Valencia Street Park – Alternative St. Luke’s Plan

Mission Loc@l and SF FYI net reports that there are several rather unpublicized meetings this week — St. Luke’s and El Tonayense.

Tuesday, 2 PM

• Rebuild of St. Luke’s Hospital – Evaluation of temporary hospital structure
• Question: Shall this Resolution be ADOPTED? (easiest search for ‘Luke’)

Wednesday, 5 PM

• El Tonayense (19th and Harrison) public hearing
• UPDATE: City Hall, Room 416, 5PM – agenda
• Mission Loc@l will be tweeting (guys, will this be on the MLnow account or another?)

Wednesday, 6:30-8 PM –

• Mission District Community Task Force Meeting – St. Luke’s Hospital
• When: April 1, 2009 – Wednesday, 6:30 to 8 p.m.

(Ed: This particular task force meeting was last year.)

More on Tonayense later. Re St. Luke’s – remember that the favored plan is a souless, two-story blank wall along Cesar Chavez, with the service “ass-end” of the hospital overbearing the houses on Guerrero.

Current layout – translucent red is 1970s tower that is too expensive to retrofit, blue are existing hospital buildings, green are houses at the corner of Cesar Chavez on the left and Guerrero on the right.

CPMC proposal – solid red is suggested replacement building, solid blue is future expansion building, no windows on the first two stories. Both are flush with the sidewalk on Cesar Chavez with no street access. Loading and garbage is between existing green houses and red replacement building.

This does not seem to be the neighborhood’s favored solution — feedback from the March 4th Community Workshop available for download from CPMC. (Strange how there is littel to no mention of the strong opposition to the new building on the doctor’s parking lot and over San Jose Ave, or the poor integration with the Cesar Chavez street improvement plan.) Secret CMPC plan to enrage neighbors, or just lazy? Regardless, a better plan is in order.

We here at the BJPLC (Burrito Justice Planning and Landscape Committee) have decided on a different approach for St. Luke’s. Instead of what we have now — a block on Valencia with no residences and stairs to nowhere:

We create Valencia Street Park, and build the replacement hospital across the street:

Details of our modest proposal:

• Close down Valencia between Cesar Chavez and Mission to auto traffic and create a park greenery, with bike access (and bus access?)
• Build the replacement building (green) across Valencia on the old Sears parking lot, not on the doctor’s parking lot.
• Expansion (yellow) can still happen across the park on the 1970 tower site.
• Make a cul-de-sac off of Cesar Chavez as the primary access point to St. Luke’s.
• Free the 1912 steps (brown/orange) which would now lead from the historic building down to our new and glorious Valencia Street Park green belt.

Unreasonable? No less so than the current CPMC plan. This alternative lets St. Luke’s rebuild, expand and improve the neighborhood at the same time. There are surprisingly few parks in the area — Precita and Garfield Parks aren’t exactly close, and Bernal is a different case. There are surprisingly few parks and playgrounds in Noe Valley — in fact, other than Juri, is there another park within 23rd, Diamond, 29th and Mission?

So what about the doctor’s parking lot? CPMC could sell the doctor’s parking lot for reasonable height mixed residential-retail development, or use it for new medical offices as was the original plan.

Most importantly, we can let the El Tonayense truck sit in front of the 1912 steps! Magic Curry Kart and other vendors are also welcome.