Plan Potrero Hill SF

By Corinne Woods
Neighborhood Parks Council

While increasing the stock of affordable housing is a key element in the Eastern Neighborhoods planning process (see The Next Big Fight, San Francisco Bay Guardian, December 20, 2006), creating a new community involves more than building housing, even affordable housing. The San Francisco Planning Department is currently engaged in a “community-based” planning effort for land within the Showplace Square/Potrero Hill and Central Waterfront areas, among others. Unhappy about the length of time that the Planning Department has taken in this effort and cognizant of the intense developer pressure for parcel-by-parcel rezoning of industrial land to high-density residential uses under “conditional use” variances, the Potrero/Showplace Square/Dogpatch community itself is also conducting a concurrent planning effort: planpotrerohillsf.org.

In support of the community’s initiative, the Board of Supervisors, at their January 9, 2007 meeting, unanimously approved a Resolution establishing City and County Policy for the Eastern Neighborhoods Rezoning and Community Plans Area.
This resolution sets forth priorities that the community feels should be considered in the planning effort: not only affordable housing, but also public improvements, services and amenities, including recreation and community facilities, open space and transportation improvements that will bring a coherent sense of place to the area as it evolves.

San Francisco has about 5.5 acres of open space per 1,000 residents – about one half of the national standard, set by the National Recreation and Park Association, of 10 acres per 1,000 inhabitants. There are more than 4,000 acres of public open space owned by local, state and federal authorities within the City’s boundaries, the preponderance of which is on the western side of the City. In its 2003 report, Green Envy: Achieving Equity in Open Space, which is currently being updated, the Neighborhood Parks Council discovered that there is a serious gap in the distribution of accessible open space in the Eastern Neighborhoods, especially along the waterfront corridor. The eastern side of the City is identified in the Recreation and Open Space Element of San Francisco’s General Plan as a high-need area. This won’t come as a surprise to those who live or work in the Showplace Square, Potrero or Dogpatch neighborhoods.

Much of the eastern bayshore, of course, was historically zoned for industry, with little area included for residential or commercial uses. Industrial areas have not traditionally had much parkland. As these areas are redeveloped for residential and commercial uses, with significantly increased density, adequate parkland and public open space needs to be reserved for public use and enjoyment, including the environmental restoration of the bay edge wherever possible. These are also the mandate for development of the State Lands Commission.

The 300-acre Mission Bay Redevelopment Project will, when complete, add about 49 acres of open space including parks and plazas along Mission Creek and San Francisco Bay, with another 8 acres of (not very accessible) open space to be developed within the UCSF Mission Bay campus. While this is a significant addition to the neighborhood, Mission Bay will be quite dense, with 6,000 housing units (adding 10 to15,000 residents), 6 million sq. ft. of office/life science/technology commercial space, and a 500-room hotel. The UCSF research campus will contain 2.65 million sq. ft. of buildings on its 43 acres, including a 750 bed housing facility for students, faculty and staff, plus an additional 14.5 acres for a new hospital for women, children and cancer patients. When it is built out, the Mission Bay Redevelopment area will have up to 30,000 new workers.

Using San Francisco’s current open space average of 5.5 acres per 1,000 residents, if we add 12,000 new residents we would anticipate gaining at least 66 acres of open space, or preferably 120 acres of open space using the national standard of 10 acres per 1,000 residents. Unfortunately, Mission Bay won’t even meet the current San Francisco standard, let alone relieve the deficit of open space in surrounding eastern neighborhoods.

In the area covered by the Eastern Neighborhoods Planning Process (Better Neighborhoods 2002), open spaces consist of Jackson Playground, Esprit Park, Potrero Hill Playground, and two small waterfront parks managed by the Port of San Francisco – Agua Vista Park and Warm Water Cove Park. To accommodate the expected population increase of up to 10,000 new residents in the Central Waterfront area, the City needs to fund and find another 55 – 100 acres of open space. Showplace Square, also being considered for rezoning from industrial to high-density residential use, should also include sufficient publicly- accessible open space to accommodate the increased density.

Current planning regulations have allowed “live-work” market rate lofts to be built in industrial areas at 100% lot coverage and little or no private open space or any requirement for public parks in the immediate vicinity. The Planning Department does not seem to be able to take into account the cumulative impact of all of these individual developments that are essentially creating new neighborhoods. Not even a playground is eked out of large development projects. It’s no wonder families are moving out of San Francisco.

There are several proposed individual projects currently under review by the Planning Department that would rezone industrial parcels to residential uses on a parcel-by-parcel basis. If these pending projects are exempted from analysis of cumulative impacts under the Environmental Impact Report for the Eastern Neighborhoods, it will be much more difficult to achieve equity in open space for the area as a whole.

How can neighborhood serving accessible open space be provided in a city with competing priorities and sky-high prices for land? First, it must be acknowledged that land use development policies impact public health, and, as such, deserve special consideration in comprehensive land use planning. The San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) recently released a draft Eastern Neighborhoods Community Health Impact Assessment (ENCHIA) Final Report (December 2006) after an eighteen month effort to comprehensively evaluate the health benefits and burdens of a community planning process. One of the conclusions of this report is that open space planning should be a priority for healthy neighborhoods. The ENCHIA process produced an assessment tool, the Healthy Development Measurement Tool, which reflects a systematic approach to assessing social, environmental, economic and equity priorities for land use planning through the lens of health. It is vital that we begin to use this tool with all projects under consideration and that come forward in the future. The City Planning Department and other city agencies involved in the Eastern Neighborhoods planning process must not miss these important opportunities to add critically needed open space.

Second, the City should actively adhere to the recommendations for Parks, Open Space and Streetscapes in the Sustainability Plan for San Francisco in the Eastern Neighborhoods planning process. This plan has four major goals: providing attractive and numerous vegetated oases and tree lined streets; maintenance of this vital resource; expanding public participation in supporting our “green” resources and recreational facilities; and providing adequate civic commitment to fund urban forest and recreation programs. While streetscape improvements are an important element of the plan, they cannot replace parks.

Third, it is important to identify and reserve adequate land for open space development early in the process. Otherwise, only the “left over” land, that can’t be intensively developed for residential or commercial use, will be available. In the Eastern Neighborhoods, Port of San Francisco property, which is subject to the Public Trust that sets a high priority on public access and open space, may offer the best opportunity for development of parks and recreation facilities where such uses would not conflict with the Port’s maritime operations or deprive the Port of income-producing uses. Although surplus Port land may be available, the cost of environmental remediation and open space development are far beyond the Port’s financial resources. The cost should be shared by the City and by the developers or new residents who will benefit from the improvements.

Fourth, both the Neighborhood Parks Council’s Green Envy Report and San Francisco’s Sustainability Plan outline mechanisms for funding acquisition, development and maintenance of publicly accessible open space. The Environmental Impact Report for the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan (and for each and every separate project proposed within the Plan areas) should address the cumulative impacts of increased density, and incorporate required mitigations that provide funding mechanisms for acquisition, development and maintenance of parks and recreation facilities as conditions for rezoning. Privately owned land could be purchased, or already-publicly owned lands (possibly traded from one agency to another) could be developed and maintained using public Open Space funds, bond funds or state and federal funds or development fees, community facilities districts, or any combination of these mechanisms.

However acquisition is accomplished, development and maintenance of new open space in the Eastern Neighborhoods requires a plan that acknowledges the importance of parks as a critical environmental, social, and health element in creating a new and vital San Francisco neighborhood.

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