Editor:
During the past few months, the District 1 supervisor has initiated a landmarks nomination process for Lincoln Park. City staff has already been granted a doubling of the time allowed, by code, for a staff report recommending official landmark status for this very complex, large and historic site.
Similar requests for additional time to review and comment on the staff recommendations have been rebuffed by the district’s elected supervisor.
This is a very large assessor’s parcel under consideration that could impact a large number of active users, on site institutions, large adjacent users and neighbors. In fact, the acreage and complexity of uses and users may be a larger area than any historic district in the City of San Francisco. The merits to consider the complete and complex rich history and active uses is undisputed and needed.
Yet, multiple reasonable requests to extend public review and comment on the imminent staff report have tacitly been dismissed by the local supervisor.
Additionally, the sparse public presentation and vetting of this proposal and its potential long-term impacts have been cloaked behind an opaque public process.
There is absolutely no eminent threat to any of the park’s historic character. Any expeditious and less than transparent landmark process does not serve my neighborhood nor citywide interests. This is not good government.
Paul A. Lord, Jr.
Categories: letter to the editor
Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon 
I’m in favor of anything that removes that golf course!
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That’s not the majority feeling of people who live in the neighborhood around the golf course. San Franciscans of all ages and ethnic backgrounds have long cherished Lincoln as an affordable neighborhood golf course. It’s the oldest public course in the western US which means it has historical significance.
I notice you recently advocated for increased transparency and sunshine in governance and for preservation of affordable living in San Francisco. I hope we can continue to count on you to support a transparent process here (whatever the outcome) even though you apparently don’t like golf and you don’t live in the Outer Richmond.
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Mr. Lord must be a golfer who is concerned his right to the Links will one day evaporate. Makes me whimsical to think that area was once trees and rolling hills before the golf course destroyed it. If a Landmark designation results in this area one day being returned to its original habitat, I say JUST DO IT!!!!!
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A naive ill informed response laden with erroneous assumptions and lack of knowledge. A historic cemetery, museum, cafe, Western Terminus of the Lincoln Highway, art installations, Holocaust Memorial and a children’s playground has not been a native woodlands and habitat – and has not been one for well over a century of active SF residential users.
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The author is saying the decision deserves a more open and transparent process. The current process is not unlike the decision to close the Great Highway, which Supervisor Chan now agrees occurred without a sufficient public outreach process. You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but frankly it is difficult to understand. Before citizens developed any of the outer western parts of San Francisco, including GGP, the cemetery and then the golf course, the land out here was a bunch of sand dunes. Do you want to restore San Francisco to it’s condition 125 years ago?
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BTW What trees are on the parklands were put in by and for the current uses. It was never a wooded landscape and your abhorrent lack of knowledge would probably suggest plant non-native eucalyptus.
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