Can we trust City Hall with Harding?

By Gwen Knapp
OF THE EXAMINER STAFF
Sunday, December 12, 1999

A GOLF cart paused on its way down a path at Harding Park, and one of its two young male occupants stepped out. He wore a Raiders sweat shirt and had a dark mustache, a goatee and an imminent tee time. He motioned to an elderly woman on the path, inviting her to take his place in the cart.

"Oh no, I couldn't," she said.

"I insist," he said, and his friend, the driver of the cart, seconded his gallantry.

The woman relented and rode off with her young escort, who would drive back to pick up his friend a few minutes later.

I was at the park for only 10 minutes Friday morning before I witnessed this exchange. The scene captured the character of Harding Park, a place where white-haired ladies cross paths with dreadlocked Gen-Xers, where German, Korean and Spanish accents mingle, where an 84-year-old retired machinist and a 78-year-old retired plumber can sit in a cart, waiting for their tee time and sharing their skepticism about The City's plans to let a private company manage their beloved golf course.

"That's a lot of baloney," Les Lindberg, the 84-year-old, said.

The City promises to keep green fees low, to make sure that residents in Raiders sweat shirts won't be pushed aside by tourists with little polo players riding over their hearts. The City promises and promises, crosses its heart and swears to heaven. And still, there are doubters.

"That's bull," Erwin Levy, the 78-year-old, said.

City officials say they can't understand. They say they want to upgrade the course, make desperately needed repairs to the 75-year-old park. But in the greatest boom time in American history, with a general fund bursting at the seams, they say they can't do it with public money.

So The City has turned to the private sector for help, soliciting bids from four companies that would like to lease and run the park for the next 35 years. If the plan goes forward, the winning contractor will be expected to pour as much as $15.million in renovations into Harding, host the PGA's Tour Championship every three years and pay rent to The City.

The operator would also be expected to accommodate two distinct groups of patrons: tourists with wads of cash and San Franciscans who bring a common touch (read: No stock options) to the golf course.

THE ONE thing missing from the plan is trust. A petition outside Harding's golf shop calls for The City to abandon "privatization" plans. Protesters have shown up at a mayoral debate in West Portal, written letters and formed a loosely knit group named SHAFTED.

Advocates for the plan hate the word "privatization," seeing it as the product of paranoia. They say The City will retain control of Harding, that it will remain a municipal golf course.

Lou Perrone, president of the Harding Men's Club, supports the leasing plan. He says it is the only way to save the course from City mismanagement. He believes that the dissenters would rather see the course rot over the next 20 years than endure the necessary renovation period and an incursion of tourists.

The leasing plan was the brainchild of Sandy Tatum, one of the most respected figures in San Francisco's golfing circles. He says he wanted to protect a civic treasure, and he worked for years to come up with a solution.

Tatum deserves credit for all of his efforts, but he has two things that the typical Harding golfer does not: a country-club membership and, more important, faith that The City will honor its agreements.

"That's the most cynical thing I've ever heard," he told me when I said that I expected a loophole to appear or be inserted into the leasing agreement someday, selling out the working-class golfers.

But how can anyone explain the decay of Harding, and the plea for intervention from the private sector, without bending toward cynicism? The park's regulars show up to see nothing at work -- not their green fees ($17 to $20 for residents) not their tax dollars and certainly not the gardeners who are supposed to tend the course.

THE CITY readily admits that it hasn't taken adequate care of its own property. In fact, it practically brags about that, as a way of winning support for the leasing agreement.

According to a fact sheet issued by the Recreation and Park Department: "One of the most innovative features of this project ..... is the underlying premise that properly trained and equipped City employees can maintain a municipal golf facility at the highest standards."

Now, who trusts an outfit that considers competence on the job "innovative"? The City says it will require any private operator to train municipal employees to do their work, which begs the question: Why didn't The City train them in the first place?

The cynicism flows from other sources. The Tour Championship, we're told, will bring in $50.million to the local economy on its triennial visits. Isn't this what we heard when the mayor pushed for the 49ers' stadium and mall deal, that sports events bolster business? Isn't that what we hear whenever someone in City Hall wants to host the X-Games, the Super Bowl, the Olympics?

In a city swamped with tourists, Harding is going to be used as one more promotional tool. Mostly, the Tour Championship would be a vanity plate for City officials, an event requiring high-end renovations rather than a basic makeover to meet the needs of retired plumbers and machinists.

THE ARNOLD Palmer Golf Management group, one of the four bidders for Harding, took control of the Presidio Golf Course four years ago and turned it into a lovely place. I visited the other day and saw a radical change from the last time I'd been there, when military duffers still controlled the place. The Presidio course looked like the rest of hyper-gentrified San Francisco, its pro shop and grill bearing a polished-wood elegance that hinted of a country club.

An even more dramatic difference: Four years ago, the greens fees were reportedly going to be set at $35 on weekdays, $45 on weekends. When a current renovation is finished, the fees will be $42 Monday to Thursday, $52 on Friday and $72 on weekends. That doesn't include a reservation fee of $8 to $12 if you call more than eight days in advance.

Leasing advocates say that the Presidio and Harding are apples and oranges, federal and municipal properties, with entirely different missions. But suspicious minds see only a golf course on public land charging prohibitive fees.

Those same minds doubt the promises that Harding's eventual operators would be required to schedule 65 percent of all rounds for residents. Who will monitor that scheduling and how? The City that can't keep Harding up to its own satisfaction is going to be dramatically better at accounting than it is at gardening?

As a public-relations gambit, The City says it wants to add a free program for young players, to pull in golfers from less-advantaged backgrounds, from ethnic minority groups. But Harding has that now. It is an extraordinary place filled with ordinary people, described as "the United Nations of golf" in a recent Golf World piece. Maybe City officials, having diligently ignored Harding Park for so long, don't know that.

©1999 San Francisco Examiner