In February 2009 President Barak Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Developed in response to the 2008 Great Recession the primary objective of this federal statute was to save existing jobs and create new ones.
One of the largest ARRA funded projects was the Doyle Drive Replacement Project known now as the Presidio Parkway which is the south approach to the iconic Golden Gate Bridge. The project was a collaboration between funding partners: Federal Highways Administration, Caltrans, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) and the Presidio Trust.
Members of the LGBT community have been critical at each stage of this mega construction project which has transformed the historic Presidio of San Francisco. At the beginning of the Project, then San Francisco Supervisor Bevan Dufty (third from right) was serving as the chair of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA). As the project launched, and through a competitive bidding process, Paul Pendergast, CEO of Pendergast Consulting Group and now President of BuildOUT California (second from right), was brought on to manage the economic development programs for this $1.2B infrastructure project.
Fast forward to 2022 and San Francisco Supervisor Rafael Mandelman (forth from right) is serving as the Chair of the SFCTA just as the new landscape design and installation are set to be unveiled at a series of events commencing on April 22, 2022. Dufty, Mandelman, and Pendergast were recently joined by Landscape Architect Andrew Sullivan (first on the left), Plant Construction's Phil Aguilar (first on right) and Matt Naderi from the Presidio Trust (second from the left) as they toured the west-end of the project.