S.F. Presidio Under Siege, May Fall to Budget Ax

Twice a day every day for as long as anyone here remembers, the sharp reports of cannon fire have echoed through the affluent San Francisco neighborhoods overlooking the spectacular Golden Gate.

As familiar as the area’s plaintive foghorns, the ceremonial cannon signals reveille and retreat--the hoisting and lowering of the flag--at the Presidio of San Francisco, America’s oldest continually active military base.

Soon, however, federal budget cutters may silence the cannon by closing the base. The closure would cost San Francisco, which cherishes its heritage as do few other places on Earth, a tradition older than the United States itself.

“No question that there will be sadness if the military leaves; it will be the passing of an era,” said Brian O’Neill of the U.S. Park Service, which is to assume control of all but a small piece of the Army outpost. “The Presidio has been a part of San Francisco longer than the city has been a city.”

The sprawling, sylvan Presidio, founded by Spanish colonists early in 1776, is among 86 military bases tagged for retirement by the President’s Commission on Base Realignment. Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci has approved the list and passed it on to Congress, which is expected to accept the suggestions.

The closures and other recommendations are anticipated to save $700 million a year, of which the commission estimates $74 million could be realized at the Presidio alone.

News of the proposed closure not only has renewed public curiosity over the Presidio’s history, it also has sparked public interest in what will become of the 1,441-acre base that has been hailed as one of the most beautiful--and valuable--pieces of urban real estate in the world.

Federal officials said the Presidio’s future will not be formally discussed until the Army actually vacates the area, but charitable groups, civic leaders and small business operators already are lining up with ideas about what to do with the estimated 1,100 buildings scattered around the post.

“Soon we’ll be hearing from every group with any sort of cause and a need to occupy space,” said O’Neill of the Park Service, which will administer the property after the Army is finished with it. “We really have to step back and assure ourselves that we don’t make any decision that is shortsighted.

“We have to recognize that this is one of the most precious pieces of real estate in the world. What happens in the future could be very exciting. But if not dealt with carefully, it could be piecemealed to death.”

Proposals to subdivide the Presidio for commercial or residential uses were quashed by the creation in 1972 of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, a U.S. Park Service property that is legally entitled to all but 36 acres of the Presidio after the Army quits it.

Even without the Presidio, the park has become the U.S. Park Service’s most popular recreation area. This year, for example, more than 26 million visitors wandered around its 72,800 acres, which include Ft. Point and Ft. Mason on San Francisco’s waterfront and old Army artillery batteries in the ruggedly beautiful Marin headlands to the north.

With those visitor volumes, park officials have said they can easily put to use the Presidio’s rolling hills, woods, meadows, bluffs and beaches.

However, the Presidio--with its legion of buildings to maintain, including more than 300 historically significant, federally protected structures--could pose a particular financial burden for the Park Service.

The Army spends nearly $7.8 million a year to maintain the Presidio grounds and buildings, many of which date back to the Civil War and a few of which can be traced to the original Presidio of 1776. In contrast, the entire budget for the rest of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area was $9.5 million.

Substituting Civil Service tradesmen for the modestly paid soldiers who now maintain the Presidio could make the cost-cutting idea a money-loser--an idea Reps. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Barbara Boxer (D-Greenbrae) are using to lobby their congressional colleagues to keep the Army base open.

“You tell me how this is going to save money,” said Milton B. Halsey Jr., of the Ft. Point Historical Assn. Some of the Presidio’s operating costs could be met by leasing the existing buildings to nonprofit groups or small businesses. A similar system has proven successful at Ft. Mason, an old bay-side shipping and storage depot that now is home to such varied tenants as a vegetarian restaurant, a theater company, two ethnic museums, a children’s art center and a youth hostel.

Some people have recommended leasing the Letterman Army Medical Center to a private health-care provider. That, however, could prove problematical because the 20-year-old hospital tower does not meet current earthquake safety standards.

Other Suggestions

Others have suggested using the Presidio for a new University of California campus, a conference center, a luxury resort hotel, or as the site of low-cost housing. The last idea is most ironic, since the Presidio sits between Pacific Heights and Seacliff, two neighborhoods of multimillion-dollar mansions.

Howard Levitt of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area said a leasing program is “certainly possible” but added that, “we don’t want to prejudice the hearing process in any way.” If the Presidio is abandoned by the Army, its future will be decided in public hearings that Levitt said could last two years.

“The buildings must be actively reused in a way that does not detract from their historical ambiance and fabric,” said O’Neill. “The last thing we want to do is erase 200 years of significant history represented there.”

Boxer said that at least some of the existing base housing, including the city’s oldest Victorian-era homes and spacious Mission Revival-style officers’ houses on generous wooded lots, could be retained for use by Army personnel who would remain in the Bay Area after the Presidio closes.

Army spokesman Tom McKenzie said housing and the officers’ club at Ft. Mason still are used by Army personnel assigned to the Presidio and the Oakland Army Base. He declined to speculate on whether a similar arrangement would be made, or needed, at the Presidio if it closes.

Construction Program

Ironically, the Presidio now is in the middle of a $40-million construction program, in which new barracks are being constructed to replace buildings that housed soldiers in the 19th Century. Also being built are a child-care center, commissary, bowling alley and convenience store.

That construction, which McKenzie said will continue, offers a sense of the Presidio itself. Far in the northwest edge of densely populated San Francisco, the base could be mistaken for a rural coastal region dotted by small towns.

In addition to homes and offices, there are playgrounds, a theater, shops--even a liquor store. Except for one company of combat engineers, base personnel are administrators. The largest of the 32 tenants is the 6th Army, a paper agency overseeing reserve and National Guard units all over the West.

Current assignments belie a colorful history.

Spanish colonists established San Francisco’s Presidio--as well as similar garrisons in San Diego, Santa Barbara and Monterey--to protect the Franciscan missions on the coast and to discourage incursions by other colonial powers, such as England and Russia.

An adobe brick wall from the original commandant’s house is incorporated in the current officers’ club, letting the Army claim the club as San Francisco’s oldest building. That claim is discounted by some historians, who contend that Mission Dolores, built later in 1791, is the oldest complete building.

Show Little Enthusiasm

Mexican soldiers supplanted Spaniards at the Presidio after Mexico revolted from Spain in 1822, but the new owners showed little enthusiasm for the foggy fortress. By the time John C. Fremont peacefully overran the Presidio for the United States in 1846, Mexico had only a sergeant and five soldiers assigned there.

American troops used the Presidio as a base for several historic tasks. From here, they protected settlers, subdued Confederate subversives and countered a Confederate expedition to Santa Fe during the Civil War, and fought the Modocs and other Indian tribes in Northern California in the 1870s and 1880s.

The Presidio launched an expeditionary force to the Philippines during the Spanish-American War and took in returning wounded and ailing troops at what is now Letterman Army Medical Center, once the largest military medical center west of the Mississippi.

Troops from the Presidio kept the peace and battled fires in the city after the 1906 earthquake; the Presidio itself served as a relocation camp while the city was rebuilt. Two of the thousands of temporary wooden shacks for refugees from that time are preserved at the base.

Coordinated Defense

World War II launched new activity, with the Presidio coordinating domestic defenses--the order interning Japanese-Americans was issued from the Presidio--and serving as a vital command link with ground troops in the Pacific.

“There are so many stories here,” said Ed Green, a civilian technician at the 15-year-old Presidio Army Museum. “There are years and years and years of fabulous history.”

Still, despite more than two centuries of military history, Green said that the Presidio’s many cannon never fired a single shot at an enemy.