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San Francisco Chronicle​

People love the new Great Highway park. Do they love it enough to spare Supervisor Joel Engardio?

What controversy? Being able to take a snooze in a beachfront hammock on a sunny afternoon has made all the turmoil over closing the Upper Great Highway to create Sunset Dunes, San Francisco's newest park, worth it. At least it did for Fred Reynolds, who lives nearby, when I spoke to him on a recent Saturday. 'I thought it worked very well during COVID,' Reynolds said of the pandemic closure of the roadway. 'So, it seems like a natural progression. I think it's turning out to be a great asset for the city.' Now the question is if Reynolds' neighbors feel similarly enough about the park and its new amenities to extinguish their political furor. While San Francisco voted to pass Prop K in November, closing the Great Highway to cars, Sunset residents overwhelmingly opposed the measure — and responded to its passage by revolting against their supervisor, Joel Engardio, who championed the roadway's closure. The campaign to recall Engardio said it had enough petition signatures from District 4 residents by Thursday's deadline to submit to the San Francisco Elections Department for a ballot measure. If the signatures are certified, the department must hold a recall election 105 to 120 days afterward. There's also a lawsuit seeking to reopen the Great Highway and the possibility of a ballot measure to reverse Prop K. The recall campaign also opened another front in the city's moderate-progressive political war. Meanwhile, Sunset Dunes park, the source of all this acrimony, opened officially to great fanfare on April 12. Politics aside, it's still doing well. Sunset Dunes is still largely a four-lane road. There's new murals, paintings on the asphalt, sculptures and some added amenities, such as hammocks and tree trunks repurposed into seating. That's enough for Sunset Dunes to become the third most-visited park in the city during the week, averaging 3,400 visitors a day, and fourth overall on weekends, averaging 7,800 visitors a day, according to the Recreation and Park Department. 'I've been coming out on the weekends pretty much, but I want to start coming out at night every day just for exercise, too,' Sunset resident Osmond Li said after trying out a piano set up for visitors. So far, 62% of the visitors to Sunset Dunes are from San Francisco, and 35% of them are from the adjacent Sunset, Parkside and West Portal neighborhoods, according to the Recreation and Park Department's sensors that can track cell phone registrations. A 'honeymoon' surge to a new park is normal, but 'weekday consistency suggests lasting success. Our numbers there have been higher than expected,' said Tamara Barak Aparton, a spokesperson for the Recreation and Park Department. Is all that foot traffic translating into more sales for area businesses? It's probably too early for anything conclusive, but I checked with a couple of businesses I talked to just after the November election. Andytown Coffee Roasters co-owner Lauren Crabbe said her count of foot traffic at her Outer Sunset shops is up 20% over last year, compared to 5% at her Richmond District location. 'There's obviously something going on there beyond just the weather if we're seeing one neighborhood performing better than the other,' Crabbe said. At Aqua Surf Shop in the Sunset, store manager Dagan Ministero, who opposed Prop K, said he hasn't had an influx of customers since the park opened. 'I don't know if it's just the nation overall, but business is kind of down these days,' Ministero said. 'I haven't seen an increase.' Traffic congestion was one of the chief concerns for Ministero and many opposed to closing the Great Highway. Traffic is at or below pre-pandemic levels on the lower Great Highway adjacent to the park and nearby 46th Avenue, according to monitors set up by the group Friends of Sunset Dunes. However, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is collecting more comprehensive data on the area's traffic conditions that it expects to release this summer, according to Parisa Safarzadeh, a spokesperson for the agency. 'We do anticipate that with every road change there is an adjustment period,' Safarzadeh said, noting that new traffic patterns and potential problems become clearer after drivers settle into routines. To help traffic flow, there are new stoplights at Lincoln Way and 41st Avenue, and at Sloat and Skyline boulevards. Sunset Boulevard, the closest major north-south route, has been repaved. Speed bumps were added to some streets near the Great Highway to discourage cut-through traffic. Safarzadeh said traffic data will be evaluated to determine if further changes are needed. 'It's too early to even understand what that would look like.' Drivers accustomed to using the closed 2-mile stretch of the Upper Great Highway from Lincoln Way to Sloat Boulevard will bear the brunt of these changes. Anecdotal evidence suggests commutes could be longer and not everybody is happy. Ministero said he's witnessed several fender benders in the area that he attributed to an uptick in traffic and that better infrastructure changes should have been in place before the closure. 'I feel like it was kind of putting the cart before the horse,' Ministero said. Despite his opposition to the Great Highway's closure, Ministero, who lives in the Richmond, said he loves the new public space and surfs the area almost daily, despite the 'problematic' traffic. Sunset voters who felt betrayed by Engardio now appear to have a chance at retribution by recalling him. Or can the new park win them over before Election Day? Either way, the park will remain. We can throw Engardio out and relitigate this at the polls and the courts. But to what end? Engardio has a vested interest in making sure Sunset Dunes is a success, so ousting him could jeopardize that. No doubt, commuters will be inconvenienced. I live in the Sunset, and I'll be one of them, too, when I drive. We should make sure the city upholds its responsibility to make traffic improvements. Because in the end, Sunset Dunes could become a great city asset, and that's what we should all want. Harry Mok is an assistant editor, editorial board member and columnist for the Opinion section.