SPUR's deep involvement with city planning issues, while guiding SPUR's expansion into new policy areas of city management, finance, and the democratic decision-making process. He has an intimate knowledge of the dynamics of change in San Francisco during the 1970s, from the founding of the GGNRA, to the effects of Proposition 13, to the continuing transformation of San Francisco's economic base. In February of this year, Gabriel Metcalf interviewed John Jacobs about some of his major accomplishments at SPUR.
First Impressions
METCALF: John how did you get to SPUR?
JACOBS: Well, John Hirten brought me to SPUR. In fact, John Hirten brought me to California. We had been college roommates and John eventually won the job as the first executive director of the Stockton, California, Redevelopment Agency. Jack was there two years and left, and so then I became the executive director from 1960 to 1966. And he did the same damned thing to me here at SPUR.
When I came, ºÚÁÏ´«ËÍÃÅwas, I think, quite influential for a number of reasons. One, it was the only act in town, basically speaking. ºÚÁÏ´«ËÍÃÅwas the only organization concerned with the entire community. It was supported by the Blyth-Zellerbach Committee, and we had people on the Board of Directors like Jerd Sullivan, who was president of Crocker Bank, Jack Merrill, who was independently wealthy and had a chemical company over in the East Bay, Gwyn Follis, who was chairman of Chevron. And these were men of considerable prominence within the community-both socially and in the business community.
I remember Jerd Sullivan, he was a tower of a man, but he had had an unfortunate accident and he had to wear braces on his legs. He had fallen on a trip back East and had fractured both of his hips and didn't know it and continued to walk on them in great pain, which apparently caused irreparable nerve damage. So from a six-foot-four giant, he was then crippled, but still he was a power in the community. I remember him picking up the telephone, calling one of the city's biggest property owners and saying, "_____, you son of a bitch, I want that check for ºÚÁÏ´«ËÍÃÅand I'm going to send somebody over for it. Don't give me any backtalk.
METCALF: And now that's what you do for us.
JACOBS: We would make appearances before the B-Z committee once or twice a year and tell them what we'd been doing. And they were particularly interested that we bring the neighborhoods together with the business community because they felt that the goals should be co-terminus.
In those days Gwyn Follis was chairman of the Blyth-Zellerbach Committee and we'd give him a budget and he'd say, "Well, you have to raise so much money outside of the B-Z Committee," and we said, "Okay," and he would send out letters saying, "Your share to support ºÚÁÏ´«ËÍÃÅis ____" and the checks would just automatically come in from the business community.
METCALF: So you really didn't have to worry about fund-raising the way we do now?
JACOBS: It was easier than today, but we still had to make the match from other sources.
Occasionally one of the corporations would object, and there was one that will go unnamed, that was always angry at ºÚÁÏ´«ËÍÃÅbut they didn't want to leave the Blyth-Zellerbach Committee. And ultimately that company was the cause of the demise of the Blyth Zellerbach Committee. I remember one occasion, this particular company insisted on an assessment of ºÚÁÏ´«ËÍÃÅand they assigned a young attorney to investigate SPUR. He spent a lot of time here and he wrote a report urging continued support of the organization, and before he submitted the report he said, "I don't know what this is going to do to my job prospects, because the chairman does not like the organization." But he submitted the report and they didn't fire him.
METCALF: Were there ever conflicts between what ºÚÁÏ´«ËÍÃÅthought were the best interests of the city and what the Blyth-Zellerbach Committee thought?
JACOBS: The Blyth-Zellerbach Committee never interfered with SPUR, never ever. Gwyn Follis had so much respect and if anyone wanted to complain about SPUR, they'd have to go through him and Follis simply wouldn't hear it.
He'd say, "Well, you know, you can't have them on a leash," that's the way he would talk. "Otherwise they won't be effective."
METCALF: After 1980, the Blyth-Zellerbach Committee stopped funding SPUR. How did you manage to sustain ºÚÁÏ´«ËÍÃÅthrough that transition?
JACOBS: When Tom Clausen left the Bank of America to run the World Bank, the B-Z Committee died. So I sought ways to interest the business community in what we were