The Golden Gate Park Ferris wheel could keep spinning — with fewer bright lights and less noise — under a plan unanimously approved Thursday by the Recreation and Park Commission.
The Rec and Park board approval means that set of commissioners wants the wheel to remain at the east end of the Music Concourse through 2025. The other set of commissioners — the members of the Historic Preservation Commission — have voted unanimously to put off making up their mind for another month.
And no matter how the votes go, nobody gets to take a ride until the pandemic danger rating is reduced from the purple tier to the red tier.
For more than an hour at the Rec and Park commission’s monthly meeting, dozens of Ferris wheel fans and foes sounded off, calling the 150-foot-high wheel everything from a beacon of joy to a killer of great horned owls.
“Why does everything have to be so controversial and negative?” exasperated commissioner Larry Mazzola said after listening to a dozen wheel foes. “We’re talking about a Ferris wheel. The next thing they’ll want to cancel is Halloween.”
Business leaders — including the proprietor of a nearby hot dog wagon — told the commission that the wheel could help economic recovery. Nature lovers and many neighbors called it a nuisance more suited to an amusement park or someplace — anyplace — else.
“Why can’t the wheel go to John McLaren Park?” said Richard Rothman, neighborhood resident who complained of increased traffic brought by wheel customers.
“Why can’t it be moved to Fisherman’s Wharf or Pier 39?” said Janet Carpinelli of San Francisco who said the commissioners should “consider other creatures who live in the park besides us.”
Ornithologist Nancy De Stefanis said the bright lights make birds “crash into buildings and structures” and accused the commissioners of “not acting as good stewards of this park.”
But Kevin Carroll, executive director of the San Francisco Hotel Council, said the wheel, formally known as the SkyStar, could help fill hotel rooms and “help us recover from our darkest time ever.”
And Rodney Fong, head of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, said it was time to “have a little bit of fun.”
Dana Ketcham, director of permits for the department, said the giant wheel brought “joy and fun for families” and helped make the concourse a “safe place to be in the evening.” During the wheel’s 39 days of actual operation in the fall, she informed commissioners, three couples got engaged.
Ketcham said park staff and the wheel operator had agreed to two changes — turning off the wheel’s brightest lights and switching off the noisy portable generator after 10 p.m. After that hour, the wheel would be illuminated by fainter lights powered by batteries.
Not enough, said naturalist Natalie Downe.
“The prime feeding time for bats is shortly after sunset,” she told the commission by phone during the virtual meeting during her one-minute window of being unmuted. “You have a responsibility to listen to nature. The wildlife can’t call in to tell you they’re struggling to survive.”
Commissioner Kat Anderson said the board “cares about wildlife, nature, noise and lights” and struggled with the decision.
“Sometimes we try so hard to make everybody happy that we make nobody happy,” she said.
The giant wheel was originally to be in the park for a little more than a year to help celebrate the park’s 150th anniversary. But as soon as it was unloaded from the 14 trucks that brought it last winter from its former home in Cincinnati, and before its 36 passenger gondolas could be installed, the pandemic ratcheted up and the wheel was frozen in place.
In October, the wheel was finally allowed to operate. A month later, the fall pandemic surge shut it down again.
Under the terms of its contract, the city gets $1 from every $18 ticket sold. The deal also obliges the operator to provide 500 free tickets a month to at-risk families, an arrangement that will continue as long as the big wheel keeps on turning.
Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SteveRubeSF
February 19, 2021 at 07:27AM
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Giant-Ferris-Wheel-gets-OK-to-spin-for-4-more-15961723.php
Giant Ferris wheel at Golden Gate Park moves one step closer to staying - San Francisco Chronicle
https://news.google.com/search?q=Wheel&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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