it back to what it really is -- is paying attention to our neighborhoods, making them stronger, building community and building partnerships. that is what these street parks are all about. it is never about just the concrete or the flowers. it is about the life and increased value we bring to our neighborhoods. that is what being a neighbor of the great city is all about. that is what i love about the city. my neighborhood is doing the same thing with our street. we want to pay attention to it. we want to get a little help. they get it. we bring the bureaucrats out to the neighborhoods. we make everybody that much more appreciative of what kind of city they are a part of. i want to emphasize the strength of our city relies on the strength of people likfrom the

community. you build it here, in glen park, the mission, chinatown. it builds up the strength of the city. it comes back to our department's opening up their resources, not protecting it like other bureaucratic agencies have historically done. we've said we can do it and be challenged with a grant program completely open to everybody. these things are worth the $1 million it looks like today. it is worth 10 times more in building camaraderie and companionship with our neighbors. i want to emphasize that. i want to represent that by giving what i can do to reflect our appreciation for the leadership. it is a certificate of honor to

julian for his leadership on this project and many other projects that have kept this community working and expanding and growing. there is a design around his leadership. by voice vote as the mayor and city administrator that when you have strong communities, things like disasters, we will have strong neighborhoods to help us recover back. this is the beginning of that. i want to give you this certificate on behalf of the city, parks trust, the challenge grant program. thank you for all of the leadership you have had. [applause] >> water?

[inaudible] [applause] >> thank you, mr. mayor, for your leadership on this. during his time as dpw director, during the community challenge grant program, and now as mayor, it is great for us to see a mayor that gets it on what matters to our neighborhoods and is encouraging all of the departments to embrace things the way he did. thank you for your leadership in

enabling things like this to happen. someone else who really gets this is the supervisor that represents this area. he is very much focused on the importance of keeping the streets and sidewalks cleans welcoming, and beautiful. i know he was regretful he was not able to be here today. he did send a representative from david campos' office. >> i want to thank the mayor for his kind words. as a member of the committee, i would personally like to show my appreciation and thank julian and the friends of bernal gardens for their work so that

we can enjoy these beautiful places for generations to come. on behalf of the entire community supervisor comampos, in the board of supervisors, i would like to present this to julian for your commitment to excellence -- commitment of excellence to the organization that has succeeded in turning a vacant lot to a beautiful garden. thank you for being an exceptional community leader. [applause] congratulations. >> thank you again to supervisor

campos and his office. it is easy to have great ideas, but you need to turn to someone to get the work done. that someone in san francisco is sometimes known as mr. clean. he is our deputy director for operations who works to keep the city clean and make it beautiful. our deputy director. [applause] >> let me join the mayor and our director in welcoming you all. thank you for contributing to such a beautiful asset to our neighborhood. san francisco has many hills and streets and lots of open spaces that have not been developed. people all over on the city had come together to help the city become stewards of the beautiful

lands. here is another example of the community coming together, businesses, everyone contributing their share in making san francisco the great city that it is. i like to thank brought madmoor landscapes apply the gave discounts and free materials to make this project happen. janet moyer landscaping assisted with the design. there was effort in trying to figure out the slopes the walls. they helped quite a bit. jordan kirkland, veronica brady , and the friends of bernal gardens who brought this burden to fruition. the department of public works is out there to hold hands and

work with everyone. it is through their leadership that we are able to improve our neighborhoods. i would especially like to thank the staff of dpw who go out to all of these meetings and start these projects. i want to thank all of the bureau's at dpw who assisted in bringing supplies, and doing some work, or making sure that the project was built as planned. thank you very much. [applause] >> there are a lot of other people to think. you have been hearing a lot about this gentleman, julian, who is responsible for a lot of this. i used to live not far from here. i used to walk my dog upon the hill there. it is so great to see the transformation of this space. it is something i want to see in

my neighborhood as well. it does not happen without the leadership of the grass-roots level. we're there to support it, but the leadership is not there from the community, it does not happen. it is my great pleasure to bring forth a great leader in this community mr. julian wyler. [applause] >> welcome to this point guard in v -- vista point guard. there are a lot of people who are not here today who contributed to make this possible. there are a lot of other people who come here and work and put in various parts of the garden, especially the unsung heroes of the volunteers in the neighborhood. working together and staying focused, this neighborhood has

reached out and made partnerships with the city. we have worked together. we get more done that way. it is a real synergy. these gardens to them exist five years ago. they were all neglected, blighted, like a cross the street where you still see areas that can be in crude -- improved. we just need a vision. the public gardens connect us to natural beauty. they give us a sense of community pride. they provide habitats for bees, butterflies, and birds. they represent what is best in us as a community. the bench represents a window on the past. it was once a curb in downtown san francisco. we've simply connected it to the future.

another purpose for the garden is that it provides a place for people just sit and reflect and pause on their journey. it provides a kind of common duty that we all share. it allows us to stop and reflect on the shining city beyond which continues to reinvent itself. today, we dedicate this beautiful public garden. made keeps a loy it keep so. thank you. [applause] >> those are beautiful words befitting and beautiful their part of our city.

-- befitting a beautiful new part of our city. mohammad thanked a lot of the donors. the mayor referenced the grant program. there's the whole group of the friends of bernal gardens that we want to thank. finally, it is not just community partners. in his community organizations that we partner with to make things like this happen. -- it is committee par-- communy organizations that we partner with to make things like this happen. there's great sensibility about the landscapes of san francisco. there is san francisco parks trust. i would like to ask karen to close us out with a few words. >> thank you. i think we're all moved by ulian's words and passion for

this place. we're proud to be here for the completion of the beautiful garden. the term is fiscal sponsor, but it is so much more. we do community interface all over the city with many partners. bureaucracy is not a bad word. we work well with government. thank you to the bureaucrats. to me, that meeting has no pejorative anything. the sense of entrepreneurship from dpw is very strong. you can see in the interactions with julian wyler, bernal gardens, and others in the committee who make this happen. dpw deserves credit. they built a concrete platform. they delivered supplies. the organized community work days and brought in tools. we worked with sandra.

thank you for your hard work. you can partner with dpw, but you have to have a person there to be a partner. she has been hit. on our own staff, i want to thank julie and brean for their -- brandy for their two years of work on this. we have the committee challenge grant that provided a lot of funding for this. lanita is an able leader for that program. thank you to all of our partners in the city and community. enjoy your new garden. [applause] >> thank you, everyone, for coming out. i think we have a ribbon to cut. it is green because this is a green space. please join us in formally opening the park.

are we ready? [applause] thank you. i will beat anybody to that tape. -- i will beat anybody to that cake. [laughter] >> very good. perfect timing, mayor. [applause] >> actually, mayor, i was just at the part of the program where i was going to introduce. it is now my pleasure to introduce the honorable edwin

lee, the honorable mayor of the city and county of san francisco? would you mind saying a few words? >> well, thank you. i guess my timing is still ok. everybody, thank you for being here. housing, and especially affordable housing, is such a challenge these days. with the economy the way it is, with the lack of help we get from the feds and the state, we have to do a lot on our own. that means we have to have the most creative people working in partnerships with the other committed creative people in our community. so it is no wonder you have got the union bank, wells fargo working together with the federal home loan bank. you've got the institute of aging working with bridge housing. you've got redevelopment working with the mayor's office. everybody, including our public health department, all putting their best synergies together

to create this fantastic place that when i walked in, the first thing i asked was where was my unit. just to understand, you have 125 units, 25 of which are going to be targeted for our most frail, our most vulnerable, sitting on top of two floors of fantastic health -social service-corrective type supportive things we did do for our seniors. it is that type of magic that says only in san francisco can we open this kind of thing up like this when everybody else is talking about layoffs, shutting down, not getting started, not even having good conversations at all. take a look around you. i think we are really lucky to be in a city to have people that are so committed to working together. and i wallace want to -- also

want to thank everybody. the neighborhoods had the problem with the size and the mass, and we found a way to get through that, to find a common agreement, to look forward to a day like this to see the seniors as happy as they are to have an affordable unit here in the middle of our great city. this is a wonderful plushment, and i know there was a lot of sweat, a lot of tears behind doing all of this, and i want to thank everybody involved in it. especially bridge. you are such a magnifique accept housing provider and developer. you have done wonderful things working alongside the institute. it is a marvelous combination. i am here to say thank you to everybody who participated in this. as i saw down it street, looking to see what we were going to do with the old coronet, how it was going to be here and how it was going to transform, and i am so glad so

many people made this happen. for future generations of people who are going to come here, serviced here, live here in a comfortable way, and then to make sure this serves as yet another example as to why we fight for redevelopment, why we do things right in the city. to make sure fred maxwell, doug and others keep these examples coming. in san francisco, we will continue doing it right. now they don't get paid up there until they start listening to people and getting the work done. thank you very much for this opportunity. [applause] >> mayor, thank you so much four thoughts, and he about couldn't agree with you more. i have to say that the redevelopment agency, the city and county of san francisco, have been stellar partners for bridge, and we appreciate your candid attitude. thank you very much, and i would like to give you this as an appreciation.

>> well, thank you very much. [applause] >> another great partner of bridge's --

>> what if you could make a memorial that is more about information and you are never fixed and it can go wherever it wants to go? everyone who has donated to it could use it, host it, share it. >> for quite a great deal of team she was hired in 2005, she struggled with finding the correct and appropriate visual expression. >> it was a bench at one point. it was a darkened room at another point. but the theme always was a theme of how do we call people's attention to the issue of speci species extinction. >> many exhibits do make long detailed explanations about species decline and biology of birds and that is very useful for lots of purposes. but i think it is also important to try to pull at the strings

inside people. >> missing is not just about specific extinct or endangered species. it is about absence and a more fundamental level of not knowing what we are losing and we need to link species loss to habitat loss and really focuses much on the habitat. >> of course the overall mission of the academy has to do with two really fundamental and important questions. one of which is the nature of life. how did we get here? the second is the challenge of sustainability. if we are here how are we going to find a way to stay? these questions resonated very strongly with maya. >> on average a species disappears every 20 minutes. this is the only media work that

i have done. i might never do another one because i'm not a media artist per se but i have used the medium because it seemed to be the one that could allow me to convey the sounds and images here. memorials to me are different from artworks. they are artistic, but memorials have a function. >> it is a beautiful scupltural objective made with bronze and lined with red wood from water tanks in clear lake. that is the scupltural form that gives expression to maya's project. if you think about a cone or a bull horn, they are used to get the attention of the crowd, often to communicate an important message. this project has a very important message and it is about our earth and what we are losing and what we are missing

and what we don't even know is gone. >> so, what is missing is starting with an idea of loss, but in a funny way the shape of this cone is, whether you want to call it like the r.c.a. victor dog, it is listen to the earth and what if we could create a portal that could look at the past, the present and the future? >> you can change what is then missing by changing the software, by changing what is projected and missing. so, missing isn't a static installation. it is an installation that is going to grow and change over time. and she has worked to bring all of this information together from laboratory after laboratory including, fortunately, our great fwroup of researche e-- g researchers at the california academy. >> this couldn't have been more site specific to this place and we think just visually in terms of its scupltural form it really holds its own against the

architectural largest and grandeur of the building. it is an unusual compelling object. we think it will draw people out on the terrace, they will see the big cone and say what is that. then as they approach the cone tell hear these very unusual sounds that were obtained from the cornell orinthology lab. >> we have the largest recording of birds, mammals, frogs and insects and a huge library of videos. so this is an absolutely perfect opportunity for us to team up with a world renown, very creative inspirational artist and put the sounds and sights of the animals that we study into a brand-new context, a context that really allows people to appreciate an esthetic way of the idea that we might live in the world without these sounds or sites. >> in the scientific realm it is

shifting baselines. we get used to less and less, diminished expectations of what it was. >> when i came along lobsters six feet long and oysters 12 inches within they days all the oyster beds in new york, manhattan, the harbor would clean the water. so, just getting people to wake up to what was just literally there 200 years ago, 150 years ago. you see the object and say what is that. you come out and hear these intriguing sounds, sounds like i have never heard in my life. and then you step closer and you almost have a very intimate experience. >> we could link to different institutions around the globe, maybe one per continent, maybe two or three in this country, then once they are all networked, they begin to communicate with one another and share information. in 2010 the website will launch,

but it will be what you would call an informational website and then we are going to try to, by 2011, invite people to add a memory. so in a funny way the member rely grows and there is something organic about how this memorial begins to have legs so to speak. so we don't know quite where it will go but i promise to keep on it 10 years. my goal is to raise awareness and then either protect forests from being cut down or reforest in ways that promote biodiversity. >> biodiverse city often argued to be important for the world's human populations because all of the medicinal plants and uses that we can put to it and fiber that it gives us and food that it gives us. while these are vital and important and worth literally hundreds of billions of dollars, the part that we also have to be able to communicate is the more

spiritual sense of how important it is that we get to live side by side with all of these forms that have three billion years of history behind them and how tragic it would be not commercially and not in a utilitarian way but an emotio l emotional, psychological, spiritual way if we watch them one by one disappear. >> this is sort of a merger between art and science and advocacy in a funny way getting people to wake unand realize what is going on -- wake up and realize what is going on. so it is a memborial trying to get us to interpret history and look to the past. they have always been about lacking at the past so we proceed forward and maybe don't commit the same mistakes.