Publication Date: Friday, July 16, 2004
Sea Scouts sinking?
Sea Scouts sinking?
(July 16, 2004) Application to restore former base falls short, according to city administrators
by Bill D'Agostino
For more than 40 years, young boys and girls learned the complex skills for nautical life at the Sea Scout base in Palo Alto.
But apparently, they should have been taught proposal writing as well.
A hand-written application from Sea Scout leaders and alumni to restore the group's former base on Embarcadero Road, turning the ramshackle and vacant building into a maritime museum, public meeting hall and organization headquarters, was recently rebuffed by the City of Palo Alto.
"The submittal was high on enthusiasm, but low on facts," said Bill Fellman, the city's real estate manager.
Most importantly, the group doesn't give a solid plan for raising money, Fellman said.
"They've had promises of donations and raised very little funding," he said. "It leads you to be suspect that they have the wherewithal to finish it."
The Sea Scout leaders had originally missed the city's initial deadline for submitting their proposal in January, but got an extension. Kevin Murray, the president of the Lucie Stern Maritime Center, a group formed to restore the vessel-shaped base, submitted the proposal in April.
Murray, a skipper with the scouts, said fund-raising was caught in a "Catch-22" because donors only want to give once the group has the right to the building, which overlooks the San Francisco Bay.
"It's difficult to ask for money when you don't have an application completed or a lease issued," Murray said.
In the proposal, Murray wrote that he hopes to renovate the base for the scouts' monthly meetings, while opening a museum for the public to learn about the history of the now-closed Palo Alto yacht harbor. (The scouts are now sailing out of the Port of Redwood City.)
The funds to restore the building would come from "our membership (who also provide free labor)" and grants from foundations corporations and governments, Murray wrote.
The city estimates the cost to be $750,000 to $1 million, but Murray thinks it can be done for $250,000 since some work and materials will be donated pro bono.
City administrators are now asking the group to resubmit its application with more detail. If Murray had submitted a satisfactory claim, the maritime center would have likely won the right to use the building, since no other group applied. But Fellman said there might be another group interested in it, once the city reopens the proposal later this year.
"Hopefully they'll give us a chance to give them whatever's missing, whatever they need," Murray said.
If no group submits a good application, the city will be forced to find funds to restore the building itself or demolish it, as had once been planned.
The former base, which opened in 1941, is a historic building that was designed by famed local architect Birge Clark. The base was forced to close in 1991, a few years after the city shut down the former yacht harbor in 1986, following a bitter election.
Even though the building is in the shape of a ship, it is not in ship-shape condition. Dry rot has invaded in recent years, since high tides splash into the first floor. Vandalism has also marred the structure, with broken windows and graffiti shattering the distinctive Streamline Moderne architecture. The building also has round windows shaped like portholes on the U-shaped second story.
The City Council placed the building on the city's list of historic structures in 2002, an honor that does nothing to protect it from being razed.
"It's just a wonderful building that really does need to be saved," said Beth Bunnenberg, the chair of the city's Historic Resources Board, who applied to place the building on the city's historic list.
Staff writer Bill D'Agostino can be e-mailed at bdagostino@paweekly.com
E-mail a friend a link to this story. | 
