Sharp Park: When You Win, The Other Guy Says You Lose

A restoration vision for Sharp Park.

Some of you may have read an article recently saying that Wild Equity’s lawsuit over Sharp Park Golf Course was dismissed, case closed. This article was spawned by a misleading press release by a golf industry front group. Here’s what really happened:

After our lawsuit was filed claiming that the golf course was killing endangered species without a permit, the golf course applied for the very permits our lawsuit claimed it needed.

In October a permit was issued: and it is a doozy. It contains over 50 pages of terms and conditions that burden the golf course with hiring biological monitors to walk in front of mowers, building new breeding and feeding ponds for endangered species, and restoring habitat to create a biological corridor connecting Laguna Salada to the national park next door, Mori Point.

Since a permit was issued, the legal issue we raised was over or “moot,” and Wild Equity is in the process of recovering fees and costs from the City for catalyzing this legal change.

While the permit didn’t order the creation of a new National Park at Sharp Park, we never asked the Court or the permitting agency to do that: because we know that move will have to come from San Francisco and nowhere else.

And we are very close: on five different occasions the San Francisco Board of Supervisors have voted to move forward with restoration planning at Sharp Park in partnership with the National Park Service. While the last vote was vetoed by new Mayor who never met with us, we have a new Board of Supervisors next year.

There will be more legal challenges and legislative work on this campaign in 2013, so stay tuned as we restore Sharp Park!