HOK provided pro-bono design services and volunteer labor to create park space in one of San Francisco’s most underserved districts.
After nearly five years of community outreach, planning and design, San Francisco has its newest gateway park. The open space at the intersection of Meade Avenue and 3rd Street transforms an underutilized sliver of land into a welcome sign for the Bayview neighborhood.
Eight-foot-tall letters spelling out “BAYVIEW” greet visitors as they enter the historic neighborhood located in the city’s southeast corner. HOK’s San Francisco studio led community visioning on the project and provided planning and landscape architecture services. Members of HOK’s San Francisco team also helped secure funding for the park and create the mosaics that decorate each of the Bayview letters.
“This project really was public-private partnership. Without the design help of HOK and support from city and state representatives, we couldn’t have envisioned a space that represented our community so well,” said Marsha Maloof, president of the Bayview Hills Neighborhood Association.
HOK’s Roana Tirado speaks during the Aug. 14 ribbon-cutting for the new park.
“Design is a powerful tool to help people reestablish a sense of community and pride of place,” said Roana Tirado, a landscape architect and project manager who led HOK’s team. “We hope this project can serve as a prototype for similar efforts within this neighborhood and for other communities across the city and country.”
HOK also worked with the neighborhood association and the San Francisco Department of Public Works to develop a master plan and design guidelines for a network of additional open spaces in the neighborhood.
Members of HOK’s San Francisco studio spent the morning of June 19 (Juneteenth) volunteering on site. Working alongside neighborhood residents, the HOK team added mosaics to the Bayview letters.
Civic infrastructure installed over the past century has divided Bayview and ruptured connections within the historically working-class neighborhood. Now, as housing costs soar, Bayview has become one the city’s fastest growing neighborhoods.
HOK’s planning and design celebrates the neighborhood’s proud ties to Native American and Black communities while preserving green space to help offset gentrification. Native wildflowers, grasses and trees will soon fill in around the massive Bayview letters.
Public Glass, a local arts nonprofit, led the design for the mosaics using ceramic and glass materials donated from the community. Household dishes, vases, pottery and glassware reinforce the park’s connection to Bayview residents.
Video of the ribbon-cutting event courtesy of HereSay Media.