Renovation plans for Dolores Park still unclear

Dolores Park in San Francisco’s Mission District: on a sunny day, it’s a Mecca for hipsters, tourists and artists. Sometimes the place is so packed with bicycles, dogs and people soaking up the sun that you can barely see the grass.

So in late January, when news hit that the park might be shut down for renovations for 16 months beginning next year, people were not happy.

A Facebook group called “Don’t close ALL of Dolores Park for the whole time!!!” sprang up, and more than a thousand members joined within a few weeks.

On a recent afternoon, some park-goers expressed just how terrible it would be to live without “hipster hill”:

VINCENT CASTANZO: It’s a great place to meet people and just hang out, because there’s like literally hundreds if not thousands of kids who use it all the time, and just people in general.

JOSH FURNALD: It seems like a terrible idea to shut down any park for more than three months to me, it doesn’t make any sense unless it saves piles of money. 

JENN FURNALD: Where would people go?

MATT BELL: It’s one of the few places really close to downtown where you can kind of walk up a hill a bit and get a clear view of downtown. Really nice gathering place. 

JOSH FURNALD: There isn’t much green space around here, other than this, if you look at a map.  

CASTANZO: There’s other stuff to do, there’s other places to go, but this is like, it’s a cool location, like everybody knows where it – I mean, it’s also free too, which is a big plus, so I will have to find something else to do.

And it’s not just park visitors who would be upset with an extended closure. For many local businesses, Dolores Park means customers. But all the uproar may be premature. The city still hasn’t decided whether the park will be closed all at once or shut down in phases. Angela Kilduff has more. 

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ANGELA KILDUFF: It’s a sunny day, and on one side of the 14-acre park, ice cream vendors push carts past the bustling playground. On the other side, tennis matches unfold. On the lawn in between, hundreds of people are playing Frisbee, sharing picnics, and discreetly or not so discreetly drinking Tecate. But while the people here are having fun, the park itself is in pretty rough shape. Bald spots mar the grass and long cracks run along the tennis courts. The playground needs to be rebuilt, and so do the bathrooms. The park doesn’t drain properly – so the grass is wet, even when it’s not raining.

The question is not whether the park needs repairs. It’s how – and when – they’ll be done.

TRACY HIGGINS: A few customers have asked me if I know what’s going on, and I say, “No, do you know what’s going on?" So far, there’s no tangible, concrete answers to our questions.

Tracy Higgins owns Lilah Belle’s, an organic take-out restaurant at 18th and Church. She says a long-term park closure could be disastrous for her business.

HIGGINS: We would have to get a big reduction in our rent or change our business plan to survive for 16 months for sure.

To avoid closing the park altogether, the city could do the construction in stages. That option is vastly more popular among neighborhood residents and business owners – even though it could make the whole project take a lot longer. San Francisco Recreation and Parks spokesperson Elton Pon says city officials still haven’t decided how to proceed.

ELTON PON: We’re at the beginning stages of the process, so it’s really too early to tell.

Construction isn’t slated to begin until December of 2011. In the meantime, the city is holding a series of public meetings to discuss the plans. It’s all part of a process that started in 2008, when city voters passed the Clean and Safe Neighborhood Parks Bond. It gave $150 million to the Recreation and Parks Department.

PON: The projects under this bond will go towards fixing playground, bathrooms, irrigation… So this bond is looking to take what’s broken in our park system and fix it.

But there are some problems in the park system that the bond money can’t fix. The city is facing an estimated $400 million budget shortfall for the coming fiscal year, so the parks department has to cut its budget by $12.5 million. That could mean increased fees, decreased services and layoffs.

The parks bond is a separate pool of money, specifically earmarked for improving parks and trails around the city. Pon says it can’t go towards basic jobs and services.

PON: If I weren’t working for the park department, that would be my first assumption. You have money for this, and you’re facing a deficit, why not hold off on those projects? But it doesn’t work that way.

The Dolores Park renovations will move forward, whether in stages or all at once. And not everyone is upset by the prospect of the park closing for construction. Faye’s Video on 18th Street serves coffee and rents movies. Mike McConnell has owned the shop for 11 years. He has watched the park’s traffic increase, and says now it’s almost too popular.

MIKE MCCONNELL: In the last few years, the park has become this phenomenon, like a destination place, and it’s been oversaturated. So I think it’s good that, you know, there might be like a break from all that.

Parks and Recreation Commissioners will set the schedule for the renovations within the next six months. And depending on what they decide, the denizens of Dolores Park may just have to find another place to spend sunny days.

In San Francisco, I’m Angela Kilduff for Crosscurrents.

Angela Kilduff is a student at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. KALW’S Brian Pelletier contributed to this report.