Remembering Jim Meko: SoMa Loses Its Champion

Remembering Jim Meko: SoMa Loses Its ChampionPhoto: Jim Meko/Twitter
Tom Carter
Published on September 05, 2015

This article, written by Tom Carter, was originally published in Central City Extra's September 2015 issue. It has been edited for length. You can find Central City Extra distributed around area cafes, nonprofits, City Hall offices, SROs and other residences – and in the periodicals section on the fifth floor of the Main Library.

A crowd of 200 admirers of Jim Meko jammed Slim’s August 17th to praise him as the driven, undisputed guardian of the west side of SoMa, where he lived and worked for four decades.

Mr. Meko was known at City Hall for his indefatigable efforts to protect the diverse character of his working-class neighborhood through his comprehensive testimonies and the dozen organizations he led or was a member of. His death at age 66 leaves a gap in leadership, the mourners said, shoes hard to fill, someone to take up his torch, the work he began not yet done.

Mr. Meko served two terms on the Entertainment Commission, but his most notable achievement was steering the 22-member Western SoMa Citizens Advisory Task Force, created in 2004 by a resolution co-authored by then-supervisors Chris Daly and Matt Gonzalez.

Charged with ensuring that the neighborhood retain its culturally diverse, working-class character, the task force’s plan limited housing south of Harrison Street and market-rate housing north of it; developed height and density guidelines; required special permits for chain stores; restricted the size of big-box retailers; pushed for more parks and open space; and added more crosswalks and traffic calming. The plan changed 141 sections of the Planning Code. 

Brimming with anticipation, Mr. Meko told the Central City Extra in October 2005, “It’s revolutionary. now we’re in charge.”

It seemed the table was turning, in contrast to earlier days when SoMa Leadership Council members saw how the Planning Department’s eastern neighborhood plan addressed western SoMa. “They were treating us like an abandoned industrial area.”

The task force plan’s features protected art spaces and service/light industrial zones, and allowed nighttime entertainment expansion and higher but moderate density, task force member John Elberling, TODCO’s Executive Director, told the Extra after the memorial.

But the plan isn’t really working now. Mr. Meko’s first love, nighttime entertainment, hasn’t grown, "and the Central SoMa Plan is killing off about half of the district," Elberling said. "But we’ll know more next year."

Daly, who appointed Mr. Meko Chairman of the Task Force, told the memorial gathering that the task force's plan “was really Jim’s” in every detail. Mr. Meko conducted committee meetings for eight years.

"SoMa is my greatest love," one mourner quoted Mr. Meko as saying. "(It) occupies most of my waking hours.”

Mr. Meko died August 3rd at UCSF hospital on Parnassus Avenue after suffering a stroke July 10th. He was found next to his bed in his home on 10th Street near Folsom, also his business address, by Roy Carr, 77, his partner of 30-plus years and co-owner of their printing shop.

At the hospital, Mr. Meko lingered for two weeks, never regaining consciousness. this memorial was his sendoff.

Mr. Meko came to the City from St. Paul, Minnesota. Daly, who praised him as an “eloquent writer,” read a piece Mr. Meko had written in 2006 for the Fog City Journal, reflecting on the evolution of his neighborhood.

It began: “I moved to SoMa in ’77, mostly to be left alone. It was a warehouse district. There were no homeowner associations and very few families. My neighbors were Filipino refugees from Manilatown, gay men experimenting with alternative lifestyles, beat poets, performance artists and rock and roll bands. survivors and squatters."

The neighborhood had good times and bad, the mix always striking a humanist chord in Mr. Meko, of Hungarian and Irish stock. He kept getting more deeply involved with his neighborhood until at one point he was a member of a dozen organizations, had served eight years on the Entertainment Commission and another eight on the time-consuming Task Force, was the neighborhood’s go-to historian and had run for District 6 Supervisor. In November 2010, the city gave him a Lifetime Achievement award for his work.

Mr. Meko was the leading voice of SoMa Leadership Council, an otherwise leaderless group that met monthly to “ensure that south of Market remains a compassionate, diverse, vibrant and complete neighborhood,” as its motto said. It grew out of another organization, the SoMa residents Association, that Mr. Meko and neighbors launched in 1997 to fight noisy, late-night entertainment.

The council promoted peace between the clubs and their neighbors, urged the Board of Supervisors to ban live/work units and, Mr. Meko told the Extra in 2010, “it created the western SoMa planning process to preserve mixed use.”

“He probably went to more meetings than anyone I’ve ever known,” friend Gayle Rubin said. “And he was the fairest man I ever knew,” a sentiment widely held in the room.

Mr. Meko dropped off the Leadership Council to run for Supervisor in 2010, a move that put the organization on indefinite hold. The District 6 field had 14 candidates on the ballot and Jane Kim won. Mr. Meko, who had been known to shout disagreements at Kim during candidate forums, finished a distant ninth with 404 votes, even with the endorsement of former Board President Gonzalez, now Chief Assistant Public Defender.

Meko on the campaign trail in 2010. (Photo: The Tender)

With Daly termed out, the task of carrying the Western SoMa Plan fell to Kim, who did not attend the memorial. Her staff stand-in, Danny Madegar, said he had worked with Mr. Meko to bring Kim’s legislation “across the finish line” before the Board of Supervisors and was impressed with Mr. Meko’s meticulousness. The plan passed 8 to 1.

Among stories of Mr. Meko’s effect on people, none was greater than Kris Schaeffer’s. She helped organize the memorial and spoke toward the end. She was his sister's roommate at Creighton College in Omaha, Nebraska, 50 years ago when Mr. Meko was a shy teenager.

That was ancient history until one day 10 years ago, Schaeffer said. She was looking for ways to stop giant home-builder Pulte Homes from buying the San Francisco Tennis Club (now the Bay Club) at Fifth and Townsend streets in District 6, to build 500 condominiums. An avid member, she was proud of the club’s reasonable cost, its mixed middle-class membership and its outstanding community outreach programs to benefit low-income children and families.

Land use lawyer Sue Hestor, she said, recommended she connect with Mr. Meko. She found a welcoming, middle-aged man, but now a cautious activist skeptical of what he figured was an elitist, self-absorbed tennis club member. He grilled her, but listened just as hard, then he rode his bicycle to the club to see for himself and to listen to the members. He measured what was to be lost or gained and liked what he had found. "He hated classism, but he changed his opinion (about the club)," Schaeffer said.

Mr. Meko persuaded Daly to bicycle over to make his own assessment, too. He did, and partnerships were born. Mr. Meko helped Schaeffer organize SoMa Town Hall meetings to discuss the issues. He introduced Schaeffer to a Planning Commissioner ahead of the hearing on the club, and, like a “younger brother” she never had, schooled her in land use and district political power. Supervisor Daly authored a resolution putting a moratorium on the kind of massive structure Pulte planned.

“Jim gave me the guts to go visit every Supervisor,” Schaeffer said. She attended task force meetings to counter the pitch Pulte representatives were making. Rallies were organized on City Hall’s steps and club members and high-profile tennis sympathizers testified at hearings.

In the end, the moratorium passed, the economy took a downturn and goliath Pulte took a rock between the eyes and “pulled out” in 2008.

“As a result, Jim got me involved with neighborhood stuff. I still am,” Schaeffer said, her voice trembling.“He taught me how one person can make a difference — that I could. he got people to know and love SoMa. I will miss him.”