The current iteration of San Francisco’s Civic Center Plaza dates back to 1961, and an overhaul has been a long time coming. After three major renovation plans in the ’80s and ’90s came to naught, late Mayor Ed Lee got the ball rolling again in 2015 for the most ambitious effort yet.
The recently released Civic Center Public Realm Plan recasts the plaza as a larger, tree-encircled space, connected to Market Street via a long park. It would be a more flexible and accommodating place for everything from soccer games to massive rallies.
The plan for the approximately 17-acre area also calls for a bike and pedestrian-friendly redesign of surrounding streets. Nearly all surface parking around the plaza would be removed and reclaimed for open space.
These aren’t final plans. They’re more like a guiding outline. A two-year environmental impact review is about to begin, and the version that emerges will require approval by the Planning Commission and eventually the Board of Supervisors. From there, details must be filled in, as firms submit bids for the myriad jobs that make up the grand design.
An estimated budget has not yet been released, but it’s easy to see how the improvements could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Frisc recently toured the area with landscape architect Willett Moss, a founding partner at San Francisco-based firm CMG, which was lead consultant on the team that created the master plan.
Here is our conversation, edited for length and clarity.
The Frisc: What do you think of San Francisco’s landscapes?
Willett Moss: I think the city is so young and deserves a significant public space of consequence, which we take for granted in much older cities. We’re lacking something like Trafalgar Square in London. Here, we’re relying on the inherent natural beauty around us, the views and vistas — we’re resting on pretty.
What was Civic Center Plaza like originally?
The design of the plaza and buildings came out of the “City Beautiful” movement in the early 1900s, which was about fostering civic pride through grand neoclassical architecture. The plaza had formal gardens on the corners, a ring of trees around the perimeter, and two fountain pools flanking the open center. You had a clear view from the steps of City Hall all the way down Fulton Street to Market. At that time, Fulton went all the way through.
The redesign revives the original City Beautiful idea by emphasizing that long axis. The parking lot on Fulton is an egregious waste of space, and in the plan it becomes a pedestrian mall with two lawns and outdoor spaces for the Asian Art Museum and the main library.
There will still be street crossings at Larkin and Hyde Streets, but we’re trying to minimize them so you can get off the BART at UN Plaza and stroll on up to Civic Center Plaza.
Would the original design still work today?
It would be more functional for big events than it is now. I was here for the Women’s March in 2018, and you couldn’t see anything because of the rows of trees down the middle of the plaza.
But our culture has shifted, and spaces need to provide for the daily uses and needs of people. The Tenderloin and Central SoMa are radically underserved in terms of open space. On top of that, there’s upwards of 50,000 workers coming through here daily. So the plaza is operating not only as our democratic public space — where the city comes to gather, celebrate, and protest — but also as neighborhood park space. That’s a significant point of tension we struggled with throughout the design process. The ambition here is to be incredibly inclusive.
‘This sounds naive, but I think we have to do it all.’
— Willett Moss
The new playgrounds and the Bi-Rite café have brought more people to the plaza. What else does it need to become more inclusive?
Well, what are we sitting on right now? These odd metal boxes are vents for Brooks Hall beneath us.
So the redesign includes basic, fundamental services: more seating than you can imagine, multiple public restrooms, drinking water fountains, trees that actually provide shade. I was in Japan recently and there are immaculate public bathrooms wherever and whenever you need one. And if you’re elderly or a parent with small kids, it makes going out of the house imaginable. None of this is rocket science.
The homelessness crisis has put a lot of pressure on public spaces. How do you address that issue in the design?
By providing basic services, the idea is that anyone and everyone can be comfortable here. This is the Bryant Park [in New York City] approach, where there are so many chairs that everyone has a seat. The plan does have a nod to reality — all the planting is surrounded by fencing. And there’s a docent group called Urban Alchemy that is tasked with managing antisocial behavior.
As we walk around the plaza, it’s striking to see so much on-street parking in such a prominent location.
When you look around, the first thing you see is all the cars. Meanwhile, the parking garage is almost never at capacity. The plan is to remove most of the parking around the plaza, which buys us another 15 feet and gives us room to put in trees that surround it. The streets on all sides are excessively wide, so we can potentially narrow them and add bike lanes. We’re proposing that Grove St. in front of Bill Graham auditorium be closed to regular car traffic and be part of a bike route that the city is designing to connect to Hayes Valley.
And it’s possible to have soccer fields?
Yes, the lawns in the plaza today are used occasionally for soccer, and the Civic Center Initiative started prototyping soccer on Fulton last summer. In the plan, the four lawns are multipurpose, but are also sized to accommodate games with four kids per side. They are framed by terraced seating, which should help keep stray balls on the field.
Should we be spending money on this now when the city needs so many other things, including affordable housing?
This sounds naïve, but I think we have to do it all. It’s about the long game and creating city stability and a sense of pride. Studies have shown the benefit of well-managed open space to health and well-being. When you have super-dense housing, as in the Tenderloin, you need that open space for a healthy and happy community.
Lydia Lee writes about architecture and design in the Bay Area.