Fisherman's Wharf

Fisherman's Wharf is a district rather than a building, and its record is a long argument about whether it is a working harbour or a destination. The Port's 1981 Action Plan, prepared by ROMA, framed the problem: tenants wanted restrooms, sidewalk treatment, parking management and rubbish disposal, and the plan insisted that for the area to keep its tourist appeal "the authenticity of maritime activity" had to be maintained. A 1986 management audit by the Board of Supervisors' Budget Analyst found the Port could not say what the wharf cost it — it did not know the maintenance costs of either Fisherman's Wharf or Pier 94/96 — while carrying $3.68 million of delinquent tenant accounts. The Port's own 1987 staff report on commercial fishing facilities carried a consultant's assessment of what the fleet and the fish handlers needed, developed with wharf tenants and adopted by the Commission in 1986. That work ended in the Hyde Street Fishing Harbor, whose environmental report the City Planning Commission certified in December 1996; the comments on the draft include a speaker describing thirty fishing boats "tied up helter skelter in the outer lagoon with no water, no power, no toilets". Recorded contract payments against the wharf as a whole are negligible, because Port work is contracted pier by pier rather than by district.