The Presidio’s Future Seems Up for Grabs : San Francisco: As the National Park Service takes over the landmark military base this weekend, no once is certain about the next step. Meanwhile, the army remains in residence.

A mouthwatering patch of the country’s most valuable urban land turns into a national park this weekend, to blossom one day into a think tank for the world and a playground for 10 million visitors.

Or a black hole for taxpayers.

Or a greedy $20-billion land grab.

After 218 years as a military base under Spain, Mexico and the United States, the Presidio joins the vast holdings of the National Park Service. But there’s never been a national park like the Presidio. It encompasses 5%--1,480 acres--of San Francisco, the nation’s most expensive city. It boasts a gorgeous view of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco Bay.

In addition to forests, dunes, trails and beaches, the 6th Army headquarters includes 510 historic buildings, a state-of-the-art medical research center, a picturesque golf course, tennis courts and more.

Too valuable a prize to reserve only for San Franciscans, or Californians, or even Americans, visionaries say.

“It should be a global center, a great learning center, bringing together individuals and organizations working on the world’s pressing environmental and social issues,” said Robert Chandler, the Park Service official who heads the Presidio Project.

The Department of Energy has already declared that the park will be “the world’s foremost training institute for sustainable development.”

It will also be a model of the Clinton Administration’s public-private partnership theme.

It’s not hard to sell the idea of working in a historic building that sits in a park at the foot of Golden Gate Bridge, only miles from Stanford, the University of California at Berkeley, Silicon Valley and dozens of research facilities.

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Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev fell for the Presidio instantly. His war-and-peace think tank will be housed in an old Coast Guard station.

Vice President Al Gore visited the Presidio recently, calling it a future showcase of environmental technology leading to clean engines and non-polluting agriculture. He also brought a couple of federal tenants.

The Corporation for National Service--the Administration’s domestic Peace Corps--will base some operations at the Presidio. The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to encourage contractors to locate at the site.

On the private side, the Tides Foundation, which nurtures progressive environmental and social groups, is looking to rent space. The University of California at San Francisco is fighting for the research hospital.

In addition, there’s the endangered plant communities, sea lions, open space, bike trails, and planned museums for residents and tourists.

“Yellowstone and Yosemite national parks each attract 4 million visitors a year,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). “By contrast, it is projected that the Presidio will attract 10 million or more.”

But that bright vision is murkier than the Golden Gate fog that often rolls across the Presidio.

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The underlying threat is the staggering value of the land. When the Army began decommissioning the base, officials estimated they could sell off chunks for $500 million.

Way too low, says real estate attorney Neil Eisenberg, who once served on the park’s advisory committee but has become a vocal critic of the process.

If developed on an urban scale, with skyscrapers and condominiums, the Presidio’s real value could be $20 billion, he says. And there are developers quietly waiting in the wings for the park to collapse under its own expensive weight, he adds.

The park’s most vulnerable point is its cost. Congress has allocated $25 million for each of the first two years, making it the most expensive national park in the United States. And the real cost of running the park could reach two or three times that figure.

The stiff price tag has angered many congressmen and makes future annual appropriations chancy.

Rep. John Duncan (R-Tenn.) complains the budget is three times Yellowstone’s and five times higher than his own Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Duncan unsuccessfully pushed a bill critics say would have allowed selling or leasing most of the Presidio.

Building maintenance takes the blame for the high costs. The Parks Service finds itself stuck with keeping up 870 structures on the Presidio.

The agency is backing a bill by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) that would create a private-public Presidio Trust to administer and lease the buildings.

The trust would implement the global village think tank concept, filling the buildings with rent-paying tenants to chip away at the $25 million without inviting in oil companies and chemical factories.

But the U.S. Army has had second thoughts. After agreeing to decommission the base, the Defense Department informed the Interior Department it wasn’t really leaving after all. The 6th Army will continue to use 40% of the Presidio buildings as its headquarters for at least five years.

And by the way, the Army said, we’ll keep the golf course for officer morale.

Chandler puts the best face on it. At least, he says, we have a paying tenant during the transition phase. But the Army decision stunned park supporters who had hoped to use the golf course for revenue.

The Army’s decision also struck a nerve with a growing chorus of critics who complain that the Presidio planning process was run behind closed doors. Powerful organizations appeared to be cutting up the cake.

But Chandler insists that everything was done by the book, with endless public hearings and public bids when legally required. “There were no secret deals and conspiracies,” he said.

Environmentalists worry the protracted debate may frighten potential tenants, sabotage the global village think tank, and ultimately threaten the park’s existence.

“If you don’t do a real good job, you create pressure--like, let’s sell a big chunk of it off,” said Michael Alexander, the Sierra Club’s representative on the advisory committee. “And we’d be fools to sell it off.”

Alexander recalls the history of California’s redwood forests, parceled out to loggers in the 1930s for 50 cents an acre.

“In the 1960s, the children of the people who sold it off realized we had to preserve it,” he said. “But there was only a small chunk left by then--and it cost us a billion dollars.”