No More Needles
The California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) has decided to shutter the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine (ACTCM), which first opened in 1980. ACTCM will no longer accept new students but will work with currently enrolled scholars to complete their degrees within a designated schedule. CIIS and ACTCM merged in 2015, at the time stating that “The union of the two institutions expands opportunities for mind, body, and spirit education and research.” Apparently, what didn’t expand was the acupuncture school’s finances.
Bus Yard Development Lurches Forward
A plan to modernize the Potrero bus storage yard has moved to the next stop, with the City selecting a development team for the project. In 2017, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency initiated a $2.3 billion multiyear effort to repair, renovate, and modernize the agency’s facilities, including the more than a century old Potrero yard. Six bus routes originate at the 4.4-acre facility, located at Bryant and Mariposa streets, across from Franklin Square Playground. The redevelopment, which calls for 595 housing units and a new bus storage depot, will be taken on by a newly formed joint venture led by Plenary, an Australian public infrastructure developer, in collaboration with Mission Economic Development Agency, Young Community Developers, Tabernacle Community Development Corp. and Presidio Development Partners. There’s no timeline for when the project might break ground; complex projects such as this one can take years to secure approvals and financing.
Emails Unanswered
District 10 supervisorial aide Natalie Gee asked the View to encourage constituents to express their opinions by publishing her office’s email address. The View already does that. Yet several emails to Gee and the office from the paper have gone unanswered. Mixed message much? All supervisorial offices are outfitted with an expensive subscription to Salesforce as a means to manage residents’ communications. One suspects that this tool isn’t used much, if at all; probably another costly waste of money, sitting right in front of decisionmakers.
Esprit Park Retailored
At the end of this month or early next, Esprit Park will be closed for renovations, fenced from people and dogs. The redesign, five years in the making, will take roughly 12 months, at a cost of $7 million, most of which will be paid from an University of California, San Francisco grant. More than 50 sick or dying trees and shrubs will be removed by mid-February, to avoid disrupting nesting birds. A stitch in time hopefully saves essential green space in Dogpatch.
