The scraggly yellowed bluff where Everson Street dead ends will soon become a scenic overlook with tree-framed views of the San Francisco Bay, thanks to an anonymous donation of almost $100,000* to the Recreation and Parks Department to restore the small neighborhood open space.
“We anticipate completing the work this winter,” said Nathan Tinclair, deputy director of partnerships at the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department.
A ring of boulders along the Everson border of the park will prevent vehicles from driving in (which does happen on occasion, Tinclair said), and visitors will be able to walk to the bluff’s edge along a trail surrounded by native plants. A new water connection and drip irrigation will sustain the plants, which have been suggested by the department’s Natural Areas staff.
Click here to see the proposed design.
The work will include tree pruning and the removal of about 25 trees, focussed primarily on eucalyptus trees in poor condition, Tinclair said. Notices posted by last weekend appeared to be on the park’s younger trees. (Click here to see the department’s Environmental Evaluation of the site. Thank you to neighbor Tom Borden for linking to this in his comment below.)
According to its page on the department’s website, the spot is popular with a variety of birds, from resident chestnut-back chickadees to migratory warblers. The site also spells the park’s name without the “u” that appears in all other spellings in Glen Park, from the formerly named Fairmount Elementary School to Fairmount Heights to Fairmount Street itself, which leads up to the base of the bluff.
Tinclair will appear at the Glen Park Association’s October 17, 2019, meeting at the Glen Park Recreation Center to describe the project to interested neighbors.
To give feedback before the meeting, email Tinclair at nathan.tinclair@sfgov.org
*Editor’s note: The original story said the donation was $1 million, which was wrong and later corrected. Contact information added later as well. Later we included a link to the site’s Environmental Evaluation provided by a neighbor in comments below.
Wow, a $1,000,000 donation — that’s a good feeling to know it’s going toward restoration of a natural area/park. I wonder if it will include pulling out all the weeds and such along Amatista stairway. It’s a lovely, sweet, quiet and hidden spot. I hope it doesn’t get Intstagrammed up the wazoo, and become overtrodden.
Well, thank you, kind and anonymous donor, for your generosity.
So sorry about the wrong number. Turns out it’s $100k, not $1m. Quite a difference!
Great news. I hope this will prompt the city to study turning the 300 block of Fairmount (it is signed and it exists on paper, but in real life doesn’t look like a road) into a public stairway. The owners of the 210 Laidley mega mansion that was under construction for years was using this area—public land—to brace scaffolding, but all work has stopped as the project gets sold off as-is. Now is the time for Glen Park residents to reclaim it.
I was initially happy to see someone donating towards our parks. Unfortunately, the “anonymous” donation turns out to be a bribe by the new homeowner that built the new McMansion at 44 Everson St to get 17 trees chopped down, so they will have a spectacular view that they didn’t originally pay for. Since private landowners don’t generally get approval to remove established trees, they turned to the SF Rec and Parks Dept to wrap the deforestation plan in something that seems like a positive on the surface. While helping Parks Dept with their aim of eliminating all non-native trees and giving the donor a nice view of downtown that they didn’t have when they bought the lot.
Keep in mind, there are NO native trees in San Francisco, so that Native plant mandate they hoodwinked the supervisors into approving before, gives them authority to remove any trees in any park area they choose. They have officially identified over 20,000 “non-native” trees in SF parks to remove thus far.
I might be mistaken here, but I understand that eucalyptus trees have a very shallow root system – easily subject to dangerously falling – plus very flammable. Because the growth is relatively fast, the trees are susceptible to “widow makers”. That besides all the the flammable leaf drop and trunk:branch peeling. And that they are native to Australia…do I have this somewhat correct?
True, Phil — and the oil in the dropped leaves and bark, even if it doesn’t catch fire, is toxic to many native groundcover and other plants. San Francisco does have SOME native trees — mostly oaks — but they were limited to river or creek valleys until developers started planting import trees to make the landscape look more European and attract buyers. The whole Panhandle and much of Golden Gate Park came about in that way; there’s a book (“Trees of the Panhandle” by Elizabeh McClintock) on the plantings as an experiment in what would flourish in the “great Western Desert” of the City. Friends of the Urban Forest can tell you more — they may still give a walking tour on this subject.
You can see a lot more information about the project in this Environmental Evaluation assembled by the Planning Department.
https://sfrecpark.org/wp-content/uploads/Item-5b-Fairmont-Plaza-Planning-Department-Note-to-File-SNRMP.pdf
It includes information on the tree assessments. It is interesting that this project is being run by a “deputy director of partnerships”. In this case the partnership is between a new McMansion owner who doesn’t want those trees blocking his view and RPD’s Natural Resource Division (NRD) that wants to remove as many trees as possible from our undeveloped parkland.
Watch for closure of little trails in the park. The one trail shown on the diagrams is likely the only one that the NRD wants to exist when they are done. Fences may be installed. It would be a shame if this ended up like Corona Heights where you feel like you are confined in cattle chutes.
I have just take another lovely walk around this area and I do not agree at all that the mega-mansion people get huge new views. There are no houses sitting behind that grove of eucalyptus. Some houses side views will be more open but compared to making the area more usable with nicer plants the rest of us get something better too. I am no eucalyptus hater and there are some lovely old trees there, but it is a problem plant, for reasons your other readers understand better than I.