Rendering of the new Centennial Way Park South.
Construction is set to begin this weekend for South City’s Centennial Way Park South, a new 4-acre public space featuring a skate park, outdoor classroom, play area and bike park.
Project discussions began in 2022, and after securing about $2.5 million in grant funding from the state, efforts quickly got underway, with community engagement, design and construction bidding all taking place during 2023, a quicker-than-average timeline for such an initiative.
“We had to move really quickly. One of the biggest challenges with this is the site timeline. … The grant requires projects to be completed by September 2024. We had conceptual designs, but we had to quickly get through the community engagement and construction design process,” the city’s deputy director of Capital Projects Philip Vitale said, adding that increased construction costs from initial conception added unanticipated obstacles as well.
But community engagement was robust and overwhelmingly positive, he mentioned. The skateboarding community in particular was vocal about not just incorporating a skate park in the area, but designing one that wasn’t siloed from other public spaces, as is often the case.
“They really wanted to see skate spaces along the trails, and they really wanted them integrated, instead of fenced in and isolated from the rest of the community,” Vitale said.
The park will also have several spaces for outdoor education, including play areas and a garden for kids of various ages. And instead of relying on traditional playground structures, such as slides or swings, Vitale said the city is using preserved trees that were removed due to construction on Orange Memorial Park, as well as trees knocked down from last year’s storms. The idea, he said, is to invite more creativity and natural elements into the younger generations’ sense of play.
“It’s in close proximity to South San Francisco High and Los Cerritos Elementary, as well as the Boys and Girls Club. We thought this was a good opportunity for outdoor education space,” he said.
Similar to the city’s new Library and Parks and Recreation Center, the site falls on BART-owned property, and in exchange for its use, the city agreed to maintain the land.
“We expanded into an agreement of BART, and with that, we had these opportunities to expand more programming. While there has been a pedestrian trail, we had always wanted to add more activities along the trail,” Vitale said.
The groundbreaking event will be Saturday, Feb. 3, at Centennial Trail on Spruce Avenue. Construction is expected to be completed by this summer.
(650) 344-5200 ext. 102
Daily Journal staff
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