Concourse Authority Give Thumbs Up for Underground Garage in Golden Gate Park

By Paul Kozakiewicz

The Golden Gate Park Concourse Authority approved final design plans Dec. 6 for an underground garage in the Music and Museum concourses in Golden Gate Park.

San Francisco voters approved the garage when they passed Proposition J in 1998. The measure created the Concourse Authority to oversee the design and construction of the facility. It also required transportation improvements in the park and that 800 parking spaces, the same number that will be provided in the new garage, be removed from the park's surface roads. As part of the plan, a shuttle bus service has been instituted in the park during heavy traffic times.

The authority is looking at several other measures, including traffic calming in the park and possible road closures. The removal of several small parking lots near the Music Concourse will allow for the creation of a "pedestrian oasis," allowing more space for bicyclists, pedestrians and roller skaters.

Financing for the $50 million garage, which is being designed by the architectural firm of Gordon H. Chong and Partners, is coming from private donations. Because of concerns from residents that the plan would tear up the Music Concourse, the area located in front of the Band Shell, the authority decided to construct the underground garage in two sections that will be connected by an underground roadway. One section of the garage will be built under the roadway in front of the California Academy of Sciences on the south side of the concourse and the other under the roadway next to the soon-to-be-rebuilt M.H. deYoung Memorial Museum on the north side of the concourse.

There will be two entrances to the garage, at Fulton Street and 10th Avenue in the Richmond District and on Music Concourse Drive near Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. The plan provides for landscaping to help hide the garage, including the placement of hanging ivy near the two entrances.

One aspect of the underground garage plan that the public was particularly concerned about was the planned destruction of pedestrian tunnels that are constructed under major thoroughfares and connect with the Music Concourse. The new plan would keep and rebuild the tunnels but they would be reconstructed with more-modern design elements.

According to the Gordon Chong and Partners, the tunnels were redesigned to better integrate the portals with the park's landscaping.