Golden Gate Park’s Beach Chalet soccer fields spur turf tiff
UPDATE 4:15 p.m. May 25 – The San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission has approved a controversial plan to install artificial turf and lights in a renovation of the Beach Chalet soccer fields in Golden Gate Park.
The Bay City News wire service reports in the SF Appeal that in a joint meeting Thursday, the Planning Commission voted 4-1 to certify an environmental report on the plan and the Rec and Park Commission voted unanimously to approve the plan itself.
SF Gate’s City Insider blog reports that Thursday’s meeting on the $14 million poroposal represented a clash of cultures and competing ideas about the purpose of San Francisco’s parks:
While opponents of the plan insisted it wasn’t a case of kids versus birds, that’s not what it looked like Thursday evening. For nearly four-and-a-half hours, two very different groups of speakers tried to sway the commissions.
Uniformed soccer players and their parents and coaches argued that the current grass field at Beach Chalet was a muddy, gopher-ridden danger that was closed as often as it was open, while the mostly older neighbors and environmentalists said that if new artificial turf fields are needed, it should be built somewhere else.
But concerns about the lights, the turf and the undeniable effect the changes will have on Golden Gate Park and its wildlife weren’t enough to convince the commissioners to reject the chance to boost the use of Beach Chalet.
Bay City News also reports that Chief of Police Greg Suhr told commissioners that the plan, with its nighttime lighting, could help reduce chronic problems with drug use and prostitution in the heavily vegetated areas near the fields.
Opponents of the plan can appeal the commissions’ decisions to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
SF Ocean Edge, a group that has opposed the plan for artificial turf and lights, posted a message on its website stating that it would meet with a lawyer to decide what to do. “It is a sad day for Golden Gate Park, when the departments charged with stewardship of our parks decide to destroy our crown jewel,” the group stated.
One of the city supervisors who may end up voting on the proposal is Supervisor Eric Mar of District 1, which consists largely of the Richmond District. The Chinese-language World Journal reports [based on an online translation] that although Mar says he hasn’t made up his mind about the field proposal, he did take time Thursday afternoon to play soccer with children on a temporary pitch set up in Civic Center across from City Hall.
***
The Beach Chalet soccer fields at Golden Gate Park’s west end often are a muddy, torn-up mess unusable by soccer players — but they’re also a hunting ground for hawks and herons, and a rare patch of simple green grass in a densely populated city.
Two City commissions will meet today to discuss a plan to renovate the fields by installing artificial turf, lights for nighttime play and other amenities. The San Francisco Planning Commission and the Recreation and Park Commission will meet jointly Thursday at 3 p.m. in Room 400 at City Hall.
Artificial turf at other municipal soccer fields has enabled children and adults to play virtually continuously throughout the year, regardless of how much rain has fallen or how many other feet have trod the pitch. The Recreation and Park Department and other advocates say this is critically important because there just aren’t enough fields available for everyone who wants to use them, and fields that require less maintenance are fields that can serve more San Franciscans.
But these renovated fields come with bright lights to illuminate the fields well into the evening, and bird and bees are seldom seen. It’s not that San Francisco doesn’t need sports fields, say opponents — it’s that the City shouldn’t replace grass areas with plastic and shouldn’t be installing stadium-style lights so close to the beach, where the light could annoy neighbors and interfere with migrating birds.
At Thursday’s meeting, the Planning Commission is scheduled to vote on whether to certify the environmental-impact report the City has already produced about the Beach Chalet plan. Commissioners also will decide whether the Beach Chalet plan meets state environmental regulations and whether it’s in line with the overall direction of City’s development plans.
If planning commissioners decide that the EIR addressed all the right issues, studied them completely and reached the correct conclusions, then the Recreation and Park Commission is scheduled to vote on whether to approve the soccer field project.
The public comment period on the EIR ended in late 2011.
Thursday’s meeting is scheduled to be webcast on San Francisco Government Television Channel 2.
This is not a case of birds vs. kids. It is a case of the City ignoring a win-win alternative that could provide kids a place to play while protecting the western edge of Golden Gate Park as habitat and as parkland for everyone to enjoy.
Why is thBeachChalet project so damaging to the Park?
It replaces seven acres of grassy playing field with seven acres of artificial turf and adds 150,000 watts of sports lights, right next to Ocean Beach. The lights will be lighted from dusk until 10:00 p.m. every night of the year, impacting couples who stroll along the promenade at sunset, families who star-gaze at the Dark Sky, and fire worshipers who enjoy the fire rings on the beach in the dark.
The project will introduce additional paving into what is now a vegetated area, build bleacher seating for over 1,000 spectators, and cut down over 55 trees. Artificial turf is made up of a gravel base, old tires or other infill, and plastic grass. The Audubon Society has described the 7 acres of artificial turf as the environmental equivalent of paving 7 acres of parkland with an asphalt parking lot.
It is ironic that while the City is removing tiny bits of concrete in the Paving to Parks program, it is planning to destroy the habitat and beauty of a wide swath of the western edge of Golden Gate Park.
Turning the western end of Golden Gate Park into an urbanized soccer complex runs counter to the 1998 Golden Gate Park Master Plan, the 2004 National Register listing, the city’s own Coastal Plan, and the 2012 Ocean Beach Master Plan. These plans were created with a vision of the Park; the current soccer complex plan is short-sighted — what is needed is a vision for the Park as parkland.
There are financial considerations, also — the project budget has been quoted at between $9.6 and $13 million. The Beach Chalet fields could undergo a simple renovation with natural grass for much less and the rest of the 2008 Bond funding could be used to fix up other playing fields in San Francisco. This would release more funding for our money-starved parks in the upcoming 2012 Bond.
In a few years, San Franciscans will be drinking the water from the aquifer under Golden Gate Park. If the artificial turf run-off has to be treated for toxics, then the rainwater that falls on the field will have to be drained to the sewage treatment plant and processed. This is an expensive process. Artificial turf is usually warrantied for 8 to 10 years. With the completion of this project, San Francisco will have over 30 acres of artificial turf on RPD land — where will the City find the funding to pay for replacing it all when it wears out in 10 years? Kids can’t play soccer on old gravel and worn-out plastic grass.
There is a win-win alternative – -fix up the Beach Chalet fields with real grass and NO sports lights and then use the rest of the funding to fix up other playing fields for kids all over San Francisco.
There is only one Golden Gate Park – let’s preserve it as parkland for the enjoyment of everyone today and for future generations.
http://www.sfoceanedge.org.