With Expansion of San Francisco Marina Now Scrapped, the Financial Futures of East and West Harbor Are Uncertain
When a proposal for an expansion of San Francisco Marina’s West Harbor came to light last summer, there was a public outcry. “Diminishment of an iconic view” was the main talking point against the project, but problems with the proposal — which could have extended the current West Harbor breakwater the entire length of Marina Green — seemed numerous.
Last week, the S.F. Board of Supervisors voted to effectively prohibit any enlargement of West Harbor, but the challenging economics, demographics and bureaucracy surrounding San Francisco Marina remain.
Officially, the supervisors blocked San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Department, which runs the marina, from using city funds for any project that would extend the eastern boundary of West Harbor Marina by more than approximately 150 feet from its current location. Rec and Park had proposed moving boats from East Harbor to an expanded West Harbor so that the former could be cleaned of toxic soil remaining from an old Pacific Gas & Electric plant. The expansion idea seemed to appeal to no one, including boaters.
It’s not clear what’s next for the two-harbor, more than 700-slip San Francisco Marina, which is full of contradictions. The Marina currently operates at a “loss,” but has the most expensive slips in the Bay Area; the city is currently considering raising rates by as much as 30%. (The city has also discussed charging for parking at the Marina’s lots.) At present, S.F. Marina is only about 87% occupied, but there’s a long waiting list for slips. West Harbor is a magnet for silting — the city spends half a million dollars each year dredging the entrance, but many individual slips have become too shallow for deep-draft vessels.
The numerous conundrums raise larger questions about how the city runs the marina and plans for/finances necessary improvements. “I’m going to apologize for [the] City of San Francisco for not listening to all of you,” supervisor Aaron Peskin reportedly said when addressing residents in a recent public meeting about the Marina.
After a two-decade legal battle, the City of San Francisco reached an agreement with PG&E whereby the public utility would pay up to $190 million to fund the cleanup and reconstruction of the Marina Small Craft Harbor, also known as East Harbor, and also known as Gashouse Cove. Though it seemed like a victory a long time in the making — the harbor was terribly polluted during the 1906 earthquake — some people feel that sum is “woefully inadequate.”
“Rec and Park and the city attorney need to reopen the negotiations with PG&E,” said Bruce Stone, the president of the S.F. Harbor Marina Association, a nonprofit that represents berth holders and users of San Francisco Marina. Part of the $190 million settlement included a $60 million no-interest loan. “The settlement should be revised to replace the loan with a further grant from PG&E, and the construction budget must be inflation-adjusted,” Stone said in a letter to the Board of Supervisors.
“With the new ordinance prohibiting expansion of Outer West [referring to the proposed extension] the existing agreement with PG&E should be viewed as null and void, given it depended on that premise,” Stone told Latitude. “The city now needs to install more berths in East Harbor, including the shallower half, to accommodate smaller boats that do not have deep draft. Also, as Supervisor Peskin suggested, the money saved by not building slips in Outer West might best be spent paying down the existing [Division of Boating and Waterways] loan that supported the West Harbor renovation, thereby easing pressure on the overall harbor budget.”
Stone has also called for a 100- to 200-foot extension and redesign of the breakwater, which he believes might help with silting.
A January report by the city said that S.F. Marina’s operating costs totaled $4.86 million last year and are supplemented by a nearly $600,000 subsidy from the city’s general fund. But Stone told Latitude that the city isn’t factoring in boatowners’ property taxes or possessory user fees, or the interest tax on the slips themselves, which he believes add “well over $500,000 each year” to the general fund, “and will be nearly $1 million per year when the renovations are complete, and slips are rented to boaters,” Stone said.
No one seems to disagree that S.F. Marina has very high slip fees. There was a 20% increase in fees in 2021/22 to cover dredging costs, and a 2023 survey conducted among the 36 yacht harbors in the Bay Area “revealed that the Marina charged the highest fees to lease their berths to boat owners; rates per foot are several dollars higher than the median regional rate,” the January report said, admitting that “there were no major differences in amenities between the Marina Harbor and regional harbors.”
Bruce Stone said that S.F. Marina’s amenities are actually much worse than the mean. “We don’t get dock carts or private bathrooms, and there are a lot of break-ins as gates are easily bypassed. Boaters would like decent internet so they can install remote cameras with motion-detector alarms to identify intruders and deter break-ins.”
To cover what they perceive as a budget deficit, the city has proposed raising berthing fees in both East and West Harbors by 31.4%, plus inflationary increases, with “no improvements to the Marina’s harbors. [We] cannot gauge whether the Marina’s tenants are willing to absorb a rate increase of that magnitude,” the January city report said. “However, wait-list length and few tenant departures following the 2022 20% rate increase suggest there is room to increase rates and capture additional revenue.”
Stone told Latitude that the idea that people are waiting for slips is a myth.
“There is effectively no waiting list,” Stone said, explaining that people often don’t accept the shallow, narrow slips being offered, and choose to stay on the list. “Others do not actually own a boat — they are just considering the idea of a boat and want to have a chance to place a boat there at some undefined future date. These dead souls have inflated the wait-list statistics to a meaningless number. A survey of their intent would clarify this.”
“The only way that any common sense could prevail was to have the Board of Supervisors pass this ordinance that forbids any building within 150 feet of the West Harbor. It was a really big vote,” Chrissy Kaplan, the longtime owner of Gashouse Cove Marina Inc., which sits in East Harbor, told Latitude.
When we spoke with her last summer, Kapaln highlighted the fact that Gashouse Cove Marina is the only fuel dock on the Cityfront, which dozens of emergency agencies use. “If there was no fuel dock on the Cityfront, you’d have to go to Sausalito, or buy five-gallon jugs of diesel at the gas station on Lombard Street,” Bruce Stone said. “Refueling with five-gallon jugs is not allowed, as some fuel drips in the water, and is impracticable for motor boats needing more capacity. The police, fire and Coast Guard boats depend on this facility.”
Kaplan said that whatever the next step is for S.F. Marina, she hopes that Rec and Park will be receptive to listening to the stakeholders. “It’s a lot bigger than just me — it’s all of those agencies, too. I’m hopeful that when the conversation starts again, we’ll all be speaking. My responsibility will be to connect the dots, to get [the city] talking to the people of San Francisco so they hear what they need. I think I can help facilitate those questions.”
Kaplan said that Recreation and Park were using “scare tactics” when talking about moving forward without expanding West Harbor. In a statement, Rec and Park said, “We expect the effects of this ordinance to include: the elimination of the fuel dock and breakwater, reduction of approximately 200 slips, and a continued annual dredging obligation that costs between $600,000 and $1 million. As a result, slip holders can expect to see berthing fees increase by 20% to 30% in the near future.”
Kaplan said that it doesn’t have to happen that way. “It doesn’t have to be reinvented, we don’t need another park, but we can certainly improve upon the one that we have. There is so much to be done to have the community be more inclusive without eliminating what is already there.”
Stories by Bill Belmont:
You say “Rec and Park had proposed moving boats from East Harbor to an expanded West Harbor so that the former could be cleaned of toxic soil remaining from an old Pacific Gas & Electric plant.“
This isn’t really accurate. The point of moving the harbor was not to clean up toxic soils, but to avoid just that. Renovation and continued use of the East Harbor would require dredging, exposing highly toxic soils that are presently “capped” by siltation. (See https://sfrecpark.org/1160/Marina-Improvement-and-Remediation-Proje and https://documents.geotracker.waterboards.ca.gov/regulators/deliverable_documents/5199628531/East%20Harbor%20and%20Outside%20East%20Harbor_Frequently%20Asked%20Questions_23Aug2023.pdf)
The long background to this proposal is that PG&E is legally responsible for cleaning up its toxic legacy, but strong-armed the city into accepting a much cheaper, faster, and dirtier alternative in the form of financing these new amenities. The savings for PG&E would be in the hundreds of millions if the city takes the bait. (See https://www.mgpdata.com/elementor-1810/ for a somewhat overwhelming presentation of this “bribe”)
For my own part, I’d rather see it cleaned up and the existing Marina Green views maintained. I’m grateful to the supervisors for intervening—though it remains to be seen how the situation will play out.