permitting garage underneath parkland without legislative approval
How later courts described this case
- permitting garage underneath parkland without legislative approval
- parking garage built under Union Square
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
EDMONDS, J., Concurring.
I concur in the decision in so far as it concerns the city’s title but I am so strongly opposed to the procedure by which a question of great public interest is conclusively decided, that I take this occasion to express my views concerning it.
The petitioners are the City and County of San Francisco and its Board of Park Commissioners, but the taxpayer who sought to intervene and is denied a hearing asserts that they are not the real parties in interest. He alleges that the plan to construct the garage was conceived, planned and promoted by private parties; that these parties have already formed a corporation known as the Union Square Garage Corporation to carry out the project; that the corporation has arranged to finance itself partly by the selling of private seeu *449 rities and partly by securing a loan from a governmental agency; and that it has induced the Board of Park Commissioners to take the present proceedings. This taxpayer also alleges that the private corporation will have the exclusive use and operation of the garage for a period of fifty years; that it will reap considerable profit therefrom; and that the city will receive no benefit except a moderate rental for the use of the premises during the term of the lease.
Although these allegations have nothing to do with the legal question concerning the authority of the city to lease the park premises, unquestionably the Secretary of the Park Commission, against whom the proceeding was brought, has refused to call for bids upon the proposed lease for the sole purpose of securing a judgment of this court approving the project. To accomplish this the city and its Park Commissioners have sued an appointed employee of the latter for the asserted purpose of compelling him to perform a purely ministerial act. The taxpayer charges that for these reasons the proceeding is a collusive one. Certainly it is not brought in such form as to allow a full and fair judicial examination of the merits of a project which will involve the expenditure of many thousands of dollars of public funds and have a great effect, for better or for worse, upon the growth of San Francisco’s downtown area.
Carter, J., concurred.