Board of Supervisors votes to revoke Kearny Street pedestrian bridge permit, orders permittee to bear removal cost

SAN FRANCISCO — The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on April 12 to grant a petition to revoke the major encroachment permit for the private pedestrian bridge that spans Kearny Street from the Hilton Hotel to Portsmouth Square, saying the permittee must pay the cost of removal and restoration.

The decision, made after a public hearing that included presentations from petitioners, the Department of Public Works (DPW) and the permit holder, followed hours of public comment from Chinatown residents, community groups and other stakeholders who urged the board to approve the Portsmouth Square Improvement Project and remove the bridge.

The board’s action matters because the bridge sits above a public park used daily by Chinatown residents — including many seniors and residents of single-room occupancy (SRO) housing — and the approved Portsmouth Square plan would replace the bridge with new open space, a community room and a resiliency center. Petitioners and community groups argued the bridge is underused, often closed, casts shadow over the park and limits the square’s utility as Chinatown’s "living room." The permit holder countered that building the bridge was a condition of the hotel’s original development and that demolition costs would be prohibitive.

At the hearing, pro bono counsel for the lead petitioners, attorney Alan Lowe of Perkins Coie, summarized the community process that produced the Portsmouth Square Improvement Plan. "The pedestrian bridge has outlived its useful purpose," he said, adding that the community-driven plan would open about 20,000 square feet of new playground space and create roughly 9,000 square feet of community space, including a resiliency center for heat and poor-air-quality events.

Lead petitioner Janet Lee Se, a longtime Chinatown resident, described the bridge as underutilized and "restricts the park's potential and casts shadows on the park making areas under and around the bridge unwelcoming." Multiple community organizations and neighborhood groups — including the Chinatown Community Development Center, Chinatown CDC, Chinatown Transportation Research Improvement Project, Chinatown SRO United Collaborative and the Chinese Cultural Center — delivered similar testimony in English, Cantonese, Mandarin and Filipino. Speakers repeatedly described Portsmouth Square as essential open space for residents who live in cramped SRO units.

DPW interim director Carla Short told the board that Public Works prepared a demolition cost estimate as required by Public Works Code Article 15, section 786. Short said an initial estimate prepared earlier was about $1,330,000; the department updated that to $1,420,000 but emphasized the estimate excluded soft costs and traffic control. Short said soft costs could be approximately 50% of the project cost and that demolition would likely require at least a 3‑day weekend full closure for erecting false work, with a total demolition timeline of roughly 8–10 weeks and 4–6 weeks for plaza restoration.

The permit holder, Portsmouth Square Inc., represented in the hearing by David Gonzalez, said the bridge had been built as a condition of the Hilton Hotel's approval and that, as successor in interest to the original permittee, the organization had paid millions to construct the structure. "We were told unequivocally by several city officers that the cost of this removal would be borne by the city," Gonzalez said, adding the hotel and owners could not shoulder the demolition cost after pandemic impacts.

Supervisor Aaron Peskin said the original 1967 encroachment instrument makes the permit revocable and places responsibility for removal on the permittee. Peskin moved to approve the petition to revoke the permit (item 21), incorporate the DPW record including a 03/24/2022 memorandum from DPW setting an estimated cost of $2,125,200, and approve the related item 23; he moved to table item 22 (the item to deny the petition). The motion, seconded by Supervisor Ahsha Safai (recorded as Safaie in the clerk's roll call), passed unanimously on a roll call vote of 10–0.

In making the motion and in subsequent remarks, Peskin referenced the statutory grounds in the Public Works Code allowing revocation: failure to maintain the encroachment under the permit terms, creation of a significant health or safety hazard, or a severe negative impact on the surrounding neighborhood that cannot be mitigated. He said testimony and documentary materials in the record supported findings on maintenance and neighborhood impact. The motion explicitly incorporated the DPW director’s memorandum and the certified Final Environmental Impact Report for the Portsmouth Square Improvement Project into the hearing record.

Several petitioners and community speakers also pointed to photographs, historical documentation and the long planning process dating to 2012–2014 and community design workshops, saying the replacement project was the product of years of public outreach and multiple Commission approvals. Petitioners emphasized that the bridge was frequently locked, cited private events held on the bridge, and raised safety concerns including bicycles and skateboard activity on the structure.

The permit holder said it had maintained insurance and supported community programming over the decades but asked the board to recognize the financial hardship of requiring the owners to pay removal costs. Supervisor Peskin and the deputy city attorney noted the historical permit’s terms required the permittee to carry insurance and to fund removal if the encroachment were revoked.

The board’s action was limited to revoking the encroachment permit and incorporating the DPW cost analysis into the record; it did not itself appropriate funds or order immediate demolition. DPW told the board that the demolition would require additional planning, traffic control coordination, possible temporary lane and sidewalk closures, and that some costs (traffic control, soft costs) were not included in the initial hard‑cost estimate. DPW also noted that vehicular egress from an adjacent parking garage could be impacted and that the demolition work would be phased to allow partial pedestrian and vehicular access where feasible.

The board’s unanimous vote (10–0) approves item 21 (granting the petition to revoke the major encroachment permit) and item 23, and tables item 22 (denying the petition). The board’s order incorporates DPW’s memo and the certified Final EIR into the record and finds the revocation is authorized under current Public Works Code provisions. The record shows the original petition was filed in 2018 and that the Planning Commission certified the project’s Final EIR in January 2022 with final approval actions occurring in February 2022.

What happens next: the revocation means the permit holder is responsible for removal and restoration costs per the language of the original encroachment instrument as incorporated into the hearing record; DPW and other city departments will need to coordinate the technical planning, phasing and traffic control needed to carry out demolition and restoration. The board did not set a demolition schedule during the hearing.

— Reporting by the Board of Supervisors meeting transcript; quotes and attributions are drawn from the hearing record.