AND SO WE HAVE
TODCO Group
Over 50 Years of South Of Market Neighborhood Building and San Francisco Civic Impact.
John Elberling President Emeritus
The legend of TOOR, Tenants and Owners Opposed to Redevelopment, and its early 1970’s residential hotel tenant leaders’ battle to stop city Redevelopment Agency bulldozers from tearing down their South of Market skid row neighborhood homes to build a major convention center, deluxe hotels, and corporate office towers is well known, the subject of books and urban lore. They won a compromise, four lots in the Yerba Buena Project for replacement senior housing, eventually 1,200 new federally-subsidized apartments in seven residences built between 1978 and 2005. But with the exception of landmark St. Patrick’s Church all of that one time San Francisco community is long gone. In its place are not only the Moscone Convention Center and Yerba Buena Gardens, art museums, and malls but also a new downtown Yerba Buena neighborhood that is home to almost 12,000 residents of all backgrounds today.
When TOOR signed that settlement Agreement with the city in 1973 they could not know what would replace all that was to be demolished and lost forever. But they did know and did achieve their single most vital goal: That their community, working class, lower-income, Central City people of many descriptions, would be a vital part of the future Yerba Buena too. Because, to make that possible in 1971 they had incorporated TODCO, their own intended nonprofit “community development corporation” to ultimately bring that Vision to life. And so we have.
TODCO absolutely embodied the spirit of the American Community Development Movement that emerged in the 1960’s in response to top-down urban renewal and freeway projects that were destroying inner city neighborhoods across the nation in the name of civic progress. This Movement was inspired by two great Truths:
And so we have. In the 50 years since that beginning…
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