McCoppin Hub Plaza has been abruptly fenced-off and padlocked.
Developed with a mix of permanent seating and terraced pads for food trucks, farmers markets or other community events, the landscaped plaza was designed to revitalize a dead space in the neighborhood, and become a “calm, open and welcome” space “controlled by the community.”
While a number of readers have wondered if the area’s growing homeless population and their control of the plaza might be to blame for the sudden closure, according to the Department of Public Works, which erected the fence and is working on some signage and an email, the closure is simply to allow for a couple of landscaping and irrigation changes to be completed and the closure will only last a few weeks.
Of course, if any of those irrigation changes happen to result in water being rerouted from the planters to the pavement…
developing this space was a total mistake. If it was left as an empty street it would have been a much more versatile space, and *actually* usable for food trucks and the like. But now it’s only real use is as a homeless encampment, for which the money would have been better spent building actual housing for the homeless. Maybe they’ll leave the fences up for good. Or even better, tear it down and build the actual homeless housing.
I shudder to think how much was spent (mis)planning and building this silly thing.
Too much hardscape and not enough permeable surfaces.
You do realize San Francisco is currently spending 167 million dollars on the homeless?
Yet you propose tearing down McCoppin Hub Plaza in order fund more magical homeless projects? Aren’t City residents allowed to want anything improved in their neighborhoods?
So the view through your eyes is all about throwing more money towards the never improving homeless nonprofit network?
The terrorists are winning!
Your snark detector is off today.
@ zig: Your comment is idiotic and completely inappropriate. Did you forget to take your meds today?
I live in the neighborhood. The local email lists have been exploding with criticism of SFPD and SFgov (Jane Kim) for letting McCoppin Hub Plaza be taken over by vagrants. Last week a person was stabbed there. The food trucks left for good long ago. Not a single community event there in months. Its quite dangerous, especially at night.
With a liquor store, pot dispensary, and Uhaul rental right next door, who could have guessed this would happen?
seriously wish every pot dispensary in SF would close. its all a sham and a shame. maybe 1 out of 20 people have a legit medical issue. and frankly there is no evidence that marijuana can treat any of these ailments. the dispensaries jsut make the neighborhoods more ghetto serving drug addicts
Yet liquor stores remain open. Oh, and unless you’re a teetotaler, you’re a complete hypocrite.
im ok with closing those too. but there is a difference. its not being peddled as medicine. weed being peddled as medicine is not much different than what the travelling tonic salesmen were doing in the 1800s. recreactional marijuan is illegal but these clinics are using the front of “medicine” to serve addicts.
The big difference between potheads on the streets and drunks on the streets is that the potheads just grin at you, while the drunks fight, shout, piss, etc. I’d rather they close the liquor stores.
There’s a difference between a “liquor store” (and all that it connotes), and cleaner / nicer places such as BevMo or Healthy Spirits. I can drink alcohol (and I do) and still relish the idea of closing down cheap booze liquor stores.
Was SFgov (Jane Kim) elected to destroy people’s neighborhood? Sends all your angry emails and letters to her, let your voice be heard!
Jane Kim doesn’t seem to respond too much about this immediate neighborhood. It’s the extreme corner of her district.
pave over it and build condos for the people who actually work and need a place to live
People who actually work can’t afford new condos. At least call for rentals.
A $5000 rental or a $1M condo. Same people. This city has become expensive and only the successful and affluent can afford it.
Now if there was actual turnover of these 100,000s of rent controlled apartments, “regular people” could have a shot at landing something within their means.
if you save for 15 yrs as i did, you can afford a condo. meaning that most people over the age of 37 (15yrs post college) should be able to buy if they do the appropriate saving and sacrificing.
This is terrible…and I thought this shinny new park was intended take pressure off Division street and allow for a whole slug of new pop tents for all the campers under the freeway. Nice Palm trees!
Just one more magnet for the western soma street people. Things have and continue to get worse as street people are pushed south and west off of mid-market.
We can’t have nice things in SF because we offer so much money and free services to not-so-nice people to hop on a Greyhound bus and find their way here.
SF spends between $150,000,000 and $200,000,000 PER YEAR on “the homeless” – and has for at least the last 20 years – that’s over $3,000,000,000 – and counting. With an estimated 15,000 homeless folks here, that’s $200,000 per homeless person.
For that much $$, we could have bought each one a nice house somewhere else in California, along with a brand new Mercedes, big screen TV’s for each room, maid service, and a massage each week.
But nooooooooooooo…. we keep trying to lure them here and keep them here instead.
Be sure to call all the local homeless “non-profit” organizations who pay big salaries to their heads – who make more and more $$$$$ for each and every homeless person they can get to show up, or stay, in SF.
EcceMorons: you are sooo correct. There is no motivation to squelch the homeless problem since so many people (those working for the NPOs, NGOs and the city) who “live” off the plight of the homeless, like leaches.
They are called poverty pimps. Most work in city hall or for SEIU.
or BeyondChron.com
M.R.
If there are no directly adjacent businesses, residents/community groups to act as “stewards” for the Plaza it will devolve into neglect and a defacto homeless encampment.
Additionally, the design is weak and throughly unappealing.
There are many stewards, a very active neighborhood group mostly made of up long time residents. The problem is that they cannot police the plaza and boot the vagrants out. SFPD do your job! Were tired of your non-response to our calls.
Yup, unresponsive SFPD plust a gutted Rec & Park budget equal increased degradation and a downward spiral for all public spaces.
Speaking of SFPD…I cannot remember the last time I saw beat cops in neighborhoods (much less downtown), other than during the protests around Union Square during the holidays when a group of our finest was hanging in a circle talking and laughing during the protest.
In NYC, they are all over the place.
you can find a group of about 6 “beat cops” at Cumaica coffee on 3rd and clement every morning from 7-9AM
As a supporter of Parklet from yesterday’s socketsite debate, it is sad for me to say that this place would have been better if it was left alone for use as a parking lot.
I swear it looks like a mini-golf version of the temples at Luxor in Egypt. Oddly enough, the original doesn’t have palm trees…
Comparing this kind of dated pathetic urban/landscape design typical of SF to what could have been – something like Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park – is depressing indeed.
I don’t see how anyone could possibly compare the McCoppin st site to the site of the Sculpture Park in Seattle. They are not alike in any way one could fathom. What a ridiculous thing to say that was.
alfonso ribeiro breaking board: Any site circumstances can afford great design opportunities in the hands of a good designer – the point of the Seattle Sculpture Park comparison is not how amazing that site is (that was actually perceived as a relatively crappy site before the redesign), but how bad this McCoppin site redesign is in comparison…
SF is plagued with the curse of too much money.
This money comes from the incredible wealth coming to SF and created by people who create things. This is reflected in very good revenue for the city.
City Hall and in general our elected officials do not have to fight for this money. It just shows up year in and year out.
But this revenue gives our elected officials the illusion they have to do something right. The reality is that this City Hall success is purely circumstantial.
Maintaining an army of homeless, a ridiculously inadequate transportation system, a never ending dystopian distortion of the rental market, letting corrupt people make their own rules. These are not signs of success but of a pretty dysfunctional city.
We are lucky to have a great local economy but our leaders are as inept as they come.
Amen.
could we hire some of the homeless as beat cops so they can police themselves?
Such a cynic! A “ridiculously inadequate transportation system”? Muni could be better but many people who come here from other US cities think it is impressive. It ain’t where it could be but it’s good and getting better. Also, while SF could be more efficient, it has a great bond rating and is making smart, lasting investments in its infrastructure. The bonds are possible and more affordable because of smart financial decision-making. I won’t argue with you on the homeless issue though, which is a pathetic state of affairs. There is also too much corruption/ineptness, but any is too much and I imagine it is much less than many other big cities.
you must be joking. we are well down the totem pole on good public transport in the US. Boston, NY, Wash DC, Baltimore, Chicago, even LA are much better. and when you compare su to other cultural cities in EU and Asia, we are at the bottom.
Muni has ONE backbone that crawls to a stop on a 3-mile stretch. In 10 years Paris has already built 7 lines, crisscrossing the city north/south/diagonals/arches. That was 100+ years ago.
Is SF better than other metros in the US. Definitely yes. But that’s not very challenging.
SF is definitley not better than NYC, Boston, Wash DC and Chicago in public transport.
Also, having a great bond rating means investors know you probably have cash flow. I am back to my “curse of too much money”.
With all the human assets we are attracting, we should have top notch transportation. Instead, those human assets are moving around in white buses and black limos that they had to INVENT to compensate for the serious shortcomings of a city that spends its daylight gazing at its own navel
We’re not likely to go the way of Detroit, but could we at least elect makers instead of panderers?
either that or privatize public transport. Private companies will hire talented people and will find a way to build high quality quickly and make a profit. they wont hire people from SFBC to be transit engineers.
Nope. Public is the way. This is a common asset, and way too valuable to answer to the very short life cycles of private providers.
Also, A private company will sell first, make you pay later once you’re a “captive audience” with no other choice. Have we learned nothing of our long-running healthcare debacle? Paying twice what other developed countries are paying, and for a worse general outcome. Sometimes the private sector cannot do it better than the public.
Now our problem in SF is that our leaders are not being challenged enough and focus a lot of energy on keeping things as they are instead of doing their jobs.
the private sector could do better with healthcare. it was never truly private. the fact that most consumers never think about the cost of a hospital stay or a drug or a lab test has led to the inflation of these costs. Medical care has been revolutionized in this country due to private companies and private grants. very little innovation came from the govt. the new public payer system is fine and im all for it. but its only acting as an insurance company, not as a “creater or innovator”. even under single payor, the new devices, lab tests, drugs, machine, genetics are all driven by private enterprise.
iwould be all for public if our city govt was decent. other cities seem to be able to plan and innovate with “public” transport, but SF fails miserably.
Much of what is being “created” is ephemeral and silly./ Endless vidoe games, aps, and advertising technologies. Making the lives of the overpriveleged even easier.
Don;t be so self congratualtory. You’re not making steel or building real things. You’re coding software for a few megacorporations to enable The Owners to extract more rent from the rest of us.
google, apple, yahoo, oracle, cisco, facebook(ok maybe FB has no value)), square, uber, twitter, salesforce, box, lucasfilms, mozilla, airbnb, lendingclub, dropbox, adobe, autodesk, dolby
how are these not building real things that have value?
Can’t do anything nice in this town without it getting crapped on, vandalized, or taken over by vagrants. And of course we can’t do anything to the vagrants because they have the right to harass whoever they fell like. Can’t blame them for their actions because decades of abuse, neglect, bad fortune, etc etc have led them to this. But we can’t do anything about it because you can’t reverse decades of such a life with some free voluntary programs. What to do?
Unfortunate that concerns about universal accessibility turn sloped public sites into giant ADA ramps. I don’t know the answer to this, but the results are often not wonderful.
UPDATE: Unable To Solve Homeless Problem, City Will Permanently Fence McCoppin Hub