Staff from the San Francisco Planning Department, along with the local history nonprofit Western Neighborhoods Project, held a West Portal Neighborhood History Night on Tuesday to collect feedback from the public about the important buildings worthy of preservation protections.
About a dozen participants crowded the San Francisco Public Library’s West Portal Branch to hear city planners with the SF Survey team and a local historian share possible entrants into the pipeline of potential historical sites.
The meeting was kind of neighborhood-led cultural empowerment as a way to include the public who may have historically been left out of the city's notoriously bureaucratic efforts of the past, planners said. Feedback collected will go to the Planning Commission on March 18.
Western Neighborhoods Project’s Greg Gaar narrated a slideshow of historic photos, while others in the audience knowingly sighed when some long-gone buildings on West Portal Avenue were shown in their heyday. The Empire Theater was a standout.
“It's a real shame about the Empire Theater," Gaar told the audience. "I don't know why some billionaire can't buy it and restore it like with the Castro Theater."
Many participants suggested protecting the theater, which is slated to become a nine-story apartment building with retail on the ground floor. Many were sad to hear that the existing structure is not likely to be saved from demolition.
Richard Sucré, deputy director of current planning, said the Empire Theater project owners had already filed for city approval, and any new legislation targeting the theater for historic preservation would not apply.
Anthony Myers/Ingleside Light
Sucré and planning staff presented some turn-of-the-century photos of the area, including some photographs of the Twin Peaks Tunnel and track construction.
City planners have been going to different neighborhoods collecting this information in part because the city has never done a comprehensive building inventory, and the department didn't want to miss anything this time around. It’s part of a citywide cultural resources survey, a multi-year effort to document historic places.
Staff members are also gathering information for potential cultural and historic landmarks around West Portal.
“We started out in the avenues, and we are working our way around the city," Sucré said. “Hopefully, we can get to Ingleside later this year.”
A historic district for Ingleside’s stretch of Ocean Avenue has been in the works for over a decade, but the Planning Department has delayed advancing the application for a variety of reasons.
