Editor,
As a longtime Potrero Hill resident I’ve seen a lot of changes in our neighborhood. We’ve faced many challenges from greedy developers and municipal agencies. For example, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency proposed in 2011 to install parking meters all over the Hill and eastern Mission. Through grassroot efforts, a coalition of Hill, Dogpatch and Mission neighbors challenged these plans, which were ultimately scrapped.
During my time here we transformed a vacant lot on the corner of 18th and Pennsylvania into a thriving, beautiful garden right next to Interstate-280. I enjoy Pennsylvania Gardens every time I step out of my house.
Unfortunately, just north of the garden on Pennsylvania something sinister has been going on. In 2017 the old industrial buildings on this site that formerly housed Center Hardware & Supply Co. and Brickley Production Services were torn down to prepare for construction of a multi-story apartment/condominium complex. Drawings were rendered, plans made, letters sent, meetings held. But now here we are, six years later, with a gigantic hole in the ground, an unsightly blight on our neighborhood that in the last several years has become a magnet for the homeless, drug dealing and criminal activity; a dangerous corner where someone was held up at gunpoint – suffering shooting wounds – last summer.
It’s hard to know who to hold responsible for this situation. I certainly don’t blame the homeless; they’ve been abandoned by our political leaders, who seem to lack the courage or imagination to come up with a solution to their manifest, multidimensional, problems. What about the property owners? Do they owe nothing to our neighborhood? I guess the attitude of the William Spencer Company, headquartered in Brisbane, California, is that they can leave their blighted property vacant for as long as they like. Municipal government places no constraints on their behavior. It’s only us as neighbors who must live with the consequences of their actions, as reprehensible as they are.
James Wilkins
Pennsylvania Avenue