The "Crooked Truth" Behind City's Real Crooked Street
By NBC's JEAN ELLE
The crookedest street in San Francisco is a bit of a secret. It's Vermont Street in Potrero Hill. A winding road topped off with picturesque McKinley Square Park.
But there is another secret. Something one neighbor has named the crooked truth.
Videos on YouTube and pictures on Facebook reveal an ongoing problem with homeless encampments, trash and graffiti in the steep wooded hillside along Hwy. 101.
"We've had homeless issues, gangs kids coming to drink, drugs," resident Henry Wimmer said adding that neighbors have been trying to get help to clean up their neighborhood for years.
The problem: jurisdiction.
The McKinley Square Park Foundation has brought together a daunting list of agencies.
The land on the west side of the fence is Caltrans and the California Highway Patrol and on the east side, it's San Francisco Rec and Park, public works and the San Francisco Police Department.
Graffiti is now being painted, police are on patrol and Caltrans says it has spent $187,000 in the last six month regularly clearing the property along the freeway.
But the job is far from over. As soon as agencies clear an area, residents say the encampments come back.
But neighborhoods are not giving up. They are working to redesign the park. Residents hope lighting and thinner greenery will help them take the park back.
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Community leads charge for improvements to park
By: Will Reisman
Examiner Staff Writer
August 30, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO — Unwilling to wait for The City to foot the bill, one community in San Francisco is taking it upon itself to improve a treasured but underutilized local park.
Potrero Hill residents want to raise $500,000 over the next two years to improve McKinley Square, a six-acre park on 20th Street that serves a community with an ever-growing number of families.
The park already features an enclosed play structure for children, patches of green lawn for dog-walking and natural shrubbery.
But The City has never heavily invested in the neighborhood resource, according to Joyce Book, who founded the McKinley Square Park Foundation in May.
About 80 percent of the park’s terrain has a steep downward slope, limiting accessibility for seniors, children, and people with disabilities, Book said.
At a community meeting hosted by the McKinley Square Park Foundation on Aug. 19, residents suggested terracing the slope to add walking paths and flat green spaces for volleyball or bocce ball surfaces.
Other suggestions for McKinley Square include working with local schools to establish education programs at the park, Book said.
The Week That Was: October 19-25, 2009
I headed out to McKinley Square at night for a Meet and Greet with the neighbors of the park, including members of the McKinley Square Park Foundation. Folks from the San Francisco Parks Trust were also on hand. I took a tour of the park and discussed with the neighbors some of their issues and concerns related to the park.
At the forefront of their concerns are the public health and safety issues that are present at the lower end of the park and plans for a new park design to better utilize open space to meet the needs of the neighborhoods diverse community.
The Community Challenge Grant Program (CCG) is a community-based fund that provides resources to local residents, businesses, non-profits and other community groups to make physical improvements to their neighborhoods.
The CCG focuses on projects that directly engage residents and businesses in creating green spaces, gathering places, public art, and other neighborhood amenities by featuring and applying ecologically friendly amenities and practices.
The program is an important tool for enabling communities to take the lead in conducting small scale improvements in their own communities, and is a critical component of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Livable City Initiative.
This year the McKinley Square Park Foundation (MSPF) has sponsored the Vermont Street Neighborhood Association (VSNA) for a 50K grant on behalf of the areas surrounding McKinley Square. The beautification project includes new gathering spaces, native gardens and a children's play area. The project site is located on DPW unimproved land located at the base of Vermont Street at 21st.
VSNA and their members did an excellent job in the areas of community outreach, flyers, 20+ letters of support from individual neighbors and exceeded the minimum 25% financial requirement in order to participate at this level of funding.
*CCG award notification is 9/20/10. We'll send out an update as the process evolves.
Read more here...
