A flood of setbacks for park renovations
After months of rain, soil can’t dry out enough to begin work
The view from the front window of Michael Rice’s Glen Park home has hardly changed in the past few months.
As rain came down in torrents and the sky stayed a monotone gray, construction equipment surrounding the Glen Canyon Recreation Center has barely moved. Progress slowed and then, for what seemed like weeks, stopped. The building’s walls continue to wait for new stucco, and a new roof has yet to be installed.
“We are tired of looking at it,” said Rice, 70, who is retired. “We are looking forward to completion. This was the oldest unrenovated recreation center in San Francisco. It’s long overdue, and people are starting to get antsy. There’s not much you can do about the rain, though.”
The recreation center isn’t the only project to stall in recent months. The fences around a halfdozen Recreation and Park Depart-
ment project sites now won’t come down until June because of weather delays. As winter storms battered San Francisco, rain flooded the department’s construction sites, churning the dirt into a sticky soup and making it impossible to lay cement and asphalt or plant sod. The expected completion dates were postponed one month — and then more.
At Mountain Lake Playground, the cement for a new pathway was never poured. At the Noe Courts, the surface was never replaced. And at Alamo Square Park — one of the department’s most popular open spaces — the sod, shrubs and spring flowers were never planted.
That project, which began last summer and was expected to take seven months, could now take more than a year to complete. On a recent morning, when more storm clouds rolled in after days of sunny weather, tourists snapped photos of the Painted Ladies and seemed confused by the fences surrounding the park.
But local residents and city officials said they weren’t surprised by the inundation.
“We have had 27 days of heavy rain, not just sprinkling,” said Rec and Park spokeswoman Connie Chan. “It has really caused serious delays. There’s a lot of construction that is weather dependent. Even two weeks ago, it was still consistently raining. We want to do the work, but we can’t. This is the first time we have seen anything like this winter rain.”
The inclement weather has impacted the latest round of renovations funded by the 2012 Clean and Safe Neighborhood Parks bonds. The projects funded by its predecessor, the 2008 bond of the same name, were largely completed on time. The Mansell Corridor and South Park projects, which were funded in part by the 2012 bond, were also delayed from their estimated late 2016 finish dates because of rain. They finally opened in February and March.
It’s unlikely that the delays will cost the city extra money, Chan said. About 10 percent of each project’s budget goes toward unforeseen delays, like rain, she said.
Toks Ajike, the department’s supervising project manager, called the winter storms “somewhat unprecedented.” After years of drought, no one was expecting delays because of flooding.
“This level of rain is the worse we have seen in at least the last eight to 10 years,” he said. “The rain has been consistent since Dec. 16 or so, and it has been raining every couple of days. It slows down the ability of the contractor to do their work, and it makes it harder for them to excavate soil.”
The timing of the half-dozen projects that were about to be finished coupled with heavy rainfall created the perfect
storm of events, he said.
“Usually it rains for a week or two and we are able to go on right after that,” Ajike said. “When it rains almost every week, well, that’s a different story. It doesn’t allow the soils to dry up so we can go on with the subsequent work.”
But Claire Myers, who lives near Mountain Lake Playground and has been eagerly anticipating its renovation, said it’s hard to dislike the rain when the state needs it so badly. Myers, 49, has 8- and 9-year-old sons who want to play at the park. The renovation has been nearly six years in the making, she said.
“The rain delay is a mixed blessing,” she said, sighing. “Obviously California wants rain. At this point, a few more months are worth the wait. We just want it for the summer for the kids. Personally, it was like, the last thing we expected. Who would have thought all these projects would be backed up from rain delays?”