
Katie Canales/Business Insider
The park's staff wanted the fort to serve a "higher purpose." It didn't see that reflected in a proposal submitted in part by WeWork and OpenAI.
- San Francisco's Fort Winfield Scott is a former US Army base in the Presidio National Park and has been mostly abandoned for years.
- But in 2018, the federal agency that runs the park launched a development competition inviting do-gooder organizations to submit proposals that would breathe new life into the 30-acre fort.
- The park staff envisioned Fort Scott as a campus housing mission-driven organizations dedicated to serving a "higher purpose" through issues like climate change and social challenges.
- Now-embattled coworking company WeWork, the Elon Musk-founded OpenAI, the Epicenter for Climate Solutions (EPIC,) and the World Economic Forum eventually teamed up and submitted a joint proposal to turn the site into a "campus for change."
- But the Presidio Trust staff and board rejected the proposal, citing, among other factors, that the consortium of organizations was dismissive of the humanitarian vision for the land and focused more on using the site merely for financial gain, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.
- WeWork and the World Economic Forum did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment, and OpenAI declined to comment. The Presidio Trust confirmed to Business Insider in an email that the proposal is tabled.
- In a document shared with Business Insider, EPIC cofounder Tom Dinwoodie said that the trust has "rejected a team of highly qualified individuals and organizations thoroughly committed to a better world, one with a stable climate, while safe, verdant, and plentiful with resources and opportunity for our children and their children's children."
- The trust announced in a press release in June 2019 that it will instead take on the gradual redevelopment of the fort on its own, though a representative for the trust told Business Insider that it currently doesn't have any specific plans for the site.
- So until it does, the fort with its abandoned Mission-style barracks will sit untouched. Here's what it's like inside.
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