Friends of Golden Gateway

Friends of Golden Gateway hopes everyone had a great Holiday Season.  We wish to start the New Year by updating you on what is happening.

The proposed FOGG Fund Raising event for February has been delayed due to time constraints.  We are hoping to hold our fund raiser in the late spring or early summer.
 

We do want to thank all those who made a tax deductible donation in 2006.

Your donations and support really mean a great deal to FOGG.  These funds have really helped us make our financial commitments during the latter half of 2006, and we appreciate it.

As expected, the developer, Simon Snellgrove, has filed with the SF Planning Department to undertake an environmental review of both the SF Port parking lot (Seawall Lot, Block #351), and the existing Club site – called the 8 Washington property – (Block # 201 – the front 5 courts and club house, Block #171 – the pool area and courts 6, 7 & 8, and Block #168 – court 9 and the remaining open space).
 
FOGG wants to make it clear to our members and Mr. Snellgrove that we will make every effort to prevent him from closing down our open recreational space for the development of a large (500 or more space) underground parking lot to benefit his Piers  1 ½ – 5 development, and 170 of the highest priced condominiums in the City.
 
We have reviewed his proposal, and find it does not include a real site plan.  It has a number of evasions of fact, and does not adhere to the recent Recreational Space Resolution (File #061493 – Interim Zoning Requiring Conditional Use Authorization for Change in Use or Reduction of 15,000 square feet or more of Recreational Space) requiring a one for one replacement of recreational space.
The proposal submitted show only six tennis courts for the present nine.  Further, the proposal would require that swimmers cross a 50 foot public/private walkway to walk from the proposed club house to the pools.  As we stated previously, this doesn’t work. (The Club’s management strongly disapproves of this idea.)
At this time Mr. Snellgrove can only file for an environmental review.  He still has a number of hoops to jump through including SF Port and Board of Supervisors approval for exclusive negotiating rights.  It will also require changes to the Public Trust Ordinance through the State Legislature.
FOGG expects that in the coming 18 months permanent legislation will be adopted to finally put a stop to these speculative proposals, and preserve our open recreational space in perpetuity.  We are constantly striving to ensure that this happens.
As we have said before, it takes many hours of volunteer work to accomplish our goals, but it also takes many hours of professional legal work to make the correct decisions as we shape the proper permanent legislation for final approval.  FOGG looks forward to your continued support and tax deductible donations while this effort moves ahead.
You may make your tax deductible deduction at the link on this web site or send a check made out to AGAPE/FOGG to James Eggert, Treasurer, 550 Davis St. #46, San Francisco, CA 94111.  On the memo line write “for 2007 tax deduction.”
FOGG has been fighting to preserve our Club since 2003 and we have just begun to fight!
Lastly, we wish to congratulate Supervisor Aaron Peskin who has been reelected as President of the Board of Supervisors.  It was a unanimous vote.  Way to go Aaron!

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 14th, 2007 at 2:22 pm and is filed under blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.