Boris Dramov: In 1980 I helped the City when they did the northeast waterfront plan and we agreed on everything except the piers. We could not reach consensus on the piers… there was still the hope that maybe maritime would come back. I remember sitting with many people who said, "The City has enough on their plate to do inland. Let them do a good job at that."

Will Travis: We agreed on everything in the waterfront plan except what would happen to the waterfront.

Jim Haas: The planning that’s been going on has been uncoordinated and messy and we’re very fortunate that it’s come out so well …

Boris Dramov: It wasn’t necessarily bad that way. I think there are lots of ways of doing it. There are waterfronts that are very "thin". Our waterfront isn’t thin, in fact, leaving the controversy of the piers for a period of time allowed development to move forward on inland sites first. The basic premise of the Northeast Waterfront Plan was to extend the amenity of the waterfront inland and share it more democratically with the community as a whole.

Will Travis

Will Travis: Of course, that’s one of the challenges that we have. People are worried what’s happened it’s just the tip of the iceberg. And I think that a lot of people love the San Francisco waterfront but they love it the way it used to be. They really felt that if they could just keep it looking the way it used to look, that it would go back to the way it used to be. And I think that institutionally, we have a lot of laws in place that also reflect the past and not the future. I think a breakthrough came with the notion of the historical district because I think that people are in some way afraid of designers. They’re afraid of change. They know what’s there now. They know how it looks. They know they like it. They know they like the way it used to be. And the future is unknown and they get frightened of it. When we talked about the historic district, I think it gave people a sense of comfort and confidence that we could have a changing waterfront and yet it would fit within a scale and context that they were comfortable with and liked. So I view that as a remarkable breakthrough where we now have an overlay of what can happen and a lot of change can take place within that context.

Will Travis: We owe the Giants. I greatly thank the Giants organization because I think if someone had suggested that it would be possible to build essentially an enormous several square block structure along the waterfront and design it in a fashion that would be friendly to the surrounding communities, that would have a scale that is welcoming, that is not oppressive or overwhelming and that really does open up the waterfront: well, I think if it had been a church or a hotel or housing or anything else but a ballpark it would have been a much harder sell. It allowed an example of it is possible for designers to craft, something that meets these criteria on a very human scale.

Jack Bair: I’m relatively new to this effort. I’ve been working for the Giants for eight years and my responsibility from the beginning was to select a site for the ballpark and look at the ballpark development. And so I wasn’t really a player here in the olden days that people recall fondly. For a long time, the San Francisco waterfront was a waterfront that was sort of broken down, run down and not particularly attractive or charming or something to preserve.

When I started working for the Giants, you couldn’t walk along the water. It was all walled off and I had to call and get special permission to go there to take photos and sort of imagine what the ballpark would look like on that location and what people staring over the right field wall toward the water would see. We had to all sort of imagine these things because the way it was before was not somewhere where anybody from the public could even go. Now, the walk behind the park is open all the time for people to stroll and you go there right now and you see people on skateboards, roller blades, people walking and using the area for recreation and it’s a place for people to show their friends from out of town, "Hey, come let’s look at the ballpark and let’s stroll around the area." I think that’s a great thing.

Now, I am actually proud of taking people down to the waterfront. I had a friend that was in from Sydney, Australia over the weekend. He hadn’t been here in five or six years and we went down to the waterfront. He had much appreciation for how much improved the area was starting at the ballpark and moving up and even past the Bay Bridge to the northern waterfront as well with the walking pier that exists out there. I pointed out the area for the planned park that’s opposite the Gap Building, the cruise ship terminal that slated to go in. It’s just very attractive and it opens up to me the waterfront as something to be proud of not only for tourists to enjoy but for a citizen to enjoy. I mean there are a lot of fine restaurants that are all located along the Embarcadero Roadway where people patronize. There’s housing that’s going up to take advantage of the views.