An Untold Story: How It Came To Be 1000 Seniors Celebrate The Yerba Buena Community's 40 Years!
AN UNTOLD STORY: HOW IT CAME TO BE 1000 SENIORS CELEBRATE THE YERBA BUENA COMMUNITY’S 40 YEARS!
On September 27th 1,000 elder residents of all eight Yerba Buena Neighborhood senior residences joined together in Moscone Center’s Esplanade Ballroom to celebrate their 37th annual Senior Ball sponsored by the Center and the TODCO Group. These apartment blocks, intended as replacement low-income housing for 4000 SRO units demolished by the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency in the 1970’s, are the heart of the Yerba Buena neighborhood today: Clementina Towers (built 1971), Silvercrest Residence (1972), Alexis Apartments (1974), Woolf House (1979), San Lorezno Ruiz Center (1980), Ceatrice Polite Apartments (1986), Mendelsohn House (1988), and Eugene Coleman Community House (2002).
But the very first Senior Ball wasn’t so easy. The brand new Moscone Convention Center first opened in 1984 by hosting that July’s Democratic National Convention that nominated Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro for President and Vice-President for the November’s election. It was a huge national event with much more media attention than the recent Moscone Center APEC conference received. The security arrangements, street and sidewalk closings in the Yerba Buena area were almost as tight then too. And in those days the City just expected the local senior residents living there to “grin and bear it” during Moscone Center events no matter the practical difficulties for them. So, they objected, demanding respect. TODCO’s director wrote Mayor Feinstein calling out the callous indifference of the City toward the same elderly population that the national Democratic Party so vocally claimed to cherish and care about, making sure to copy the local press and elected Democrats. The next morning that story ran in both daily papers, and then the Mayor’s office called a few minutes after noon.
“What can we do?” the Mayor’s assistant asked. “Our Yerba Buena seniors need real respect, and their own first-class celebration too, just like all you big shots!” the director replied. So, a plan was made. A week later the National Democratic Party sponsored a Yerba Buena Senior Ball a for the neighborhood’s 1000 elderly residents a few days before the start of the Convention in the Palace Hotel Ballroom, with a dance band and full prime rib buffet. The legendary Ann Richards of Texas, that year’s convention chairperson, presided at the head table, joined by Mayor Feinstein and Representative Sala Burton, all pledging maximum care and support for the seniors of America.
It was a grand moment. But then things went back to normal. The City’s routine indifference to local YBC seniors continued the next few years, until oh wait! a new plan was announced in 1986 to expand and double the size of Moscone Center, adding a second underground hall beneath the block across Howard Street to its north. That put local residents’ concerns, especially then for pedestrian safety on the heavy traffic streets surrounding Moscone Center that had already taken the lives of two elders, in a whole new light. Well, TODCO might even have to litigate the expansion project’s massive environmental impact report (EIR), TODCO’s director once again wrote the Mayor, with copies to the local press.
“What can we do?” the City Administrator’s project manager then called and asked the director the next day. “A real YBC district pedestrian impacts/safety EIR study,” he replied, “and widen all our local sidewalks and change all the stoplights to have no-traffic phases for maximum safety!” “And oh, by the way, let’s make the Yerba Buena Senior Ball an annual event to show the City’s and Moscone Center’s appreciation of our local seniors civic spirt by accepting the many inconveniences of its large conventions throughout every year.” It took years to complete, but all those safety improvements were ultimately installed, and in 1988 the second Yerba Buena Senior Ball convened in Moscone Center for all the neighborhoods’ elders, and so it has every year since except during the several Covid pandemic years.
But wait, again in 2023 last November, 39 years after that first Moscone Center national mega-event, the déjà vu of APEC, the Asian/Pacific Economic Conference, came to the Yerba Buena neighborhood with even more intensive security lockdowns of the surrounding district. And once again TODCO’s director emailed the Mayor’s office calling for the City to provide special assistance for all the local senor residences to ensure their food programs, lunch programs, and emergency services were assured continued operation during the week long area-wide traffic access shutdowns. In response, the City’s Assessor/Recorder, Joaquin Torres, took charge of coordinating all City agencies to minimize the disruptions to the lives of Yerba Buena’s 2000 senior residents. So then, once more this July 2024, a unique San Francisco neighborhood convened together to celebrate their own Yerba Buena Senior Ball, and appreciate their community’s determined spirit, together all in the one place, Moscone Center, that so often impacts their everyday lives.
- By John Elberling, President TODCO Group
For more information about our nonprofit, our initiatives, our affordable housing residences and much more make sure to browse through our TODCO Group website at the link below!
Follow TODCO Group on social media:
· https://www.instagram.com/todcogroup/
· https://www.facebook.com/TODCOgroup
· https://www.linkedin.com/company/todco-group
· https://www.tiktok.com/@todcogroup
