Las Urbanistas

Mayor wants Hunters Point Shipyard transferred to city to speed toxic cleanup

Robert Selna, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office is pushing the Navy to transfer ownership of Hunters Point Shipyard in San Francisco to the city in hope of accelerating a toxic cleanup of the property in time to meet the 49ers’ 2012 deadline to build a new football stadium.

In a Feb. 16 memo obtained by The Chronicle, the city proposes to take ownership of the former naval base and assume responsibility for removing most non-radiological toxic material provided that the Navy covers the costs.

The Navy believes the transfer is possible. But questions remain about whether funding is available for a faster cleanup, the exact locations to be cleaned and whether the Navy can meet its obligation to rid the shipyard of radiological waste before turning it over to the city.

The city’s responsibility would include dealing with chemical and petroleum contamination and other toxic wastes.

“Our primary objective is to expedite the cleanup and transfer of the shipyard so that we can create the public benefits the property holds, and one of those is the possibility of creating a stadium for the 49ers,” said Newsom’s base reuse director, Michael Cohen.

Cohen, who wrote the memo, said the Navy’s current plan for the cleanup would take 10 more years. About $400 million has been spent so far, and another $500 million is needed to complete the work. The Navy believes a transfer to the city and faster cleanup would cost up to $75 million more. Cohen and Navy officials think Congress might provide that money.

The city wants title to the 500-acre former base as quickly as possible, Cohen said, because preparatory work for the stadium needs to start by May 2009 in order to make the 2012 season opening kickoff.

In December, Newsom invited owners of the 49ers to build a stadium at the shipyard as a last-ditch effort to keep the team from moving to Santa Clara. Newsom’s proposal attempted to answer team co-owner John York’s complaints about the huge parking structure required for a new stadium at Candlestick Point, where it was proposed initially.

The shipyard accommodates 19,000 surface parking spaces, which would mean twice as much space for tailgaters, addressing York’s chief problem with the proposed Candlestick Point garage.

At the time, York characterized Newsom’s offer in December as “political gamesmanship.” While he did not reject the proposal outright, he said he doubted that the shipyard could be clean enough to complete a stadium by 2012, noting the snail’s pace of the work so far.

The shipyard, closed in 1974, remains on the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund list of hazardous sites and inspectors recently found radiological deposits in the sewers there.

Shipyard Parcel A, one of five shipyard parcels designated A through E, has been cleared for the Lennar Corp. to construct 1,600 new condominiums and townhouses. But delays in toxic cleanup have led to uncertainties about a master plan for the area, which was to serve as an economic engine for the struggling southeast section of the city — possibly through the development of offices, stores, light industry and parks.

While Cohen’s memo urged the Navy to expedite the transfer of the base, he made it clear that the city would not accept the much more complex job of ridding the base’s sewers and soil of radioactive material.

The city has also said that it does not believe it can handle the cleanup of a portion of Parcel E, where the Navy has already removed radioactive soil but which contains PCBs and other waste and was the scene of an underground fire in 2000.

Doug Gilkey, the Navy’s base closure manager, said the Navy’s stance on the transfer has been an all-or-nothing deal, but he opined that a compromise could be reached.

“We have some disagreement about the risk and what the remedy may be for Parcel E-2,” Gilkey said. “Once we figure that out, hopefully it will take away some concern from the city’s side.”

Funding is another matter, Gilkey said.

“If the cleanup was going to take $500 million (more) over 10 years and now it will take three to five years, that money is going to have to come from somewhere … but in terms of where, your guess is as good as mine” Gilkey said.

Gilkey said his “bosses at the Pentagon are already talking with the senators and the people in Congress,” who would control the funds needed for an expedited cleanup job.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Dianne Feinstein have worked to obtain the shipyard for city development since the 1990s, and both have expressed a desire to keep the 49ers in San Francisco.

“The cleanup effort at Hunters Point has been a priority for the speaker for 15 years. The speaker has long fought to ensure that the Navy meets its commitments,” said Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill.

If the plan to transfer the base to the city works out, the Navy would pay the city for the cost of the cleanup, and the city would transfer the responsibility and the funds to the developer, Lennar.

Lennar would then hire a company to complete the job and would obtain insurance in case it turned out to be more costly than first believed.

Local environmental advocates said the city has devised a sound strategy but that questions remain.

“If the Navy goes along with this, then it’s a good deal for the city,” said Saul Bloom, executive director at ARC Ecology, a San Francisco nonprofit that helps communities plan for the closure and cleanup of military bases.

“The biggest issue is probably funding … and if the city makes this too onerous on the Navy, the Navy might just sit it out, which would hurt the 49ers deal, but I doubt that will happen.”

Chronicle staff writer Patrick Hoge contributed to this story. E-mail Robert Selna at rselna@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/08/MNGCROHIP91.DTL

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Yerba Buena Island projects are adding to total, officials say

Michael Cabanatuan, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Construction of the new Bay Bridge will cost $140 million more than anticipated, officials said Wednesday, but that increase could prevent more costly and frustrating delays that have become synonymous with the project.

Caltrans and Bay Area Toll Authority officials said Wednesday that work on Yerba Buena Island — including construction of a temporary detour and a connection from the new eastern span to the island’s tunnels — will cost more than planned. That’s due to rising costs of materials and construction, changes in construction schedules, an effort to shorten the duration of a detour, and a decision to rebuild rather than retrofit the elevated roadway just east of the tunnels.

Rachel Gordon, Chronicle Staff Writer; Thursday, March 8, 2007

This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

WHEN Morgan Lyons and Martha Harris refer to themselves as “city people,” which they frequently do, they aren’t speaking abstractly about L.A. They’re talking specifically of its urban core, the downtown district where they’ve lived since 1988, when they left their Pasadena home for a condo at 9th and Flower streets.

They were urban adventurers, believers in downtown even then, when the area was still pretty gritty. But the couple envisioned a soon-to-come hub that would rival Paris or New York: a place where shimmering clusters of corporate towers would be matched by equal numbers of elegant high-rise homes anchored by upscale boutiques, sidewalk cafes, locals pushing prams and walking dogs.

It didn’t happen quite that way. Or that soon.

The lull didn’t shake their faith. They were already hooked on a freeway-free life filled with nearby cultural and gastronomic delights, still a secret to most of stolidly suburban L.A.

When Harris, 59, and Lyons, 64, heard of the South Park community planned around 11th Street and Grand Avenue — five residential towers with parks, restaurants, shops and pedestrian paths — they’d lived in their old place 18 years and were ready to take another leap. But before signing the purchase agreement for a top-floor penthouse in the first of those new buildings, they consulted with Team HC, interior designer Hannah Lee and her husband, architect Clarence Chiang Jr.

Harris and Lyons wanted to explore design ideas for the space that would be so unlike any they had ever owned. All exterior walls would be floor-to-ceiling glass, leaving little wall area for traditional furniture placement.

The couple, married 28 years, moved into their new digs seven months ago with their two cats. Now it’s just a three-block walk to Lyons’ office (he’s president of Lodestar Management/Research Inc.), and a two-mile drive to Harris’ work as senior vice president of university relations at USC.

Their new 3,100-square-foot home has two master bedroom suites, four baths, bamboo floors, 11-foot-high ceilings, and all those walls of glass. The public space is one huge, undivided area that includes living room, dining room and kitchen.

Harris and Lyons kept everything personal they loved, but gave away the furniture, leaving Lee and Chiang to start from scratch. Both couples agreed that the downtown skyline would be the star of the décor; furniture would be a supporting player.

The design team came up with a color scheme of beiges and browns with occasional spikes of color for wood and upholstered pieces designed with quiet, contemporary flair.

The main seating area, in front of the fireplace, includes a massive beige L-shaped sectional, a burgundy chaise and a beige, upholstered side chair. All sit on a custom-designed area rug of beige with burgundy detail.

“We kept it simple, so as not to compete with the dynamic setting,” Lee says. The dining table, side tables and a carved screen are espresso-tinted oak, all designed and manufactured in China by Lee and Chiang, who divide their time between Hong Kong and L.A., where they first hit the spotlight when they designed interiors for the renovated Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

To bring the kitchen into sync with the rest of the open space, Lee stained the original blond wood cabinets espresso brown, and built what she calls an “appliance garage.” It has aluminum roll-up doors that handsomely convert what had been a wet bar into a port for a coffee maker, toaster and other appliances, as well as shelves for china.

The master bedroom suites had walls but no doors. Harris and Lyons wanted a bit more privacy for themselves and potential guests. So Lee and Chiang designed and built what they call sliding barn doors: massive ash wood panels with a distressed finish and a black, galvanized-steel edge. Their rustic simplicity blends perfectly with the other textures — concrete, wood, glass, steel — throughout the apartment.

Even the cats have a new kind of privacy. A cat door in the unit’s large laundry room leads the felines into a small enclosed bathroom of their own, a kind of closet with louvered door built into, but completely hidden from, one of the humans’ bathrooms.

BOTH owners say one of the biggest differences between the old condo and the new is their expanded city (and sky) views.

“It’s remarkable, and it changes by the hour. We can see South Park and the downtown skyline continue to build out. We can see the mountains, people walking their dogs, or going to and from Staples. We love downtown so much. And now we have this huge view of it all, and can see almost everything being built,” Harris says.

She has long been a fan of local artists. The couple’s walls are filled with works that depict L.A., including photos by Julius Shulman, purchased from the photographer in the 1980s. Panoramic photo views of the city are by Pete Jackson, and a pastel by Nancy Popenoe shows an L.A. skyline with the bright red “Jesus Saves” sign, which Lyons and Harris can actually see in the distance from their windows.

Glass doors open onto the broad balcony that wraps around the entire apartment and provides a kind of observation post from which to scan the ever-expanding cityscape. Indeed, the sky is dotted at that very moment with huge crayon-colored cranes at construction sites near and far, one of them right outside their bedroom window. “That’s L.A. Live over there,” Harris says, pointing across the street to where a $2-billion complex of apartments, restaurants, theaters and 1,100 hotel rooms is rising adjacent to Staples Center. “And more condos going up there and there,” she says pointing east and north. “The ambience is so much livelier and vibrant now than even just two years ago…. The energy is amazing.”

Yes, but what about the apartment itself? Lyons answers with a chuckle: “We love it, of course. But we still spend most of our time in that area,” he says, pointing to the only room in the house with no windows: an entry foyer, which they’ve lined with bookcases and turned into a TV room and den.

Sark, Channel Islands — HERE, on an island that might be called Camelot, the winds of democracy have blown in like the waft from a landfill.

This 3-mile-long stretch of granite crags, flowered meadows, neat cottages and well-behaved Guernsey cows 80 miles off Britain’s coast in the English Channel is the last feudal outpost in Europe. Algernon Swinburne, the 19th century poet, called it a “small, sweet world of wave-encompassed wonder.”

Sark has remained pretty much the same for 442 years, since Queen Elizabeth I declared it a noble fiefdom. Transport is by bicycle, horse-and-

carriage or Wellington boots. When absolutely necessary, one may resort to one of the island’s few tractors. But the neighbors, never frugal with opinions, tend to look up from their gardens and make case-by-case assessments of what constitutes necessity.

Landownership is divided among 40 “tenants.” They are the descendants or successors of the 40 men with muskets recruited by the original seigneur, the ruling lord commissioned to defend the isle against pirates and buccaneers. Government administration is by fiat, with the island administrator, judge, constable and clerk appointed by the current seigneur, a 79-year-old former aeronautical engineer whose family has governed Sark since 1852.

But that was all in place long before the 21st century arrived on the gut-churning, twice-a-day ferry from Guernsey; before it was decreed that, in a modern Europe whose members are signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights, it’s just not on to have feudal lords, and not on to have seats in the island’s parliament bequeathed across generations to eldest sons, and not on to refuse to adopt divorce laws because you don’t like them.

Sark, like the rest of the islands that squat in the English Channel, is technically not part of Britain, or anywhere else. As a dependency of the sovereign of England on and off since the days of William the Conqueror, Sark adopts its own tax residency, landownership and environmental standards.

But as a dependency, it looks to Britain for its defense and international diplomacy, and to the nearby island of Guernsey for criminal laws. (The bigger island centuries ago was granted Sark as part of its bailiwick, or court bailiff’s jurisdiction.) That means that when Britain agreed to respect human rights, so, by extension, did Sark.

Until now, no one has been particularly inclined to get rid of the feudal governing system that placed political power in the hands of the seigneur and a parliament made up of his 40 vassals and, more recently, 12 elected deputies.

But as outsiders looking for a slice of the island’s tranquillity and rural grace have begun to buy up the 40 land allotments, some of the newcomers have demanded at least a nod to the conventions of the 21st century, much as has happened on Guernsey and the nearby island of Jersey. For some, the idea of having to apply to the seigneur for permission to sell land — and pay him

one-thirteenth of the sales price — is too charmingly medieval for comfort.

BRITISH authorities, responsible for administering European human rights standards, have given Sark a choice: Either create an elected parliament of a form chosen by the majority of the island’s 600 or so residents, or give up some sovereignty.

“They said the legislature wasn’t human-rights-compliant…. About 10 years ago, the seigneurs in Guernsey had to give up giving permission [to sell land] and collecting money, and I realized from that date that the same thing was going to happen in Sark, that it was all inevitable,” said Michael Beaumont, the seigneur, who has tended to rule Sark the only way this island of eccentrics could be ruled: by dry wit, gentle prodding and quiet diplomacy.

A referendum last fall was supposed to usher in an elected parliament. But the last few weeks it has become clear that Sark’s 40 landlords, who would for the first time have to stand for election, aren’t giving in without a fight.

In January, the parliament, known as Chief Pleas, voted to suspend the referendum and study further whether Sark truly wants to go down the democratic road.

“We are now up to our seventh year in discussing a new constitution,” said Beaumont, who has made it clear he is prepared to forgo his inherited privilege and defer to progress. “But when you’ve got a house with a vast majority all made up of [landowners], they’re not going to give up their seats, at least not willingly. They’re going to fight to the last drop of blood, as far as I can see.”

As early as the 13th century, Sark was a haven for monks and pirates, the treacherous underwater rocks along its coasts serving as weapons against unsuspecting ships. That ended in 1565, when Queen Elizabeth I granted the island as a fief to Helier de Carteret on the condition he ensure the island’s safety by retaining 40 armed men.

Beaumont became seigneur in 1974 on the death of his grandmother, Sibyl Hathaway, dame of Sark, who held the island’s population together during Nazi occupation (imperiously requiring the German officers to sign in as visitors at the elegant manor house).

Over the years, the island had on its own cast away some of the trappings of feudalism.

Beaumont no longer collects an annual tithe on residents’ wealth; annual payment of a live chicken to the seigneur also is no longer mandatory; and taxes are a fraction of what they are in Britain, though Beaumont continues to take his treizieme, one-thirteenth of the sales price, whenever one of the original 40 tenements is sold. None can be subdivided or conveyed without his concurrence, and all must be sold to a loyal subject of the queen.

THE seigneur’s consent is no longer required for marriage (and no one can remember when he had the right to review the bride on her wedding night). Divorce is still not written into Sark’s code, but the island has agreed to accept those granted elsewhere. The law decreeing that tenements must be handed down to the eldest son was changed in 1999 to allow daughters to inherit as well.

Still, by tradition and law, Beaumont is the only Sark resident permitted to keep pigeons or an unspayed bitch. And residents with a complaint can still fall on one knee and invoke the Clameur de Haro, a Norman custom under which a person can obtain immediate cessation of any action he considers to be an infringement of his rights.

“It usually involves boundary disputes. Say someone is knocking your trees down,” explained Jeremy Bateman, the deputy seneschal, or island administrator.

“You can fall on your knees and invoke the Clameur de Haro. You say: ‘Haro, haro haro! A mon aide, mon prince, on me fait tort!’ [Help me, my prince, someone does me wrong!] And when that’s done, everything stops. All work must be stopped until there’s a hearing of the court.

“It is used occasionally,” Bateman said. “I think the last time it was three years ago. A wall was being built on a boundary, and it was invoked. It’s quite effective.”

Sark’s residents — natives whose families have inhabited the island for generations, mainland Brits looking for a quieter life, and wealthy, often-secretive refugees appreciative of the island’s generous tax laws — for the most part rent their homes on short- and long-term leases granted by the tenants. By law, newcomers can live only in homes built before 1976, a regulation intended to allow the construction of new homes for the children of islanders but hold the new arrivals largely at bay.

Residents survive mainly on the revenue from the thousands of tourists who descend on the island each summer once the terrifying winter gales subside.

With next to no civil service, Sark is governed by volunteers. The seigneur’s chief gardener is also the head of the constitutional review committee. Some people fish during the week and drive a carriage on weekends. Members of Chief Pleas oversee the schools, the sewage system, trash pickup, harbors, fishing, agriculture and health care.

“You’ll see somebody that’s working behind the counter in the food shops, and when you pop into the pub that evening they’ll be behind the bar. That’s how people support each other and make a living,” said Geoff Benfield, a former automotive engineer from the mainland who opened a combination bed-and-breakfast and rocking horse carving studio on Sark.

The constable is one of the few who gets a salary. He earned it in 1991, when an unemployed French nuclear physicist, dressed in military fatigues and armed with an automatic rifle and 250 rounds of ammunition, launched a one-man invasion.

“He put these notices up, they were all in French, of course, saying he was going to take over the island,” Beaumont recalled.

“Everyone took it as a joke, of course, until the next day somebody saw him walking around with a rifle. Fortunately, the constable just had a lot of plain common sense. He walked up to the chap and said, ‘That’s an interesting rifle you’ve got there.’ And he asked, ‘How does it work?’

“So the chap started to show him, and the rest of the fire brigade pounced on him.”

MANY residents probably would have been content to leave Sark as it was for another 400 years. That wasn’t going to happen after billionaire twin brothers Sir David Barclay and Sir Frederick Barclay bought the island of Brecqhou next door in 1993. The island falls under Sark’s jurisdiction.

The reclusive Barclays, owners of the Telegraph media empire and the Ritz Hotel, proceeded to build an enormous castle, complete with medieval-style turrets.

Their distaste for Sark’s feudal system apparently began when they were informed that Beaumont was due his treizieme on the purchase of the island — a sum of $254,000.

The Barclay brothers weren’t successful in challenging Sark’s jurisdiction over Brecqhou, but they did succeed in forcing scrutiny of the island’s compliance with the human rights convention.

In pushing the island to democratize, officials in London have warned that failure to modernize on Sark’s own terms could result in Sark losing some of its independence and being governed more directly by the larger island of Guernsey, an option no one here seems to want.

Moreover, many residents have become impatient with the domination of the landowners in decision making.

“The situation we have at the moment is we have about 40 people — perhaps 27 or 28 of them turn up for meetings — who have a seat in government simply because they own land,” said Jan Guy, a former head teacher at the island’s school who has lived here 19 years.

“Now, in some cases, their family has owned that land for many years, and several generations. But in many cases, that land has been bought quite recently. So if you came over and you bought a nice tenement, the next meeting of government, you’d be there, governing for the people of Sark. I ask you, do you think that’s right?”

But other long-term residents fear that easing the feudal landowners out of the government will be the beginning of the end.

“We must remember, it’s worked wonderfully for 450 years. Unfortunately, it’s a lot of the outsiders who come to the island because they love it, and lo and behold they want to change things once they get here,” said Elizabeth Perree, whose family, descendants of original tenants on the island, operates an inn and small farm.

“It still has the lovely simplicity of horses and carriages trundling along the roads. Cattle grazing and having lovely butter and cream straight from the farms — all these little things are what make Sark what it is,” she said.

“It’ll be a tragedy if it starts to get built up and become like anywhere else in the world,” Perree said. “People say, ‘progress,’ we should do this, we should do that. Someone at the moment is suggesting that we should have more building because that would give more work to people.

“But in a funny way, I feel it’s special because it has stayed as it was. It’s the last feudal state in the Western world, for goodness’ sake.”

March 7, 2007, 10:29 PM CST

The committee trying to bring the 2016 Olympics to Chicago gave a bus full of U.S. Olympic Committee officials and two buses full of media an odd sort of venue tour Wednesday.

The USOC group, including an 11-member commission on a two-day visit to evaluate the city’s Olympic bid, did not leave its bus to walk through the Washington Park site of the proposed $366 million Olympic Stadium, marked by multicolored flags of the 202 nations that are part of the International Olympic Committee.

Both the USOC and media groups saw the site of the proposed Olympic Village—truck marshaling yards at McCormick Place—from a suite on the 30th floor of the Hyatt Hotel at the convention center. Orange balloons outlined both parts of that site, the $1.1 billion residential complex on the west side of Lake Shore Drive and the recreational and outdoor dining facilities for Olympic athletes on the east side of the Drive.

The flags might as well have all been red, and the balloons risked having the air let out of them because of continuing questions over financing for the two biggest projects for a Chicago Olympic Games.

“Any bid that does not have existing venues will have to demonstrate its ability to complete those venues to the IOC,” USOC Chief Executive Jim Scherr said at a news conference after the venue tour.

Los Angeles, the other finalist to be the U.S. candidate in the global competition for the 2016 host, has 30 of its 36 venues in place, including the Olympic stadium (L.A. Coliseum) and village (UCLA dormitories).

The USOC board will pick the candidate April 14.

“While the final decision will be based on which city has the best chance internationally, either city is capable of hosting the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games,” said USOC Vice President Bob Ctvrtlik, who’s overseeing the bid process.

The lavish praise both Scherr and Ctvrtlik heaped on Chicago’s “bold plan” immediately was tempered by Ctvrtlik’s insistence that the city provide guarantees it would do what it promises.

Mayor Richard M. Daley, who rode the bus for nearly three hours with the USOC group, said the city is looking at “a number of options.” Daley, who long has insisted no public money would be used for the Games, declined several times to reiterate that promise Wednesday.

The compactness of Chicago’s plan and the combination of scenery and buildings that would turn many of the venues into picture postcards clearly impressed the USOC.

The stop at Northerly Island, which would have BMX cycling, beach volleyball and track cycling, showed the USOC group why the site was picked: dramatic views of Soldier Field, the Field Museum and the skyline.

“Just think what the backdrop would be for [TV] broadcasters,” Doug Arnot, Chicago 2016 director of sport and operations, told the USOC. “We have emphasized the merger of parkland and the Olympics, and there is no better place to show that than Northerly Island.”

The final leg of the tour, north on Lake Shore Drive to the whitewater site in Lincoln Park, passed the proposed archery site in Grant Park, the rowing venue that would run from the aquarium to the Chicago River and a triathlon site that would use the lake at North Avenue for swimming and Lake Shore Drive for cycling and running.

All those venue sites are telegenic—a big part of Chicago’s pitch to the USOC.

“These would be Games unparalleled in their experience for the athlete, the Olympic family and the spectators, with the showcase of the waterfront experience,” Scherr said.

A discordant note was sounded as the USOC delegation boarded a bus outside the Hilton to begin the tour. A protester with a bullhorn accused Daley and the Olympics of racism, claimed the Olympics would displace homeless and said that the Games should not come to the city. The USOC commissions polls to determine whether a city wants the Games.

phersh@tribune.com

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

March 7, 2007, 10:28 PM CST

Contrary to his earlier promises, Mayor Richard Daley will have to pledge local funds, at least as collateral, if he wants Chicago to beat Los Angeles to become the U.S. bidder for the 2016 Olympics.

“I’m sure you know there will be either legislation going through or city council meetings at which very important guarantees or commitments, perhaps, might be voted upon,” USOC Vice President Bob Ctvrtlik said.

“We definitely want the government to have some skin in the game,” he said. “We have been assured by the mayor that this is the case with the City of Chicago.”

The USOC team was asked whether it believed a city that saw huge cost overruns in the creation of Millennium Park could be expected to deliver an Olympic stadium and village on budget. “That is certainly one of the items we are going to have an ongoing dialog on,” said USOC Chief Executive Jim Scherr.

The city has until March 31 to spell out its guarantees to the USOC, which will decide April 14 whether Chicago or Los Angeles will move into the international competition, to be decided in 2009.

“We just have to see what their final package entails,” Ctvrtlik said. “So, at this time, they made some representations, and we’ll see exactly what comes concretely presented to us by March 31.”

Asked about Ctvrtlik’s remarks, Daley told reporters, “We are presently working on the guarantee, both with public and private” entities.

“We’re looking at that—the concern the USOC has, rightfully so,” the mayor said. “We will be coming up with a plan very shortly.”

But Daley repeatedly refused to provide any details during a press conference by Chicago’s bid team, which followed the USOC briefing. And he dodged the question of whether he was amending his promise not to use any local, public funds.

When asked about the promise, Daley said, “We are presently looking at a number of options in regards to the commitment we’ll make.”

Daley has amassed two big pots of money over the past two years, though uses for the cash have been earmarked for purposes other than the Olympics.

In 2005, the city leased the Chicago Skyway to private operators for $1.83 billion. Of the total, $500 million was set aside for a long-term reserve that generates about $25 million a year in investment income. A $325 million annuity also was created to fund various city programs over the following eight years.

Last fall, Daley announced a deal to lease four downtown parking garages—one owned by the city, three by the Chicago Park District—for $563 million. More than half of the money was used to pay outstanding debt associated with the garages, but $122 million was reserved for a variety of park system improvements.

Daley often has said that the city expects the private sector, Olympic-generated revenue and the federal government to cover the costs of the games and has vowed that local taxpayers would not be at risk. Wednesday’s change of tone came eight days after Daley was re-elected.

Later in the day, the Chicago 2016 bid committee issued a statement on guarantees, attempting to clarify what will be needed.

The private developer selected to build the $1.1 billion Olympic Village south of McCormick Place would be required to obtain its own private-market guarantees, the committee said.

And the contractor on the $366 million temporary stadium in Washington Park would have to commit to delivering it at a pre-established cost and set up its own construction guarantees.

“As for everything else, the International Olympic Committee, and thus the USOC, require a guarantee against any operating budget shortfall from every bid city,” Patrick Sandusky, a Chicago 2016 spokesman, said in a statement. “This is what the city and the committee are working to develop.”

Given the experience of previous U.S. host cities, it is likely Chicago will find a lender or consortium of lenders to extend a line of credit to cover costs that occur before Olympic-generated revenue starts to pour in.

But such a financing plan will need to be backed up by government.

The IOC “wants financial guarantees and assurances from a government that bills will be paid,” said A.D. Frazier, who was chief operating officer of the 1996 Atlanta Games.

“This is something New York struggled with on its bid for 2012,” said Kevin Walmsley, an Olympic historian with the International Centre for Olympic Studies at the University of Western Ontario. “This is hard and fast with the IOC.”

If the Games generate enough revenue, from television rights, ticket sales, sponsorships and the like, the city could pay off a line of credit without ever having to tap taxpayers.

And that is what the Chicago 2016 Committee projects will happen.

“The fact is, the recent Games in the U.S. have returned surpluses,” Sandusky said in the statement. “Looking at the current trend in Olympic revenue generation, we anticipate a Games in Chicago will return a significant surplus. Therefore, the likelihood of having to tap this guarantee is minimal.”

The IOC’s insistence on an ironclad guarantee stems from a mix-up surrounding the Atlanta bid, Frazier said.

A state authority set up to have financial oversight of the Games was given bonding power but no ability to levy funds to pay off bonds, he said.

“When the IOC realized there was effectively no government backing for Atlanta, they were furious,” he said.

Speaking to the issue of cost overruns at Millennium Park, which the USOC acknowledged was something of a concern, Daley said, “The scope changed 100 percent, and it went from a small green space to what we have—an internationally acclaimed park, one of the best in the world.”

Originally estimated to cost $150 million when plans were unveiled in 1998, the price tag ballooned to about $490 million by the time it opened in 2005.

Private donors covered roughly $220 million of the total, the city the remainder.

The Chicago 2016 Committee until Wednesday had been putting off providing details on guarantees, noting the city was in a competitive situation and saying the information would be shared at some later date. But at the dual press briefings, the issue bubbled over.

“The USOC asking for a guarantee was not a surprise for us, or for any other Olympic bid city,” said Sandusky. “It has always asked for this kind of guarantee. … From the beginning, we knew about it and worked on it.”

kbergen@tribune.com

phersh@tribune.com

Heather Knight, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

This article appeared on page B - 5 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

The home of Allen Allensworth, who in 1908 founded the colony that bore his name, is now part of a state park in the Central Valley of California.

ALLENSWORTH, Calif. — It is an unlikely place for a utopia: this cracked-earth landscape of two-lane roads in the Central Valley, so remote that the lilting staccato of freight trains can be heard from miles away.

The New York Times

Nearly 10,000 tourists are drawn to the remote state park each year.

California State Parks

Colonel Allensworth envisioned the town as a haven from racial oppression.

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Former residents are among those fighting a proposed dairy near the park. They include Alice Royal and her brother William E. Calbert.

Yet it was here, nearly a century ago, that Allen Allensworth, an escaped slave from Kentucky who became the nation’s highest-ranking black Army officer at the time, forged an idealistic community dedicated to Booker T. Washington’s principles of self-help and self-determination. In 1908 he established Allensworth Colony, which flourished for a fleeting moment in the California heat and dust.

About 220 miles southeast of San Francisco, the colony drew pilgrims like Cornelius Pope, now 77, who recalls his sense of revelation upon entering the two-room schoolhouse, where everyone was black and photographs of Abraham Lincoln and Booker T. Washington hung on the walls. As the child of migrant cotton pickers, Mr. Pope had lived in cow barns and tents with dirt floors.

“She taught me how to read and write,” he said of Alwortha Hall, his teacher, who was named after the town. “It was the first true happiness I’d ever known.”

Now the site of Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park, with its array of board-and-batten buildings restored and rebuilt, California’s first planned black community continues to exert a powerful pull, especially among former residents like Mr. Pope, who helped champion the park’s creation in the 1970s.

So the prospect of a giant dairy with over 16,000 cows and waste lagoons planned near the park’s periphery has elicited a wave of emotion among those protective of its history, including several former residents and black R.V. clubs that gather regularly to speak about the park to the nearly 10,000 tourists drawn here each year.

“You can relocate cattle,” said Nettie Morrison, the mayor of the adjoining hamlet named for the colony. “You can’t relocate history.”

Allensworth was the westernmost black settlement among the scores founded as refuges from lynch mobs, segregation laws and dependency sharecropping. Among them were Nicodemus, Kan., now part of the National Park Service, and Boley, Okla. (current pop. 1,126), then the most bustling of about 50 all-black towns.

Collectively, the communities represent an under-recognized chapter of American history that began in 1879 with the “exodusters” who migrated from the South to escape racial oppression after Reconstruction. “Most of these places have been forgotten,” said Jeffrey A. Harris, diversity director for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. “It’s a perspective on history that’s been washed out of the general narrative.”

This is a corner of California with milk in its veins: Tulare County is the country’s largest producer, with more than 300 dairies — a literal cash cow. The county’s Board of Supervisors has tentatively approved the dairy complex, and a final vote will be on March 20. Assemblywoman Wilmer D. Carter, a member of the black caucus, recently introduced a bill that would prohibit any animal-feeding operation within five miles of the park.

Although many mysteries about the colony remain, what is known is that as a slave, Mr. Allensworth was sold and taught to read and write by his new master’s son. He escaped and joined the Union Army; later, he served as a delegate to the Republican National Conventions in 1880 and 1884. For 20 years, he was a chaplain for the 24th (Colored) Infantry, one of the famed all-black “Buffalo soldier” regiments. His dream was to create a place where African-Americans could control their own destiny and Buffalo soldiers could retire.

The colony thrived at first, with a 75-cents-a-night hotel, restaurants, general stores, a library, a girls’ glee club, a theater club and a debating society, and its own branch of the N.A.A.C.P. “Of all the all-black towns of the period, none were as well-conceived,” said Dr. Lonnie Bunch, director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington.

Alice Royal, born in 1923 — “the year electric lights went on in Allensworth” — said she recalled walking at night, committing the constellations to memory. “Even the night was an education,” Mrs. Royal said.

The grand plans included a vocational school that would be the Tuskegee of the West.

But the colony’s troubles soon began. There were legal disputes with the white-owned company that sold Mr. Allensworth’s association the land over promised water allotments from wells. By the time they were resolved, the water table had dropped precipitously. The Santa Fe railroad, which stopped on the land bought by Mr. Allensworth, refused to change the name on the local depot, then called Solita, claiming Allensworth was too long to fit on the sign.

In 1914, the railroad bypassed Allensworth entirely, essentially strangling its economy. Perhaps the biggest blow came later that year when Mr. Allensworth died after being struck by a motorcycle driven by two white youths — an “accident” that is still being researched by historians. By the 1960s, arsenic contamination in the water had turned the place into a ghost town.

“There was nothing but old rag-tag houses you could see clear through,” Mr. Pope said. “There was not even a sign that said Allensworth, not even any arrow.”

Previous plans for land close to the park have included a turkey farm and an industrial food grease dump. Luke Cole, director of the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, said such land uses were “about as close to intentional discrimination as you can see.”

In recent years, the environmental impact of megadairies on the San Joaquin Valley, with some of the country’s worst air quality, has led to lawsuits and a push for tougher regulations. Concerns include air pollution resulting from waste lagoons and the contamination of aquifers.

“It’s not the dairy itself — it’s the position of the dairy,” Mrs. Royal said. “Especially in hot and windy times, it’s a stench out of this world. Nobody will want to come picnicking or celebrating in the park.”

Samuel Etchegaray, a 64-year-old rancher, wants to build the dairy, and in recent weeks, the state, which has invested $8 million in renovations at the park, has enlisted the nonprofit Trust for Public Land to discuss with him the possibility of a conservation easement that would preclude agricultural use.

David Albers, a land-use lawyer in Bakersfield who is representing Mr. Etchegaray, said he and his client were evaluating the trust’s proposal. “If it meets our goals and the state’s goals,” Mr. Albers said, “then there will be a deal.”

David J. Organ, a historian at Clark Atlanta University who is writing a book on Allensworth and other black settlements, said that although the colony was short-lived, its message remains relevant.

“Preservation is the last frontier of the civil rights movement,” Mr. Organ said. “Especially post-Katrina, we have to reconstruct the memories of these communities before we can physically reconstruct them with hammer and nails. That’s the legacy of Allensworth.”