08 September 2008 - 15:46, Tinman said
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We’ve previously expounded on why the Sharp Park golf course must close. Here’s what’s happened since.

The Rec&Park Department (RPD) has finally released the golf course plan that it commissioned from Leon Younger of PROS Consulting. Not surprisingly, this plan is deeply flawed. By failing to solve flood management and endangered species problems, the plan imposes huge financial and legal risks to the City and County of San Francisco and its taxpayers.

In a nutshell, the RPD plan calls for a) privatization of all public golf courses; and b) reconstruction of Sharp Park as an “elite” and expensive golf course with all 18 holes west of Highway 1 plus a new “Junior Golf” facility east of Highway 1.

Here are the most important of the many fatal flaws in this proposal:

The plan makes the golf course’s current flood management problems significantly worse. The entire basin west of Highway 1 is near or below sea level. Yet this is exactly where the plan places all 18 holes of this course. Currently 3-4 holes of the course are under water and unplayable for months at a time. This plan would place the entire course in such jeopardy. The established sea wall prevents salt water intrusion onto the golf course but dams freshwater drainage from Sanchez Creek resulting in regular flooding and hole closures. The plan’s inclusion of more holes in that flood zone means more hole closures and greater economic loss.

The plan’s failure to solve the flood management problems will create significant legal liability to San Francisco for flood damage to adjacent properties. During heavy rains, water backs up from Sharp Park into surrounding neighborhoods because the sea wall blocks appropriate drainage of Sanchez Creek. By not mitigating this problem, San Francisco will sooner or later be obligated to pay out huge damages from flooded-out neighbors.

The plan will subject San Francisco to large civil and criminal penalties for illegal “taking” of the endangered San Francisco garter snake and the threatened California red-legged frog. Biologists hired by RPD showed that the entire area of Sharp Park is habitat for the snake, not just the tiny areas cordoned off in the RPD/Younger report. It is a physical impossibility for golf operations to continue — particularly in intensified fashion proposed by the plan — without killing both frogs and snakes. Illegal take of both has indeed already been frequently documented, and this will only increase under this plan. At some $25,000s per incident, San Francisco’s taxpayers will be on the hook for serious costs — and San Francisco officials who are responsible for this illegal activity will be at significant risk for criminal penalties.

The plan will invoke prohibitively expensive permits and permit processes. Not only are these costs completely neglected in the plan, they also will be lost investments when the plan is rejected on solid scientific grounds. San Francisco is not free to do whatever it likes with this property even though it owns it. The California Coastal Commission, the California Department of Fish and Game, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service all have jurisdiction here. In particular, a Habitat Conservation Plan will be mandatory, and this step will cost some hundreds of thousands of dollars and will last as long as 8-10 years. Ultimately San Francisco will expend well over seven figures on environmental planning just to seek permission for this plan before it finds it rejected.

The plan’s market analysis for continuing golf in Sharp Park is bogus on its face. The plan conjectures mutually inconsistent expectations that the course can raise fees by over $100/round while simultaneously dramatically increasing the number of rounds played at the course— primarily from women, minority, and junior players, Bay Area residents that typically comprise the smallest components of the golf market. It is quite clear that the golf market will NOT support this vision: most public courses are currently running well below 50% capacity despite the deep discounts currently offered at the course. Raising prices while increasing demand doesn’t pass Economics 101.

The RPD process leading up to this plan has been improper and disingenuous. The Golf Task Force’s meetings have frequently been canceled at the last moment by RPD officials, apparently so that they could proceed with planning without input from the Task Force. The RPD has refused to provide materials to Task Force members and has redacted those materials it has reluctantly handed over with as heavy a hand as the CIA. There is no reason at this point to retain a shred of confidence in the RPD’s intentions or judgment.

The plan, if pursued further by the RPD, will be met with a costly lawsuit. Opposition to the continued destruction of endangered species habitat in Sharp Park is vigorous and uniform in the environmental community, and the City and County of San Francisco will have an immediate opportunity to learn the scale of this opposition if it proceeds with this plan in any fashion.

Clearly, there are powerful forces at the highest levels of San Francisco government that love golf and want to see it continue at Sharp Park. It appears most likely that the RPD General Manager is getting intense pressure from the Mayor to make this so, though it’s hard to see what benefit Newsom thinks he’s deriving for his gubernatorial campaign by exterminating endangered species for a golf course that few want. Then again, Newsom’s base is the country club set, and from their lofty vantage point, this all may seem like great policy.

San Francisco does have a clear and noble alternative, though: a restoration plan to protect and preserve the Sanchez Creek drainage through the creation of a world-class environmental center, hiking/nature trail system, and camping program. Sharp Park can meet the highest priority public park needs identified (ironically) by a prior Pros Consulting report in 2004. The current golf plan is, however, exactly the WRONG thing to do.

UPDATE: The RPD has inexplicably canceled yet ANOTHER Golf Task Force meeting. The Sept 17 meeting has been pushed back to Sept 29 — which is a date that many cannot attend, as it turns out. The RPD obviously views the Golf Task Force as a body to rubber stamp — not shape — its golf policy. This is actually no big surprise, and clearly points out that the public has one forum in which to be heard: Superior Court.

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