Visitors hang out in the quad outside the Montgomery Barracks in the Presidio in San Francisco in 2025. The Trump administration has fired all members of the Presidio Trust Board, which oversees the property.
A year after threatening to “dramatically” downsize the operations of San Francisco’s Presidio, President Donald Trump has terminated the park’s board of trustees.
The six trustees, who were all appointed by former President Joe Biden, received letters of termination on Wednesday. The Presidio Trust still has not been informed if new trustees have been appointed.
“The Administration has informed our board members that their appointments to the Presidio Trust board have been terminated,” the trust said in a statement to the Chronicle. “We had been anticipating that we would ultimately receive new board members and are awaiting information on the new appointments. We have a long history of wonderful leaders serving the Presidio, and we look forward to welcoming and working with the new members.”
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The Presidio Trust board of trustees is made up of six members who serve at the will of the president and one who is appointed by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior. That board seat has been vacant for several years.
The six members of the Presidio Trust board terminated were Chairman Mark Buell, Vice Chair Chuck Collins, Lenore “Leni” Eccles, Patsy Ishiyama, Bonnie LePard and Nicola Minor. The terms of three of the trustees expired last May and three were set to expire in May of 2027.
“It has been a passion and a pleasure to serve on the board of the Presidio Trust,” Buell said in a statement. “The Presidio is the most successful example of a Post to Park conversion in the country and should serve as a model for others.”
Presidio Tunnel Tops park visitors walk through the park surrounded by blossoming plants in San Francisco, in 2023.
Created by Congress in 1996, the Trust is a federal corporation with a directive to manage and lease property within the Presidio, a 1,500-acre swath of federal land, designated a national historic landmark in 1962.
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“The Presidio Trust is an extraordinary American treasure,” Eccles said in a statement. “I’ve had the privilege of serving with board chairs who were appointed to the board by President Trump in his first term and by President Biden during his term and then elected as Chair. The accomplishments of the Trust, with its breadth and depth, are truly remarkable and beyond what many have imagined. The newly appointed directors to the Presidio Trust board can look forward to an amazing experience with the knowledge of bringing significant impact for millions of visitors for the years ahead.”
The Presidio board shake up comes a little more than a year after Trump issued an executive order in which he said that the Presidio Trust, a federal agency charged with running and protecting the historic 1,500-acre park, should be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law” because it is “unnecessary.”
The order was posted on the White House website under the heading “Commencing the Reduction of Federal Bureaucracy Executive order,” and called out four federal entities — the Presidio Trust, the Inter-American Foundation, the United States African Development Foundation and the United States Institute of Peace — as examples of “waste and abuse.”
The executive order gave the Presidio Trust 30 days to respond, which it did in a 14-page report titled “Commencing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy.” In the response the trust emphasized the Presidio’s military history and financial health. The park has not received federal appropriations since 2013, instead paying for operations with revenue generated from residential and commercial leases as well as philanthropic donations.
The report asserts “broad” legal powers that allow it to offer an “extraordinary national park site at a minimal cost” to taxpayers. The Presidio Trust generated operating revenue of $182 million in 2024, the most in its history. It has generated $350 million in net income and over $1.1 billion in value for the national park since it became financially independent in 2013.
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“Run like a business, with a CEO and a Chief Business Officer, and overseen by a board appointed by the President of the United States, the Presidio Trust operates profitable businesses — commercial leasing, residential leasing, hotels, and a golf course — in order to fund park operations,” the report states.
Trump’s targeting of the Presidio was widely seen as motivated by his long-standing animosity toward Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi, who led the effort to create a federal agency to manage what’s now a hilly waterfront park covered by historic buildings, green lawns and cypress, pines and eucalyptus trees.
After Trump’s executive order, Pelosi said “I don’t take it personally if he wants to insult something as innovative and wonderful as the Presidio.”
“There are some people who don’t believe in urban parks,” she said. “We believe in urban parks, and that’s why we have the Presidio.”
The Presidio currently has 3,100 residents living in 1,400 homes with an average residential occupancy rate of 97%. In addition, the Trust leases 2.1 million square feet of commercial space to more than 300 businesses that employ approximately 4,000 people. The commercial occupancy rate is 96% – easily the highest of any sub-market in San Francisco.
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Last year the Presidio announced that it would build its first new ground-up housing development in more than two decades, a 196-unit, six-building apartment complex planned on 4.6 acres of the 60-acre district once occupied by the Army’s Letterman General Hospital.
The report quotes several Presidio Trust board members whom Trump appointed during his first term, including Lynne Benioff, wife of Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.
“Put simply, donors trust the Trust,” Benioff says in the report. “Its reputation as a well-run organization means people are willing to put their own dollars into projects to make the park even more successful.”
The termination of the trustees comes several months after Presidio Trust CEO Jean Fraser announced that she would step down this year. A search for a new CEO is ongoing. At the time, Fraser pointed to the financial health of the trust and the fact that the Trump administration had not offered any response to the report the trust sent after the president’s executive order, adding “if I thought the Presidio Trust was threatened, I would stay.”
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“I believe that good leaders leave at the right time for their organizations,” she said at the time. “With the trust on solid financial footing, now is a great time to recruit the next leader. Plus, I have accomplished what I wanted to do here and I’m ready for a new challenge.”
Created by Congress in 1996, the Trust is a federal corporation with a directive to manage and lease property within the Presidio, a 1,500-acre swath of federal land, designated a national historic landmark in 1962.
