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Esmeralda Slide Park in San Francisco is shown in 2023. The Bernal Heights space is part of the city\u2019s Street Parks Program, maintained by neighborhood volunteers.<\/p>\n
Santiago Mejia\/The Chronicle<\/p>\n
Esmeralda Slide Park in San Francisco is shown in 2023. Residents oversee the Bernal Heights site, one of dozens of community-maintained street parks.<\/p>\n
Santiago Mejia\/The Chronicle<\/p>\n
The signature double slide at Esmeralda Slide Park in San Francisco is shown in 2023.<\/p>\n
Santiago Mejia\/The Chronicle<\/p>\n
Raul Romero has been a tireless volunteer clearing away junk and helping build the freeway-side greenway in San Francisco\u2019s Portola neighborhood.<\/p>\n
Jana Asenbrennerova\/Special to The Chronicle<\/p>\n
Esmeralda Slide Park in San Francisco welcomes visitors with a big sign marking its signature attraction, a gleaming steel double slide that swooshes kids on a 40-foot ride past rows of immaculately terraced planters. Anyone taking the steep, tree-lined stairs through this leafy slice of Bernal Heights might assume it is a city park under jurisdiction of the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department.<\/p>\n
Esmeralda is an outlier\u00a0\u2014 planned, planted, named and maintained by its neighbors, with oversight from San Francisco Public Works, which owns the property as a public right of way. There are 137 of these open spaces, called street parks, each with a volunteer steward in charge.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The city could always use more of both\u00a0\u2014 street parks and stewards\u00a0\u2014 so it will promote the concept this weekend by hosting its first-ever Street Park Summit<\/a> at its Public Works Street Tree Nursery<\/a>, between the I-80 overpasses on Fifth Street.<\/p>\n The half-day summit Saturday morning will include advice from city landscapers, gardeners and arborists, as well as grant-writing experts to assist with funding outreach. The seminar will end with a field trip in city shuttle vans to see five showcase sites in the Street Parks Program,<\/a> a partnership between Public Works and residents who don\u2019t mind getting their hands dirty for no pay.<\/p>\n STREET PARK SUMMIT<\/p>\n When: 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday, April 18 \u201cThese are odd little pieces of land that would otherwise be dormant and neglected,\u201d explained Ramses Alvarez, community engagement manager for Public Works. These odd lots can be next to staircases on hillsides or median strips, or in areas originally mapped out for paved streets that turned out to be too steep or narrow, known as \u201cunaccepted\u201d or \u201cpaper\u201d streets.<\/p>\n San Francisco Chronicle Logo<\/p>\n Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re looking for people to become a steward of a space that maybe they look at out their bedroom window,\u201d Alvarez said. \u201cThey might say, \u2018That space requires a little more love, and I want to give it to them.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n That\u2019s what happened to Joan Carson and her husband, Wayne Harriman. After they moved onto Prospect Street in Bernal Heights in 2001, they decided to adopt Esmeralda Stairway, which ran down the hillside adjacent to their house, and was overgrown in weeds and generally neglected.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWay back when I took this on, 15 years ago, I was able to get compost bags from Public Works, and got training in how to clean up the graffiti and the paint to do it with,\u201d Carson said. That was about the extent of city assistance available.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere weren\u2019t very many street parks or people you could talk to, to share resources,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Carson organized the first community workday, and 42 neighbors signed up. She called herself the lead volunteer, a title that evolved into steward\u00a0\u2014 and she became the first of 137 of them.<\/p>\n She also renamed the staircase the Esmeralda Slide Park, after her group refurbished the kids slide that runs parallel to the staircase. She made the wooden letters for the sign.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cEsmeralda is what it\u2019s all about. Somebody from the community stepped in and thought the place needed more nurturing,\u201d said Carson.\u00a0 \u201cWayne and I spent four years working the area before the city stepped in and got involved with doing infrastructure repairs.\u201d<\/p>\n An arbor bearing wooden \u201cEsmeralda Slide Park\u201d lettering, made by steward Joan Carson, is shown in San Francisco in 2023.<\/p>\n Santiago Mejia\/The Chronicle<\/p>\n By the time Public Works became involved,\u00a0Esmeralda Slide Park had already won a Seven Hills Award from the nonprofit San Francisco Beautiful, in 2015.<\/p>\n \u201cSan Francisco Beautiful is a huge supporter of neighbors working to improve the small-scale civic infrastructure,\u201d said Robert Ogilvie, CEO of the 80-year-old organization. \u201cThe Street Parks Program is one of the most important and visible things that San Francisco Public Works does. It is an example of government at its best.\u201d<\/p>\n The Street Parks Program, which launched in 2004 with one staff person, has added two more in the past two years. For big cleanup events, it sends out landscapers and gardeners to assist the volunteers, lend tools and supply gardening gloves. Most importantly, it supplies bags to pick up the green waste and sends out a truck to haul them away.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n All of this assistance comes later. Launching a street park is up to the neighbors.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I moved in now, when the Street Parks Program is beyond its infancy, and tried to figure out how to make this a better place, they would connect me with other park stewards and give the guidance to find the resources I need,\u201d Carson said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Raul Romero, volunteer at Portola Greenway, poses for a portrait during the Bloom Shaboom Community Block Party in the Portola District, the historic greenhouse part of the city, on May 15, 2022.<\/p>\n Jana Asenbrennerova\/Special to The Chronicle<\/p>\n Street parks, also called pocket parks, are funded by donations and grants\u00a0\u2014 unlike a sister program, Green Benefit Districts, which require approval by a vote of property owners and are paid for through property tax assessments. They include the recently-opened Minnesota Grove<\/a> on Minnesota Street in Dogpatch and the Glen Park Greenway, along the former banks of Islais Creek.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Where: 415 Fifth St., San Francisco
What: Networking with San Francisco street parks stewards and Public Works staff; informational sessions on community challenge grants, permits and gardening techniques; and a shuttle tour of several street parks.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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