Lucasfilm: Pressroom | Letterman Digital Arts Center

Presidio Background

Letterman Digital Arts Center Achieves the Goals of The Presidio Trust

In 1994, the Presidio of San Francisco, the former army base at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge, was transferred to the National Park Service and made part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Congress mandated a unique funding model for the Presidio: It must achieve economic self-sufficiency by 2013, or face being liquidated.

The Presidio Trust was established and charged with maintaining and enhancing the cultural, historical and recreational resources of the park, while achieving long-term financial stability.

As part of this mission, the Trust selected the 23-acre site of the vacated Letterman Army Medical Center to be redeveloped and leased. Following a design competition in 1997, a team led by Lucasfilm Ltd. was selected to replace the hospital with the Letterman Digital Arts Center, a new home for the company.

From conception to execution, the creation of the Letterman Digital Arts Center has been guided by certain fundamental intentions regarding sustainability:

To restore the 23-acre site from a shuttered hospital and paved parking lot to a landscaped public park that includes appropriately scaled buildings
To develop a sustainable design and construction process, setting the highest standards of resource efficiency and pollution reduction
To create a new public garden, making this prominent corner of the Presidio inviting, visible and useful
To minimize car traffic to and around the site
To invite pedestrians from all directions by making the edges of the campus visually open and accessible via walkways and promenades

The development agreement between Lucasfilm Ltd. and the Presidio Trust was signed on Aug. 14, 2001.