Backers of the recently approved Bayview-Hunters Point Redevelopment Plan insisted that it merely fulfilled a decade-long community planning process. The Plan would allegedly ensure that community input, not outside forces, would shape the neighborhood’s future. But within weeks of the Plan’s approval, Mayor Newsom announced plans to build thousands of apartments in Bayview to house athletes attending the 2016 Olympics, the 49ers declared an intention to build a new stadium and to join with the Lennar Corp. to develop adjacent parcels, and Lennar Corp. has sent word that it is reconsidering its Redevelopment-Agency sponsored plan for townhouses at the former Hunters-Point Naval Shipyard. All three of these proposals would dramatically remake the Bayview-Hunters Point community--- yet residents of the low-income African-American community had to learn about plans for their neighborhood in the newspaper.

Critics of the Bayview-Hunters Point Redevelopment Plan did not have to wait long to question its ability to ensure “community control” over the neighborhood’s future. Private interests have spent the past two weeks carving up the neighborhood like European colonizers in a Third World country, with community input limited to offering feedback over projects conceived in backroom deals.

What’s astonishing about the spin on the 49ers stadium is the notion that it does not include public financing. After all, if the team is able to generate revenue from what was public land prior to the 1997 stadium rezoning initiative, does not that rezoning constitute a huge public benefit?

The Chronicle’s July 15 editorial pointed out that the 1997 initiative also guaranteed the hiring of 1000 welfare recipients and that 25% of the permanent jobs went to Bayview-Hunters Point residents. What gives the 49ers the right to use the rezoning portion of the initiative but not others?

Let’s assume that the rezoning of the land adjacent to the 49ers stadium goes before the voters. This initiative would dramatically reshape land use in Bayview-Hunters Point, but Bayview-Hunters Point residents---who vote in low numbers and do not give many campaign contributions---would have little say over the outcome.

Such an initiative would be a classic example of the “ballot box rezoning” that Mayor Newsom has criticized. Yet there is no way the Mayor will oppose the financial mechanism for a new “privately-funded” 49ers stadium, and with Newsom’s support and the 49ers and Lennar spending millions on the campaign, it is likely to pass.

District 10 Supervisor Sophie Maxwell says that she will insist “that the community has a say in whatever the team builds.” But a citywide ballot initiative takes away the community’s veto-power over the project, so any “say” Bayview residents have depends on Maxwell’s willingness to oppose the initiative.

Expect the 49ers and Lennar to gain Maxwell’s support by offering the usual host of community benefits. A massive land use plan conceived by private interests will thus get the stamp of public approval, and the fact that the surrounding community did not initiate the plan, or have any say prior to its unveiling, will be little noticed.

Mayor Newsom’s ambitious plan to build thousands of rental units in Bayview to house Olympic athletes also emerged outside the neighborhood planning process. Since San Francisco has no chance of being awarded the 2016 Olympics (former Supervisor and State Senator Quentin Kopp put the city through the same game in the 1980’s), some may think the Mayor’s housing plan will simply fade away.

But such detractors may be unaware of a critical fact: the Lennar Corp., under contract to build townhouses at Hunters Point Naval Shipyards, wants instead to build highrise towers.

Such towers would be perfect for housing Olympic athletes. The revised project could be sold to the public as critical to San Francisco’s Olympic bid, cloaking Lennar’s change of plans as motivated by public benevolence rather than private profit.

Lennar is one of America’s largest homebuilding companies, and is in business to make a profit. If its business and community interests coincide, great, but regardless of Bayview’s prior preference for townhouses, the Redevelopment Agency will change the plan to towers if Lennar requests.

Mayor Newsom’s announcement of his Olympics plan preceded any “community input” from Bayview residents or businesses. The change in Lennar’s plans obviously must have public approval (to the extent the Redevelopment Agency Commission constitutes such), but community input is only meaningful if it is allowed to shape the planning process, not simply respond to proposals from outsiders.

We heard a lot over the past months about a ten-year Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood planning process. Yet the 49ers, Lennar, and the city’s Olympic dreams operate independently and outside of this process, making a mockery of claims that Redevelopment is needed to transform community plans into reality.

The true reality is that you would never hear a private developer or Mayor unilaterally announce major development plans for the Richmond, Noe Valley, the Sunset, Pacific Heights or other moderate to upper-income neighborhoods. Low-income African-American communities tend to learn about plans for their neighborhood after they are announced, and without any prior community process.

Send feedback to rshaw@beyondchron.org