A Step Back From Main Post SEIS
Many of you are in summer holiday mode…I know that’s where I’ve been since my teaching closed down for the summer. Now with some time off under my belt, I’m focusing on the Main Post SEIS, and the Presidio Trust’s proposed alternative of a contemporary art museum, lodge and theater. How to dig into this weighty and complex set of proposals? First, a step back…
- I don’t doubt at all that, given its location and importance to our country, history will continue to be made at the Presidio. To best understand how we will all “make history” at the Presidio I’d like to take a brief look at the arc of Presidio history and its relationship to our nation and the world. A simplified version will be enough.
- Where is our country going? Where would we like it to go? I’ll list some of the critical issues for current society. Highlighting the Presidio’s history and listing the major challenges we face as a country create the larger context for decision-making at this National Historic Landmark District. What we will see is that the Presidio is, and has always been, a place where concerned people respond to the critical needs of the day.
- I’d then like to examine goals we might set for our country and the Presidio. Which of these goals are appropriate to tackle in a national park and the Presidio specifically? If we citizens can achieve consensus around these goals, the Presidio’s caretakers will have their mission. The objectives and tasks needed to complete the mission will follow from the goals. Because, after all, we citizens own the national parks. What happens here needs to make sense to us.
- In that light we might, after very careful consideration, agree to undertake a project in the very heart of the Presidio. As national park stewards we carry a substantial burden to preserve and protect a national park’s natural and cultural resources for future generations without impairment.
- Perhaps we’ve done this before, you ask, this visioning process, once or twice over the years? Yes, I know. But, some of us may have lost sight of that vision as new, and potentially distracting, opportunities appear. It is necessary to revisit the vision from time to time to remind ourselves of what we set out to do, the agreements we made with each other and the trust we placed in each other to accomplish our goals.
–Doug Kern