By Rebecca Bowe
Here’s the latest twist in the fight over 113 Steuart Street, a shuttered two-story building on the city’s northern waterfront that high-profile developer Hines Interests wants to raze and replace with a tall, shiny green building called 110 The Embarcadero. A committee that’s pushing to landmark 113 Steuart is claiming that Hines has used “industrial espionage” to try and thwart their efforts.
On Aug. 4, a group called the 113 Steuart Street Landmark Committee — comprised of preservationists, historians and labor union members — held a meeting at the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 34 Hall to chart their strategy for landmarking 113 Steuart, which would preclude demolition. The site is historically significant, committee members argue, because it served as the labor hall where International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) leader Harry Bridges and the Maritime Strike Committee organized the Waterfront Maritime Strike of 1934. (The ILA was the predecessor to the ILWU.)
The meeting attracted a newcomer. Committee members Ralph Schoenman and Bradley Wiedmaier told the Guardian that Daniel McGill introduced himself to the rest of the group as a “student of urban planning interested in the field” who professed a “deep interest” in the effort to preserve the building. Throughout the planning meeting, Wiedmaier said, McGill was “feverishly taking notes on everything anyone said.”
If McGill really was there as a Hines spy, we doubt he’d last a day as an FBI informant. As any good spy should know, giving your real name makes it much easier for your foes to denounce you as an infiltrator. Suspicions raised, Weidmaier consulted Google the next day and found McGill listed as an Assistant Project Manager at Hines Interests – the very development firm that aims to tear down 113 Steuart.