As pretty much every attempt to reduce blight around the 16th and Mission BART station has failed, BART is now floating the idea of a “community-driven process” of meetings and workshops to revitalize the beleaguered station area.

Some might argue with the premise of a Sunday Chronicle story which claims that the Civic Center BART station and UN Plaza have been quite thoroughly cleaned up by the new skateboard park, lines of trees that have been added, and the occasional free concert held there. The Chron describes that area surrounding CIVIC Center station as “utterly enchanting, starting with the skate park at United Nations Plaza and culminating in a Beaux Arts square lined with London plane trees and manicured grass.”

The area is certainly somewhat nicer now, though maybe not “enchanting.” The same cannot be said for the blighted 16th and Mission BART plaza area, which for decades has felt as chaotic and unsettling as the Mos Eisley Cantina from Star Wars. Many in the neighborhood feel that Mayor Lurie’s Sixth Street crackdown just moved more mayhem to 16th and Mission, and the city has tried a few failed interventions like putting up metal anti-vending barriers and putting a giant SF Police RV there.

And yet the vending and the drug sales continue pretty much unabated at 16th and Mission. So the Chronicle reports that the BART Board of Directors is planning to hold “community workshops” and a “community-driven process” to basically just ask the public for their ideas to clean up the plaza.

That may seem like a desperate idea from a BART board that is just grasping at straws. But a funny quote from former board director Bevan Dufty makes it clear that the directors’ ideas have not worked, particularly when Dufty had a ping-pong table placed at the plaza.

“I may be culpable for the ping-pong table that turned into a den of sex,” Dufty told the Chron, acknowledging that it was used for public sex. “I definitely lost any chance I had of getting a plaque in that station.”

There have been no public meetings yet, but current BART board director Edward Wright says these meetings will start in November. So we’ll keep any eye out for announcements on that. Meanwhile, the Chronicle spoke to a few passersby at 16th and Mission, who recommended  cleaner tiles, more security, and the addition of new features “so it doesn’t look like a trap house.”

Related: New 16th Street Police Presence Just Moving Blight to Nearby Alleys, Residents Say [Joe]

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist