Boeddeker Park
Ellis & Taylor Streets
San Francisco, CA
Submitted by: Ilaria Salvadori
2.6-acre park in a low-income neighborhood with a reliance on defensive design and a primary focus on use by children and families - factors that unintentionally turned the place into a battlefield
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Why It Doesn't Work
Park was designed with safety and security in mind, but in all the wrong ways. It's cut off from the streets by fences and walls, and activity areas are also segregated in "open rooms" formed by six-foot fences. The main, bench-lined walkway through the park became known as "the Gauntlet" after it was colonized by drug dealers a year or so after the park's 1985 opening. Ultimately, accessibility was sacrificed in the name of safety, and the community decided the close the park in 1999. One entrance is permanently locked except for rare special occasions; the other is open only on a variable schedule. Loiterers simply moved to the sidewalk; the park is now an empty cage watched from outside by drug dealers and drug users.
The situation seems hopeless - as with so many other public spaces - but recommended remedies include:
What Puts Boeddeker Park in the Hall of Shame?
Cut off from the street by fences and walls, and there are only two entrances, one of which is locked almost all of the time. The "open room" activity areas are accessible only by the main circulation path, which became known as the "gauntlet" when threatening people began to dominate.
Fences and walls meant to provide safety instead make the place feel like a cage - it's forbidding to walk into. Benches have metal dividers; trees were seen as obstacles to visibility and so are limited and not optimally sited.
Activity areas - a basketball court, play equipment, and areas of lawn, hard surfaces and benches - are limited and cut off from one another by six-foot fences. Designing with children and families in mind excluded other possibilities that could have been generated by the actual population of this very diverse neighborhood.
When the park was not locked up, primary users tended to be drug dealers and loiterers; now it's simply empty except during approved hours and for approved users.
History & Background
Boedekker Park was developed in 1985 by landscape architects Ryston, Hanamoto, Alley & Abey (RHAA) of Marin County. A Save Boeddeker Park committee formed in the mid 1990s recommended a new playground and still more, higher fencing, which were installed in 1998. These design changes ignored the comments in a report from city park staff that stated the original design of the park was problematic in itself. Now, the role of staff at the park's recreation center is reduced to unlocking the park for visitors who have an approved reason to enter.
Contact Info:
415-292-2019
User Comments:
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I must agree and support all comments I read. Great, can we see some old fashion city community organizing? That will truly begin to address the array of problem that affect this land. In my opinion San Francisco has a history of talent.
Talent comes with hard work, consistency and dedication. Our City has embarked homelessness in record numbers, substance abuse out of control, child abuse etc...I challenge the fine minds of San Francisco to truly demonstrate democracy.
The funding we receive to afford the care and preservation of our parks need not be control by politicians and criminals. We natives of San Francisco have allowed this to happen to our parks, by paying for salaries of personnel who serve no purpose, allowing individuals to corrupt and mismanage, just blatantly ripe off. While the field staff has no control. Yes! We the on site staff implement of job duties to the best of our ability, under the above mention condition with putting our lives in further danger.
Remaining problems include removing a public toilet at the Jones/Eddy entrance that serves as a crack and whore house, getting the loiterers and litter removed and encouraging parents and children to return to what we hope becomes a safe resource for the whole community.
UPDATE - Jan 2005.
Unfortunately the advisory group Friends of Boeddeker Park, responsible for many improvements, working with the Neighborhood Parks Council PARKSCAN program over the past two years, has degenerated into a quarrelsome unproductive ragtag bunch of local nutcases who would rather argue and denigrate than do anything constructive.
Positively, staff from the residential Presentation Senior Community (a Mercy Housing property) that abuts the park, Glide Church across the street and the St. Anthony Foundation that retains a profound interest in the park that is named after Father Boeddeker have joined forces to maintain progress already made and to further make this park the community resource it should be.
Among other things this working group sponsored a Senior Ice Cream Social & Mixer in the north end of the park in the spring and a Senior Bingo Blast a few months ago. We are currently planning a barbecue in the late spring or summer and a Tenderloin Art Show around Labor Day sponsored by the St. Anthony Foundation to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the park and to honor Father Boeddeker.
We welcome your thoughts and suggestions. You may reach me via email at dstein@pacbell.net