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Home»Art Market
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City of San Francisco and developer appear to have planned Vaillancourt Fountain demolition before proposal was made public – The Art Newspaper

News RoomBy News RoomOctober 14, 2025
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Previously undisclosed public documents reveal the city of San Francisco may have misled the public about who ultimately bears responsibility for maintaining and repairing Armand Vaillancourt’s namesake Brutalist sculpture and fountain in Embarcadero Plaza.

In addition, new information reveals that city officials had been discussing a planned redevelopment of the plaza around a decade before such plans were made public in 2024. Those plans did not appear to include preserving the landmark Vaillancourt Fountain—a public art asset the city of San Francisco has a legal responsibility to maintain—or the equally significant Embarcadero Plaza in which the monument is located.

Documents reviewed by The Art Newspaper show 15 different instances between December 1978 and May 2025 in which San Francisco Recreation and Park Department (Rec) officials referred to property management company BXP (and its predecessor organisations) as being responsible for the maintenance of Vaillancourt fountain and/or Embarcadero Plaza. BXP officials were also found to have referred to their maintenance obligations in the same documents.

During an October 2024 meeting of San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Commission, the commission’s general manager Phil Ginsburg said he had discussions with representatives from BXP “eight to ten years” before the Commission formalised its participation in a public-private partnership with the goal of redeveloping the plaza.

The findings are significant because they support the claims of those seeking to preserve Vaillancourt Fountain, namely that Rec officials have not been completely transparent as to their intent, nor their legal responsibility towards the sculptural fountain and Embarcadero Plaza. Rec officials argue the fountain and plaza are too dilapidated to be preserved, though they have not addressed why BXP—which according to documents review by The Art Newspaper was responsible for at least some maintenance obligations for the last 45 years—let it deteriorate so severely.

“We have a long-standing healthy partnership with BXP and Boston Properties,” Ginsburg said during a 17 October 2024 meeting of the Recreation and Park Commission. “Fundamentally we share space at Embarcadero Plaza and we have been able to count on them and rely on them as long as I’ve been in this job.”

Ginsburg, who held his post for 16 years, announced his resignation on 22 September. He did not respond to The Art Newspaper’s requests for comment.

Vaillancourt’s much-maligned 1971 fountain has not had water running through it since June 2024 and has been fenced off from the public since 9 June of this year owing to alleged safety and security concerns.

Documents provided to The Art Newspaper by a source who asked to remain anonymous in order to share municipal materials show that Rec had maintenance and repair agreements with BXP and its predecessor organisations dating back to at least December 1978. The agreements stipulated that BXP—owners of the Embarcadero Center office, hotel and retail complex—would be responsible for maintaining parts of Embarcadero Plaza and Vaillancourt Fountain in exchange for allowing the construction of a spiral staircase descending into the plaza. The documents indicate that the agreement was discussed in memos, meetings and emails at regular intervals between 1978 and 2025.

Disrepair therefore demolition?

The current physical state of the Vaillancourt Fountain has been cited by Rec as justification for its potential demolition. The city has not previously disclosed or acknowledged that BXP and its predecessor organisations have been responsible for the fountain and plaza’s maintenance for nearly their entire existence.

BXP has been leading a public-private partnership to redevelop Embarcadero Plaza and demolish Vaillancourt Fountain. The company’s plan proposes the elimination of the fountain and combining two separate public spaces—Embarcadero Plaza and the adjacent Sue Bierman Park—into a single multi-use space.

On 18 August, Ginsburg sent a letter to the San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) to request the “formal deaccession of the Vaillancourt Fountain from the Civic Art Collection and its removal from Embarcadero Plaza”. This was the first step required in the proposal to demolish the fountain, which is technically the property of SFAC. The deaccession request prompted the 96-year-old Québécois artist to send the city a cease-and-desist letter.

Armand Vaillancourt, Vaillancourt Fountain, 1971 Photo by Josh Mazgelis, via Flickr

In the 29 August letter, Vaillancourt and his lawyer Sébastien Lormeau “demand that the city and all other parties implicated in the redevelopment of Sue Bierman Park and Embarcadero Plaza immediately cease and desist from taking any steps whatsoever that may endanger or damage the Vaillancourt Fountain”. The letter further specifies that this is to include “demolition, dismantlement or physical modification of the work”.

SFAC is legally required to maintain the works it owns according to its own policies and guidelines. While the commission’s director of communications Coma Te confirmed this legal requirement, he adds that “there is no dedicated funding source allocated for this specific purpose”. In a statement to The Art Newspaper, Te says that assessments of the works in the Civic Arts Collection are only done on an ad hoc basis, but confirms that SFAC was aware of the 54-year-old fountain’s various mechanical and electrical system problems.

Asked whether SFAC was aware that Rec had maintenance agreements with BXP and its predecessor organisations, Te says: “SFAC staff were aware, through historical reference in archived meeting minutes, that agreements may have existed, but were not aware of agreement details as they were between other external parties and SFAC did not have copies of those agreements.”

Putting the cranes before the bulldozers

BXP first circulated conceptual renderings of its proposed new park in July 2024 that did not include the fountain. The renderings were developed before formal public consultation had occurred and before the city publicly claimed that the fountain was in an irreparably poor state.

At a public consultation in July 2025 where the majority of attendees voiced support for preserving Vaillancourt Fountain, Rec officials stated that the monumental sculpture was too decrepit to be preserved, but stopped short of confirming their position that it should be demolished. They demurred from suggestions that the public could raise funds to preserve it.

On 19 September, a coalition of interested parties sent a letter to the city of San Francisco and its agencies involved in the Embarcadero Plaza redevelopment project, demanding that Vaillancourt Fountain be retained and rehabilitated for “present and future residents and visitors”. The coalition includes the families of Vaillancourt and the landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, the California Garden & Landscape History Society, the International Council on Monuments and Sites’ international scientific committee on 20th-century heritage, the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, San Francisco Heritage, the Cultural Landscape Foundation, the Society of Architectural Historians, and both Docomomo (a non-profit devoted to the study and protection of Modernist architecture) and its northern California chapter.

Jack McCarthy, a board member with Docomomo US’s northern California chapter, raised concerns that the city of San Francisco is not handling the fountain issue in good faith. “In their own words, the city believes Vaillancourt Fountain is not a symbolic sculpture, but ‘a critical design challenge in the Embarcadero Plaza and Sue Bierman Park project’ and ‘incompatible with the open lawn and gathering spaces envisioned in the new design’,” McCarthy tells The Art Newspaper in a statement.

An October 2024 email from a BXP representative to a Rec staff member suggests that, at least as far as BXP is concerned, the development of the park is a done deal and the company’s previous maintenance obligations are moot. “Attached to the permit are a handful of maintenance obligations that we’ve performed over the years,” the email reads. “Once we commence development of the new park, I think it makes sense to modify this permit to remove the various maintenance obligations (since they really won’t apply).”

This email was sent by BXP’s senior vice president Aaron Fenton to Lisa Bransten, listed as Rec’s director of partnerships. The email was sent on 16 October 2024, just two weeks before then-mayor of San Francisco London Breed introduced legislation to create a partnership between BXP, the city and several agencies, with the stated goal of redeveloping the plaza per plans initially developed by BXP. Bransten did not reply to The Art Newspaper’s requests for comment. Fenton did reply, stating that questions should be directed to Rec.

Ultimately Erin Garcia, a vice-president at the public relations firm Berlin Rosen, responded to The Art Newspaper’s questions. Garcia says that although a memorandum of understanding is in place between BXP, Rec and other partners, “no formal plans have been completed or approved to date”. Garcia did not respond to follow-up questions.

Five-decade partnership

The earliest known agreement between the city and the owners of the Embarcadero Center, according to documents provided by the anonymous source, is from 1978. In a resolution passed on 14 December of that year, the San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission allowed the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency and the owners of Embarcadero Center to enter into a long-term agreement wherein the latter would take on specific maintenance responsibilities in exchange for allowing them to construct a staircase facilitating better access to the office, hotel and retail complex from the plaza. The agreement specifies continued maintenance of Vaillancourt Fountain and its pumps.

The fountain has not functioned since June 2024, when—according to Rec officials—the last of its four pumps failed. Rec subsequently decided to drain the fountain. There was no indication from Rec at the time that the decision would be permanent. Later that month, Rec officials indicated that the pumps were beyond their useful life and would cost $3m to replace. The first renderings of BXP’s proposal to redevelop Embarcadero Plaza—from which Vaillancourt Fountain was conspicuously absent—were published less than one month later.

“If one compares the November 2024 pre-agreement rendering with the July 2025 community meeting rendering, the predetermined nature of the designs for this renovation project becomes apparent,” says McCarthy of Docomomo.

Minutes from a Park Commission meeting on 8 November 1979 indicate that Embarcadero Center satisfactorily repaired the pumps and restored the plaza, per the previous agreement. The minutes further indicate that “Embarcadero Center has assumed the complete maintenance responsibilities of M. Justin Herman Plaza” and that the commissioners wished to express their profound gratitude to Embarcadero Center executive director James R. Bronkema for being the first major corporation to “adopt a park” in San Francisco.

(Justin Herman Plaza is the previous name of Embarcadero Plaza, in which Vaillancourt Fountain is the most prominent feature. Herman was the executive director of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency from 1959 to 1971, but his ‘urban renewal’ projects resulted in the destruction of historic buildings as well as the displacement of thousands of residents, many of whom were people of colour. The plaza’s name was changed in 2017 after a petition collected more than 14,000 signatures.)

The Embarcadero Center’s responsibility to maintain Vaillancourt Fountain was reiterated on 15 September 1988. Meeting minutes indicate the assistant superintendent of neighbourhood parks and squares at the time, Ron DeLeon, stated that“the department has an agreement with Embarcadero Center, Ltd, to operate and maintain the Vallancourt [sic] Fountain at Justin Herman Plaza”.

That statement was made during a discussion about whether or not the city should allow the construction of cyclone fencing around the ventilation tower and pump room to keep out people who are unhoused. The city agreed to the proposal. The presence of people experiencing homeless around Vaillancourt Fountain in recent years has been cited as one of the reasons it should be demolished.

A document presented to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in September 2010 reiterates Boston Properties’ maintenance responsibilities for the plaza. (Boston Properties finalised its acquisition of the Embarcadero Center in 1999 and renamed itself BXP in 2024.)

These pre-existing and repeatedly reaffirmed maintenance responsibilities were not mentioned in any of the materials related to the March 2025 agreement between Rec, BXP, the Downtown San Francisco Partnership and the Office of Economic and Workforce Development that authorised their collaboration “regarding potential improvements and renovations at Embarcadero Plaza and Sue Bierman Park”. Officials from Rec did not disclose BXP’s prior maintenance obligations at public consultations in which they argued the fountain was too costly to preserve.

The agreement from March 2025 stipulates that Rec is authorised to receive cash and in-kind grants from BXP of $2.5m for design and project management services, as well as up to $10m in cash or grants from either BXP or the Downtown San Francisco Partnership.

Upkeep not kept up

Armand Vaillancourt, Vaillancourt Fountain, 1971 Photo by Mike Liu, via Flickr

The anonymous source who provided The Art Newspaper with the initial dossier of public documents—including a memo from 1984, a letter from 1988, an email from 2000 and a permit from 2001—has since provided several additional and more recent documents that all appear to confirm BXP (and its predecessors) had maintenance obligations to ensure the upkeep of the plaza and fountain.

A 2012 document prepared by San Francisco’s Civil Grand Jury entitled “Where There’s Smoke: The need to strengthen the Art Commission’s stewardship of San Francisco’s cultural legacy”, states: “There is no current memorandum of understanding between Rec & Park and SFAC for the use of Justin Herman Plaza, which is under Rec & Park’s domain.” The same document adds: “A complicating factor is that a host of public and private entities manage the Embarcadero and adjacent public spaces. Rec & Park, the San Francisco Port Commission, the Department of Public Works, the Real Estate Division and Boston Properties all claim interests in Justin Herman Plaza and its surrounds.”

In a May 2016 meeting of SFAC’s Street Artists Committee, the street artists programme’s director Howard Lazar corrects a statement made by an SFAC commissioner about who is responsible for the plaza, stating: “Justin Herman Plaza is under Rec and Park and administered by Boston Properties.”

Another document from September 2020 reiterates that Embarcadero Plaza has a “shared jurisdiction”, listing Boston Properties along with SFAC and Rec as among the many businesses, departments and city agencies with a stake in the plaza. And a 2025 email from Rec’s director of operations Eric Andersen to project manager Eoanna Harrison Goodwin states Andersen’s belief that Boston Properties was responsible for handling the fountain’s cleaning.

“This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the agreements related to Embarcadero Plaza and the Vaillancourt Fountain,” Tamara Aparton , Rec’s deputy director of communications and public affairs, tells The Art Newspaper in an emailed statement. “BXP and its predecessors were never responsible for the fountain’s long-term upkeep.”

Aparton included five photographs of pages of a resolution that appeared to indicate an agreement drafted in 1979, though parts were not filled out, and only one signature was visible. The document appeared to confirm that Embarcadero Center would be responsible for plaza and fountain maintenance tasks for up to 30 months, during which time they would undertake additional construction tasks that resulted in an occupation of a portion of the plaza. Aparton also claimed that the permits “expired decades ago” and that they did not “establish ongoing fountain obligations”.

Aparton did not address The Art Newspaper’s questions about several instances over the ensuing decades in which officials from Rec and BXP referred to the company’s apparently ongoing maintenance obligations. She did say that “Rec and Park has periodically maintained [the fountain’s] internal mechanical systems” but did not respond to a follow-up question about how the fountain came to be in an allegedly irreparably decrepit state if Rec was at least partly responsible for maintaining it.

Assessment says there is still time for repairs

Aparton also did not address how Rec officials concluded that the fountain and plaza should be demolished when a conditions assessment prepared for Rec earlier this year concluded that “the fountain overall does not appear to have yet deteriorated beyond repair” and that “a variety of treatment approaches may be explored” to repair and safeguard the fountain.

Docomomo’s Jack McCarthy says that Embarcadero Plaza has already been recognised as a historic resource, and documentation in Rec’s possession states that Vaillancourt Fountain is also an individually eligible historic resource.

“The value of these two elements—plaza and sculpture—is multi-fold,” McCarthy says. He enumerates “their respective and collaborative designs by renowned designers, their place in the cultural history of San Francisco and their visibility on the national and international stage as a forum of civic expression and the birthplace of modern street skateboarding”.

McCarthy argues that whether the fountain and plaza have value should not be the focus of discussion given this has already been established. Instead, he says, the problem lies with how San Francisco manages, recognises and maintains its assets. He reiterated that the conditions assessment document prepared for Rec and used by the department to make its case that Vaillancourt Fountain is a threat to public safety and is no longer viable as a functional or safe public asset, actually states that it “does not appear to have yet deteriorated beyond repair”.

“Instead of releasing this report and allowing for community involvement and discussion about the range of options that are available, the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department consistently asserts that the only option is demolition,” McCarthy says. “This is not true.”

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