SAN FRANCISCO — The Educational Coalition for Responsible Development, led by State Senator Leland Yee and Assemblywoman Fiona Ma, held a press conference last week to oppose development of a City College of S.F. high-rise in low-rise Chinatown and North Beach.
The group supports a Chinatown campus for City College, but not the proposed 17-story structure. The coalition urged the district to listen to concerns about increased shadows, feng shui, traffic concerns, pedestrians and other quality of life issues.
“We are not going to micromanage the community college. We have able-bodied representatives on the board itself,” said Yee, joined by College Board members Julio Ramos and John Rizzo.
The state senator was a former member of the S.F. school board that leases the outmoded Filbert Street elementary school to City College, which wants to replace it with a new campus.
Yee accused CCSF of planning a structure “several stories high [but] in the dead of night they changed their plans and proposed a 17-story building.”
“I am prepared to hold up their funding if in fact they are going to destroy the character and neighborhood that they want to somehow partner with,” he said.
Joanne Low, dean of the NorthBeach/Chinatown Campus, urged patience. “There will be additional hearings where people will be able to come and comment…. [The longer environmental impact report process is] because the college heard what people said at the scoping meetings and took it seriously.”
Others said the press conference was hastily arranged and did not reflect opposition to the proposed new campus plans.
“I was misled,” said Rudy Ascercion, a Filipino American veterans advocate and former International Hotel tenant. “The person who approached us said that there will be 7,000 students coming at once and there would be no parking spaces. That is really not true, because the students are going to be staggered.”
“Satellite campuses in these neighborhoods [Richmond, Sunset/Parkside and Stonestown] could reduce the demand and make for a more suitable building in Chinatown/North Beach.”
— Assembly Majority Whip Fiona Ma
“In 1977, the [adjacent] International Hotel was a major milestone and the beginning of modern Asian American history and civil rights movement. As such, the current plan would cast a shadow and obscure the major milestones of Asian American history.”
— Filipino American Democratic Caucus co-chair Alice Bulos’ statement
“This [17-story] plan was significantly different from the original proposal of two low rise buildings to be Chinatown campus.”
— Albert Cheng, retired school administrator and co-chair of the Chinese Culture Center