IV. Environmental Setting and Impacts H. Parks, Recreation and Open Space Environmental Setting The San Francisco Recreation and Park Department maintains more than 200 parks, playgrounds, and open spaces throughout the City. The City’s park system also includes 15 recreation centers, nine swimming pools, five golf courses as well as tennis courts, ball diamonds, athletic fields and basketball courts. The Recreation and Park Department manages the Marina Yacht Harbor, Candlestick (Monster) Park, the San Francisco Zoo, and the Lake Merced Complex. In total, the Department currently owns and manages roughly 3,380 acres of parkland and open space. Together with other city agencies and state and federal open space properties within the city, about 6,360 acres of recreational resources (a variety of parks, walkways, landscaped areas, recreational facilities, playing fields and unmaintained open areas) serve San Francisco.172 San Franciscans also benefit from the Bay Area regional open spaces system. Regional resources include public open spaces managed by the East Bay Regional Park District in Alameda and Contra Costa counties; the National Park Service in Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties as well as state park and recreation areas throughout. In addition, thousands of acres of watershed and agricultural lands are preserved as open spaces by water and utility districts or in private ownership. The Bay Trail is a planned recreational corridor that, when complete, will encircle San Francisco and San Pablo Bays with a continuous 400-mile network of bicycling and hiking trails. It will connect the shoreline of all nine Bay Area counties, link 47 cities, and cross the major toll bridges in the region. To date, approximately 240 miles of the alignment—over half the Bay Trail’s ultimate length—have been completed. A segment of the Bay Trail passes through the Central Waterfront planning area along Third Street. This trail segment is classified as an “unimproved Bay Trail (on-street), with no bike lanes and/or sidewalks.”173 Within San Francisco, publicly accessible open spaces and recreational facilities are categorized according to their size and particular amenities as serving the city, district, neighborhood, or subneighborhood. Several larger open space areas, including Golden Gate Park (1, 017 acres), the Lake Merced complex (700 acres; 368-acre lake) and John McLaren Park (317 acres) compose about one-half of the total city-owned acreage in recreational use. Unlike neighborhood facilities, these larger areas provide programs, activities or recreation opportunities that serve the city as a whole. These spaces, in addition to smaller areas with unique attributes such as water features or hilltop vista points, function as city-serving open spaces because they attract residents from the entire city. 172 Recreational resource acreages taken from the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department inventory, May 2006. 173 More information related to the Bay Trail is available at the Association of Bay Area Government’s website, http://baytrail.abag.ca.gov/overview.html Case No. 2004.0160E 363 Eastern Neighborhoods Rezoning and Area Plans 203091 IV. Environmental Setting and Impacts H. Parks, Recreation and Open Space In addition to the larger open spaces, Recreation and Park Department land comprises more than one hundred parks and recreational facilities (both outdoor and indoor), which function mainly for neighborhood use. These smaller facilities are primarily used by residents in the immediate surrounding area and are categorized by size and intended service area. District-serving parks are generally larger than 10 acres and have a service area consisting of a three-eighths-mile radius around the park, while neighborhood-serving parks are generally one to 10 acres and have a service area of one-quarter of a mile. Subneighborhood-serving open spaces, often referred to as mini parks, are too small to accommodate athletic facilities. These parks tend to include seating areas, small landscaped spaces, totlots targeting pre-school age children, and playgrounds with amenities generally for elementary school age children. The service area for subneighborhood parks is one-eighth of a mile. As discussed in Section IV.B, Plans and Policies, the San Francisco General Plan establishes a goal of serving every neighborhood with adequate public open space and recreational facilities. Policies in the General Plan’s Recreation and Open Space Element state that access is a key factor in park utilization and that every San Franciscan “should be serviced with a park within walking distance of their home.” As illustrated in the proceeding analysis, existing open space and recreational facilities are unequally distributed throughout the city and many of the underserved communities are within the four Eastern Neighborhoods. Open Space and Facilities Inventory174 There are 24 parks and open spaces within the boundaries of the Eastern Neighborhoods. These include 19 parks under the jurisdiction of the Recreation and Park Department, three parks under jurisdiction of the Port of San Francisco, one community garden owned by the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, and one open space owned by Muni (see Section IV.A, Land Use). Five existing parks are located outside the Eastern Neighborhoods but whose service areas fall within the project area, including Yerba Buena Gardens north of East SoMa, the Howard and Langton Mini Park west of East SoMa, Mission Dolores Park east of the Mission, and Precita and Bernal Heights Parks south of the Mission.175 Two approved redevelopment plan areas, the Mission Bay North Redevelopment Plan and the Mission Bay South Redevelopment Plan, are located in an area surrounded by the Eastern Neighborhood project area to the north, west and south (approximately between King, Seventh and Mariposa Streets and the Bay). Together these plans, 174 The majority of the park and open space acreages in this Section were taken from Green Envy: Achieving Equity in Open Space published in December of 2003 by the Neighborhood Parks Council and cross-checked with the Recreation and Parks Department: http://www.sfneighborhoodparks.org/publications/greenenvy.html. Other sources of acreages include the Recreation and Open Space Element of the General Plan and various project status reports published by the Recreation and Park Department: http://www.sfgov.org/site/recpark_index.asp. 175 The Recreation and Open Space Element of the General Plan establishes open space services area as “acceptable walking distance” from a recreational resource boundary. They are defined by varying radii from a park’s edge depending on the size and type of open space as well as the surrounding topography. These are ½ mile (approximate ten minute walk) for city-serving open spaces, ⅜ mile (seven and a half minute walk) for district- serving open spaces, ¼ mile (five minute walk) for neighborhood-serving open spaces and ⅛ mile for subneighborhood-serving open spaces. Case No. 2004.0160E 364 Eastern Neighborhoods Rezoning and Area Plans 203091 IV. Environmental Setting and Impacts H. Parks, Recreation and Open Space which are currently under development, include over 40 acres of open space, a portion of which would serve areas in East SoMa, Showplace Square/Potrero Hill and the Central Waterfront Neighborhoods.176 In addition to publicly owned and managed open space areas, there are several privately owned but publicly accessible open spaces within and servicing East SoMa. The Recreation and Park Department conducted a gap analysis for the 2006 Recreation and Park Acquisition Policy (see Regulatory Setting), which revealed areas of the City considered to be underserved by parklands and open spaces, based on an analysis of neighborhood service area radii from each park’s edge as established in the General Plan’s Recreation and Open Space Element.177 Each of the four Eastern Neighborhoods includes areas found to be in need of recreational resources. Existing resources and deficiencies are described below. Figure 20 depicts the recreational facilities and/or open space resources in and adjacent to the Eastern Neighborhoods project area, along with their service radii. East SoMa There are five existing facilities totaling approximately five acres of recreational resources within the boundaries of the East SoMa Neighborhood, three of which are managed by the Recreation and Park Department. Table 52 lists existing parks and recreational facilities in East SoMa. TABLE 52 OPEN SPACE AND RECREATIONAL FACILITIES IN EAST SOMA Park or Facility Size (Acres) Classification South of Market Recreation Center 1.02 neighborhood South Park 0.85 subneighborhood Victoria Manalo Draves Park 2.00 neighborhood Alice Street Community Gardens a 0.4 (est.) subneighborhood South Beach Park a 0.27 neighborhood Total 4.55 a These facilities managed by the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency. SOURCES: San Francisco Recreation and Park Department, Parks Inventory, May 2006; and Recreation and Park Department Acquisition Policy Maps. 176 San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, Redevelopment Plan for the Mission Bay North Redevelopment Project, October 26, 1998. San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, Redevelopment Plan for the Mission Bay South Redevelopment Project, November 2, 1998. 177 The Recreation and Park Department gap analysis methodology assumed open space service areas as established in the Recreation and Open Space Element of the General Plan. An exception is the Recreation and Park Department