Possible Tourist Destination - Post AMTC

Alcatraz considering sleepovers

By: John UptonExaminer Staff Writer July 6, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO — The weather-worn doors to former guards’ barracks on Alcatraz Island could be swung open to allow visitors to sleep overnight at the world-famous outcrop.

But delicate or aging tourists might be disappointed. In keeping with the island’s rugged past, overnight visitors will need to sweat for their board through physical labor to help spruce up the famous landmark, under recommendations being drafted by officials.

Last year, the federal agency that oversees Alcatraz solicited public feedback on the island’s future. The task was part of an effort to create a 20-year master plan for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which includes Alcatraz Island and some other Bay Area coastal regions.

The GGNRA outlined three alternatives for the future of the island, which is a popular tourist destination that was formerly home to a military fortress, a maximum-security penitentiary and a Native American settlement.

The alternatives raised the prospect that hotel or hostel accommodations might open on the island, as first reported by The Examiner.

They included increasing visitor access to the island, preserving and enhancing its natural environment, and restoring and celebrating its “national treasures” — features relating to Alcatraz’s checkered cultural past.

More than 1,500 people and organizations submitted feedback, according to GGNRA project manager Brian Aviles.

“We’ve selected the preferred alternative,” Aviles said. “It’s going to be alternative number three —‘Focusing on National Treasures.’”

No new buildings are planned on the island, but aging buildings will be refurbished and some ecological restoration will be undertaken, he said.

“We want to focus the accommodations on providing a better place for our volunteer and educational programs — so it’s going to be modest in scale, and it’s going to be dorm-like,” Aviles said.

The dormitories will be built in future years into the cold, gray Barracks Building, which is the island’s largest building and the first structure visitors encounter when they reach the island by ferry.

“That was historically a barracks, and we think we can reconfigure it. We’re not going to restore all of it — it’s a five story building — but portions of it would be opened up to the public,” Aviles said.

The recommendations are due to be finalized next year, and it’s too early to say how many beds or rooms will open, but Aviles said he imagined dorm rooms containing 20 beds each.

A small fee might need to be paid by volunteer workers staying on the island.

Many older tourists on the island Sunday turned up their noses at the prospect of sleeping in the Barracks Building — especially if labor was required.
But younger visitors sounded enthusiastic.

“I would definitely be interested,” said Alex Cordery, a 15-year-old Englishman vacationing with pals in California. “It’d be good to be able to say that you stayed at Alcatraz.”

The duties of the island’s newest inhabitants will be based loosely on an existing program, in which nonprofits enter a lottery to send groups to the island, where they sleep on cots in prison hallways and garden and paint during the day.

Access to those programs is severely limited because the island lacks basic amenities like running water. The GGNRA is considering undertaking rainwater harvesting and water recycling initiatives on site, as well as building an underwater cable to import power from the mainland and installing solar panels on the island, according to Aviles.

Residents of the Rock
A history of the Barracks Building on Alcatraz Island

1860s: Construction of the Barracks Building begins. The building is designed to provide a “bombproof” fortress to help protect San Francisco from Confederate forces and sympathizers.

1890s: The Barracks Building is used to house a growing number of guards brought onto the island to oversee soldier prisoners who were punished for committing crimes during the Spanish-American War.

1930s: After the island was turned into a federal penitentiary in 1934, military living quarters inside the building were carved up to provide apartment housing for guards and their families.

1969-1979: Hundreds of Native American activists, who claimed ownership of the island, lived inside the Barracks Building.Present: The building houses a tourist gift shop, theater and historical artifacts, but most of it is locked up for safety reasons.

Source: Cultural Resources and Museum Management Division, Golden Gate National Recreation Area
jupton@sfexaminer.com