The “oasis” at Turk and Hyde streets in the Tenderloin doesn’t look like much. Its patch of grass is fake. The chairs are flimsy.
But for the Tenderloin, where greenery or a seat is hard to come by, the former parking lot has been a respite from the streets beyond, since it opened in 2022. People stop in to meet friends for lunch, listen to music or let their dogs play in the dog run.
Now, Mission Local has learned that the city will cease to fund its contract with Urban Alchemy to manage the space. The oasis is set to close on June 21.
“Everyone in the community knows that having that lot be vacant is going to be bad for the neighborhood,” said Supervisor Bilal Mahmood.
Mahmood is negotiating with the mayor’s office and SEIU Local 87, the janitors union that owns the lot, to implement new programming there.
The intersection at Turk and Hyde was once known as a hub of drug activity, but has improved drastically in recent years with the creation of the Turk/Hyde Mini Park for children, the oasis, and the presence of various safety ambassadors — including Urban Alchemy workers — stationed in the parks and on the streets.
It is unclear whether the site would continue as a makeshift park after Urban Alchemy leaves. The nonprofit opened the site, a former parking lot, as its first oasis, a model the nonprofit has now replicated in cities around the country. It was meant to offer an inclusive place for neighbors, like residents of nearby SROs, who have few other public spaces to hang out and feel safe and comfortable.
“We’re incredibly proud to have pioneered the innovative oasis model here in San Francisco,” said Urban Alchemy spokesperson Jess Montejano. “It’s provided a safe and healthy place for some of the most vulnerable people in our community to find respite and get connected to services.”
Last summer, San Francisco briefly opened a second oasis on Sixth Street, providing bathrooms and a break from the streets in another troubled corridor of the city. Within months, the mayor’s office shut it down and restored the parking lot.
The closures come as the mayor’s office has been shifting Urban Alchemy and other safety ambassadors and outreach workers away from fixed posts in favor of roving street teams.
Because of the change in focus, Mahmood said, a new ambassador group would not be taking over the oasis.
It seems the mayor’s office is open to preventing the site from returning to a vacant lot. Lurie’s spokesperson, Charles Lutvak, told Mission Local that the office is “identifying community-driven opportunities to continue activating the space at Turk and Hyde.”
In the densely populated, urban neighborhood, creating and cultivating public spaces, even in vacant lots, became a major focus of the Tenderloin Community Action Plan, an initiative launched with the Planning Department in 2021 to improve neighborhood conditions for residents. During the pandemic, children’s advocates slowly transformed the Elm Street alley into a part-time play area. Last summer, community organizers created two temporary soccer pitches at the site of a demolished McDonald’s on Van Ness.
But while there are now a handful of places for the neighborhood’s roughly 3,500 children to play outside, public spaces for adults seem to be disappearing.
Safe Passage Park and the parklet on the Golden Gate Greenway, both of which opened during the pandemic, closed in 2024 and 2025, respectively. The community marketplace at La Cocina also shut to the public. City officials announced plans to remove new benches and planters on Taylor Street just months after installing them.
The red gates to the lush Tenderloin National Forest are, almost always, locked to visitors.
As for the oasis, its gate may remain open — if a new arrangement is found. Asked if a new operator would be in place by the end of the month, Mahmood said simply: “It has to.”