The proposed subdivision of the 219-space surface area parking lot on the north side of 17th Street between Folsom and Shotwell and the building of a 34,300-square-foot neighborhood park on half the site has been funded thanks to grant from the State.
The design of the park will be refined and finalized over the next twelve months with construction planed to commence next Spring and be completed in early 2014.
UPDATE: Two Year Rain Delay For Folsom Street Park Project
Oh good…another park for drug dealers to hang in. The area is already where prostitutes hang out. No mother is going to bring her children to that neighborhood. Plus the city is converting this 200+ space parking lot into a park AND then installing parking meters in the same area. What a bunch of money-grubbing politicians! This is a WORK area! You can’t take away that much parking in the city without impacting the workforce. EVIL!
Anything nice in the city will be trashed…particularly in this area. Lets circle back to this topic in 2015 and check.
Thanks SFBob and Dont Get it for your cheery optimistic words on this beautiful day.
SFBob, all other things being equal, people working in the area who currently park on the street will have to park in a pay-for-the-day lot. So they’ll in turn bargain with their employers for a pay increase to cover the marginal increase in their cost of working, no? That’s the way the wonderful, perfect free market is supposed to work.
On the other hand, if you don’t think the free market is perfect or works as theory describes it then…
I went to a presentation on this last night. Half the lot will be a park. 110 parking spots will remain until they are converted to future public housing. The local street parking will go RPP or SFPark, but that’s up to the neighbors to debate with the SFMTA.
Uh oh. Sounds like SFBob is losing his “free” parking space.
Yay for new parks and green space.
Sure maybe not a park to hang in at night (what urban park is), but surely a nice place for a worker to have lunch and catch a few rays.
Yay for more public housing in that area.
I always hang out next to the public housing projects, and “catch a few rays”. Can’t wait!!
I wish people would stop pre-judging drug users with stereotypes and misinformation. Substitute another minority group, like say, ‘Latinos’ in SFBOB comment above and you see how discrimination works. Prejudice needs its helpers to stay alive rather than wait for it t whither on its own. Drug dealing in the open is a direct consequence of the failed ‘war on drugs’ and if one doesn’t like seeing this, then help us end the drug war.
– San Francisco Drug Users Union, 149 Turk, SF CA 94102
Yes because people who live in public housing aren’t people I’d like to be near. Ick!
Quick! Get me back to my gated suburban “community”!
It is highly unlikely that “public housing” in the sense of SF Housing Authority housing is going to be built at this site. I don’t think the Housing Authority has built new housing (on a new site) in about 30 years, but don’t quote me. This is probably going to be publicly-assisted housing, of which there is much in the Mission and across the city, most of which is very well run and uncontroversial. It will provide eyes on the park, which will help, actually.
In addition, there are several new-ish parks in the general neighborhood which are functioning quite nicely. For instance, the park on Folsom at the former site of Bessie Charmichel School seems to be doing pretty well, and a park just around the corner from my place on Treat and 23rd is very popular and well used.
Of course parks are a challenge, as any public space is a challenge in a society which has as many homeless people as we do in San Francisco. The inclusion of the community garden element is one element that this park uses to keep a sense of guardianship in the park…it’s worked well at other parks in the City. But still, I don’t want to minimize the challenges, particularly because this location has relatively few residences around it, right now.
BTW, I haven’t noticed prostitution near this site, and I drive often along Folsom in the evening. I used to see prostitutes around Capp and 18th, but I haven’t in a number of years. I’m not sure where the hotspot is these days, but it does seem to move around.
Flip the plan. Get the children’s play area away from the Folsom Street car exhaust.
I live in the neighborhood and am delighted with this. This will serve neighborhood needs much better than a parking lot.
The Mission sorely needs more green space and all the existing parks are heavily used. From what I can tell the City does a pretty good job of making sure that drug dealing/homeless shenanigans etc is not a problem at existing parks (with possible exception of the surrounding sidewalks at Jose Coronado).
From a PURELY design standpoint, compare the contemporary landscape design of the highline park in NYC and the curvy childish meandering paths of the this park with vestigeal odd pockets off green. Who designed this?
Plus the city is converting this 200+ space parking lot into a park AND then installing parking meters in the same area. What a bunch of money-grubbing politicians!
SFMTA Apologizes, Halts Parking Meter Plan:
http://missionlocal.org/2012/01/sfmta-apologizes-halts-parking-meter-plan/
Employees of the moronically demented Planning and SFMTA departments spend way too much of their days (on our dime) posting comments on these very blogs that cover their bumbling programs. As evidenced above.
I attended the planning meetings on this park more than a year ago. I see some posting here did not! A children’s area was “required” because a playground doubles drug-use/selling fines. We did look at NYC’s “High Line” and Portland’s Pearl District parks, etc. No $$ for that. This area (Shotwell) has drainage issues — and we asked for fountains or or something with water to improve the noise. (Again, no $$.) The people who park in this lot do -not- work within 7 blocks of this park — they are bused to UCSF, etc. The parking lot is an eyesore and this will help ODC and improve the ‘hood.
I happen to work in the building that shares the block with this parking lot. ME and about 50 OTHER coworkers PAY UCSF for the permit for this lot. Meters and lack of parking, as well as low income housing + a park only make more undesirables switch their drug dealing location from 16/mission to 17 and Folsom. We already have to pay to have our outside walls painted twice a week, what happens when its graffti’d daily? who pays for that? not the city.
One less parking lot! Great news.
UPDATE: Two Year Rain Delay For Folsom And 17th Street Park.