How are San Francisco city planners hoping to transform the area around Balboa Park to make it nicer?
Planners propose to rejuvenate Balboa Park area: Robert Selna, Chronicle Staff Writer Saturday, March 21, 2009 Things may change under a city Planning Department strategy to transform the area into a transit village with new dense housing and retail. On Monday, the department will ask a Board of Supervisors committee to forward the plan for a final vote. Planners envision a neighborhood where college students and residents linger at coffee shops and gather at a new plaza. They want residents to walk and ride their bikes to commuter trains on what has been a traffic-choked and often precarious Ocean Avenue. The Balboa Park Station was BART’s busiest stop outside of downtown San Francisco in 2008, with approximately 13,800 weekday riders. Yet the BART and Muni stations are east of Interstate 280, cutting them off from the Ocean Avenue commercial corridor. We’ve tried to outline a vision for the area that revitalizes the commercial district, integrates the student population with the serv
A library, museum and new entrance into the Balboa Park BART station are among the proposals in a transit-oriented mixed-use development plan The City aims to create around the busiest transit hub in the southern part of town. The Balboa Park Station Area Plan calls for 1,780 new apartments and 104,680 square feet of commercial development not far from City College of San Francisco’s Ocean Avenue campus. It also includes a 6,000-square-foot library scheduled to break ground at Ocean and Plymouth avenues next spring, said Mindy Linetzky, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco Public Library system. On Tuesday, residents will have a chance to offer their thoughts about what should be included in the environmental impact report that’s scheduled for completion later this year. The report is the first step for the 20-year blueprint that planners hope to get approved in coming months. The plan calls for a deck to be constructed over Interstate 280 behind the BART station. Muni trains that curre
Currently the area around Balboa Park is clogged with lots of cars and isn’t very welcoming for pedestrians. City planners in San Francisco are hoping to change this and make the area more welcoming by adding apartment buildings, a supermarket, coffee shops and designing sidewalks to accomodate foot traffic. They also plan to improve the streets and open spaces. The biggest plan on the table right now is to demolish the auto parts store that takes up 2 blocks near the park and replace it with a couple of apartment buildings and possibly a grocery store. Currently the plan is centered around the area near the Balboa Park BART Station and Ocean Avenue commercial district. Sources: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/21/BAR417O46T.
