It's the city's fault that a rare earthquake shack is all but gone

As many now know, the walls of the shack on Valley Street were illegally stripped:

The way it was the way it was. Photos by Mark Norton

The easy way to view this long saga is to blame the real estate speculators who started this project — first John Schrader of Nova Design Build, and the new owner to whom Schrader sold this magnificent piece, Benjamin Steiner of the Citadel Property Group. Naturally, they deserve every title you can imagine.

But the real tragedy here is that city officials whose job it is to protect historic resources like the Valley Street Earthquake Cottage, facilitated this act of destruction, even though they now pretend to be the cottage's defenders.

For many years, the conservation community and neighbors have pleaded with Planning Department staff and the Planning Commission to leave Valley Street Cottage alone, and build on its rear. Instead, the staff approved the idea of ​​raising the hut higher, moving it forward on the lot, and making it the second floor of the new structure. We all knew this would be an almost impossible task. And now we see that the new owner couldn't even get to first base with this plan.

Worse still, once the new owner began construction, our conservation engineer, Michael Garavaglia, reached out to the planning department to see how they planned to monitor the project, and to offer any assistance they might want. He was told that everything was fine, that planning department staff were in contact with the owner, and that there was nothing to worry about. Talk about falling asleep at the switch…

It wasn't until neighbors started raising the alarm that Planning Department staff noticed things were going wrong.

The crucial question is what happens next.

Planning Department staff are now trying to get tough by threatening a fine of up to $500,000. It's a lot of money, but it's highly doubtful that the Planning Department would have the courage to impose a fine like that.

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Even with a hefty fine, if Steiner is allowed to finish demolishing the earthquake hut, it will allow him to start over and build a massive home of sorts, without a historic structure in the way. Given Noe Valley's ridiculously high housing prices, he might be able to make a very tidy profit on the deal.

Was exposing the earthquake hut part of this plan? It remains unclear why he destroyed the hut's walls, an action that appears to make it more difficult to move the hut as planned. Time may tell the tale.

We have been asking Steiner to rebuild the hut using all the historical materials that were not destroyed. The Planning Department staff, for the time being anyway, has embraced this application as if it were their idea. Well, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

The truth is, rebuilding an earthquake shack is a bit like putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. It's not impossible, but it's definitely difficult.

And we must remember that San Francisco is the phoenix that rose from the ashes of the 1906 earthquake and fire. In fact, that is exactly what the few remaining earthquake shacks represent – a city that, once upon a time, knew how to take care of the poor and working-class people in their hour of need.

Do the powers that be in San Francisco still have that will and determination today? This is almost a laughable question, since it seems like the billionaires are in charge, and the poor and working class people are being driven out of the city left and right by the invasion of tech companies, by greedy landlords and real estate speculators who know no bounds.

But we do what we always do on offense, as the saying goes, which is stand up and fight.

Calling for the rebuilding and restoration of the Valley Street Earthquake Cottage is just a small part of this campaign. San Francisco belongs to all of us, not just the rich.

Mark Norton works at Oracle Park and is a proud member of UNITE HERE Local 2 and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). 48 Hills published his article “The Hidden Political History of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fires.” His website is Mark Norton Online.

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