Community organizer Oscar Grande speaks to Mission residents about what types of activities and programs are needed in the neighborhood. Together with the City’s Planning Department, the neighborhood organization PODER hosted an open forum to help brainstorm a new park and community space in the northeast Mission. Photo Suzy Salazar

On the rainy morning of Jan. 23, in the small cafeteria at Marshall Elementary School, the wheels started turning on the creation of a new open space in the Mission.

The purpose of the public meeting, held by the San Francisco Planning Department, was to get community input on the design of a new park. The site of the future park would occupy half of a surface parking lot currently owned by the City’s public utility commission at 17th and Folsom streets.

The other half is being considered as a site for low-income housing.

According to Susan Exline, a planner with the Planning Department, the creation of a conceptual design for the park has to be expedited in order to meet a rapidly approaching (March 1) application deadline for a state grant that would cover construction costs.

“For the first time, we’re actually coming together to design the park,” Exline said to the crowd of roughly 100 people who gathered to discuss the new open space. “Whatever the details are, we’ll decide them between March and October.”

By October, Planning Department officials will know if plans for construction have been approved.

“So if in the conceptual plan the people say they want a playground, then by October, we’ll have the specifics of that playground planned and ready go,” Exline said.

Should the grant be denied, she added, the Planning Department plans to pay for the park’s construction with developer impact fees, one-time charges applied to offset the additional public-service costs of new development.

Before breaking into smaller groups, the assembled Mission residents listened to John Dennis, a landscape architect for the Department of Public Works, who laid out possible features of the park.

“A 21st century park should contain sustainable materials,” Dennis said, adding that landscaping strategies like permeable paving and rain gardens should be incorporated to control runoff to sewer lines. “In a Mediterranean climate, I think it’s better to celebrate the rain than to just whisk it away.”

Dennis also reminded people to consider “passive recreation” options like tables with shade, public art installments and possibly wireless Internet access.

One recurring recommendation among those at Saturday’s meeting was the incorporation of sustainable food gardens that could serve the community, particularly those people living in the proposed low-income housing development that could potentially overlook the park.

“I’m here to advocate for community gardens” said Ashley Weiss, an activist working with the Future Action Reclamation Mob, a group running a community food garden in Potrero Hill. “We (would) have the garden as a place to gather, but also a (place) to empower people to grow their own food and to be more self sufficient.”

Each idea was discussed in smaller groups, which then drew plans for the park on top of maps of the site. The six resulting visions of the park will be synthesized and put into the conceptual design to be included with the grant application.

Gloria, a Mission resident, said she came to advocate for interactive education opportunities for children.

“Even though a lot of families with children can’t come to this meeting, I want to advocate for them,” she said. “The children need to have opportunities to play with nature and change it, like combining sand and water for creative play… even though we’re in the middlle of the city, it could be an oasis.”

One of the largest concerns was safety, and most people agreed that the park needed to be active at night to prevent prostitution and other illicit activity. Ideas for facilitating this night-time activity included music and cultural events in the evening.

Some people were concerned about the separation between the planning efforts for the park and the housing development, citing the two should be treated as a single community effort.

“We should just treat this as one project,” said Richard, a Mission resident and open-space advocate. “The park needs people to thrive and housing would crate a community around the park … when people are there, you actually get better security.”

He also advocated the inclusion of “soft entrances” that introduce green space into the areas surrounding the park.

Oscar Grande, an organizer for PODER, said that he understood the people’s concerns.

“We need to do more pushing and prodding on the housing piece, to make sure there isn’t so much emphasis on the park that housing is forgotten” he said. “Community members are asking questions about how the housing will interact with the park and it feels a little backwards and narrow to only discuss the park without the housing. Those people living in the housing are going to be the eyes and ears of the park.”

Grande also pointed to the positive progress the meeting itself represented. “This is the first time we’ve collaborated with the Planning Department. We’ve had kind of an adversarial relationship with them in the past,” he said. “This is a first for us, and even though we know there’s going to be bumps and stops on the way, we’re going to keep true to the vision we’ve been talking about.”

Although the particulars still remain to be seen, the park at 17th and Folsom streets is on a course for completion. Once finished, many believe it would serve as a symbol of the effort and energy the community has poured into the project for years.