Mission Bay and San Francisco’s Future
The Fifth Street Plaza at the end of Fifth Street between Berry Street and the creek was developed as a grass drumlin.
The plaza provides a large grassy area for walkers as well as striking views north to the city’s downtown and south across the creek to the UCSF campus and its environs. The creek overlook encourages people to pause and contemplate their surroundings. Viewers will not suspect that 200 piles were driven 200 feet through the bay mud to bedrock to create the base for this viewing point.
Concave granite runnels direct water from areas paved with cobble weirs to the adjacent bio-infiltration field. A series of low concrete walls inserted into the drumlin runs parallel to the runnels.
A Sports Park at the west end of the esplanade serves residents and the general community with courts for basketball, volleyball, and tennis. A storage shed for kayaks, designed by MK Think, recalls the hull of a boat driven into the ground.
Although the park’s location under the I-280 freeway flyovers suggests discomfort from the steady drone of traffic, the flyovers are so far above ground that they seem to belong to another world.
The garden below is planted in a series of wavelike bands of colorful phormiums, grasses, and sedges.
Extending out over the creek, a curved wooden overlook projecting from the Esplanade near the Sports Park provides a view of the length of Mission Creek with its picturesque procession of houseboats anchored off the creek’s south bank. This overlook actually hides the main outflow pipe for the combined sewer infrastructure located in the bank below.
Occupants of the housing on the north side of the Esplanade enjoy a setting unique in this city where residential development is typically removed from the waterfront. Where else can residents contemplate a waterfront park just outside their dwelling?
