To Friends of Francisco Park
We are so happy with the successful Recreation and Parks opening of Francisco Park. It was a pleasure to welcome Mayor London Breed to the park for the dedication. In lieu of a traditional “ribbon cutting,” Mayor Breed and other civic leaders teamed up for a “plant watering” – apropos, given the site’s former life as a reservoir and of course, its current life housing thousands of gallons of water in the catchment system.
Supervisor Catherine Stefani, Phil Ginsburg, General Manager, Recreation and Parks Department, and Leslie Alspach, Francisco Park Conservancy Board President, also spoke about this unique public/private partnership which transformed the site from a civic blight into a true civic pleasure.
On Saturday April 30, the Francisco Park Conservancy welcomed friends and supporters to a celebratory First Saturday. Children not only loved the new Larsen/Lam Playground, but had fun with giant bubbles, hula hooping on the lawn and made crowns with fresh flowers in honor of May Day! Dogs were not excluded from the celebration and had their pictures taken in Pepi’s Dog Park by Crooked Smile Events. Thank you to our Project Manager, Brendan McDevitt (MCK Americas Inc) who generously sponsored our First Saturday festivities.
The community response for the new park has been spectacular. A Russian Hill resident for 30 years said she had tears in her eyes walking through the site and seeing its transformation. A park neighbor said she had barely left her chair by the window as she was having such fun watching all of the activities in the park.
In case you missed them, there were also several wonderful press reviews in the San Francisco Gate, The San Francisco Standard, and on CBS Bay Area
We are feeling great gratitude to those friends and supporters who never lost sight of the vision!
Together, we all made Francisco Park come to life.
With our most profound thanks,
Leslie Alspach
Francisco Park Conservancy Board President