City for Sale: The Transformation of San Francisco

2. Superagency and the Redevelopment Booster Club

15 2 Superagency and the Redevelopment Booster Club Ben Swig’s dream and corporate San Francisco’s plans needed the official backing of the City and the federal government. Financing and assembling land for massive downtown redevelopment is an enormous undertaking, and unguided individual developers might create a patchwork of small projects , more a hindrance than a help in changing the face of the city. The task required government to step in, take land by eminent domain, furnish central direction and guidelines, and provide the financial incentives to guarantee appropriate investment by private developers. As the body shaped to achieve these ends, the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency (SFRA) is far more than just another government department or regulatory body; it is a “superagency” with broad-ranging political and economic powers that reflect the full authority of the state apparatus. As Frederick Wirt notes: Like its counterparts in other cities, SFRA is a compound of public and private powers that provides a touch of the corporate state to local government in America. It can make and implement its own plans, move people from one section of town to another, arrange massive sums for financing, condemn property, and promote all its wonders. Traditional controls of public power, so endemic in American government, run a little thin with these agencies.1 The SFRA was established in 1948 in anticipation of passage by Congress of the 1949 Housing Act, which introduced the urban renewal program . Like redevelopment bodies in general, SFRA is a semiautonomous entity with vast independent legal, financial, and technical powers and 16 / Chapter 2 resources. Its commissioners are appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the Board of Supervisors. During the heyday of urban renewal—the 1960s and first half of the 1970s—the agency had access to massive sums of federal funds; between 1959 and 1971, it was able to secure $128 million in federal urban renewal dollars for the city. Its relative freedom from local control and its direct access to federal money tended to reduce city hall control over its activities. Its large technical staff developed an exclusive familiarity with the complex arcana of federal urban renewal statutes and administrative regulations. It is able to issue its own bonds. It has and extensively uses the power of eminent domain, and even when such power is not directly used, that lurking presence often creates “willing” sellers. During most of its first decade, SFRA’s operations and importance were limited, as evidenced by a small and not very talented staff, generally uninspired appointments to its governing board, and frequent squabbles both internally and with federal urban renewal officials. Urban renewal was new, and direction and support from Washington was less than optimal. According to one account, even in the late 1950s the agency staff was “riddled with political hacks.”2 This tone was set during the term of Mayor Elmer Robinson (1952–55). The agency secretary at that time was a man who had threatened to oppose Robinson in the 1951 election but withdrew on promise of an agency position; another board member was a private detective known as Robinson’s “hatchet man” on the agency. Internal dissension ran high and culminated in the summary firing of Executive Director James Lash in 1953, which brought anguished cries from the city’s “good government” advocates as well as from the newspapers. Lash’s successor was Eugene Riordan, the retiring director of City Property, a “gentlemen of the old school but with no evident qualifications for so demanding a post.”3 Throughout the 1950s, federal urban renewal officials were highly critical of the agency, its staff, and its leadership. The August 28, 1957, Examiner reported that “M. Justin Herman, regional administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency, which controls federal funds for redevelopment projects, accused the agency of ‘the most cumbersome and costly’ handling of funds of any city in the U.S.” Within the city, the agency was criticized from several quarters. The mutual acrimony between the agency and the City Planning Department was well known. In mid-1956, Mayor George Christopher asked agency chairman Joseph Alioto to resign, calling him an “obstructionist,” referring to controversy over the agency’s difficulties in putting together a plan to relocate the produce market.4 The Redevelopment Booster Club / 17 Mayor Christopher entered office wary of massive renewal schemes and resisted the Swig...