It’s been a big week for park lovers in San Francisco. On Saturday, India Basin Shoreline Park opened on the Southeastern waterfront. And on Tuesday morning, city and community leaders gathered on the Eastern waterfront to celebrate the opening of Bayfront Park.
“I've been waiting for this park for years and it is glorious,” declares Adam Ringel. He's a local Bay City Bikes tour guide and he says he’s excited to start taking his tours down to the park.
“I actually take people literally by Chase Center, so I'll be happily pointing it out. I literally make a turn right next to it over at 16th Street, so you're damn right, I will be, and I'll be pointing this out with legitimate pride.”
Bayfront Park was conceived of more than 20 years ago, as part of the Mission Bay South Redevelopment Plan. It will be owned and maintained by the Port of San Francisco, which has a mandate to deal with the effects of climate change.
Seth Hamalian is a developer who’s worked on the project for years. He says the park was designed with rising sea levels in mind: Where the sidewalk meets the water, rocks gradually slope down.
“So, you don't have a sharp sea wall, because that doesn't allow energy from wave action to dissipate. The second thing is you actually change elevation. You have the opportunity to do it subtly, where if I'm walking along here over time as I'm moving through this park, I'm actually at a higher elevation than kind of the standard elevation in the surrounding area.”
In 2021, the Mayor’s Office created something called ClimateSF, to coordinate and oversee existing and future climate resilience projects. But a 2024 Civil Grand Jury Report found that it was having trouble coordinating with other city departments and that it needed to be more proactive about communicating to residents the future impacts of climate change.
Some predictions say that the water will rise three to six feet — or more — by the end of the century. Groups throughout the Bay Area are doing their best to prepare for this. City officials are hopeful that Bayfront park’s design will hold up against this looming threat.
