Since I posted last, I’ve gone on many a walk around my neighborhood. This is a part of San Francisco where everything is new. Since I posted last, I’ve seen the playground open. Earlier today I went by the playground and it was quite a lively scene at midday, midweek, noon on a Wednesday. See the pictures I took.
Each time I walk along the promenade on the north side of the creek there are always more mommies or nannies with young children in strollers, and today the park on the south side of the creek was as full as ever with folks out enjoying the sunshine in so many ways. Out walking dogs, taking the kids for a stroll, or just lying in the grass reading. Urban parks are the community’s oasis, and that’s truer than ever where businesses are taking so long to move in and give those of us who live here places to go.
It’s not fully built out yet. I passed by a construction site on my walk today. I’ve lived here since before most of these massive mid-rise and high-rise residential buildings sprung from the empty lots that were here. People who grew up elsewhere in San Francisco pass through and can’t believe how different it looks compared to how vacant all this land was just three or four years ago. Thousands of people live here now.
Construction on that kindergarten through elementary school hasn’t started yet. That’s another year away, and then it will take three years for the school to be built. It’s going to be one of the last things to be built here. It was promised to the community in the master plan for redeveloping this part of the City, and now it’s up to the San Francisco Unified School District to get moving on it, now that the voters approved the bond measure last November that earmarked money to build a school here, where so many young couples and families are moving in. I’m part of the steering committee that’s been advocating for the school to be built and in the past week or so, neighbors who are following this community effort have been asking what’s happening with that property? They see it’s now being used as a parking lot for construction workers. They are wondering when the school will be built.
Yes, there’s a lot going on. I’ll keep taking walks through the new neighborhood that’s no longer new to me but still very new in the sense that it’s growing, before my very eyes, and still has a few years to go before it’s completely built out.
The Creekside Correspondent 