Treasure Island

Mayor Willie Brown

Willie Brown has worn many hats in his illustrious career – often literally, including the elegant Borsalino fedoras that have long been a sartorial signature.

Born the fourth out of five children and raised in the small Texas town of Mineola in the 1930s and 1940s, Brown endured segregation and invidious racism during his early years. As a youth, he augmented his family’s income by working as a shoeshine boy, fry cook, janitor, and field hand. Determined to make his mark, he moved to San Francisco at 17 to live with his uncle.

Brown found ample purchase for his growing ambitions in the City by the Bay. He enrolled at San Francisco State University, supporting himself through his studies in a variety of jobs, including doorman and shoe salesman. He joined the NAACP and the Young Democrats Club, befriending John L. Burton, who would later become the chairman of the California Democratic Party. Following his graduation from SF State he matriculated at the Hastings College of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was president of his class and earned his J.D. degree in 1958.

Brown practiced criminal law in San Francisco in the 1950s and early 1960s. Politics ultimately beckoned, and he was elected to the California Assembly in 1965. He succeeded to Speaker in 1980 and served in that post until 1995.   

Brown was one of the most savvy and accomplished leaders to ever serve in the California Assembly, but he’s primarily known today for the office he held after retiring from the state legislature: Mayor of San Francisco. Brown served as the city’s mayor from 1996 to 2004, and he still wears the honorific “Mr. Mayor” as easily as one of his bespoke Italian suits.

Recently, Brown reminisced about his life and times from his penthouse office on San Francisco’s Embarcadero.  The sun illuminated the city in a brilliant pale-yellow light, and the view of the water and the nearby Bay Bridge almost stunned the eye. That same bridge connected to Treasure Island:  something Brown wanted to talk about. The redevelopment of the property was one of Brown’s most challenging undertakings as mayor – and ultimately, one of his most successful. But he didn’t do it alone, he emphasizes. Much of the credit, he insists, properly belongs to his foremost partner in the project: Darius Anderson.

When Brown assumed San Francisco’s mayoralty, Treasure Island was a decommissioned naval base, part of a complex of military properties slated for redevelopment that included the Presidio and Hunter’s Point Naval Shipyard.

“But from a development perspective, Treasure Island was the crown jewel,” Brown said, noting it was a very large and desirable parcel of real estate in a city desperately short of buildable spaces. “It also came without the benefit of a tax base. So we needed a partnership – one in which the city would provide the land, and our partners would provide the capital.”

Darius Anderson represented one such group of potential investors – and he came with a perspective that set him apart from his competitors.

“Darius was just an ordinary guy then,” said Brown. “His business was just starting to really take off. But he was able to approach the project from the point of view of local government. He had a grand vision. He saw what Treasure Island could be, what the city’s needs were, including access issues such as new freeway ramps from the Bay Bridge and public transit options.”

At the same time, Anderson was able to maintain cohesion and commitment among his investors.

“He saw, for example, that Treasure Island could be the next St. Francis Yacht Club,” said Brown, “and that was a very astute angle to promote with investors. They bought in because Darius was able to combine his vision with their desires and conjoin them with the decision-making process.”

Anderson was active in government lobbying and consulting, so he and Brown knew each other well prior to the Treasure Island project – more than that, they were good friends. That relationship concerned Anderson, and he told Brown he’d withdraw from Treasure Island if his bid compromised either their friendship or Brown’s political standing. Brown objected, maintaining their friendship had no bearing on the power of Anderson’s vision or the soundness of his proposals.

“I told him that any office holder in my position who had private people willing to invest their assets with absolutely no guarantee of return would move forward,” said Brown. “And we did.”

Time has vindicated that decision, observed Brown.

“We have 8,000 new residents and 250,000 square feet of new retail space,” Brown said. “Also, low-income people were the first people to move in. Very few developers would’ve agreed to that. They wouldn’t want residents who couldn’t pay, who couldn’t provide a return on their investment. But Darius was very clear about that – that was all part of the concept that he brought to the table.”

Brown feels that Anderson’s background contributed to his intuitive understanding of the unique challenges inherent in Treasure Island’s redevelopment.

“The fact that he was a regular guy, a bootstrap guy – I think that really helps him in his projects,” mused Brown – who is, of course, a bootstrap guy himself. “He’s just a very unusual human being. He was so young when he came to the public arena, and people who interacted with him just loved him and respected him as a visionary. I think they saw all that in him before he saw it in himself. He’s not a business guy, a finance guy, or an architect – but he’s able to bring all those people together to get things done. He’s able to build the bridges.”

That Everyman quality also comes through when Anderson steps out of the business realm, said Brown.

“He can walk through the Tenderloin, he sees someone in need, and he just connects with him,” Brown observed. “He’s always been fascinated with street musicians. He treats them like the Three Tenors. I mean, he almost adopts them. Businesspeople don’t do that. Politicians don’t do that. No dollars-and-cents guy does that. Where did he get that? Like I said, there’s so much to this cat. He’s like no one else I know.”

 

Larry Florin

When Larry Florin took over as the first Executive Director of the Treasure Island Development Authority in 1998, his priorities were clear – and basic.

“I was mainly concerned about providing essential services such as police and fire following the Navy’s exit from the island,” says Florin. “My focus wasn’t much beyond that.”

But shortly after assuming office, Florin agreed to take a meeting with a young developer: Darius Anderson.

“He had a proposal to redevelop a portion of the marina,” says Florin, “and even though I was preoccupied, he hooked my interest. He had a very clear idea of what he wanted to do, and it was obvious he had done his homework. Perhaps even more to the point, he already had the needed financial support lined up. That was a very big deal for us. Lots of people had ideas, sometimes good ideas. But without the backing, that’s all they were – ideas.”

Florin found Anderson’s proposal so compelling that he threw his own support behind the project, and it was ultimately approved.

“He then leveraged that small contract into a much larger one, and subsequently became the driving force behind the redevelopment of the entire island,” says Florin.

Anderson’s accomplishment was particularly impressive because Treasure Island’s redevelopment was a project of almost confounding complexity, Florin observes.

“It was an incredibly challenging site,” Florin recalls. “It was on landfill, so seismic concerns were a real issue, and there were legacy environmental problems from Navy ownership. That all had to be addressed safely and within budgetary constraints for redevelopment to succeed.”

An especially thorny problem was the access points from the Bay Bridge to Treasure Island and contiguous Yerba Buena Island.

“The off and on ramps were totally inadequate for the traffic projections,” says Florin. “At that point, Bay Bridge reconstruction necessitated by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake was underway. I was on the Mayor’s committee for reconstruction design, but we were hobbled by the fact that there wasn’t adequate funding for new offramp planning. To make a long story short, it was Darius’ advocacy that put that issue on the table and ultimately secured funding. If he hadn’t been involved there would’ve been insufficient access, and it’s highly unlikely that redevelopment would have proceeded.”

Florin later became CEO of Burbank Housing, a nonprofit organization that builds quality affordable housing in the North Bay. He was in that position when wildfires ravaged Sonoma, Napa, and Mendocino Counties in 2017, killing 40 people and destroying thousands of homes. Anderson stepped aggressively into the civic breach, organizing local leaders into Rebuild NorthBay, an ad hoc foundation dedicated to restoring homes, infrastructure, and community morale in the fire zones.

“Darius got a group of us together and we went to Washington to advocate for recovery efforts,” recalls Florin, “and we met with Mick Mulvaney, who was then Chief of Staff for the Trump White House. Now, the North Bay wasn’t exactly a favorite jurisdiction of the Trump administration. But Darius arranged meetings at the White House and on Capitol Hill at the highest levels, and we met with all the Republican chairs of the committees that were considering emergency funding. And two weeks after we returned to the North Bay, it was announced that the funding had been released. It was just an astounding accomplishment on Darius’ part – there’s no other way to put it.”

Florin says he should have had an inkling of Anderson’s influence and abilities during their initial meetings about Treasure Island.

“I remember one time we were in my office,” Florin says with a chuckle, “and my assistant – who happened to be London Breed, San Francisco’s current mayor – walked in and said, ‘The Mayor would like to speak to you.’ She was referring to Willie Brown, of course. So I said, ‘Darius, why don’t you step out of the office for a minute while I take this call.’ And London looked at me at me and said, ‘Not you – the Mayor wants to talk to Darius.’ So I said, ‘Okayyy’ – and I stepped out of the office.’”

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