San Francisco Gets $92 Million for Hunters Point Shipyard Restoration

 

SAN FRANCISCO, California, January 21, 2010 (ENS) – San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced today that an additional $92 million has been secured for the cleanup of the contaminated and closed Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.

A centerpiece of the redevelopment is a new football stadium for the San Francisco 49ers. Residential and commercial spaces, parks and trails, and a new United Nations Global Compact Global Warming and Technology Center are components of the 15-year redevelopment project.

Mayor Newsom, with cooperation from California Democrats House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Dianne Feinstein, has worked to get the federal government to fulfill its obligation to adequately fund the cleanup of the shipyard, located in the southeast section of the city.

From fiscal year 1991 through 2010, a total of $714.2 million has been appropriated by Congress for the U.S. Navy’s cleanup operations at Hunters Point.

“This is a significant achievement for the entire city and in particular the Bayview-Hunters Point community and will bring new life and opportunity to one of our most at-risk neighborhoods,” said Mayor Newsom.

“These funds will allow the city to continue to move forward with plans to transform the long abandoned shipyard from an environmental blight into a job-producing economic engine for all of San Francisco.”

“These additional funds will allow the Navy to stay on track to complete cleanup and transfer of the vast majority of the remaining parcels by 2013, including all of the areas necessary for the city’s extensive redevelopment plans to proceed,” said Speaker Pelosi.

“As a result, plans for new clean and green businesses and industry can move forward, creating jobs and economic opportunity for the Bayview community and putting the Bay Area in the forefront of the emerging green economy,” Pelosi said.

The cleanup of the Hunters Point Shipyard is expected to generate 1,500 construction jobs per year across a range of building trades for the expected 16 year life of the development.

The project also will create some 10,700 permanent jobs, including retail and sales, building and open space maintenance and management, and in commercial, office, light industrial and research and development jobs.

The environmental restoration that will be achieved allows the city to advance the transformation of the shuttered base into an economic engine.

The finished project will include up to 10,500 residential units – a third of them offered at below market affordable rates. There will be 336 acres of new or improved public parks, open spaces and waterfront trails and plazas.

About 885,000 square feet of regional and neighborhood serving retail space is included in the finished redevelopment. There will be 255,000 square feet of new and renovated replacement space for the shipyard artists, including a new Arts District supporting the arts community.

Plans call for 2.6 million square feet of commercial light industrial, research and development and office space, including a new UN Global Compact Global Warming and Technology Center.

A centerpiece of the redevelopment is improved land and supporting infrastructure for a new football stadium for the San Francisco 49ers, including necessary parking areas and transportation improvements.

The San Francisco Naval Shipyard was a U.S. Navy shipyard in San Francisco, California, located on 638 acres of waterfront at Hunters Point in the southeast corner of the city.

Originally, Hunters Point was a commercial shipyard established in 1870, consisting of two docks purchased and upbuilt in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century by the Union Iron Works company, later owned by the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Company and named Hunters Point Drydocks, located at Potrero Point.

The land was appropriated by the Navy at the onset of World War II and became one of the major shipyards of the west coast. The Navy operated the yard until 1974, when it leased most of it to a commercial ship repair company.

The Navy closed the shipyard and Naval base in 1994 as part of the Base Realignment and Closure, and the BRAC program manages the majority of the site today.

A succession of coal and oil fired power generation facilities at Hunters Point have left the site polluted and large amounts of hazardous waste remain to be cleaned up.

After World War II and until 1969, the Hunters Point shipyard was the site of the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, the military’s largest facility for applied nuclear research, which has left many areas of the shipyard radioactively contaminated.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2010. All rights reserved.

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