{"id":4680,"date":"2025-10-14T21:43:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T21:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/4680\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T21:43:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T21:43:07","slug":"san-francisco-may-destroy-vaillancourt-fountain-in-redevelopment-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/4680\/","title":{"rendered":"San Francisco May Destroy Vaillancourt Fountain in Redevelopment Plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe city of San Francisco<\/a> is considering destroying a Brutalist fountain by Armand Vaillancourt<\/a> in a redevelopment of Embarcadero Plaza.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn an October 2024 meeting<\/a>\u00a0of San Francisco\u2019s Recreation and Park Commission, the commission\u2019s general manager Phil Ginsburg revealed he had previously talked with with representatives from property management company BXP about redeveloping the plaza \u201ceight to ten years<\/a>\u201d prior to the Commission\u2019s\u00a0participation in a public-private partnership<\/a>. (On September 22, Ginsburg resigned<\/a> from his position after 16 years.)<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Straphangers<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to the Art Newspaper<\/a>, city officials had reportedly discussed redeveloping the plaza roughly a decade before these plans were made public in 2024. The plans did not seem to include the plaza or public art<\/a> asset, which the city has a legal responsibility to maintain.<\/p>\n

\n\tPreviously undisclosed public documents reportedly indicated 15 different instances in which the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department officials referred to BXP and prior organizations as being responsible for the maintenance of Vaillancourt fountain and Embarcadero Plaza between December 1978 and May 2025. BXP officials reportedly also referred to maintenance obligations in the same documents.<\/p>\n

\n\tBXP, which owns the Embarcadero Center office, hotel, and retail complex, is reportedly responsible for maintaining Embarcadero Plaza and Vaillancourt Fountain\u2014an agreement made in exchange for the construction of a spiral staircase in the plaza.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe documents indicate that, though commission officials said they wanted to try to preserve the fountain and plaza, they instead had plans in place for more than a decade to redevelop the area. Furthermore, officials now say that the fountain and plaza are too dilapidated to be preserved, but it\u2019s not clear why both continued to deteriorate in condition, even though BXP had been charged with stewarding them. Neither San Francisco\u2019s Recreation and Park Commission nor a representative from BXP could be reached for comment at the time of publication.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith the city proposing a $35 million renovation of the plaza,\u00a0the San Francisco Arts Commission is preparing to vote on deaccessioning the fountain, which will decide its future in the city. Though the fountain is not beyond repair, it reportedly costs $28,951,519 to fix. The decision has some questioning the greater impact<\/a> it will have on the display of public art.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 710-ton concrete fountain sculpture\u00a0has had a long history in San Francisco since its completion in 1971, including an incident in which\u00a0Bono spray-painted<\/a>\u00a0\u201cRock \u2019n\u2019 Roll Stops the Traffic\u201d onto its surface during a free 1987 U2 concert. Originally, the piece was situated in the center of a freeway that was later removed due to damage from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Designed as a fountain that could carry 30,000 gallons of water, the piece has not had\u00a0running water <\/a>since June 2024. It was\u00a0fenced off from the public<\/a> due to safety and security concerns in June.<\/p>\n

\n\tARTnews reached out to the mayor of San Francisco, Daniel Lurie, as well as the city\u2019s department of Public Works. Neither immediately responded to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The city of San Francisco is considering destroying a Brutalist fountain by Armand Vaillancourt in a redevelopment of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[5391,5392,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-4680","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-armand-vaillancourt","9":"tag-public-art","10":"tag-san-francisco","11":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","12":"tag-san-francisco-news","13":"tag-sf","14":"tag-sf-headlines","15":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}