Yosemite Housing Plan Debated : Environment: Proposal calls for 30% increase in motel-style rooms, but fewer tent cabins. Some see next concessions contract as a test for the national park system.

With competing visions at stake of how Yosemite National Park should meet the needs of millions of visitors into the next century, the National Park Service on Wednesday held an unprecedented public meeting in Los Angeles on a proposed concession services plan for the park.

The hearing at USC, one of four to be held across the state, marked the first time that the Park Service has sought comment on what many see as a turning point in Yosemite’s history.

At issue is a proposed 15-year concession services plan that calls for far fewer tent cabins without baths and a 30% increase in motel-style rooms with baths. The plan also calls for changes in restaurant and shop operations, and the elimination of the ice-skating rink in Curry Village. Campgrounds are not affected by the plan.

“Personally, I don’t visit Yosemite much any more,” attorney Richard S. Luskin said at the hearing. Luskin is executive director of Environment Now, a private foundation created by Walt Disney Co. President Frank Wells and his wife, Luanne.

“As Yogi Berra might put it,” he said, “the park is so crowded, no one goes there anymore.”

Actor Robert Redford, long active in environmental issues, testified that the problems facing Yosemite “are a microcosm of the crisis facing our national park system. Rampant development in the national parks is out of control, and as a result, the parks are starting to resemble the very cities we are trying to escape.”

Yosemite is viewed by environmentalists and potential commercial operators as a test of what might happen with other national parks.

“The way Yosemite goes, the rest of the nation’s parks and monuments will go for the next 50 years,” Joan Reiss, regional director of the Wilderness Society, said before the hearing.

When the plan is completed in June, it will form the Park Service’s blueprint for the private concessionaire who wins a 15-year monopoly over Yosemite’s commercial operations. Those concessions range from the famed Ahwahnee Hotel and Yosemite Lodge to restaurants and stores.

The potentially lucrative concessions contract is scheduled to be awarded in the fall of 1993, about the time the Yosemite Park & Curry Co.’s 30-year contract expires.

While no concessionaires interested in bidding on the contract stood to support the Park Service’s draft concession plan, it drew critics and supporters at Wednesday’s hearing.

Most who opposed it said it broke faith with the general management plan that was approved in 1980 with widespread support from environmentalists.

“We are deeply disappointed to find such an inadequate document for such a spectacular park,” said Reiss. “Perhaps your worst offense is the lack of Park Service commitment to the true spirit of the 1980 general management plan.”

The Yosemite Restoration Trust, a consortium of conservationists and business interests that may bid on the concessions contract, maintained that the draft “subverts” the the general management plan by proposing six new 24-unit, two-story motel buildings in Yosemite Valley.

Others, however, supported the changes.

“They’re reducing total visual pollution,” said William J. Chandler, director of the nonprofit National Parks and Conservation Assn. Chandler said building additional motel-style rooms while eliminating tent cabins was a trade-off. “You have a few more (motel-style) structures, but you have less visual blight. A lot of those (tent cabins) you wouldn’t want to stay in.”

Overall, the proposal cuts the number of lodging units by 13%, mainly by eliminating 376 of the park’s 855 tent cabins, and lodges without plumbing.

Reduction of the numbers of tent cabins drew objections from several at the hearing.

“There are three times as many poor people in this country as rich people,” said Bob Sale of El Cajon, one of 300 people at the hearing. “Poor people need some place to bed down.”

The proposal also provides for a 30% increase in lodging units with baths, including hotel rooms, lodge rooms, cottages and cabins.

At a news conference before the hearing, Yosemite Park Supt. Michael V. Finley said only a “fatal flaw” would send the plan back to the drawing board.

“Someone is going to have to point out to us (the plan has) some fatal flaw. We don’t think it does,” he said. “We do not believe that it repudiates the general management plan in any way.”

Lodging Plan

Here is how the National Park Service proposes to achieve an overall reduction in the number of lodging accommodations in Yosemite National Park. The changes are in a proposed new concession services plan, which could eventually become a blueprint for providing visitor services at Yosemite over the next 15 years.

The chart compares the new plan with the General Management Plan (GMP) that was approved 10 years ago and widely applauded by environmentalists. Existing camp grounds are unaffected by the concession plan.

Existing GMP New Change from existing Accomodation Type Units Plan to new plan Hotel rooms w/bath 121 117 149 +23.14% Cottage rooms 52 50 119 +128.86% Motel rooms 308 292 463 +50.32% Cabins 207 132 297 +29.60% Motel rooms w/o bath 16 0 0 -100% Hotel rooms w/o bath 46 19 0 -100% Cabins w/o bath 169 148 0 -100% Tent cabins 855 714 479 -43.97% Cottage room w/o both 8 7 0 -100% Added rooms at Wawoma 0 73 0 0% Total 1,782 1,552 1,507 -15.43%

Source: National Park Service