It’s another rectangular tube in the coffin for the Embarcadero Plaza’s 54-year-old Vaillancourt Fountain, as a top SF Rec and Parks official told an audience at a Tuesday night meeting that restoring the fountain is “beyond our project budget.”
The Embarcadero Plaza’s Brutalist, 710-ton Vaillancourt Fountain is already fenced off to the general public, as SF Rec and Parks officials have said the structure is “hazardous,” plus “cracked, corroded and missing key supports.” And public support for the fountain already seemed at an all-time low, after a proposed $30 million renovation of the plaza released last July did not include the fountain in any of its design renderings.
There has been no formal announcement that the beloved-by-some, but largely considered fugly Villaincourt Fountain is being taken out. Though obviously, with the city running a large deficit, the costly repair job is unlikely to be part of the $30 million renovation.
Now add to the mix that a Tuesday night community meeting about the plaza redesign, at which the Chronicle reports that an SF Rec and Park official confirmed the fountain is not part of the plaza’s planned redesign.
“We did look into keeping the fountain on-site,” Recreation and Park Department project manager Eoanna Harrison Goodwin told a public meeting audience Tuesday night. “But once we got the cost estimate, it is beyond our project budget.”
And according to Goodwin, the latest cost estimate on repairing the fountain to its full functionality would be about $29 million. That’s nearly the full cost of the overall park renovation, and would take up all the resources needed for every other aspect of the proposed combination and remodel of Embarcadero Plaza and the adjacent Sue Bierman Park.
But the fountain has its supporters, including its designer, the now-95-year-old French-Canadian artist Armand Vaillancourt, who was in town in May to fight for his fountain. Armand Vaillancourt was not at Tuesday night’s community meeting, but his daughter and SF resident Oceania Vaillancourt was.
“I just can’t imagine the fountain not being there,” the younger Vaillancourt told the assembled crowd. “I just hope we can gather the community and hopefully change the decision of removing the fountain.”
That decision is not yet made. But there sure seems to be growing momentum that the fountain won’t stay. Still, there may be some unanticipated twists and turns before the SF Arts Commission makes a final call on the fountain, which likely won’t be until sometime this fall, at the earliest.
Image: Another Believer via Wikimedia Commons
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