Once Upon a Time in SOMA:

Stories From The TODCO Family

I’ll never forget my first visit to Canon Kip Community Center at Eighth and Natoma Streets. It was a drab green concrete warehouse with a metal door down the alley. So, I gave it a try, and walked into a wonderful place and time: a genuine community.

One room was filled with middle school kids sitting quietly at desks doing homework, like young Rudy Corpuz, today’s Director of SOMA’s United Playaz. Later they’d shoot pool at a two tables. The seniors were in the back room relaxing after the lunch program and waiting for bingo. Next door teens shot baskets in the big gym. The diversity was obvious – Filipino, Black, some White – it looked just like the neighborhood. Down the hall was Gene Coleman’s office in a small side room. From behind a desk surrounded by stacks of paper he greeted me with that big, beautiful warm smile that everyone who ever met Gene will never forget. I was a newbie, the new Director of TODCO. It was January 1978, TODCO’s first Yerba Buena senior housing, Woolf House, had begun construction. Gene was a charter member of TODCO’s board of directors, now he was going to show me around. We went back to the seniors’ room and Gene introduced me. The ladies were very polite, asking how they could apply for the new housing. But one fellow challenged me, would we move the people who the Redevelopment Agency had evicted 10 years earlier back to Yerba Buena? I don’t recall my answer (only about a dozen ever did come back), but it was a poor one and he called me a “punk,” taking a roundhouse swing at my jaw. Gene pulled me back just enough so it missed, stepped in between and said, “Now Leland, he’s new, give him a chance.” It was Lee Meyerzove, a longtime, very vocal SOMA resident. TODCO’s Leland Apartments on Howard Street near Sixth is named in his memory. Welcome to the “hood,” Mr. Elberling!.. [read more]