A Digital Journal - San Francisco Public Works
In the Works
September 2024
Two decades ago, this small patch of City-owned land in the Bayview served as an unwelcome makeshift junkyard for illegal dumping. Today, driven by the vision, determination and hard work of neighbors, the once-neglected parcel is known as Bridgeview Garden, a vibrant urban oasis alive with fruit trees, flowers, herbs and community spirit.
FEATURE STORIES
Harvesting Community
at a Bayview Garden
Mary and Joel McClure, working with neighbors, transformed a derelict City-owned parcel in the Bayview into a flourishing community garden – turning consternation into magic through vision, hard work and resolve.
The Aha Moment That Sparked the New Golden Gate Park Gateway Design
When Public Works landscape architect Nicholas Ancel was working on the design for the new Golden Gate Park gateway at Ninth Avenue and Lincoln Way, he found inspiration among ancient giants in the woods.
Taking the Crews to Treasure Island
With about 290 acres of new open space cropping up around Treasure Island and its sister island, Yerba Buena Island, it will fall to Public Works to help with repairs, maintenance and inspections.
Smooth Operation: From Planning to Delivering a Road Paving Project
After decades of heavy vehicle traffic, a very rough section of pavement on O’Farrell Street will be restored to near-perfect shape through our Street Resurfacing Program.
SF311 City Services App Expands to Four Languages
The SF311 mobile app is now available in Chinese, Spanish and Filipino – expanding beyond just English and making it even easier to access City services in your preferred language.
The pergola gate at the entrance of Bridgeview Garden in the Bayview.
Harvesting Community at a Bayview Garden
Mary and Joel McClure’s home on Bridgeview Drive in the Bayview neighborhood came with knockout views that stretch from the East Bay hills to the San Mateo Bridge. But when they looked out their window at the vacant City-owned lot next door, surrounded by a decrepit metal fence fastened shut with an old, rusted lock, they saw a makeshift junkyard littered with empty oil cans, worn tires, soiled mattresses, broken appliances and bulging bags of household trash.
“We got tired of looking at a dump,” said Joel McClure. “We called up the City and asked them to please do something and take care of the lot. They said, ‘No, we don’t have the resources, but we’ll give you the key and you can take care of it.’ So, instead of looking out the window and saying someone should do something, I looked at the reflection and knew that someone should be me.”
Mary McClure shared her husband’s sentiment.
Joel and Mary McClure, the founding stewards of Bridgeview Garden.
“I turned to him and said, “Let’s go get that key.’ Joel and I are the type of people who see that if something has to be done, we do it.”
That was nearly two decades ago.
The McClures and some neighbors began by pulling weeds and removing trash. But they had bigger plans: Transform the blighted lot next door to them at Bridgeview Drive and Newhall Street into a garden. They didn’t have to look far for inspiration. A block away grows the majestic community-tended Quesada Gardens, which covers the wide roadway median on the 1700 block of Quesada Avenue that once was a dumping ground, too.
In 2007, six years after they bought their house and five years after Public Works gave them stewardship of the plot, the McClures and a handful of neighbors began planning for what would become the Bridgeview Garden. They worked with University of San Francisco design students to come up with a wish list and plan for the space, envisioning fruit trees, an edible garden, flowers, a new fence, terracing, seating pathways, irrigation and more.
The garden boasts natural treasures, among them berries, fruit trees and native plants and flowers.
The summer before, Stanford University students came in to clear the 318-square-foot lot, creating the opportunity for a fresh start. The McClures teamed up with the Quesada Gardens Initiative, which helps usher through gardens, gathering spaces and public art by bringing together volunteers, philanthropists, businesses, City agencies, foundations, nonprofits and others. The group’s aim is to advance community initiatives benefiting Bayview-Hunters Point.
Slowly, the Bridgeview Garden began to take shape: college student volunteers dug into the hillside to terrace the land and neighbors joined together to install new fencing and build retaining walls made out of broken concrete that Public Works salvaged from construction projects and donated to the cause.
Volunteers also planted herbs and vegetables. Friends of the Urban Forest brought in the fruit trees. Public Works installed a water meter and covers the water bill for irrigation.
A small group of dedicated neighbors regularly tends to the garden, pulling weeds, pruning overgrown trees and foliage and removing pieces of trash that blow in.
“This has been our passion for the past 18 years,” said Mary McClure.
In the early years of Bridgeview Garden, college students helped design and build out the site, providing them hands-on experience for community improvements.
Now retired, she worked in interior design and grew up on a Missouri farm – a background that fed her vision for turning the sullied parcel into a small urban oasis. At her side all along has been her husband, also now retired after a career in banking.
The Bridgeview Garden is part of San Francisco’s Street Parks Program, a joint partnership involving Public Works, the nonprofit San Francisco Parks Alliance and organized community volunteers. There are now 119 street parks on the program’s roster in neighborhoods across the City.
The goal is to transform underutilized and unkempt Public Works-owned parcels into welcoming greenspaces for everyone to enjoy.
Garden steward Mary McClure, left, and Public Works gardener Shingo Kohara work side by side during the Sept. 21 Bridgeview Garden workday.
The Parks Alliance provides information on grant opportunities and offers practical workshops on street parks stewardship. The community organizes neighbors, devises street park improvements, secures funding and keeps their adopted spaces watered, weeded and free of litter and graffiti.
Public Works reviews maintenance plans and, at the onset, makes sure the sites are suitable to be turned into street parks. The department also provides tools for volunteer workdays and our crews cart away the green waste – just as had happened on Sept. 21 at Bridgeview Garden. The garden was part of our monthly Love Our City: Neighborhood Beautification Day volunteer workday, held this month in the Bayview.
Community Youth Center volunteers, in orange vests, work with Public Works staff to clear ivy and weeds from the garden.
Joining the McClures were Public Works gardening crews and an energetic team of eight from Community Youth Center. The Chinatown-based nonprofit shows up regularly at Public Works-hosted greening and cleaning events.
“We love partnering with Public Works,” said Fiona Kong, program coordinator with Community Youth Center, who, wearing safety goggles and a bright orange vest, was busy removing a batch of invasive ivy growing beneath the orange and lemon trees. “These volunteer days get our youth out to different neighborhoods. I wouldn’t have ever known there was such a beautiful garden like this in the Bayview.”
A few feet away was Mary McClure, kneeling on the hillside, tackling the ivy growing around an Asian pear tree. If not the ivy one day, it’s weeds the next. Or pruning. Or picking sage and rosemary to share with elderly neighbors who enjoy the garden’s harvest.
“This,” said Mary McClure, as she looked around at the fruiting trees she helped plant years ago and the latest wave of young volunteers on hand to pitch in, “is what it’s about: Growing community through this garden.”
Volunteers and crews made good progress on cleaning up the garden on the September workday.
Neighborhood Beautification Day events are held one Saturday each month in a different supervisorial district. Next month, on Oct. 19, we’ll be cleaning and greening the Sunset and Parkside neighborhoods in District 4. Kickoff is at 9 a.m. at Robert Louis Stevenson Elementary School.
Bring your friends and family, or come solo to make new connections. The work is fun and meaningful.
PUBLIC WORKS
BY THE NUM83R5
2024 -YEAR TO DATE
9,426
POTHOLES
FILLED
5,144
TREES
PRUNED
451
CURB RAMPS
CONSTRUCTED
500
NUMBER OF BLOCKS RESURFACED
18,901
TONS OF DEBRIS COLLECTED
The Public Works-designed entry plaza to Golden Gate Park at Ninth Avenue and Lincoln Way features masonry walls and new landscaping.
The Aha Moment That Sparked the New Golden Gate Park Gateway Design
When Public Works landscape architect Nicholas Ancel was working on the design for the new Golden Gate Park gateway at Ninth Avenue and Lincoln Way, he found inspiration among ancient giants in the woods.
On a 2018 trip to Sequoia National Park – home of “General Sherman,” a massive, 275-foot sequoia that has stood in the Giant Forest for about 2,200 years – the trail system’s stonework caught Ancel’s eye.
“When you go to the General Sherman tree, the National Forest Service had done a renovation of the trail system into that area,” said Ancel, who led the Golden Gate Park gateway project for Public Works. His visit to the national park in the southern Sierra Nevada came as he was just starting work on the Golden Gate Park project.
“I thought, ‘This is so great. We should use something like this.’ It’s such an important place. It’s such a monumental place.”
“General Sherman,” a massive 275-foot sequoia, has grown in the Giant Forest in Sequioa National Park for about 2,200 years.
As a result, oval-shaped masonry walls, interspersed with larger boulders, now grace the newly constructed entry plaza to San Francisco’s largest park – along with fresh native plants and a special irrigation system, new pedestrian lighting and ADA-friendly curb ramps.
“We really wanted it to be this timeless, elegant, simple, functional design that made things safer,” Ancel said.
Public Works designed and planned the project on behalf of the Recreation and Park Department, which oversees Golden Gate Park – San Francisco’s signature greenspace, a 1,017-acre oasis in the City’s western half that eclipses even New York City’s famed Central Park in size. A ribbon-cutting ceremony for the gateway project is tentatively slated for early next month.
A map shows the location of the newly designed gateway to Golden Gate Park at Ninth Avenue and Lincoln Way.
Connecting the Inner Sunset neighborhood to Golden Gate Park, the gateway at Ninth Avenue and Lincoln Way is one of the most heavily used entrances to the park.
One of Ancel’s main goals was to foster a sense of place at the entry point. It needed to be a jumping off point, a stepping stone of sorts, where park visitors – from parents with strollers to tourists new to the area – could gather and collect themselves before heading into or out of the greenspace.
“There was really no coherent placemaking there,” he said. “There was no place for people to stop before they went into the park.”
Now, more than 5,000 square feet of new concrete paving and plaza space – in addition to about 6,000 square feet of fresh landscaping – offers a generous springboard into the City’s emerald sanctuary.
“In the grand scheme, this is not a very big project at all, but in terms of placemaking, in terms of San Francisco iconography, I think this is a pretty good one,” Ancel said. “Makes a big difference.”
A rendering shows the new gateway project at Ninth Avenue and Lincoln Way.
Another important objective for the gateway project was to make the area safer and more visible for pedestrians. New pedestrian lighting and curb ramps aim to help with visibility and accessibility.
The rock for the masonry work was sourced from a Napa quarry. The new greenery is 100% native plants, including Coast Live Oak and California Buckeye. “All the materials are basically local materials,” Ancel said.
To make the plaza stand out from the nearby sidewalk, Ancel and his team opted for a special finish for the concrete work. “Basically, it’s a rock finish that’s cast into the top of the concrete, into a colored concrete, so it looks like it’s got a lot of texture,” he said.
Perhaps most importantly, the project – though brand-new – fits right in with the historic park, offering an improved access point to the greenspace and yet connecting effortlessly to its venerable roots.
“When you go there, it already looks like it’s been there a long time,” Ancel said. “It has that timeless feel.”
A group of Public Works trades workers takes in the view of Treasure Island during a tour of new parks that they'll help maintain.
Taking the Crews to Treasure Island
On a recent overcast September morning, a contingent of Public Works trades workers huddled inside the cavernous Treasure Island Administration Building, a horseshoe-shaped Art Deco structure on the southwestern edge of the artificial island.
The building – which has made an appearance in a variety of movies, from “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” to “The Parent Trap” – served as the starting point for a tour of some of the island’s newest greenspaces and parks.
The Public Works crews, representing various trade shops, were there to get the lay of the land. With about 290 acres of new open space cropping up around Treasure Island and its sister island, Yerba Buena Island, in phases over the next decade and beyond, it will fall to Public Works’ trade shops to help with repairs, maintenance and inspections – from electrical work to plumbing.
“It’s a new park system. It’s a very important park system to the island,” said Peter Summerville, administrative analyst for the Treasure Island Development Authority (TIDA), a nonprofit public benefit agency dedicated to the economic development of the former Naval Station island.
“Having (Public Works’) strengths and capacity applied towards that upkeep on behalf of TIDA is critical to what we hope to be a world-class parks facility, operating as such and showing as such,” added Summerville, who guided the Public Works crews to a handful of new island open spaces that morning.
Peter Summerville, administrative analyst for the Treasure Island Development Authority (TIDA), center, talks with Alex Knox, an electrician supervisor for Public Works, left, and Public Works Plumbing Shop Supervisor Jerry Lehane, right.
Thousands of new homes, 41 parks and one soccer team
Though their combined 550 acres of landmass won’t change much, the two islands are transforming.
Moored halfway between San Francisco and Oakland, Treasure Island – which housed a U.S. Navy base for more than half a century – has been undergoing an ambitious redevelopment process decades in the making. So, too, has Yerba Buena Island, which serves as a midway respite for the Bay Bridge and sits just south of Treasure Island. The two islands are connected via a narrow strip of land that holds Treasure Island Road.
Some 8,000 homes, with 2,200 of those designated as affordable units, are slated for the islands. Public transportation connections, a neighborhood shopping corridor, public art, hotels, restaurants and more are part of the vision, too, creating in essence a new San Francisco neighborhood surrounded by water. The project, split into four major phases, is anticipated to be complete by 2042.
And while the completion date seems far off in the future, activity on the islands already is picking up.
This month, Mayor London Breed and Bay FC, the new women’s professional soccer franchise representing the Bay Area in the National Women’s Soccer League, announced plans for a new permanent training facility on Treasure Island. And nearly 1,000 new homes on the islands are already open or nearing completion.
A total of 41 parks are planned across the islands. As of this fall, there are about 10 acres of new parks open to the public. Over time, the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department is expected to assume management of the new parks system.
From the start, Public Works has had a significant role in the development on the islands: Reviewing and approving the proposed mapping and project phasing; issuing infrastructure permits; and providing construction management services for the infrastructure and parks improvements.
Public Works also is helping with trades work, engineering, repairs and regular inspections. As the redevelopment project moves forward and the community grows, so will Public Works’ duties.
“As the island becomes more like the rest of the City, those (Public Works) City responsibilities transfer out here,” said Summerville, who has worked on the island since 2001.
That means all the new street trees will be tended to by the Public Works Bureau of Urban Forestry. The department’s Bureau of Street-use and Mapping "handles all the issues on streets – complaints, street repair, all those different things as it would be on Folsom Street in SoMa,” Summerville said.
Jeffrey Soria, assistant superintendent for Public Works' Bureau of Building and Street Repair, inspects a lock during a tour of new parks on Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island.
Always ‘something somewhere to fix’
To be sure, Public Works is not new to work on the islands.
The department’s asphalt team paves roads and repairs potholes. Locksmiths come to change keys. Holes in roofs have to be repaired.
“You name it, right?” Summerville said. “A lot of what’s done for TIDA year-to-year is that kind of as-needed work that comes when you’re a landlord of 30, 40 buildings, right? There’s always kind of something somewhere to fix.”
That gray September morning, for instance, Public Works crews were working on new lighting for the semi-circular administration building.
The idea is to change the LED lights from white to color to have the building’s facade illuminated at night, much like City Hall, said Alex Knox, an electrician supervisor for Public Works.
“It should make the building stand out a little more,” he said, as he drove his truck to Panorama Park on Yerba Buena Island for a tour. Electrical Shop crews head over to the islands about once a month on average for various jobs, from upgrading lighting to troubleshooting power issues.
Atop Yerba Buena Island, with sweeping views of San Francisco and the rest of the Bay behind them, Public Works Plumbing Shop Supervisors Michael Flores and Jerry Lehane took a look at a backflow device, making sure they know how to access it, should the need arise.
Much like a firewall, the backflow preventer – housed in an inconspicuous metal box sitting on a concrete slab – prevents contaminated water from potentially penetrating the potable water system. Put another way: It serves as a one-way gate that allows water to flow in only one direction.
“Basically, it just protects the City’s grid,” said Flores. “Think about it like this: You have a hose in a bucket, right? And let’s say your service turns off. So now that hose can siphon that bucket water into your house. So that’s exactly what this is preventing.”
Flores, Lehane and the rest of the Plumbing Shop are charged with testing the devices annually to make sure they work correctly and repairing them, if needed. Roughly 30 dot the island now, with more in the works, Flores said.
From left to right: Plumbing Shop Supervisor Michael Flores, Assistant Superintendent for the Bureau of Building and Street Repair Jeffrey Soria and Maintenance Manager Jamal Katout chat during a tour of Panorama Park on Yerba Buena Island.
A modernizing island
For more than two decades, Summerville has had an up-close look at the gradually changing landscape on the islands.
Summerville said the metamorphosis has been interesting to see over time, with the emergence of housing and other new uses, plus the influx of newcomers building a new neighborhood and adding to the existing island community.
“It’s exciting to see the island modernize,” he said.
To be sure, work on the islands can be challenging.
Because Treasure Island used to house a naval base, workers have to be aware of potentially radioactive areas when they dig, said Cedric McAfee, Public Works’ longtime liaison to TIDA. Older buildings also can contain hazardous lead- or asbestos-laden materials that need to be carefully handled.
“Even fixing the pipe in the wall, it’s just not as simple as go cut the wall and fix the pipe,” said McAfee, who has worked as the liaison for nearly a decade and used to live on the island.
Still, McAfee loves working with his colleagues and enjoys the job.
“I like to be able to help people get things done,” he said. “The gratification you get from serving the public, it’s pretty cool when you really think about it.”
Crews pour fresh concrete on O’Farrell Street, part of the street resurfacing process.
Smooth Operation:
From Planning
to Delivering a
Road Paving Project
Working on any street in a bustling city like San Francisco can be a delicate balancing act.
Whether it involves replacing a sewer, constructing new curb ramps or applying a fresh layer of asphalt to the road, many of the infrastructure improvement projects San Francisco Public Works takes on are in heavily used, constrained spaces in the public right of way. But some streets pose outsized challenges for even our most experienced construction crews.
Take, for example, a stretch of O’Farrell Street in the Anza Vista neighborhood. There’s a nearby high school and a busy shopping center, a few steep hills to contend with and a steady stream of traffic. And then there’s the Kaiser Permanente San Francisco Medical Center, which has its emergency room entrance near the O’Farrell Street and St. Joseph’s Avenue intersection.
After decades of heavy vehicle traffic, this section of pavement on O’Farrell Street was in very rough shape. The regionally tracked Pavement Condition Index score – which ranges from 0 for the worst, rutted road to 100 for a freshly paved road – put the blocks between Masonic Avenue and St. Joseph’s Avenue in the 15 to 40 range. That lands them squarely in the rating category of “poor.” By comparison, San Francisco has an overall rating of 75, deemed “good.”
Once the concrete is poured, crews use hand tools to create a smooth layer.
Soon, this part of O’Farrell Street will jump to a score closer to the perfect 100 mark when the paving project now underway is complete.
After installing curb ramps and replacing a small section of sewer main, our contractor crews began reconstructing the concrete street base – first on the block between Masonic Avenue and Lyon Street, then between Lyon Street and St. Joseph’s Avenue.
Street base reconstruction is an intensive process that first requires breaking up and removing the existing, 2-inch-thick asphalt roadway cover, as well as the 8-inch-thick concrete layer that lies beneath it. Once the existing roadway is excavated and the rubble hauled away, crews pour a new concrete street base and allow it to cure, which typically takes only a few hours.
Crews worked in phases to make sure one traffic lane remained open at all times. Extra consideration went into planning the work near the hospital.
The Public Works-led project team met with Kaiser Permanente representatives on site to map out how we could construct the new street base near the emergency room’s driveway without interfering with the hospital’s vitally important operations. The top priority was to ensure unfettered, around-the-clock access to the emergency room for ambulances and other emergency vehicles while keeping a safe, adequately sized work area for our road repair crews.
Special consideration went into making sure ambulances could access the emergency room during construction.
Fortunately, there was no work directly in front of the emergency room, keeping the entrance open for ambulances. And while road construction did occur near where the vehicles exit the driveway, crews worked quickly to pour the street base and apply temporary asphalt.
Things will get a bit more complicated the first week of October when we apply the permanent asphalt surface in front of the emergency room driveway. We consulted with Kaiser Permanente staff to see which days of the week and times of day they typically experience the least traffic to their emergency room and will try to schedule our paving operations during those downtimes. We’ll also phase the work to ensure that one side of the wide emergency room driveway will remain open at all times so ambulances can get through.
The Public Works Street Resurfacing Program manages the improvements to about 500 blocks every year, with some projects easier to plan and deliver than others. But all have the same goal: to make the City’s streets safer and smoother for the people of San Francisco.
A user of the SF311 customer service app reports an overflowing City trash can.
SF311 City
Services App
Expands to
Four Languages
The SF311 mobile app is now available in Chinese, Spanish and Filipino – expanding beyond just English and making it even easier to access City services in your preferred language.
With just a few taps on your Android or iPhone, you can quickly request some of the City's most popular services. The app will automatically detect your phone’s language – whether Chinese, Spanish, Filipino or English.
The 3-1-1 customer service center is vital to the work Public Works performs on behalf of the people of San Francisco. In fact, Public Works receives more 3-1-1 service requests than any other City department, accounting for one third of all 3-1-1 service requests.
Last year, we received 278,285 service requests through the 3-1-1 system. That’s almost 32 requests an hour, or one every two minutes. Every day of the year.
A little more than half our requests pertain to street cleaning. Others are for graffiti, potholes, damaged trees, sidewalk hazards and more.
As an on-the-ground department caring for the public right of way around the clock, the Public Works portfolio is vast and 3-1-1 is an important partner in our connection with residents and businesses.
Now, these language access upgrades to the 3-1-1 mobile app experience will make it easier for more San Franciscans to call upon our city government.
Not only does 3-1-1 provide a one-stop portal to make service requests, but it also lets people track their requests and provides City departments, such as Public Works, with data to map trends that can inform the deployment of resources.
