A group of lawyered-up Sunset residents are once again challenging a ballot measure that closed a two-mile stretch of the Great Highway to private vehicles in order to create a new city park.
On Tuesday, the group’s lawyer, Susan Brandt-Hawley, filed an appeal which seeks to overturn the January smackdown from San Francisco Superior Court Judge Jeffrey S. Ross, which tossed out all four arguments that the group put forward seeking to overturn the decision and reopen the Great Highway.
Brandt-Hawley specializes in CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act, a state law that, since its passage in 1970, has been widely used in local land-use disputes in addition to more conventional environmental concerns.
CEQA was cited repeatedly in the four arguments that were dismissed in January. At the time, Ross ruled that CEQA didn’t apply to Proposition K, because it wasn’t approved by “a public agency.” The measure was put on the ballot by a minority of city supervisors, who do not constitute an agency, Ross said.
This appeal considers a new permutation, Brandt-Hawley wrote, which is that those five supervisors were still legally obligated to require an environmental review process before placing the 2024 Prop. K on the ballot, which passed citywide with nearly 55 percent of the vote.
The appeal will proceed in the California Court of Appeal’s First Appellate District.
“When a public agency chooses to pursue an initiative that may have significant environmental impacts,” Brandt-Hawley wrote in a statement, “voters can fairly expect and rely on prior completion of California’s state-mandated environmental review process.”
But in 2024, the appellants argue, voters had to decide whether to close “a major public roadway” without knowing the environmental effects, co-appellant Matthew Boschetto wrote. Boschetto, who ran for District 7 supervisor in 2024, spent $269,000 to oppose the ballot measure.
“Traffic diversion into residential neighborhoods, increased congestion on already-burdened corridors, and resulting air quality impacts never received mandated public study or disclosure,” he wrote.
Jen Kwart, a spokesperson for the City Attorney’s office, wrote in a statement that “the trial court conducted a thorough examination of these issues and determined the city complied with CEQA and other state laws.”
Prop. K was submitted by five supervisors to be included in the November 2024 ballot on June 18, 2024. A week later, on June 24, 2024, it was referred to the Planning Department for an environmental determination.
The department determined in July that “CEQA does not apply to a measure submitted to the voters by the mayor or five supervisors,” according to court documents.
After Prop. K passed, the SFMTA proposed to make modifications to the road to make way for a coastal park. Then, the Planning Department determined again that the project was exempt from “environmental review” as “pedestrian and bicycle facilities that improve safety, access, or mobility … within the public right-of-way.”
The successful Prop. K created the coastal park, Sunset Dunes, which opened a year ago on April 12. But the former District 4 supervisor Joel Engardio’s support for the measure that some two-thirds of his constituents opposed, triggered a recall. In September 2025, a similar percentage of District 4 voters ousted him from office.
Apart from the lawsuit, opponents of the park are gathering signatures to place a measure on the November ballot, asking voters of San Francisco to weigh in again on the road closure. They need some 10,000 valid signatures citywide to achieve this goal. The deadline to submit the petitions is July 6.
Imagine being this much of a sore loser.
Richmond and Sunset residents do have a legitimate complaint about public transit being slow/infrequent for north-south trips, especially commutes between western SF and the Peninsula. But rather than trying to destroy a park, they could direct that energy toward winning more funding to IMPROVE westside transit. That’s something the whole city could get behind and work on together, instead of this cranky anti-park minority continually choosing to create division.
Imagine spending nearly a third of a million dollars and countless hours laboring for the ultimate goal of… blocking a popular park in favor of a troubled automobile thoroughfare!
[“Boschetto, who ran for District 7 supervisor in 2024, spent $269,000 to oppose the ballot measure.”]
In 20 years, there will be an art installation at Sunset Dunes Park, immortalizing this insane opposition to this civic good, and future San Franciscans won’t believe it really happened.
I plan to be there to tell people, “No, really, all four arguments were laughed out of court, so they appealed.” And, yes, then they put it on the ballot again, and it lost by a larger margin.
Who knows, in 20 years, maybe there will still be a Great Highway deadender or three still banging around like soldiers staggering out of the jungle, not knowing the war ended a generation earlier.
Maybe the old battle-ax will be collecting signatures for yet another fruitless ballot measure.
I got news for you. Public transit is also dreadfully slow heading to/from downtown. Try taking the 38 Geary from Market street to the beach at commute hour – and bring a copy of War and Peace while you’re at it. You may finish it in one ride. And here’s an idea – build quality transit options first BEFORE closing key arteries.
Or just don’t take the slow-poke 38 — take the 38R rapid instead!
Imagine getting stonewalled and gaslit for decades and then a bunch of self-appointed gentrifier urbanists, funded by tech billionaires, come out of the woodwork and plug sh.t like Sunset Dunes.
You see, there’s a laundry list of issues that these sore losers got to deal with:
Where’s the extension of the auxiliary water supply system?
How about completing undergrounding power and comms?
And keeping the GH and the water treatment plant down by Sloat from falling into the sea?
And Outside Lands monopolizing GGP for weeks, now with two additional weeks, isn’t it great?
Yet, installing Sunset Dunes, a park that almost two thirds of D4 voters rejected, was done in record time.
So yeah, look at these sore losers.
@Drew it’s not discussed anymore because the city repeatedly debunked this claim that it’s an emergency route. And along with releasing multiple DEM statements clarifying this, anyone who’s been in the area during a tsunami alert pre-park knows the first thing they do is divert all traffic east and temporarily close the road.
I live near Sunset dunes, the people pushing this don not, Matt is a few miles away and other supporters are in Daly city.
The worst air quality in the Sunset has to do with fake laundry scents and firewood from pits and fireplaces. Their entire arguments are made up.
Anecdotally, there has been zero to very little changes to traffic congestion in the Sunset since the parks opening. Not sure what real world evidence the congestion complaint is referring.
The CEQA statute itself allows the Coastal Commission (and 12 other specific agencies) to unilaterally exempt projects. Regardless of what the appeals court finds on the City’s contention that CEQA is not required because “the voters” are not a public agency, the Coastal Commission already applied the exemption (“…as the functional equivalent of environmental review under CEQA (14 CCR Section 15251(c)).)”.
CA Coastal Commission –
https://www.coastal.ca.gov/meetings/agenda/#/2024/12
Thursday, December 12
Item 9C
Staff Report, page 23
“CEQA means we need to reinstate a highway” would be a great book for a deeper look into the need for CEQA reform.
For someone who specializes in CEQA, this lawyer doesn’t seem to know what she’s talking about. Even IF a minority of Supes constitutes a public body under CEQA, it’s still exempt as a pedestrian and bicycle improvement. That is the explicit text of 2020’s SB-288, and last year’s SB-71. She ought to be censured by the Bar for wasting her clients’ money.
CEQA needs to either be removed or completely re-written, as it makes zero sense in its current form.
Thrse proplr will go to their graves trying to get the road open! It’s tiring. I live next to the park. It’s the best that’s happen to the outer sunset in a long time. New businesses are opening, existing businesses are seeing increased business, and real estate prices are trending up.
⚖ The thing about CEQA is that it’s been amended many times, as we have discovered which things have worse environmental impacts than previous thought, and which things do not. The result is a document that’s not straightforward, and there are those who hope to exploit that. Some of the more recent changes are specifically about updated understandings of transportation impacts, but some of these lawyers specializing in CEQA make arguments with the hope that a judge or appeals judge remembers the older, obsolete points of the law.
It is bewildering that some people are spending this much money, time and energy opposing a park when our neighbors are being abducted and disappeared and our tax dollars continue to fund genocide. I truly do not understand their priorities.
I am all for the park but not in it’s current state. I had envisioned we would return it to it’s natural state, dunes. By leaving the road there we are not really creating a park. Many people just see it as a “closed great highway”. I mean there it is, still there, traffic lights and all. It’s a big tease to all the opponents of the park. Letting the pavement survive and shout out “look! I’m still a road. open me back up and use me like a road!!” If closing the great highway was a funeral for a road that died it would be open casket. At those kind of funerals the casket is eventually closed, people grieve and eventually move on. This casket remains open, making people watch the dead road decay. Those that miss most can’t move on because it’s right there. We need to close and bury this casket with tons and tons of sand. sunset dunes should be dunes!
Well, if nothing else, this gives Mission Local something to report on.
I haven’t seen the Great Highway petitions. Where can I sign?
@Chris Mei – There’s a petition at Moe’s Bar. Your signature could join those of such luminaries as Oliver Klosoff, Hugh Jass, Amanda Huggenkiss, Seymour Butz, and Homer Sexual.
The biggest problem with Sunset Dunes is that the Great Highway may be needed as an emergency evacuation route sometime in the near or distant future. This matter is rarely or ever discussed, but it is a crucial topic that should not be ignored.
Remember when you used to hear this argument against speed bumps? Hilarious.
This matter actually has been discussed ad nauseum, to the point where (then) D4 Supervisor Engardio had to request public clarification on the question from DEM and SFFD. Here is their memo, signed by DEM Ex. Dir. Mary Ellen Carroll and SFFD Chief Dean Crispen: https://engardio.com/dem-letter-evacuation-routes
tl;dr – The UGH is not a designated evacuation route, emergency responders will always have access to it, and it can be opened to traffic anytime by the GM of Rec and Park.
Depends a lot on the emergency.
For a tsunami, it’s useless. First thing you do is close that road. Because ocean.
Fire, I guess? Given the fate of the Great Hwy Extension (again, ocean) I’m not sure it’s going to lead anywhere quickly. You’ll be stuck on Sloat pretty quick.
If you did need to use it for an emergency, I guess you could just open one side of it back up for cars. Though if you were evacuating people, it might be better the keep it closed and let them walk out.
I dunno, seems dodgy as an evacuation route.