By Sarah Jane Phelan
Estrelle Akamine, shipyard artist and Spring Open Studio coordinator, at work in her Hunters Point Shipyard studio.
As the 49ers roll out the financial details behind their plan to relocate to Santa Clara, the artists at Hunters Point Shipyard are trying to work out what Mayor Gavin Newsom’s “with or without the 49ers” redevelopment proposal means for their artist colony, which has been at the shipyard for 30 years.
The artists aren’t the only ones.
At last night’s meeting at the Southeast Community Facility, the audience weren’t the only ones unable to get their hands on a hard copy of the latest version of proposal, whose wording keeps changing faster than you can say, “bait and switch.” As a result, members of the Mayor’s Hunters Point Shipyard Citizens Advisory Committee and the Bayview Hunters Point Project Area Committee ended up voting to integrate the shipyard and Candlestick Point into one big old redevelopment project—WITHOUT HAVING A COPY OF the mayor’s most recent proposal in their hands.