[ Golden Gater Online - December 4, 1997 ]
Bernadette Smith
Staff writer
Cool bay breezes and spectacular views may be the future in housing for SF State students.
Treasure Island, which closed as a U.S. Navy base and was turned over to the City and County of San Francisco earlier this year, has 904 family units available which SF State, Golden Gate University and UC San Francisco are negotiating to share.
"There's no room or money to purchase new student housing in the city," Mayor Willie Brown said in an interview at his office. He added, "With student support services on Treasure Island, this is an opportunity for a positive housing option."
The support services Brown referred to are the shops and other amenities that were abandoned when the Navy pulled out. The island is equipped with an elementary school, child care facilities and a playground on nearly every residential corner. It also has a Laundromat, general store, movie theater, gym, pizza parlor, bowling alley and saloons.
While the island is currently a ghost town, Goodwill will likely reopen and run the Laundromat and general store, according to Letrea Heddlestome, a representative of the mayor's Treasure Island office. And once the island is populated, she said, "the private sector will hopefully see the island as a viable place to do business and open the now-empty businesses which once served island residents."
One of the major problems with the notion of housing students on the island is its distance from the city. Currently, the 108 MUNI line runs about once per hour from the Transbay Terminal to Treasure Island, but its service is only available on weekdays from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.
But Brown said he believes transportation will not be a problem because free shuttles will bus students from the island directly to their campuses.
Additional transportation plans include a ferry service and more MUNI buses making more trips to and from the island. Also, a landing pad, which was used by the Navy, will allow members of the police department to be whisked off the island by helicopter.
The idea of housing students on the island is not a new one. There are currently 120 students from the San Jose Job Corps Advanced Culinary Training program living in barracks, with four students per room. They cook their own food and have an on-site entertainment center.
But the housing the three universities are trying to obtain is not old barracks, it is family housing units which were once occupied by Navy personnel.
The housing is located on the western coast of the island and offers a panoramic view of the city and the Golden Gate Bridge. The oldest units were built in 1966 and the newest ones in 1989.
The two- to four-bedroom apartments and duplexes surround landscaped cul de sacs and have backyards, dining areas, and carports or garages.
For the first time, SF State will be providing housing that is adequate for families, but the units will be open to all SF State students. Rent is currently being negotiated between the schools and the mayor's office.
Local universities are not the only groups vying for the housing property. Other organizations, businesses and even private citizens are hoping to score the lease, but Heddlestome said the housing will most likely go to the schools because they would be responsible for footing the retrofitting bill.
The cost of bringing all the units up to code will be more than $600,000, or about $7,000 per unit, according to Heddlestome, because the Navy's seismic standards were lower than California's.
"The cost for retrofitting Treasure Island now is unacceptable, but we are still in the negotiating phase," said Robert Quinn, vice president of plant operations at SF State."
Additional plans for the island include hotels, a promenade and a theme park. Currently, empty airplane hangars house a Disney studio as well as a studio for Nash Bridges, a locally-filmed television show starring Don Johnson.
According to Melissa Purcell, the former director of student housing who is now responsible for finding new student-housing options, SF State aims to have housing on Treasure Island available to students by the 1998 fall semester, but she added that it depends on the type of lease the city offers the universities.
[ Golden Gater - December 4, 1997 ]