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10th Anniversary Retrospective: Kern Parking Lot Closed

January 3, 2019 by Heather World

To celebrate the Glen Park Association Website turning ten years old, we are reposting some of our favorite stories from the last ten years.


[Edited most recently on January 7]

Nearly 50 years of free parking in downtown Glen Park ended abruptly last week when the gravel-strewn lot on Kern Alley was vacated and taped off. Two years of negotiation to legalize public parking there fell apart last November, and going forward the land will be for private use only.

“To say we were disappointed is an understatement,” said Patricia Hayes, who is managing the property for the Hayes family. The family owns some of the adjacent buildings as well.

In the end, it came down to trees.

“The landscape requirement of one tree per every five spaces and a five-foot landscape set-back from the sidewalk rendered the project unviable,” said Hayes in an email to the Glen Park Association. According to the architect hired to design the lot, the requirement would leave room for only seven vehicles.

The chapter is the latest in a long story of de facto parking and dense housing dreams. The land belonged to the City after the widening of Bosworth Street in the 1960s, but plans to create a city-owned public parking lot never materialized, and neither did a subsequent proposal to create city-owned public senior housing.

The lot was put on the market in 1971 and bought in 1974 by Tom Hayes and Bernie Kelly, both of whom owned several buildings in downtown Glen Park. (Bernie Kelly died in December 2017, and the Hayes family became the lot’s sole owner.)

All the while, people were parking there. But the land isn’t zoned for public parking. The eastern two-thirds of the lot is zoned for housing (RH2), which forbids public parking lot development. The western third is zoned “Neighborhood Commercial Transit” (NCT), which allows for apartments. Public parking lots can be developed on NCT land only if the owner applies for a short-term Conditional Use Permit, which in turn must be approved by the Planning Department.

With an eye toward developing the lot for housing in the long run, the Hayes family applied for a Conditional Use Permit in the meantime so they could charge for parking and thereby maintain the lot and keep it safe. The Planning Department denied the request.

Next Hayes went to then-Supervisor Jeff Sheehy for help. Sheehy wrote legislation to amend the City Planning Code to allow the multi-zoned parcel to be a public parking lot, putting in a sunset provision after six years.

Everyone seems to recognize the dual zoning is wonky and that unpermitted parking was a liability. In its recommendation against Sheehy’s legislation, the Planning Department hinted that someone should apply to rezone it all as NCT, though they didn’t promise to recommend approval of a conditional use for parking that might follow the rezoning.

Planning Commissioners themselves indicated support for rezoning the entire lot, as did some neighbors who testified. But that was not the legislation before them, and the Commissioners disapproved Sheehy’s legislation.

Nonetheless, the Board of Supervisors subsequently passed it in June, 2018, and plans to pave the parking lot were on again.

Patty Hayes came to the July 2018 Glen Park Association quarterly meeting and gave neighbors the news: The family was hiring Glen Park architectural firm SF-ARC to design the lot, and they hoped to develop housing there in the long term. The lot would no longer be free, she said, but the revenue from paid parking would be used to keep it clean and safe.

SF-ARC got to work but could not find a way to meet the city’s tree landscaping requirements and create a lot with enough spaces to generate the revenue needed for upkeep. By late November, after a second plan was rejected for want of trees, the Hayes family threw in the towel and decided to go private.

The lot will be available to the tenants of their commercial buildings downtown only. It will be paved, fenced, and have improved lighting, Hayes said, noting that at least it will look much better than it does now.

Filed Under: Kern Alley

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Glen Park Association is at Glen Park Greenway.
12 hours ago
Glen Park Association

Saturday’s Glen Park Greenway Work Party is Cancelled.

“I’m very sorry to say that
we have cancelled our Work Party for this Saturday July 12, along with all organized volunteer activity on the Greenway until further notice.
As you may have read in the news, our fiscal sponsor, San Francisco Parks Alliance (SFPA), has shut itself down. Just as SFPA has shut itself down, the Greenway, as an organized part of SFPA, has also been “shut down.” We are busy looking for a suitable alternative fiscal sponsor that is willing to replace SFPA. That search is going well but it is a slow process. We had hoped to find temporary ways to enable the Greenway project to function responsibly as a community activity without a fiscal sponsor. Sadly, despite our best efforts and the help of many others in Glen Park, we have failed. That is why we must cancel our Saturday Work Party and discontinue future work parties and other organized volunteer activity on the Greenway (like weeding and watering) until further notice. We recognize that the Greenway is public open space and that the organizers of the Greenway project have no control over the activities of you or of anyone else on the Greenway. However, if you do venture onto the Greenway to satisfy your urge for outdoor recreation, please be aware that your activity is not in any way organized or sanctioned by the organizers of the Glen Park Greenway project. I’m well aware of the efforts that many of the
Greenway’s supporters are making to get the Greenway organized with a new fiscal sponsor and I’m confident that this will be arranged within weeks or perhaps a few months.
However long it takes, I will contact you with news of our progress.
Many thanks for all that you do for the Greenway.”

Nicholas Dewar, volunteer Project Director

#glenparkgreenway #glenparksf #sanfrancisco @rafaelmandelmand8 @danielluriesf @crosstowntrail
#crosstowntrail #sfparksalliance #publicspace #nature
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Wonder what’s stopping just organizing it separate from that non-profit. It seems like the volunteers largely come from Glen Park.

Glen Park Association is at Laidley Street SFO.
4 days ago
Glen Park Association

It was a beautiful day for the annual #july4th celebration on Laidley street!

📷: Photos courtesy of Michael Waldstein

#glenparksf #sanfrancisco #laidley
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It was a beautiful day for the annual #july4th celebration on Laidley street! 

📷: Photos courtesy of Michael Waldstein 

#glenparksf #sanfrancisco #laidley
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Coyote Yipps
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Open SF History
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