Preserved to Death

Lerner's architecture firm has drafted just such a plan, though the Jewish Community Center has rejected it, claiming it would cost $19 million more than the current design. Lerner says he has not studied the cost of his plan. But he has worked diligently on the drawings without any expectation of payment. He has spent hours pulling people together into a coalition called the Committee to Preserve the JCC, recruiting the San Francisco Heritage Foundation and members from the Art Deco Society to help him fight for the cause.

This collective passion for the past has, for better or worse, left a deep impression on the city's landscape. As Mayor Willie Brown said last year at the groundbreaking of the lesbian and gay community center, "I frankly had never been exposed to the width and breadth and tenacity of people who like very old things."

Some say this commitment to history, however, has unintentionally robbed the city of its vitality. "When efforts to preserve the city's architecture get in the way of a historic institution's survival, I think people have gone too far," says Kevin Starr, the state librarian, whose family goes back four generations in the city. "Any kind of lock-step antiquarianism leads to a cultural dead end."

Lerner does not necessarily enjoy his role as a preservationist gadfly. He says he has kept a civil relationship with Levine and the other directors at the Jewish Community Center, "though underneath they're probably pretty pissed at me," he admits. His only purpose, he says, is to keep the nonprofit from making a "terrible mistake."