S.F. Trying to Return Fishermen to the Wharf

Along famous Fisherman’s Wharf, visitors can see restaurants, souvenir shops, street musicians, pedicabs and petty crooks--about everything, it seems, but fishermen.

Two decades of tawdry, touristy development, resulting in a glut of coffee-mug emporiums and T-shirt boutiques, have blurred the wharf’s maritime history and threatened to squeeze out the fishermen who remain.

The potential for a Fisherman’s Wharf without fishermen has spurred the city to try to revive the area by toning down tourism and expanding the fish-handling facilities.

The revival’s prospects are uncertain--planners are just now starting to add up the cost of one 4-year-old proposal--but its supporters argue that something must be done soon or the fishing industry could vanish.

Fewer and Fewer Boats

Boats from all along the West Coast bring their catch to Fisherman’s Wharf to take advantage of the higher prices it offers. But only 15 active fishing boats actually are berthed there. Nearly 135 other berths are occupied by retired trawlers, sportfishing party boats and pleasure craft.

High rents--as much as $1 million a year for some area restaurants--have corralled the land-based fish handlers and processors into an area called Fish Alley and onto two old piers. Fishermen and city planners alike worry that further commercial development will force fishing facilities out altogether.

Those facilities keep San Francisco a major fish-handling and distribution center. Thousands of pounds of fish are landed daily from colorful fishing boats clustered around Fish Alley.

This year is especially busy. Fishermen Anthony Lonero of Monterey and Stan Long of Aptos say the global ocean current oddity called El Nino has passed, lowering ocean temperatures and bringing back large schools of 30- to 35-pound king salmon.

However, working fisherman are rarely spotted by tourists, who apparently are distracted by the area’s gaudy curio museums and gift shops and are unwilling to venture near the utilitarian buildings lining Fish Alley.

“It’s not an attraction, it’s a detraction,” Connie Kassouf, a visitor from Chicago, complained after walking through the wharf area. “It’s so crowded and filled with junky little stores. It’s ruined by the commercialism. And it doesn’t give you a real flavor of the city.”

Peter Bentivegna, a third-generation fisherman, agrees.

“They are turning Fisherman’s Wharf into a carnival,” he said at a recent Port Commission meeting. “They got a man who dresses like a pirate and has parrots. There is a man who wears a gorilla suit. They got guys driving rickshaws. There’s horse-and-buggy rides. What’s that got to do with fishing?”

City officials say they understand such complaints but must be cautious in dealing with tourism, the city’s principal industry. Along with leaders of the fishing trade, they are seeking to reinvigorate fishing while accommodating the tourist trade.

Since 1981 the city has had ambitious plans for the fishing industry at the wharf, but little has been done until recently. Some public toilets, a new seawall and the start of a breakwater are the only improvements.

However, a recent tide of well-publicized wharf-related matters, including stiff increases in berth fees for fisherman, have revived interest in implementing the plan. A detailed update of the proposal was recently made public.

“The challenge before us is to put everything together,” said Christopher Martin, president of the Fisherman’s Wharf Merchants Assn. and an executive at The Cannery, an old waterfront fruit cannery that has been turned into a fashionable shopping mall.

“I want to bring back the fishing industry, make it more visible again,” he said. “It provides what people want to see. They want to see fish being unloaded. They want to see all the old fishermen with leathered faces. It’s something they can’t see in the Midwest, and it’s what draws the tourists.”

Eventually, the city hopes to expand Hyde Street Pier to accommodate a new cooperative fish-handling plant that would more than double the quantity of fish landed at the wharf to at least 40 million pounds annually.

The new plant would share the pier with a fleet of historic ships already anchored there as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Together, they would offer a tourist attraction relevant to the wharf’s history.

Huge Pier 45, now the site of most fish plants, would be refurbished with a hotel and a maritime institute. Money earned from that project would help pay for the Hyde Street Pier project and allow for additional improvements to Fish Alley and Pier 47, a smaller dock used to unload fishing boats.

Fishermen at Work

At the same time, viewing corridors would be opened to let visitors see fishermen at work and enjoy the wharf’s spectacular views. Tourist shops would be discouraged in favor of hardware stores, fish markets and other marine businesses.

The remaining tourist shops, meanwhile, would be asked to conform to various standards for signs and store designs as a way to reduce what Martin called a “carnivalistic” atmosphere.

Fishermen enthusiastically support the plan and petitioned the Port Commission earlier this year to embrace it. But the plan’s future remains uncertain because various interests have conflicting priorities.

The Port Commission, saddled with debt from past projects elsewhere on the waterfront, wants to finance the plan with the hotel development on Pier 45.

Fishermen, frequently at odds with the commission, are reluctant to agree to that project until the fish plants on Pier 45 are relocated a few hundred feet to an expanded Hyde Street Pier.

However, the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, which regulates development on the waterfront of San Francisco Bay, will not allow the expansion of Hyde Street Pier until Pier 45 is committed to some other use.

Combining the Elements

“From the outside, it may look like a row of dominoes waiting to see which one gets pushed over first, but we’ve always known they (elements of the plan) are linked and have to go forward together,” said Randall S. Rossi, a planning consultant for the Port of San Francisco.

He said fishery consultants and fishermen are beginning to detail exactly what will be needed on the new Hyde Street Pier and how to shift fish-handling facilities there from Pier 45. Some construction bids could be solicited as early as next spring, Rossi said.

But some local officials, such as Supervisor Wendy Nelder, doubt that the complicated shifting of facilities and phasing of construction can ever be sorted out.

“I don’t like the idea of Pier 45 being used for anything but fishing,” she said. “I don’t think there should be a hotel there. On the theory that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, I feel that Pier 45 should continue to be used for fishing.”

Conservationists and area homeowners agree, largely out of fear that a new hotel on Pier 45 would block their bay views and add to already chaotic traffic snarls, even though plans for the area offer solutions to these problems.

Fishermen, in any case, prefer the Hyde Street Pier because it is closer to long-established facilities at Fish Alley and because it would open up Pier 45 for hotel development, the only likely source of primary funding for the plan. Rossi said additional money will have to come from the fishing industry.

Eager to Cooperate

Patrick J. Flanagan, vice president of Standard Fisheries Corp. and a leading fish merchant, said that improvements of some sort must be made soon and that fish firms are eager to cooperate because this may be the city’s last chance to preserve the wharf.

“After five years of seeing nothing being done except the breakwater and some bathrooms, I’m not too optimistic,” he said. “The last five years (since the city adopted its ‘action plan’ for the wharf) have been the same as the 20 before that.

“Maybe, though, maybe now something will be done.”

Nelder agreed. “If we keep as we are,” she said, “some poor mayor in the future is going to have to go recruiting fishermen for Fisherman’s Wharf. It’s going to be embarrassing.”