Thursday's The Treasures of Treasure Island: Part II

I was going to do a brief Fun Filled Fact 'bout Treasure Island, the man-made island jutting out from Yerba Buena Island in the middle of the bay. Which, by the way, anchors the two sections of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.  But in doing just the most basic research, I found a whole "treasure" trove (no pun intended) of information, worthy of its own article.

Once the fair ended in 1940, came the question of what to do with a 400-acre artificial island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay.  It was thought to be an ideal location for an airport and for a while, the Pan Am China Clipper departed from there during the world's fair.   Remember when Indiana Jones boarded a seaplane at the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark?

In quick succession came Nazi Germany's invasion of Europe, Pearl Harbor, and the war was on.  San Francisco was strategically located, and the belief that it was a possible target of the Imperial Japanese military.  Treasure Island became the US Navy's main base of operations.  Within a few weeks the food court for the world's fair was converted into a mess hall, and other buildings which had playful displays of culture and entertainment were quickly repurposed for military use. 

So important was to the war effort that Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet lived in a house on Yerba Buena Island, just under the Bay Bridge until his death in 1966.  To this day the Nimitz house is used as a conference center.

For the next fifty years, the US Navy based their Pacific Operations there through the Korean, Vietnam, and the Cold Wars.  When the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War effectively ended, the Navy relinquished the site back to the city in 1994.  In a city that is as densely populated as San Francisco, getting 400 more acres of land was a gift.  

But what to do with this newly acquired land?

As the 1990s progressed, so did film productions in the city.  Treasure Island provided an excellent opportunity to utilize the large warehouse spaces the Navy left behind when they returned it to the city, and turn them into sound stages and production facilities.  In fact, Hulk, Mythbusters, Nash Bridges, and the 1995 film Copy Cat were just a few of the diverse productions filmed on the island.  The Treasure Island Administration building served as the Berlin Airport in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Buildings depicting Treasure Island's past and future

The late Robin Williams learned his craft in the 1970s San Francisco comedy scene, but then he became a big star and preferred shooting films around his native bay area.  The studios honored his interest in staying (and shooting) locally, and parts of the films Flubber, Patch Adams, and Bicentennial Man were also filmed there.

The other boon to the city were the hundreds of abandoned barracks and homes, once populated by Navy personal, not to mention the office and light industrial facilities which also lay fallow.  The city saw this as an opportunity to appropriate the light industrial facilities to conduct job training for at-risk youth and newly released convicts who were circulating back into society.  The empty homes served as transitional housing for those living in the margins. 

For a good two decades tens of thousands of at-risk and vulnerable people found job training, shelter, and a community. Then one day, maybe after watching the opening credits to Nash Bridges, someone figured out that there are million-dollar views of San Francisco and the greater bay area from Treasure Island.  After 20 years of shipping poor people to the island, now developers want in, and the city is in the process of moving them off for those million-dollar views.

Treasure Island from Downtown San Francisco

The Treasure Island Development Project is quite ambitious, planning for the construction of 8000 new homes to accommodate as many as 18,000 people by 2036, as opposed to the current population of approximately 2,800 residents currently in 2025.  The plan also calls for 25% of those new units to be affordable.

All the new renderings of happy people promenading along the waterfront look great, until you remember that there is only one two-lane road connecting to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.  Or another was of putting it, the outside world. 

The road is barley serviceable for the current population, multiply that by a factor of ten and the possibility of an unforeseen closure becomes not a matter of if, but when.  Who knew Treasure Island had so much history, and is not even a century old?