By Bobby Winston
Published: March, 2012
In February 2, a grand soiree celebrated the career of Will Travis upon his retirement from his post as executive director of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission.
Retiring state bureaucrats usually don’t get red-carpet shindigs taking up the entire second floor of the Ferry Building and attracting over 500 guests. It’s a testament to the special affection the waterfront community—and the entire Bay Area, really—has for the avuncular yet peerlessly effective Travis. Against a tide of acrimony and sectionalism, he held out for collaboration and courtesy.
Commonly called BCDC, the state agency Travis ran for 17 years regulates development in the Bay and along its shoreline. With 240 square miles of low-lying land surrounding San Francisco Bay, Travis was a strong advocate for a regional strategy to address sea level rise in the Bay Area. He remains so; he’s taken a post as Senior Advisor with the influential Bay Area Joint Policy Committee.
At the party, the comedian Will Durst and Chuck Prophet’s band entertained and speakers extolled the honoree’s virtues. Travis’ friends, representing a cross-section of the environmental, civic and corporate spectrum, banded together to present him and his wife with round-the-world airline tickets as a retirement gift.
Travis earned Bachelor of Architecture and Master of Regional Planning degrees in 1967 and 1970, respectively—both from Penn State University—and is the 2009 recipient of the Jean Auer Environmental Award.
Travis spent most of his professional career working for state coastal management agencies, but he has also worked in the fields of architecture, local planning, private consulting, advertising and public relations. He was a consultant on the first master plan for the East Bay Regional Park District. He spent 12 years at the California Coastal Commission, and has been at BCDC since 1985—first as deputy director and then as executive director since 1995.
Travis spearheaded the public acquisition of 10,000 acres of privately-owned salt ponds along the northern shoreline of San Francisco Bay to be used for one of the largest coastal wetland restoration projects in California’s history. He has also written many articles on coastal issues, has been a lecturer at colleges and universities throughout North America and has provided advice on coastal management to other states and nations.
Travis is a member of the National Research Council Roundtable on Climate Change Education and Lambda Alpha, the honorary society for the advancement of land economics. He serves on the board of directors of SPUR—the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association—and the board of trustees of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute and has served on the boards of a number of other professional and civic organizations. He served a four-year term as a member of the Berkeley city planning commission and was chairman of a special committee that worked with the University of California to formulate a new plan for downtown Berkeley.
Travis and his wife, Jody Loeffler, are the authors of Katherine’s Gift, a memoir of international adoption. They and their golden retriever, Daisy, live in Berkeley, California.
