[CPEO-MEF] REUSE: "Meet the ‘visionary’ who helped make S.F.’s Presidio what it is — and now is leaving"

[Lenny Siegel <LSiegel@cpeo.org>]

Meet the ‘visionary’ who helped make S.F.’s Presidio what it is — and now is leaving

By John King
San Francisco Chronicle
June 30, 2024

When Michael Boland joined the Presidio Trust in 2001, the historic parade ground was a potholed parking lot. Dead fish dotted Mountain Lake at summer’s end. Inspiration Point’s view toward the Palace of Fine Arts and the bay was shuttered by pine trees.

Today, a 7-acre lawn has replaced the parking lot at the heart of the old Main Post. Mountain Lake shimmers year-round. Inspiration Point has wide open views and a rugged grandeur, as do four other outlooks added within the one-time Army post that’s now a national park.

The common thread in all this is Boland, 62, who at the end of June retired from his position as chief park officer. As much as any single person, his genial aspiration has steered the Presidio’s evolution from a promising but troubled terrain into what it is today — an amalgam of rugged terrains and manicured landscapes, old buildings and new attractions, all folding together into a blend of spectacle and the sublime that no other American city can match.


…

For the entire article, see
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/michael-boland-presidio-park-19532444.php

—

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)

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