Turf Wars: The Mission: Ballerinas Still Arguing About Parking

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Tuesday, September 27, 2011, by Philip Ferrato

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On the agenda today at the Board of Supervisors: approval of the deal for the city to buy a parking lot in the Mission from the SF Public Utilities Corporation, partly with federal funds- to build a park, and at some point in the future, affordable housing. The park has been years in the planning, and at zero hour, people in the neighborhood are still arguing about parking. Local merchants say they'll suffer. Medical staff from the Mission Neighborhood Health Center say they need parking. Most vocal of all is the ODC dance center, which claims 23,000 students take classes each year at their facility- something of a stretch, statistics-wise- and cite "safety concerns." On the flip side, neighbors complain about ODC parents double-parking and blocking driveways, and last April, the president of the ODC board filed a Discretionary Review in an attempt to stop the park. He lives in Pacific Heights. Our friends over at SF Appeal have a poll, and if you have an opinion, let us know in the comments.
· S.F. debates shrinking parking lot for park [SF Gate]
· The Mission: Ballerinas and Fruit Trees Butt Heads Over Parking [Curbed SF]
· Poll: Parking Spaces Or A Park On 17th and Folsom St? [SF Appeal]

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Green Architecture & Design: The Mission: Ballerinas and Fruit Trees Butt Heads Over Parking

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Wednesday, April 13, 2011, by Philip Ferrato

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In a reinvention of the term NIMBY, we now have NIMPL, the acronym for Not In My Parking Lot. Or anywhere close. We've been looking at- and looking forward to- the Folsom/17th Street Park project for a while now, and this morning Socketsite alerted us that "someone" had filed an appeal to the Preliminary Mitigated Negative Declaration which would have allowed the project to move forward. That "someone" is Sean Dowdall, a board member and past president of ODC Dance Center half a block away from the park site and a resident of Pacific Heights. Along with stating that San Francisco is so impoverished that it can't take care of the parks it already has and without identifying his affiliation, Mr. Dowdall fires every cannon except LGBT rights in his appeal:

Elimination of more than half of the parking spaces alone, not to even consider the cumulative reduction of parking in the area due to other projects, will be detrimental to health care, arts, community outreach, businesses and employment in a low and moderate income neighborhood. As the Certificate of Determination states, people will initially circle for parking-and then ultimately give up without getting access to health care, arts and / or forcing businesses to reduce staff or close.

There's the unspoken issue of ODC patrons feeling unsafe in the neighborhood. May we recommend the 22 Fillmore?

The ODC has an impressive dance, rehearsal and pilates facility and apparently, they depend on having parking nearby to support their hundreds of annual classes and dance events. In fairness, ODC is a contributing organization and the lot is paid parking, not free. It's also a neighborhood bereft of parks and full of parking lots. Currently surplus property of the Public Utilities Commission and leased by UCSF, the site will be sold- presumably to a developer- if the city decides not to buy it.
· Parking Not Parks at 17th & Folsom [Socketsite]
· ODC Dance [ODC]
· 17th & Folsom Coverage [Curbed SF Archives]

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