South Park

South Park is the last of them. A 1972 city planning report on recreation and open space states it flatly: until 1948 the South of Market had three major parks, and of those three only South Park remains — Father Crowley Playground became freeway and the Hall of Justice, and Columbia Square, one of the city's oldest parks, was built over by Bessie Carmichael School after a citywide referendum. The same report warned that as the financial district pushed south and Yerba Buena Center replaced housing with commercial development, the need for open space here would grow rather than shrink, and noted that although funds had once been committed to a replacement park south of Market, none was ever built. The park's own upkeep arrives in small sums: the Open Space Acquisition and Park Renovation Fund lists $50,000 to rehabilitate the play area and replace benches, with plans complete but a local group seeking changes to the project's scope. Its most recent renovation is carried by a single contract — Public Works engaged Bauman Landscape & Construction at $2,940,915. The surrounding blocks appear throughout the record too, as the residential community the planners built recreation policy around, and as the site of the supportive-housing hotels on South Park Street that the city funds separately from the park.