City kids need good, safe ball fields in Golden Gate Park
The existing grass fields in use at the Beach Chalet soccer fields. Photo courtesy SFRPD and City Fields Foundation
Opinion By Phil Ginsburg and Susan Hirsch
Seven hours. That’s how long it took for Little League’s registration to fill up this year because there aren’t enough ball fields in San Francisco for all the kids who want to play.
For city parents, this is unfortunate but not unusual; many know that youth sports in San Francisco are entirely constrained by a lack of sports fields. Up to 4,000 kids use the City’s ball fields for several hours every day after school, and we simply can’t accommodate them all. The grass sports fields we do have are quickly overwhelmed because they can’t handle that amount of play. As a result, the fields are often closed
For example, on Nov. 1, with two weeks left in the youth sports season, one of the city’s main ball-field areas – the Beach Chalet Athletic Fields – was closed for the year. Just as it is forced to do every year to prepare for the spring season, the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department locked the facility to give the worn-down grass several months to rest and regrow.
This isn’t right. We can do a better job for our kids and our city. But it’s going to be a balancing act and will require a little flexibility from everyone.
Last month, a draft environmental report was released for a proposal to renovate the Beach Chalet Athletic Fields with synthetic turf, field lights and other improvements to rejuvenate the entire area. This report found the project will have practically no impact on the environment, the park, local wildlife or city residents.
In fact, the only “unavoidable significant impact” is that the soccer fields would no longer be one of the 137 contributors to the Golden Gate Park National Historic District. But given that there are so many other historic features in the park, the overall historic designation of the park won’t change.
The proposed renovation of the Beach Chalet soccer fields would also include a small playground and other changes. Image courtesy SFRPD and City Fields Foundation.
You read that right, the big impact from the Beach Chalet Athletic Field renovation will be that the fields will no longer be on a list. The lights won’t be seen by park neighbors, traffic increases are so minimal that they will be undetectable, birds and bees have plenty of foraging area throughout the park, and the synthetic turf itself is perfectly safe according to dozens of studies.
On the other hand, by renovating these fields with synthetic turf and lights we will add more than 9,000 hours of new annual play — tripling the amount of playtime on these fields. We’ll save more than 6 million gallons of water a year, we’ll eliminate the use of herbicides and pesticides at this location (yes, they are still used), and we’ll add numerous amenities to make this area of the park more family-friendly and welcoming to all.
Among the site’s improvements will be a new plaza, a rehabilitated restroom, bike racks, on-field seating, a small playground, a picnic area, barbecues, and walking trails that will allow people to easily travel between the park and Ocean Beach.
Best of all, this project is jointly funded by Rec-Park and the City Fields Foundation as part of our multiyear, citywide effort to provide after-school sports fields for kids. Our partnership has already fixed up a dozen sports fields in six different parks, adding thousands of hours of new playtime for local kids. In fact, due to these field renovations, 1,800 more kids are playing soccer each year on 148 new teams. Our efforts are working.
We only renovated high-use fields that are in poor condition and are only doing a selectnumber of synthetic-turf-and-light renovations. Nearly all grass ball fields in San Francisco will remain grass. But to keep the grass fields in good shape, Recreation and Parks relies on the synthetic-turf fields to absorb much of the heavy play.
Some have asked why it’s not possible to renovate the field with new drainage and grass. The fact is, over the years, Rec-Park has renovated dozens and dozens of city sports fields with grass, only to see the fields quickly degrade into poor and often unsafe condition. This not only wastes tax dollars, it doesn’t provide safe places for kids and athletes to play.
Given the amount of play on San Francisco’s sports fields, there is simply no way to keep grass fields in safe, playable condition without closing the fields for long periods. As a result, the Beach Chalet fields are available only by reservation and only during certain times of the year. That’s not right – Golden Gate Park deserves quality ball fields and San Franciscans should be able to safely enjoy a ball game in the City’s largest and most popular park.
Think about it. What would happen if you and a couple hundred of your closest friends ran over one spot of your living room rug for several hours each day? It sounds like a silly question, but that’s exactly what happens every day on San Francisco’s sports fields, and why the proposal to renovate Golden Gate Park’s Beach Chalet Athletic Fields is the right thing to do.
For information, visit www.cityfieldsfoundation.org or www.sfrecpark.org.
Phil Ginsburg is the general manager of the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department and a father of two youth soccer players. Susan Hirsch is the project director of the City Fields Foundation and raised two children in San Francisco.
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Publisher’s Note: This opinion article does not necessarily represent the opinion of the Ocean Beach Bulletin. It represents the opinion of its authors, who are responsible for the veracity of statements made in it. The Ocean Beach Bulletin accepts submissions of opinion articles, but does not guarantee publication. For more information, please email Tom Prete.
and for the record, I’m in favor of the astroturf. Having grown up in the midwest, I always have this instinctive thing against astroturf, but having lived here for 10 years or so, I realize that grass here just turns to mud super fast, and isnt really practical at all.
4oceans…………we want families in SF. Families need playgrounds that are safe for their children to play on and not worry about gofer holes, and lack of grass. The real environmental challenge for SF is population growth. How many more people can our natural resources and infrastructure accommodate?
Phil & Susan: Good try but no cigar. You can’t possibly maintain there are no impacts but a line on a list when your own EIR says this at page ES-1:
Proposed field lighting would consist of ten 60‐foot‐tall light standards made of galvanized steel. Two light standards each would be located at the north and south ends of the facility and another six light standards would be located between the centermost fields. Each light fixture, or assembly, would consist of ten 1,500‐watt metal halide lamps. In addition to the field light standards, the project includes 47 approximately 15‐foot‐tall pedestrian pathway light standards and 13 approximately 18‐foot‐tall parking lot light standards.
My God Phil (and you work for the District !!!), you’re talking about lighting up the entire west side of the City. I’m no math expert, but 10 x 1500 = 15,000 watts PER POLE ! on the 10 60-footers ALONE.
Have you all heard about carbon emissions and climate change?? This is absurd. A lighted field for kids in exchange for a planet they won’t be able to live on in 50 years ?!?
Get real guys, the Coastal Commission will never approve this. Eliminate the lights now and at least you’ll have a shot at helping kids.
4oceans………….suggestion, focus your energies on birth control and cap the population for SF. Now that would really be relevant for the environment.
Yes, over-population and poor dispersal of population and I think we will see it on a local level in SF.
Not much attention paid by those who sign off on this development in SF. “Open space” related to housing developments is relegated to a mini-park or green, which we know now will be populated largely by dogs and their owners, err, guardians. I don’t see provisions for children (and adults) to have room to move about–throw a ball or frisbee, i.e., get real exercise. I think all the affluent folk who are moving into most of these new developments are just assuming they will belong to gyms and take off to recreation sites/ski slopes on the weekends in their Audis, Lexuses, BMW’s.
15kW is really not that much juice, that’s about the same as boiling 15 kettles of water. Conservation is good, but there are far lower-hanging fruits than stadium lighting at some kids soccer field.