OPENSPACE OpenSpace,theFinalFrontier

ByMaryPurpura

Southeast San Francisco doesn’t have a vast open space like Golden Gate Park, or a well-funded gated community, such as the Presidio. But it does feature a large number of small, well-loved, ecologically diverse parks and green spots, and one good-sized urban park, 170-acre Candlestick Point State Recreation Area. Potrero Hill boasts four community gardens, a skate park, and the only privately-owned, hilltop open space in San Francisco. The Central Waterfront has several parks. Playgrounds are dispersed throughout the area.

The cherished parks and open spaces serve many different constituencies, including dog owners, families with young children, adults in search of fresh air and exercise, and teens and young adults seeking places to congregate. The needs of these constituencies are not always congruent. The green nooks and crannies that provide a respite from the urban, built environment often bear the marks of overuse and the pressures of the surrounding cityscape. Three out of four of the neighborhood’s community gardens are locked to guard against vandalism. A homeless encampment abuts McKinley Park. There’s the occasional smell of urine, or garbage. Some parks seem like a city planner’s afterthought, squeezed onto marginal bits of land. With large redevelopment projects planned for Showplace Square, Potrero Hill, South of Market, Bayview-Hunters Point, and Mission Bay, the steady in ux of more people and cars will further tax the area’s limited open space.

For most of its history Potrero Hill had an open feel, even though it didn’t have giant sprawling parks. Older-timers remember the red farmhouse at the intersection of De Haro and 19th streets, which was surrounded by an unusually large lot. Just seeing it when passing by walking, biking, or driving provided a sense of space. Developers built out every square inch of the lot, filling it with multiple units. The resulting effect is a crammed, closed feeling. This wall-to-wall build-out has been repeated throughout the neighborhood. The hill to the south of 26th Street, open and undeveloped until the end of the 1990s, was habitat to the endangered San Francisco garter snake. Now, individual houses and garages cover the hillside. Some south side residents who track these sorts of things haven’t seen a San Francisco garter snake in years.

But Potrero Hill residents are a resourceful and proactive lot. Over the years neighbors have re-greened the Hill. Annie Shaw’s efforts at the Pennsylvania Garden emanate pure positive energy, transforming a forsaken corner of land into a blooming oasis, inspiring others to join in. The 18th and Rhode Island Permaculture Garden offers a cutting edge look at what local, urban food production in small spaces might look like.

The work continues. Recent proposed development at 1321 De Haro Street – which would quadruple the size of an existing building, shading and re-defining parts of the open space – threatens Starr King Openspace’s character. A potential helipad at San Francisco General Hospital could disrupt the tranquility of the skies above the neighborhood. As with efforts small and large throughout Southeast San Francisco, community members are the garden produced roughly 1,000 pounds of fresh food, which was donated to the Free Farm Stand in the Mission District, which in turn distributes free organic food to those who can’t afford it. Permaculture Garden project coordinator David Cody estimated yields will triple this year.

The lot’s original soil wasn’t especially fertile. It consisted of a thin, sandy layer resting on the serpentine rock that de nes Potrero Hill. Cody and the other volunteers layered wood mulch donated by Bay View Greenwaste over cardboard donated from Whole Foods. Last year, the Eastern Neighborhoods Public Benefit Fund awarded the project $14,000. The funds will be used to develop seating and educational signs, and will help pay for research into identifying the best food plants for San Francisco’s unique climate.

To learn more or to find out about regular Friday workdays: www.18thandrhodeisland.org/ home.html.

McKinleySquarePark

Perched at the top of 20th and San Bruno streets, McKinley Square Park boasts some of the Hill’s best views. The park includes a playground, grassy patch, mulched walking paths, and off-leash dog area. It’s located next to one of San Francisco’s most established community gardens.

Two neighborhood groups, formed in the last year, are dedicated to the park’s evolution: the McKinley Square Community Association (MSCA) and the McKinley Square Park Foundation (MSPF). Both organizations are involved in a longrange planning process to develop and improve the open space.

Working together, both groups have raised $2,000 from the Innovator Awards, which is administered by San Francisco Parks Trust, a

38-year-old nonprofit. The funds will be dedicated to two projects: a community toolbox in the children’s play area that will house tools to remove graffiti, pick up debris from the sand, and facilitate cleaning and maintainance; and a foxtail eradication project – designed by Hill resident Tom Strother, who acts as MSCA’s treasurer – to research foxtail elimination, and implement the findings. Foxtails are fuzzy, wheat-like grasses whose seeds can painfully lodge in an animal’s paws, nose, and ears.

The foundation has received funds from the Eastern Neighborhoods Bene ts Trust Fund, which it plans to dedicate to developing landscaping plans for an enlarged park.

MSCA’s next meeting is Wednesday, January 13th from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at Downtown High School. Visit www.mckinleysquare.com for more information.

NeighborsAdvocateforMissionBay Playground

Mission Bay Families, a group of parents living and/or working in Mission Bay, are organizing to build a playground in the area, sooner rather than later. The Mission Bay building strategy includes plans for a playground, but the play space won’t be built until the surrounding lots are developed, which probably won’t happen for years. Mission Bay Families believes that the community would benefit from having a play area now.

According to the group’s website, more than 350 children live in Mission Bay, with less than half the planned housing built. The group has identi ed a small parcel next to the Pavilion Building on Channel Street where they’d like to develop a Tot Lot.

For more information, to join the organization’s google group, or to sign their petition: http:// responding to create the future our children will want to live in.

18thandRhodeIslandPermaculture Garden

Permaculture principles emerged from experiences in rural areas. The permaculture garden at 18th and Rhode Island streets re ects an effort to put those ideas into practice in an urban setting. Permaculture is a design system that uses observation of natural systems as a model for creating sustainable environments.

Former Potrero Hill resident Aaron Roland, M.D. owns the double lot where the permaculture garden has taken root. Roland offered use of the lot to San Francisco Permaculture Guild members, who were trying to find urban spaces on which to grow food. Since the garden’s first workday in 2008, a lush polyculture – including yellow squash, lettuce, cabbage, red clover, and swiss chard interspersed with fruit trees – has blossomed in the sunny corner lot. In missionbayfamilies.org/Home_Page. html.

PotreroHill’sCommunityGardens

Facing peak oil in earthquake country creates an appreciation for locally-sourced food. And food doesn’t get more local than what’s home grown. Community gardens enable city dwellers to grow their own, just like their country cousins. Potrero Hill has four community gardens: the Potrero Hill Community Garden at 20th Street and San Bruno Avenue; the Connecticut Friendship Garden on Connecticut Street south of 20th; the Potrero del Sol Garden at Cesar Chavez and Potrero Avenue; and the 25th and De Haro Street Green Spot, the newcomer in the bunch, having been established in the 1990s.

All the gardens have waiting lists for those who’d like to tend a plot. To get on a list, contact the coordinator at the garden that interests you: Potrero Hill Community Garden, info@potrerogarden.org, 449.0410; Connecticut Friendship Garden, Johanna.Gendelman@yahoo.com, 285.9736; Potrero del Sol Garden, pudup@ucsc.edu, 641.8988; and 25th and De Haro Green Spot, two4bike@ comcast.net.

Potrero Hill Garden Club usually meets the last Sunday of the month at 11 a.m. for a potluck lunch in a local home or garden. Call 648.1926 for details.

EspritPark

Esprit Park, a two-acre green space bordered by Minnesota, Indiana, 19th, and 20th streets, was willed into existence by the community. Established in 1982 by the clothing manufacturer Esprit Company, the park’s fate was unclear when Esprit moved out of the area. Friends of Esprit Park, a neighborhood group, worked hard to fundraise and preserve the open space. In 2001 the City took it over.

Esprit offers a fitness course – including bars and rings – with stations around the park; a running/ walking track; picnic tables; benches; and an open lawn for running around, lying in the sun, or walking on-leash dogs. Mature redwood trees frame the park on one side.

GreenTrustSF-CentralWaterfront

GreenTrust (GT) is dedicated to establishing and securing funding for a community-wide plan to create and improve open spaces for the Central Waterfront and Dogpatch, and to landscape additional areas in the community. The group has sponsored clean-ups and plantings at Warm Water Cove Park and Agua Vista Park, and has plans for larger open space projects.

GreenTrust’s most immediate goal is to complete a master plan for the greening of 22nd Street between Third and Pennsylvania streets. A community meeting was held last year to brainstorm ideas for the project, which resulted in a number of suggestions, including renovating the 22nd Street Muni mini-park; adding sidewalk bulbs – planted areas bumping out into paved streets –adding landscaping and more street trees along 22nd Street, and improving the area around the 22nd Street rail stop.

One of GreenTrust’s main objectives is to develop a comprehensive plan for the area, rather than focusing on single site improvements. GT is working to adopt a green blueprint that identifies the geographic scope of the group’s work, ranks potential projects in order of community priority, identi es potential funding sources for targeted projects, and takes specific steps to implement the GreenTrust vision. GT hopes to leverage the City’s recently approved new development open space fee with additional local developer donations, grants and individual donations.

GreenTrust will hold a community meeting to re ne plans for the 22nd Street greening project on January 23, 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., at Rickshaw Bagworks on 22nd Street at Minnesota. To learn more, become a member and/or to donate to GreenTrustSF: www.gtsfcw.org.

If you follow Mariposa east past Illinois Street, the road becomes Terry Francois Boulevard. Just past the Mission Rock Café on the street’s bay side you’ll nd Agua Vista Park and Public Fishing Pier, a small landscaped park with picnic tables and great views of the bay and the industrial backdrop – complete with old pier pilings and ship repair operations – that de ned the 20th century Central Waterfront. The Public Fishing Pier isn’t long; anglers won’t nd themselves shing in the deepest waters. But with favorite public fishing piers throughout the Bay Area being demolished or neglected into ruin, we’re lucky to have access to any kind of shing pier in our neighborhood.

The Port of San Francisco –which is responsible for Agua Vista – closed Pier 64 last year. The pier was the last of the boatyards that used to stretch along the City’s eastern waterfront. In its place, the Mission Bay Development Group will create Bay Front Park, six acres of open space that will stretch from Agua Vista Park to Mission Bay Boulevard.

While there’s broad agreement that more public access to the bay is a good thing, not everybody favors the Bay Front Park plan. Some Dogpatch residents are sorry to see the remaining vestiges of San Francisco’s working waterfront slip away, to be replaced by a generic park that doesn’t re ect the region’s maritime history or creative quirkiness, or account for the unique opportunities a bay front park offers. Development plan calls for lining the shoreline with boulders, instead of encouraging wetlands. As with Warm Water Cove Park, where some San Franciscans see productive progress, others see irretrievable loss.

PennsylvaniaGardenBlooms

The Pennsylvania Garden is one year old! In December 2008, a small plot of California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) owned land at the Mariposa Street off-ramp to Highway 280 wasn’t much more than a barren patch of wood chips and dog doo. In the spirit of guerrilla gardening, Hill resident Annie Shaw, who lives across the street from the plot, started planting the space.

Shaw’s action prompted a generous response from her neighbors. The San Francisco Botanical Society, donors from Craig’s List, and Potrero Hill residents contributed — in the case of the Botanical Society, deeply discounted – plants. Ron Lester, an ironworker, Hill resident, and chief executive officer of the Iron Maverick metal shop, crafted an entrance arch for the garden with a large “PG” incorporated into the design. Gary Brickley, whose business, Brickley Production Studios, is next door to the Pennsylvania Garden, created a six-foot-long bench especially for the space. Shaw planted the area around the bench with fragrant flowers. The garden consists of 800 to 1,000 plants in about 200 genera, within which approximately 500 species and hybrids are represented. Many of the plants are natives; all are droughtresistant.

Shaw gardens the space under the auspices of Caltrans’s Adopta-Highway program, which has allowed her access to a water source to keep the plants healthy. But the

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