Publisher: San Mateo County Times
Reporter: Julia Scott
San Bruno Mountain conservancy taking new approach
By Julia Scott
San Mateo County Times
Posted: 04/26/2009 03:58:49 PM PDT
Updated: 04/26/2009 08:57:40 PM PDT
BRISBANE
Looking out across an empty, rolling grassland pressed up against the Northeast Ridge of San Bruno Mountain, Ken McIntire sees hiking trails in place of a chain-link fence that reminds people that this site is private property. He also sees dollar signs.
"We're all broke right now, but we have to dream, you know?" said McIntire, executive director of the newly-renamed San Bruno Mountain Watch Conservancy.
McIntire is doing a lot of dreaming these days. He plans to transform the conservancy into a trust with enough funding to purchase at least five vacant properties in and around Brisbane, including Levinson Estate, the land he visited Tuesday afternoon.
That dream is a long way off. At the moment the conservancy, which grew out of the environmental advocacy collective San Bruno Mountain Watch, has so little funding that McIntire works odd jobs to support himself and the organization. But by this time next year, he hopes to have recruited some board members with ties to powerful Bay Area land trusts and found some interested sellers.
Rather than continuing to file expensive lawsuits to stop local development projects from moving forward where they encroach on threatened or endangered species, the nonprofit decided to take a more proactive approach to stopping development on the slopes of San Bruno Mountain and out on the Brisbane Baylands.
Simple enough in conception, it's modeled after bigger land trusts like the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District that have demonstrated that the best way to protect land from development is to acquire it in perpetuity.
One project has already received support from prominent officials in San Francisco and San Mateo counties - a vision for an unprecedented Bay-to-ocean "greenbelt," or walkable nature corridor, that would skirt the southern border of San Francisco near the Bay at Candlestick Point, climb over San Bruno Mountain to Colma and Daly City and end up at Pacifica's Sweeney Ridge, a portion of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
To accomplish this vision, McIntire formed the Green Corridor Committee with the enthusiastic participation of San Francisco Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, San Mateo County Parks Director Dave Holland and others last year.
It's unclear exactly what path the "greenbelt" would follow, but McIntire is eyeing a couple of cemeteries in Colma for conservation easements, essentially a plan to purchase space for a public right of way instead of attempting to buy the whole property.
He said cougars have found a way to get all the way from Sweeney Ridge to San Bruno Mountain in recent years, suggesting they may have already carved out a mysterious "wildlife corridor" in the urban zones surrounding the mountain that humans have yet to follow.
One has only to look down Bayshore Boulevard to see the development pressure bearing down on the border this town of 4,000 shares with San Francisco.
A 46-acre "transit village" in the works for San Francisco's Visitacion Valley and a 300-acre mixed-use proposal in the works for the previously undeveloped Brisbane Baylands will put the "urban" in suburban, providing a strong argument to protect green, undeveloped pockets of land where they still exist.
Almost 2,000 acres along the ridges of the mountain have already been protected as a county park, which stretches between Daly City, Colma, South San Francisco, Brisbane and San Francisco Bay.
"This is one of the largest urban parks in the country and we want to continue that effort. We want a place where people can go, where it's open. It's obvious to me that people are losing touch with their natural surroundings," said Del Schembari, a board member with the San Bruno Mountain Watch Conservancy and a South City resident.
Other than the Levinson Estate, the conservancy would like to acquire several small properties on the Baylands as well as the Brisbane Lagoon, a single parcel in Daly City and the Brisbane Quarry, the site of an ongoing tug-of-war between development interests and locals who hope to build a nature education center.
Some properties contain plant or animal species found almost nowhere else in the Bay, such as the endangered San Bruno Elfin Butterfly and the plant it depends on, the viola. Others would act as a buffer zone between the commercial parts of the Baylands and the county parkland. Other than the Colma cemeteries, the group intends to ask for a conservation easement through Pacific Nurseries Flower farm in Colma.
The conservancy has yet to contact all the landowners or get property appraisals, but all that will come soon. Raising the money is the part they seem least daunted by, even though the quarry alone is valued at $40 million.
"It's sort of like if you build it, they will come. Once we get the conservancy built up, funding will come into it. In the Bay Area, there are a lot of ecologically-minded people," said Schembari, speaking with conviction.
McIntire's group has sued over development plans approved by Brisbane over the years, especially over the ongoing home construction on the mountain's Northeast Ridge. But everyone supports the city's efforts to buy back vacant land in the Brisbane Acres, a hillside that forms a visual backdrop at the center of town. Since 1998, the town has added $100,000 a year to an open space fund to purchase pieces of the Brisbane Acres. Thanks to some matching grants, it has succeeded in preserving 48 acres' worth of land on 40 separate parcels.
A history of intermittent development in Brisbane has left pieces of grassland stranded between housing tracts. Many of the vacant parcels are no bigger than an acre, a legacy of when Brisbane was founded as Vistacion City in 1908 and subdivided into a series of one-acre parcels. Many were never built on because the original developer never added the necessary roads or water lines. Joining pieces of vacant land has been like "putting Humpty Dumpty back together," said Fred Smith, assistant city manager and administrator of the town's land acquisition program.
No other city in San Mateo County has a fund set aside to purchase open space.
Much like the San Bruno Mountain Watch Conservancy, town officials developed a list of vacant lands they wanted to preserve when they founded the program as development pressure around town become more intense.
"As real estate prices skyrocketed in the early 1990s and 2000s, we became concerned that as houses were staring to sell for over one million (dollars), it would become feasible to build on these properties," he said.
Reporter: Julia Scott
San Bruno Mountain conservancy taking new approach
By Julia Scott
San Mateo County Times
Posted: 04/26/2009 03:58:49 PM PDT
Updated: 04/26/2009 08:57:40 PM PDT
BRISBANE
Looking out across an empty, rolling grassland pressed up against the Northeast Ridge of San Bruno Mountain, Ken McIntire sees hiking trails in place of a chain-link fence that reminds people that this site is private property. He also sees dollar signs.
"We're all broke right now, but we have to dream, you know?" said McIntire, executive director of the newly-renamed San Bruno Mountain Watch Conservancy.
McIntire is doing a lot of dreaming these days. He plans to transform the conservancy into a trust with enough funding to purchase at least five vacant properties in and around Brisbane, including Levinson Estate, the land he visited Tuesday afternoon.
That dream is a long way off. At the moment the conservancy, which grew out of the environmental advocacy collective San Bruno Mountain Watch, has so little funding that McIntire works odd jobs to support himself and the organization. But by this time next year, he hopes to have recruited some board members with ties to powerful Bay Area land trusts and found some interested sellers.
Rather than continuing to file expensive lawsuits to stop local development projects from moving forward where they encroach on threatened or endangered species, the nonprofit decided to take a more proactive approach to stopping development on the slopes of San Bruno Mountain and out on the Brisbane Baylands.
Simple enough in conception, it's modeled after bigger land trusts like the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District that have demonstrated that the best way to protect land from development is to acquire it in perpetuity.
One project has already received support from prominent officials in San Francisco and San Mateo counties - a vision for an unprecedented Bay-to-ocean "greenbelt," or walkable nature corridor, that would skirt the southern border of San Francisco near the Bay at Candlestick Point, climb over San Bruno Mountain to Colma and Daly City and end up at Pacifica's Sweeney Ridge, a portion of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
To accomplish this vision, McIntire formed the Green Corridor Committee with the enthusiastic participation of San Francisco Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, San Mateo County Parks Director Dave Holland and others last year.
It's unclear exactly what path the "greenbelt" would follow, but McIntire is eyeing a couple of cemeteries in Colma for conservation easements, essentially a plan to purchase space for a public right of way instead of attempting to buy the whole property.
He said cougars have found a way to get all the way from Sweeney Ridge to San Bruno Mountain in recent years, suggesting they may have already carved out a mysterious "wildlife corridor" in the urban zones surrounding the mountain that humans have yet to follow.
One has only to look down Bayshore Boulevard to see the development pressure bearing down on the border this town of 4,000 shares with San Francisco.
A 46-acre "transit village" in the works for San Francisco's Visitacion Valley and a 300-acre mixed-use proposal in the works for the previously undeveloped Brisbane Baylands will put the "urban" in suburban, providing a strong argument to protect green, undeveloped pockets of land where they still exist.
Almost 2,000 acres along the ridges of the mountain have already been protected as a county park, which stretches between Daly City, Colma, South San Francisco, Brisbane and San Francisco Bay.
"This is one of the largest urban parks in the country and we want to continue that effort. We want a place where people can go, where it's open. It's obvious to me that people are losing touch with their natural surroundings," said Del Schembari, a board member with the San Bruno Mountain Watch Conservancy and a South City resident.
Other than the Levinson Estate, the conservancy would like to acquire several small properties on the Baylands as well as the Brisbane Lagoon, a single parcel in Daly City and the Brisbane Quarry, the site of an ongoing tug-of-war between development interests and locals who hope to build a nature education center.
Some properties contain plant or animal species found almost nowhere else in the Bay, such as the endangered San Bruno Elfin Butterfly and the plant it depends on, the viola. Others would act as a buffer zone between the commercial parts of the Baylands and the county parkland. Other than the Colma cemeteries, the group intends to ask for a conservation easement through Pacific Nurseries Flower farm in Colma.
The conservancy has yet to contact all the landowners or get property appraisals, but all that will come soon. Raising the money is the part they seem least daunted by, even though the quarry alone is valued at $40 million.
"It's sort of like if you build it, they will come. Once we get the conservancy built up, funding will come into it. In the Bay Area, there are a lot of ecologically-minded people," said Schembari, speaking with conviction.
McIntire's group has sued over development plans approved by Brisbane over the years, especially over the ongoing home construction on the mountain's Northeast Ridge. But everyone supports the city's efforts to buy back vacant land in the Brisbane Acres, a hillside that forms a visual backdrop at the center of town. Since 1998, the town has added $100,000 a year to an open space fund to purchase pieces of the Brisbane Acres. Thanks to some matching grants, it has succeeded in preserving 48 acres' worth of land on 40 separate parcels.
A history of intermittent development in Brisbane has left pieces of grassland stranded between housing tracts. Many of the vacant parcels are no bigger than an acre, a legacy of when Brisbane was founded as Vistacion City in 1908 and subdivided into a series of one-acre parcels. Many were never built on because the original developer never added the necessary roads or water lines. Joining pieces of vacant land has been like "putting Humpty Dumpty back together," said Fred Smith, assistant city manager and administrator of the town's land acquisition program.
No other city in San Mateo County has a fund set aside to purchase open space.
Much like the San Bruno Mountain Watch Conservancy, town officials developed a list of vacant lands they wanted to preserve when they founded the program as development pressure around town become more intense.
"As real estate prices skyrocketed in the early 1990s and 2000s, we became concerned that as houses were staring to sell for over one million (dollars), it would become feasible to build on these properties," he said.