HANC’s April meeting featured a lively discussion regarding the Rec & Park Department’s plan for the old 780 Frederick site of our recycling center, community garden and native plant nursery and of the bike rental business at the entrance to Golden Gate Park.
Denis Mosgofian, from the Parks, Recreation Open Space Advisory Committee (PROSAC), started things off with a discussion of recent documents revealed through Sunshine requests, as reported in the April VOICE. This was followed by a presentation from a representative of the Rec & Park Department, Dawn Kamalanathan (Director of Capital and Planning Division).
Ms. Kamalanathan outlined the plan for the project, which has evolved from a community garden to an urban agriculture “hub”. She took issue with some of the documents about which Denis spoke, stating that they were just “ideas”. When asked about community input to the new and expanded project, she said that the 140 folks who signed up for community garden plots (2 years ago!) would be solicited for their input. And that’s the extent of community outreach, it seems. Ms. Kamalanathan, a neighbor of the 780 site during construction of the community garden never came to visit (because she was not “invited”). She was asked why funds can be found for this new project ($1.6 million) but not to fix other Rec & Park facilities crying out for maintenance and her answer was not particularly warmly received by the crowd in attendance.
Also discussed with Nick Kinsey of Rec & Park was the bicycle rental project run by ParkWide at the Stanyan Street entrance to Golden Gate Park. The project was seen as a way to “activate” the site in a “positive” way so as not to have tourists intimidated by the current habitués of the park (hobos, transients, world travelers, wayward youth, drug addicts, drug dealers, homeless youth---whatever label one wants to assign them). The trial run seems to have improved the ambiance on the sidewalk in front of the entrance, given that sitting or lying when bicycles occupy the space is impossible, so there was a move to extend the contract with ParkWide for 7 days a week. HANC was concerned about the impact on bicycle rental shops so offered and passed a resolution asking that a 3-4 day ParkWide occupancy be worked out between the affected merchants (through the Haight Ashbury Merchants Association—HAMA), Supervisor Breed’s office and Rec & Park. As it turned out, a five-day compromise was agreed to for ParkWide to operate their business at the site.