Clash over trees and turf at S.F. park heads from City Hall to ball fields

The battle over grass and trees in a planned $50 million makeover of Crocker Amazon Playground moved from San Francisco City Hall to the ball fields themselves Sunday, with two community outdoor meetings in the morning chill and mist to keep tempers from heating up.

The informational sessions were hosted by the Recreation and Park Department and the San Francisco Giants Community Fund, partners in the plan to upgrade some chewed-up grass baseball and softball fields and add in a meadow to create a lighted sports complex of six diamonds, five of which would be covered in synthetic turf and the sixth in a combination of turf and grass.

Some 88 community members signed in for the first of the sessions and were met immediately by protesters from a group called Keep Crocker Real, which opposes the plan and employed a woman in an orange Lorax suit and mustache to "speak for the trees," with the aid of a bullhorn.

"When your public park is under attack, what do you do?" came the cry through the bullhorn. "Stand up. Fight back."

This call and response drowned out the microphone being used by District 11 Supervisor Chyanne Chen, who had requested the community meeting.

"We are building something for the next 50 years, and my job is to uplift community voices and uplift environmental justice," Chen, who did not voice her own opinion, said afterward. Though the issue is a long way from a vote by the Board of Supervisors, people came with the urgency as if it were coming Tuesday.

"How do you stand on the whole thing?" demanded Lance Mellon, a resident of the Portola district. "Please vote against this. It's a crime against Mother Nature."

The issue has been under debate at two previous community meetings. This month the Recreation and Park Commission voted unanimously to recommend that the Board of Supervisors accept a $28 million gift from the community fund, acting through a limited liability corporation, and rename the sports complex Willie Mays Fields of Champions. Rec and Park would contribute the other $22 million, with construction scheduled for 2027.

"The project design hasn't been finalized," said Giants Chief Development Officer Jack Bair, an officer of the Giants Community Fund. "That's why we are here."

Bair was manning six separate information booths under tents, each of which addressed a specific aspect of the project - trees, walking paths and amenities, community gathering spaces, parking and lighting, and turf design.

Attendees wore name tags and were expected to break into numbered groups and advance from station to station at the ring of a bell by a Rec and Park staffer. The protesters representing Keep Crocker Real had their own renegade station, and in place of a tent, Scott Wilder of Bernal Heights parked his white 1963 Dodge Dart convertible, festooned with signs opposing the plan for a sports field complex with synthetic turf.

"I use this park because it has grass and trees. I don't want to see it become one big carpet," Wilder said. "I just don't want us to regret this."

The biggest fear among attendees at the two sessions seemed to be the loss of mature trees - 130 of them, according to the rallying cry of Keep Crocker Real. Bair, speaking in the tree booth, said there are 309 trees around the playground now, and 75 of them would be removed to make way for the project, mostly acacia trees at the parking lot. An additional 23 trees, mostly aging eucalyptus and cypress, are in poor health and must be removed in any event.

But the project will add enough trees to bring the total to 407, or a net gain of 98 trees, Bair said.

"We're trying to build baseball and softball fields so that thousands of kids can play here," he said, and as if to make his point, it started to drizzle, which if it kept up would make grass fields unplayable. But play went on uninterrupted at the adjacent soccer fields, which are already covered in synthetic turf.

"With the use of synthetic surfaces you can play soccer on the same day as it rained," he said, hoping the crowd would appreciate the example. Mellon, for one, was unimpressed.

"You'd think San Francisco would be a leader in going organic,and that precludes the use of artificial turf," he said. "So what if a kid falls in a gopher hole."

But Jordan O'Brien of Cole Valley saw it the way the Giants and Rec and Park see it. He's a coach and a dad of three of those kids who have fallen in the gopher holes at Crocker Amazon.

"We hate playing here because of the condition of the field," he said. "The renovation would be a huge improvement for the whole community."

Angie Minkin, a resident of Moscow Street on the edge of the park, did what she could to bring the opposing parties together.

"I find this very frustrating, and I don't think it is an effective format for feedback," she said. "Is there opportunity to compromise? Can we bring it down from six fields that are Astroturf to three?"

Dan Mauer, the project manager for Rec and Park, said the overriding goal is simple.

"We want people on the fields as much as possible," he said. "We weren't planning on doing this project until the Giants came through with this beautiful gift."

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