It seems parks are opening left and right in San Francisco these days, but in a particularly concrete-dense area of western SoMa, the city’s Recreation and Parks department last week put plans for a new park on hold — after 12 years of planning.
The proposed $12.8 million project at 11th and Natoma streets, which was to be named Rachele Sullivan Park after a prominent figure in the leather and LGBTQ community, was to be funded primarily by development impact fees.
Due to a dearth of development, and impact fee reductions or waivers intended to incentivize development, funding for the park fell short by some $10 million, said San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department spokesperson Tamara Barak Aparton.
Already, the city has spent $1.4 million designing the park, and another $9.7 million was spent to purchase the site.
“While construction drawings for the new park are nearly complete, we do not yet have sufficient funding identified to move forward with construction at this time,” the department wrote in a statement on its website last week. For now, the project “will be effectively put on hold.”
Jesse Moe, who lives and works nearby, wondered: With all the efforts to beautify the city, and massive police budgets, why can’t the city come up with funds for beautification in SoMa?
“They’re self-sustaining,” Moe said of how parks can transform a community. “Everybody takes an interest in a place.”
SoMa and the Tenderloin are the neighborhoods with the least tree coverage and green space in the city, an issue that residents and leaders have discussed — and bemoaned — for years.
Initial planning around the park dates back to 2012, when the District 6 Open Space Task Force began meeting to research potential sites for a new park in the area. (At the time, District 6 included the Tenderloin, SoMa and Mission Bay. The Tenderloin was redistricted into District 5 in 2022.)
The task force noted that many areas of the district showed “substantial desire and need” for “easily accessible, central public open spaces that can function as the ‘heart’ of the neighborhood.” It identified Western SoMa as having the highest need for new open space and the Tenderloin came in second.
Actually creating such spaces has proven challenging. Currently, SoMa residents rely on Victoria Manalo Draves Park, Franklin Square in the Mission, and Civic Center Plaza.
Marlee Newman, who goes attends the California Institute of Integral Studies around the corner from the unbuilt park, said she often walks all the way into the Tenderloin to find a place to sit.
“I feel a significant need for a park,” said Newman. “I’m here for school, really, but even wanting to eat outside or just be outside, it’s tough to find space to go.”
By 2017, five years after the task force launched, the city had purchased the plot of land with five buildings on it at 11th and Natoma for $9.725 million, and the rent derived from those structures — an aikido studio and a refrigeration supply company are among current tenants there — was reportedly slated to go toward the park. Then came years of planning, months of community meetings and design.
The Arts Commission began a civic design review in early 2023, and the Rec and Parks Commission approved a concept design that December. In 2024, the park got its name after an extensive public comment process, and artist Jenifer Wofford’s proposal for bright yellow gates was selected as a public art project at the site.
But the park itself, which was anticipated to include a half basketball court, fitness area, space for children to play, and benches and tables, may not come to fruition anytime soon.
Rafael Musni, the services manager at a nearby apartment building, remembered flyers in the neighborhood and lots of public comment. He called a park “desperately needed.”
“They’re designing this neighborhood to be extra-dense,” he said. “But with that, you need to provide the infrastructure of a densely populated area.”
The Tenderloin, another area lacking green space, has also had difficulty creating new parks. Even with funds available for the “Golden Gate Greenway,” that project has struggled to launch. While pitched as a car-free community gathering and children’s play area, it remains an empty road used mostly as a truck-loading zone.
Elsewhere in the city, it seems a new park opens every few days: Bayfront Park and India Basin Waterfront Park opened within days of each other in 2024. Just last month, the city broke ground on another $105 million phase of India Basin’s makeover. Next month, the first phase of a $12 million 24-acre park will open on Treasure Island.
Rec and Parks spokesperson Aparton said Rachele Sullivan Park is the only one of the department’s nearly 30 active projects that is paused. “Once new funding is secured,” Aparton said, “we will be able to move it forward quickly.”
Aparton said that funding could come through state or federal grants, and Rec and Parks’ Monday statement suggested that an upcoming bond measure could help secure funds. When those might be secured is unclear.
This article was updated with the amount of funds the city has spent on the park.
Wonder how much was spent on the consultation, and how much construction would have cost in 2012. The results would not have been perfect, but a dozen years of delay and seeking perfection has costs too. ML, does any city agency attempt to quantify and report on such costs?
Parks are great, but instead of waging class war against the working class for whom the dwindling number of 2-story light industrial buildings like these provide good jobs, how about eminent-domaining some of the dead-in-the-water- office and luxury apartment/condo tower projects that are now fetid swamps instead?
Imagine! Great parks without the loss of any working class jobs! And fewer mosquito breeding grounds!
It won’t happen, of course, and these buildings will eventually be repurposed in order to boost nearby property values, because waging class war on behalf of billionaires against the working class is what this city does.
But you were trigger happy for Sand Dunes, what gives?
They lied to make Sand Dunes a thing that it already was at a cost of tens of millions.
Yes on A. Liars to the fires.
Big RE interests, “transforming” the city, that’s what.
Somebody’s going to have to feel the whip for this.
Ugh!!!
Nearly 30 projects and this is the one that was paused.
My 7th grader is not impressed…
Matt Dorsey…hello?!
Huge win for anti-gentrification!
Gentrification is caused by NOT creating sufficient housing relative to demand in a desirable location.