on the island, and far more notice before they, like Jenkins, finally have to leave the island.
Destination skate park
With residents hungry for information to help decide their own fates, the island continues to transform, sometimes in dramatic fashion, as earthmovers push dirt into hills the size of apartment buildings, and sometimes in more subtle ways.
Two years before the “Signal” sculpture arrived, a group of builders on the other side of the island turned discarded materials, including an old car, into an unsanctioned skate park. The renegade project, which still stands on abandoned tennis courts on Avenue M, was chronicled in the documentary Out of Sight: Treasure Island DIY. “It’s crusty, it’s grimy, it’s dirty, it’s toxic… it’s paradise,” is how the site is described in the film.
Tony “Loco” Aloy, one of the builders, sums up the project’s ethos: “If you’re starving and you see a tree full of fruit that nobody’s taking, is it wrong for you to grab one? Are you just gonna let it fall and rot on the ground?”
Led by skater Josh Matlock, the crew broke ground in 2017 and expected the city to destroy the DIY skate park within months. So Matlock created a nonprofit with the help of lawyer and fellow skater Bob O’Leary and secured official permission in March 2018.
In the documentary, O’Leary said Rich Rovetti, TIDA deputy director of real estate, was in favor because the site was already a park and he hoped it would attract more people to the island.
The park has indeed become a destination for skaters from the Bay Area and beyond: Two visitors, one from Portland, one from Cincinnati, were there when The Frisc stopped by. More importantly, island kids have a new space of their own. Eli, 13, has lived on Treasure Island since he was an infant and was at the park recently. He was excited about the arrival of new residents who, he hopes, will bring more kids to skate with.
Believe it or not, there is academic research showing cities build skate parks to push out homeless encampments from “dead spaces,” and that skaters can act as foot soldiers of gentrification by showing that places perceived as dangerous are actually not so dangerous. The Treasure Island park doesn’t fit neatly into either of these categories, but there’s no doubt it, like “Signal,” brings a post-industrial cool to the start of a major new neighborhood — and perhaps the start of a process that would ultimately push families like Eli’s off the island.
Even as the skate park attracts more people to the island, like “Signal,” its own days may be numbered. The skate park will eventually make way for new recreation fields, but not for at least seven more years, says Beck. There’s no current plan to build a new skate park, but “just because something’s not explicitly in the plan yet doesn’t mean we won’t end up having it,” Beck says.
Is it art? Is it safe?
Walk for a few minutes past “Signal,” and you see the juxtaposition of Treasure Island’s past and future — and the uncertain edge of perhaps the most dramatic transition of any of San Francisco’s neighborhoods.
Along a bayfront promenade with panoramic views of the western Bay and Golden Gate, is a fenced-off area, including boarded-up townhouses, with radiation warnings.
Just beyond the fence is the island’s low-slung residential neighborhood, with people barbecuing, fixing cars in driveways, and walking their pooches in the dog run. Two weeks before Halloween, a few people had already gone full yard with their decorations.
As residents go about their lives, the new piece of conceptual art nearby is met with a shrug. Brooklynn Villanueva says “Signal” is a good place to sit, an addition to the makeshift benches that folks have cobbled together along the shore.
“It’s art?” asks the photographer Henderson, who lives a couple streets away. “I like art, but I didn’t know it was art.” He laughs: “I don’t like it because of the noise it makes.”
“Signal” isn’t the first art piece with temporary tenure on Treasure Island. A 40-foot sculpture originally built for Burning Man has already come and gone. More art is on the way. Thanks to SF development rules, one percent ($35 million to $50 million) of the total construction budget will fund a permanent collection for the island, according to Beck. The first commission will be an installation atop Yerba Buena by Japanese photographer and architect Hiroshi Sugimoto, and a sculpture plaza is planned for Pier 1.
Bill Jenkins likes that the island has a history of funky sculpture. He does not associate “Signal” with disruptive changes to come — or even his own potential eviction. He and his family attended the September unveiling.
“I like the fact that it’s incorporating part of the Bay Bridge, considering we owe our existence to it,” Jenkins says. “No Bay Bridge, no living here.”
Alex Lash contributed to this report.