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As a made man in journalistic circles, Jerry Roberts has encountered more than his share of influential activists, politicians, and political operatives. Through him, his wife has come to know many of the same political actors. Both Roberts and Kiefer are quite well-briefed on the vicious, petty games the politically connected of San Francisco play on a day-to-day basis.
In April of last year, for some reason, the managing editor of San Francisco's largest newspaper and his businesswoman wife began to play just those kinds of games against a couple who owned restaurants and had no idea how much power a newspaper editor can wield, even when he wields it indirectly.
Linda Kiefer can remember the very day she began the neighborhood jihad she would lead on behalf of her family: April 15, 1996. She remembers the day because on that day she and her three daughters were returning from a road trip they had taken over an extended Easter vacation.
Roberts, who had not accompanied his family, asked Kiefer whether she had seen the public notice posted on the telephone pole outside the Chans' family home. Kiefer had not, she says, but examined it the very next morning. The notice said a site permit for a new house had been issued, and the deadline for appealing the decision to grant the permit was just a week away.
Anthony and Sandra Chan heard from Kiefer that night. "Linda called to say, 'We'd like to see the plans,' " Roberts recalls. "I'm not sure I even told them I worked for the paper."
That weekend, Roberts and Kiefer met with the Chans, but left unsatisfied that they had any idea how the new house might affect them. A call to the Chans' architect also failed to assuage the couple's angst.
On April 24 of last year, Roberts went to work at the newspaper as usual. Kiefer took a day off to lodge an appeal of the site permit for the new Chan home. The appeal was filed in her and Roberts' names, presumably because both are official owners of the home they live in.
"I just wanted to have the option [of opposing the project], until I got my questions answered -- to see whether I agreed or not," Kiefer says.
She got on the telephone and started soliciting advice. Marcia Smolens, perhaps the city's most formidable lobbyist, was more than happy to offer insight, including the names on a short list of the best and most connected land-use lawyers in town. The first name on the list was Alice Barkley, who had the virtue of being Chinese-American in a matter that dealt with a Chinese-American family and in a city where you can never take racial politics for granted.
When Kiefer called, however, she discovered that Barkley had represented the Chans since they first applied for the subdivision.
But the list's second name, John Sanger, also fit the bill. Sanger wasn't exactly a political slouch either. Roberts had known Sanger since his pre-Chronicle days, when he reported for the Bay Guardian. Back then, Sanger had worked at the city Planning Department.
But a contest between families with high-caliber counsel could hardly guarantee a Kiefer-Roberts victory. After all, the Chans had a head start. The time period in which to challenge the Chans' division of their property was long lapsed. Roberts and Kiefer could appeal the site permit for the new Chan home. But even if they got the site permit overturned, the Chans could get another, based on a new or altered architectural design. Contesting the site permit could never change this reality: The Chans had a legal entitlement to build some kind of house on their land.
And that was something Kiefer and Roberts just would not abide.
So, Kiefer started walking the neighborhood after work and weekends, banging on doors to drum up support for opposition to a second house on the Chan property.
The property at the center of Kiefer's near obsession is triangle shaped; the Kiefer-Roberts lot backs up to one side of the triangle. Looked at from street level, the Chan land is a wooded hilltop, protected from 10th Avenue foot traffic by a run of young cypress trees, which the Chans planted themselves. More mature trees stand farther back.
Kiefer says her organizing efforts started this way: "I would say, 'Do you know about this?' "
By "this," Kiefer meant the division of the Chan property into two lots, one of which would contain a new home. But the conversation inevitably would turn to the cypress trees on the Chan lot, which Kiefer had grown fond of. The Chan plan called for cutting some of the trees down.
Invariably, Kiefer says, the neighbors would reply: "No. Shouldn't I have gotten notice?"
Well, yes, in fact, the neighbors should have gotten notice back in 1994, when the public hearing was scheduled on the permit that allowed the Chans to subdivide their land. And, according to the city's zoning administrator, Robert Passmore, the neighbors had received notice, or ought to have, because records show notices were mailed to owners of property within 300 feet of the Chan residence, as required by law.
But Kiefer had set the hook, and was ready to reel in protesting neighbors. After all, the character of the neighborhood, which called for trees and big houses with room to breathe, was at stake. Never mind that several of the neighbors Kiefer had enlisted in the battle lived on a street that had neither large lots nor stately trees.
A steering committee was organized. A networking phone tree was established. Kiefer began publishing a newsletter to keep everybody informed.
It was a movement.
From the start, Jerry Roberts acknowledges, his wife's attempts to stop the Chans from building a house on their own property made him uneasy. Speaking inside his tiny glass office at one end of the Chronicle newsroom, Roberts tries to explain how he attempted to keep his hands clean.
