Now that the San Francisco Giants’ underwhelming season is over, the team has big off-season plans — at least in terms of real estate.
Construction should begin this winter on the first phase of the remake of the team’s parking lot south of McCovey Cove along Third Street, including a 5-acre waterfront park with tide pools open to waders and a bayside lawn capable of holding 5,000 people.
The design being released this week features several landscaped hillocks — and not just to enhance outward views or deflect incoming winds. They’re also intended to serve as buffers to expected sea level rise, part of a larger effort that will include raising the site 5 feet above the existing parking lot.
“My philosophical view is that public space has value and needs to be protected. But we also have to understand the need for the creation of spaces that eventually can be absorbed,” said Kate Orff, whose New York firm Scape is the park’s landscape architect.
The new park design offers the first glimpse of the Giants’ long-delayed 28-acre Mission Rock project, which includes the shoreline and Pier 48 as well as the parking lot. That will be followed within weeks by architectural proposals for four buildings — two office structures and two residential towers — that would join the park in Mission Rock’s first phase of 10.5 acres.
By unveiling the public space first, the Giants clearly seek to emphasize what has been a selling point for the huge mixed-use project since the team was awarded the site in 2008.
“We want this to be both a regional attraction and a neighborhood park,” said Jack Bair, the Giants’ executive vice president and leader of the team’s development effort. “Our desire is to make this one of the best urban parks in the United States in terms of size.”
At 5 acres, what’s being billed as China Basin Park would be similar in size to another bayside park now taking shape alongside Chase Center, a half-mile to the south. But the settings are strikingly different.
Where the park by the Warriors’ new arena will look east toward the distant island of Alameda, China Basin Park is directly south of the Giants’ ballpark at the hinge between Mission Creek and the bay. The fast-growing Mission Bay district begins on the other side of Third Street. The downtown skyline rises to the north behind the Bay Bridge.
Orff’s proposed design taps into these different attractions.
Terry Francois Boulevard will end at Pier 48, and the green strip and kid-size ball field along the cove will be removed. In their place would be a series of spaces that begin with a plaza near the Third Street Bridge, followed by a tree-covered hillock and then a central plaza activated in part by a small restaurant.
East of the restaurant would be another hillock, this one grassy, spilling down into a rounded lawn of nearly an acre that would hug the curve of the shoreline.
Closer to the water, an extension of the Bay Trail would line the plazas and lawn. Below it would be the new semi-natural tidal area, as well as a kayak ramp slicing down to McCovey Cove.
Gone would be the rip-rap that now separates land and water — a rubbled boundary dating back to the 19th century, when the historic Mission Bay was filled in to create expansion space for railroad companies and the Port of San Francisco.
“We’re trying to bring a constructed ecosystem to the heart of the urban environment,” said Orff, who in 2017 became the first landscape architect to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, the so-called genius grant.
Specific design details are still in flux, such as the variety of cypress that might dot the periphery of the lawn, and final sign-offs are needed from the port and the Bay Conservation and Development Commission. Still, the Giants want to start clearing the site in January.
The southern half of the existing parking lot will remain in service until the second phase of the project begins. The park and the first four buildings are scheduled to open by 2023.
This winter the work will begin with churning up asphalt along Third Street and then importing dirt to lift the building pads for the first phase roughly 5 feet above the current elevation. The idea is to place future streets and development sites above the state’s projections for where high tides are expected to be by 2100.
If all this sounds complicated, so is the saga of the Giants’ quest to make Mission Rock happen.
Previewing the park
The Giants, Tishman Speyer and the Port of San Francisco will hold an open house at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at Oracle Park to present the plans for China Basin Park to the public. The entrance to the event is at 2nd and King streets.
The team was one of four bidders for the parking lot when the port held a competition in 2007. No sooner had it been selected as part of a larger development team than the 2008 recession hit, causing the other partners to drop out.
As the economy improved, the Giants dusted off their plans, signing a term sheet with the port in 2013 — the same year that San Francisco passed an initiative requiring voter approval of any project exceeding the existing height limits on port-owned land. The team’s plans call for a variety of heights, including three 240-foot towers, so it went to the ballot and received the voters’ blessing in 2015.
Last year, the New York firm Tishman Speyer joined the Giants as co-developer. The design team includes Jeanne Gang of Chicago, who conceived the corkscrew-like Mira tower that Tishman Speyer is building near the Embarcadero on Folsom Street.
The quest to build Mission Rock began when the Giants’ new manager was Bruce Bochy — three World Series championships ago.
Orff said that key priorities for the site, such as the spacious waterfront green, have endured through all the shifts.
“Our job has been to take those years of discussion and make them manifest in the current vision,” Orff said. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime site.”
John King is The San Francisco Chronicle’s urban design critic. Email: jking@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @johnkingsfchron
