Editor,
Why would the University of California, San Francisco want to locate an academic building, the new Department of Psychiatry and Child, Teen Health Center, in a residential neighborhood and not at a key site on their Mission Bay campus, where construction has stalled, leaving many undeveloped sites by the campus core (“UCSF to Develop Psychiatric Center in Dogpatch,” February)? Is this a Trojan Horse, as some Dogpatch residents worry, or just misguided campus planning?
The Department of Psychiatry and Child, Teen Health Center is a gift from John and Lisa Pritzker. Why wouldn’t they want this important new facility at a pride of place location on the UCSF Mission Bay campus? The Pritzker family legacy would be much better served with the center located on a campus site, like behind the Sandler Neuroscience Center, an easy walk from parking, the child play friendly quad park, and other campus amenities. On campus, the center could be housed in a handsome work of architecture that compliments the other fine academic buildings.
The Pritzker family legacy will be poorly served on a site in the off-campus Dogpatch residential neighborhood, with inadequate parking and campus amenities in an unfortunate work of architecture that tries to hopefully “fit in” to the neighborhood rather than celebrate a UCSF campus site and the Pritzker Family Legacy.
Clearly the UCSF Chancellor and development office need to have a conversation with John and Lisa Pritzker to make sure that UCSF acts in their best interests
And the interests of Dogpatch would be well-served and honored if the Third Street site were to be used to house UCSF students, and/or other UCSF medical professionals and their families in a residential development in Dogpatch; a truly win-win solution.
John Loomis
Tennessee Street
