Presidio Conversion Process Map
When the US Army decommissioned the Presidio and it became part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the National Park Service launched a special planning process to produce an amended general plan. They needed a group to facilitate a series of community visioning sessions around the SF Bay Area and chose The Grove. To focus these sessions, we helped the NPS create this long map of total planning process. We persuaded them to illustrate not just the plan amendment process (the top blue arrow on the left of this chart), but the entire process through implementation, with suggestive material for what would probably happen. We also included the four other planning processes that were running in parallel. Under the top blue arrow is the NPS operational planning for the group taking over the park. Then came the joint NPS/Army back room negotiations around the actual transfer of property. Under that was the Army's base closure process and along the bottom the City of San Francisco's process of tracking and following the other processes. Seeing this all on one chart helped all the planners start being aware of each others work and facilitated very productive alignment through much of the planning. This long chart was put up at each of six community meetings, and explained in about five minutes to show where the visioning processes fit in the bigger picture.
