Sigmund Stern Grove

Park / amphitheatre

Sigmund Stern Grove (park / amphitheatre, run by the Recreation and Park Department): $4.7M paid to contractors for work here, $250.4M budgeted for its department in FY2025, 2,161 employees on the payroll, 1 contract, 1 capital project, 7 city documents at the Internet Archive, every figure linked to its source. Stern Grove has always run on a mixture of city money and private giving, and the record says so from the start: a 1947 study of consolidating the Park and Recreation departments notes that small fees were charged for some facilities at Sigmund Stern Grove, and that the summer concert programme was financed and sustained by a cooperating organisation aided by voluntary contributions. The department's annual reports through the 1940s and 1950s list the grove among its special activity centres, beside Camp Mather and the city's two swimming pools, and its programme divisions filled it — a Stern Grove Carnival staged with a cast of 1,500 children and adults, a Spring Festival, and Pine Lake Day Camp nestled at the grove's western end. The modern rebuilding was designed by Lawrence Halprin's office, whose 2003 improvement plan for Stern Grove and Pine Lake Park came with consultants for the lakes, wildlife habitat, hazardous materials and erosion control. Its first phase was completed in June 2005 through a gift from the Stern Grove Festival Association: the Rhoda Goldman Memorial Concert Meadow gained grass terrace seating and new stage and backstage buildings, and the entrance at 19th Avenue and Sloat Boulevard was rebuilt for pedestrians and vehicles. Since then the city has paid Anvil Builders $19.95 million, against $22.01 million agreed, for emergency site restoration. Source: SF Controller open data and the Internet Archive.