Regardless of appreciable public assist for its preservation, San Francisco’s 1971 Vaillancourt Fountain shouldn’t be being included in plans for a brand new metropolis park the place it at the moment stands.
Though metropolis officers insist no ultimate choice has been made concerning the destiny of the sculptor Armand Vaillancourt’s Brutalist masterpiece in Embarcadero Plaza, the fountain was not part of any of the planning actions ready for a public session that happened on 8 July.
Eoanna Harrison Goodwin, a challenge supervisor on the San Francisco Recreation and Park Division (Rec), informed an viewers of roughly 200 folks that development prices to protect the fountain have been estimated at $29m. A metropolis spokesperson confirmed to The Artwork Newspaper that this may not embody prices related to design, allowing or employees time. Rec officers had beforehand given an estimated determine of $3m for changing the fountain’s pumps, which failed final yr. Roughly $26.5m has been earmarked in private and non-private funding for your entire plaza renovation challenge.
Goodwin additional stated that the estimated value to dismantle the monument was roughly $2.5m. Metropolis officers had beforehand talked about the presence of asbestos and lead within the construction, in addition to questioned its structural integrity, justifying the erection of a safety fence round its perimeter final month.
A number of companions—together with Rec and the real-estate funding belief BXP (proprietor of Embarcadero Heart’s 4 workplace towers)—have proposed redeveloping Embarcadero Plaza and the adjoining Sue Bierman Park right into a single new park. They argue that this can rejuvenate the realm, present providers that higher mirror residents’ wants and higher combine the area with the town’s tourist-friendly waterfront.
Goodwin informed the viewers that development funding had not but been accredited, nor had an environmental evaluation been accomplished. She additional confused that whereas the thing of the general public session was to solicit enter for a future park that will not embody the fountain, Rec finally was not accountable for the colossal sculpture, which technically belongs to the San Francisco Arts Fee.
Regardless of these technicalities, it appeared as if Rec and BXP have been nonetheless transferring ahead with their plan. The general public session and former surveys didn’t present for eventualities through which the fountain can be preserved. When requested by The Artwork Newspaper whether or not this meant the fountain’s destiny was sealed, Goodwin insisted that no ultimate choice had been made. When pressed on the difficulty and requested what, at this level, may save the fountain—provided that the town and its companions have been already transferring forward with planning for the realm’s redevelopment—she responded that it was potential a non-public donor may contribute the $29m the town had estimated will likely be wanted to completely restore and protect it.
That stated, when the concept of fundraising to protect the fountain was raised throughout an hour-long Q&A session later that night, Goodwin appeared uncertain that this was potential, including that funds earmarked for plaza redevelopment couldn’t be redirected to protect public artwork. The query of whether or not the general public may increase funds to avoid wasting the fountain was broadly illustrative of the viewers’s desire that the sculpture be preserved. Many of the questions requested have been both in assist of the fountain or about why and the way the town had uncared for it for therefore lengthy.
“Website-specific artworks within the panorama rank among the many most natural and traditionally important representations of our cultural id and are sometimes essentially the most threatened,” Charles A. Birnbaum, the president and chief government of The Cultural Panorama Basis, stated in a press release to The Artwork Newspaper. “More and more, the threats are coming from the very entities that commissioned and personal these works, together with museums and different cultural establishments, and metropolis businesses.” He additional referred to as the Vaillancourt Fountain “a extensively acknowledged masterpiece, a grand civic gesture and witness to the town’s distinctive historical past, and as recognisable because the Transamerica Pyramid and the Palace of Positive Arts”.
Metropolis officers identified that survey findings supported redevelopment of the positioning, however they famous that preservation of the fountain or its plaza was not an choice. Involved residents argued that most of the options proposed for the redevelopment or ideas made in on-line surveys—together with provision of a plaza for native distributors, inexperienced area for picnics and huge, open “multi-use areas” for quite a lot of programming—are all options of the present Sue Bierman Park and Embarcadero Plaza.
Furthermore, among the metropolis’s justifications for redeveloping the positioning—such because the obvious want to draw extra guests—have been undermined by the outcomes of its personal surveys. Most respondents indicated that they got here to the park and plaza typically (as soon as every week or extra) and walked or took public transit to get there. If the purpose is to redevelop the positioning to raised go well with the wants of San Franciscans, the general public session made it look like lots of these wants have been already being met and that the general public’s main concern, preservation of the Vaillancourt Fountain, was not being thought-about in any respect.
