In a city where every resident is famously only a 10-minute walk from a park, two more parks opened this week: India Basin Waterfront Park and Bayfront Park. They opened within 72 hours of each other, reports the San Francisco Standard, and are part of an effort to green up the industrial eastern shoreline.
Beating Bayfront Park by a few days, the southern half of India Basin Waterfront Park opened on October 19. The park offers a new food pavilion for local vendors and community cooking classes, a boat building shop, two new public piers, a floating dock, an accessible walkway and native landscaping. There’s also a huge ground mural titled Lady Bayview by Raylene Gorum, an artist whose family is rooted in the Bayview. The park’s website says, “The artwork is inspired by the Big Five of Bayview, a group of Black women leaders who, in the 1960s and 1970s, successfully advocated for housing, health and labor issues, a local theater and more.” Finally, the circa 1875 Shipwright’s Cottage, a San Francisco Landmark, is rehabilitated and open as a welcome center.
This open space connects the neighborhood of Bayview-Hunter’s Point to the shoreline for the first time in generations, creating a community park out of a brownfield (a former industrial site with potential presence of contaminants). It’s part of the larger India Basin Waterfront Park project, a 10-acre, $200 million plan to combine with adjacent India Basin Shoreline Park. The project began a few years ago and will eventually deliver miles of trails, shore access, waterfront recreation and protections against sea level rise.
Not too far away, the $32 million Bayfront Park opened on October 22. It’s a 5.4-acre waterfront stretch next to Chase Center. The park connects to the Bay Trail and incorporates reminders of its past as Bethlehem Steel, the company that built ships (including liberty ships for World War II and the barges and crane ships you see in the Mothball Fleet), the Golden Gate Bridge and sections of BART’s Transbay Tube. Those reminders include three salvaged World War II era ship anchors and reclaimed steel beams from the Bay Bridge’s eastern span which create shade structures and visual interest. The beams are installed upright at an angle, with saplings planted next to them. The park consists of open lawns with picnic areas and barbecue pits. Its built-up stormwater retention feature should withstand rising sea levels and even 100-year storms.
What’s next to come? A restaurant or concession area, and a future ferry terminal. Seems like a great place to have a pregame picnic before crossing over to Chase Center.