A Digital Journal - San Francisco Public Works
In the Works
June 2025
This month, Public Works Bureau of Urban Forestry crews worked in the shadow of The Painted Ladies, a row of showcase Victorians across from Alamo Square. With skill, care and pride, they repaired the sidewalk and pruned the street trees fronting the colorful houses.
FEATURE STORIES
“The Painted Ladies,” with City Hall and the downtown skyline in the background, represent a quintessential San Francisco cityscape.
A
Picturesque
Sidewalk Makeover
One of the most popular sightseeing spots in San Francisco – the 700 block of Steiner Street with its row of beloved Victorian homes known as “The Painted Ladies” – was overdue for some much-needed TLC.
Public Works crews repair the sidewalk and trim the trees in front of the famed Victorians.
Earlier this month, Public Works Bureau of Urban Forestry cement and arborist crews – with cement mixers in tow – descended on the block to give the sidewalk in front of the homes the expert care and repairs it needed.
For seven workdays this month, they set out safety cones along the stretch as fascinated passersby looked on. The team of a dozen masons, arborists and drivers demolished large swaths of the pathway, which had been badly damaged by roots anchoring eight large ficus trees on the block.
Cement crews pour fresh cement for the new sidewalk.
All told, crews replaced 1,400 square feet of cement. The work was completed as part of StreetTreeSF, a voter-backed initiative that provides Public Works with a dedicated funding stream to care for the City’s 125,000-plus street trees and repair sidewalk damage they may cause.
Ficus tree roots uplifted and damaged the old sidewalk.
The sidewalk on Steiner Street was “pushed up and creating tripping hazards for the residents and many tourists who visit this location daily,” Bureau of Urban Forestry Cement Shop lead Jay T. Ford said. “Some of the uplift exceeded four inches in height. It was a must-do.”
The gravity of the job was not lost on Ford or his crew.
“It’s The Painted Ladies,” Ford said. “They have a book written about them.”
The colorful Painted Ladies, built in the late 1890s, are a favorite destination for tourists.
Named so because of their delightful pastel palette, the homes, located across the street from Alamo Square, are celebrities in their own right, having been featured in countless films, books and television shows, and showcased on social media platforms and in visitors’ vacation photos.
The homes, built by developer Matthew Kavanaugh in the late 1890s, also are known as the Seven Sisters and Postcard Row. The stately Victorians, with their Queen Anne architectural style, feature varying hues of purple, red, yellow, blue and green. Their peaked roofs, asymmetrical façades, gingerbread-style gables, wood shingles shaped into various designs, classical columns, spindles and balustrades, cutaway bay windows and intricate stain-glass paneling – all against the backdrop of downtown – are unmistakable.
The homes have hosted impromptu wedding proposals on their doorsteps and are visited daily by packed sightseeing buses.
Ford looked over the work during a recent visit recalling the effort that went into the job – sidewalk demolition, root pruning, tree-basin framing, concrete pouring and stenciling. Forty yards of fresh concrete were hauled in using multiple cement trucks, he said.
Cement masons smooth out the freshly poured concrete.
Public safety was top of mind throughout the job, Ford said. At every step of the process, residents were allowed access to their homes and parking garages. The crews also did their best to preserve as much of the original look of the sidewalk and revered granite curbs. “It was meticulous work,” Ford said. “The neighbors kept coming up to us thanking us. They were very pleased.”
One of the neighbors, Jaye Karza, who has lived on the block for 20 years, expressed his gratitude for the masons’ and arborists’ work. He said it was difficult to get his vehicle in and out of his building’s garage with the severe sidewalk uplift. “I love it,” he said. “It’s really helpful for safety. It’s smooth now.”
Cement Shop lead Jay T. Ford chats with a neighbor about the sidewalk work.
Built between 1892 and 1896, during San Francisco’s Victorian construction boom after the 1849 gold rush, the homes survived both the destructive 1906 and 1989 earthquakes. They were named The Painted Ladies by writers Michael Larson and Elizabeth Pomada in their 1978 book, “Painted Ladies: San Francisco's Resplendent Victorians.”
George Horsfall inherited the blue Painted Lady from his mother Catherine, who lived in the home for more than two decades before her death. He said he’s grateful the path in front of his home is safer because of the Cement Shop’s and arborists’ work.
“I’m thrilled beyond belief,” Horsfall said. It was his mother’s goal to see this repair work done before her death. “It looked like hell. Whatever is going on in the City, it seems like stuff is getting done. To whoever fixed it this time, thank you so much. I have a lot of respect for their work.”
Cement supervisor Salina Mickles oversaw the project. The Cement Shop roster included team lead Ford; crew members Orestes Cardenas, Michael Bradley, Roshedy Rapides, Brandon Dennis, Gabriel Arteaga, Ernesto Munoz, Wei Bo Wu and Marcos Vera; and driver Michael Fritz. The team was supported by cement mixer driver Arthur Budd; operating engineer Diego Chavez; general laborers Solomon Guillory, Siaosi “George” Nalesoni, Joevani Garcia, Jerri Lynn Vinson and Soledad Martinez; and arborist supervisor Netanili “Nili” Niu.
Cement Shop lead Jay T. Ford noted that it took 40 yards of new concrete to complete the job.
BY THE NUM83R5
PUBLIC WORKS
2025 -YEAR TO DATE (through end of May 2025)
5,572
POTHOLES
FILLED
3,016
TREES
PRUNED
464
CURB RAMPS
CONSTRUCTED
200
NUMBER OF BLOCKS RESURFACED
8,295
TONS OF DEBRIS COLLECTED
Public Works not only cleaned the streets and sidewalks along the event route, we also participated in the Pride Parade with a vivacious contingent of employees, friends and family.
Proud to Clean Up After Pride
San Francisco’s famed Pride Parade, held annually on the last Sunday of June, brought Market Street to celebratory life, with more than 200 contingents marching, dancing, chanting, shimmying, cartwheeling and drumming along the route. Tens of thousands of onlookers lined the route to cheer them on.
Trailing the parade revelers was a well-choreographed team of Public Works street cleaners who used rakes, brooms, shovels, pickers and blowers, as well as mechanical sweepers and flusher trucks, to get the streets and sidewalks along the approximately 1.5-mile parade route back in shape by Sunday night. The parade runs from The Embarcadero to Civic Center.
A cavalcade of Public Works street cleaning trucks follow the Pride Parade — sweeping up debris, flushing down the road and supporting crews on the ground doing manual labor.
Celebrating its 55th anniversary this year, the Pride Parade is among San Francisco’s most popular civic events – and Public Works’ largest planned-event cleanup operation of the year with dozens of street cleaners and truck drivers deployed to get the job done.
In the heart of Hayes Valley, Ivy Street is undergoing a Public Works-led makeover.
Living the Dream:
The Transformation of a Hayes Valley Alley
At the junction of San Francisco’s North of Market, South of Market and Mission grid systems, the Market-Octavia area in the heart of Hayes Valley acts as a transportation gateway to a city perpetually on the move.
More than a dozen transit lines travel through the busy neighborhood, including the historic F-line trolleys that run along Market Street. A near-constant stream of cars, trucks and motorcycles rumbles up and down a twisting ramp leading to and from Highway 101 – the remaining appendage of a double-decker freeway that once bifurcated the community. Commuters zip through the area on e-bikes and huff up hills on conventional bicycles.
In this neighborhood in motion, a Public Works-led project aims to make a narrow side street off of Octavia Street into a community destination, a leafy gathering spot to slow down, amble through and maybe even linger.
“It’s really a vision for the Market-Octavia neighborhood to utilize our streets as public spaces and bring neighbors together,” said William Bulkley, a Public Works landscape architect who is his team’s lead on the Ivy Street Living Alley project.
With the help of Public Works project managers, construction managers, landscape architects and engineers, the one-block stretch of Ivy Street, between Laguna and Octavia streets, in Hayes Valley is primed for a transformation. “We’re trying to bring a new intimate neighborhood street feeling to this very busy neighborhood,” Bulkley said.
The Ivy Street project aims to turn the narrow alley into a community destination.
New raised crosswalks at both ends of the block will aim to reduce traffic speeds, increase visibility and provide safe crossings for people who walk. The raised crosswalks will be combined with traffic-calming bulb-outs – one already exists on one end of the alley and another will be built at the other end.
“Bulb-outs inherently ... are a road diet feature essentially,” said Miguel Hernandez, a Public Works civil engineer and the design lead on the project. “In addition to shortening the crossing distance for pedestrians, they give drivers the feeling of needing to be more careful.”
Additional street trees will bring more cooling shade; eight new benches will provide respite for pedestrians; and a decorative asphalt overlay – designed by a local artist – will provide a splash of abstract beauty. Improved pedestrian lighting will illuminate the alley by night. Textured paving on the road will further nudge drivers to slow down and curb ramp upgrades will provide increased accessibility.
Local artist Rhonel Roberts will design the new decorative asphalt overlay on Ivy Street. Credit: Rhonel Roberts
Construction is about halfway done, with the project expected to be completed by October. The price tag for construction is about $1.85 million.
Though a private-sector-led living alley project at Linden Street, between Gough and Octavia streets, already exists, the Ivy Street makeover will mark a San Francisco first.
“It is the first City-designed living alley of many that were identified in the (Market and Octavia Area Plan),” Bulkley said.
‘A common front yard for public use and enjoyment’
When City planners began to draw up the Market and Octavia Area Plan in the late 2000s, so-called “living alleys” – with improvements funded by development impact fees in the area – were seen as a way to create shared, multi-purpose public spaces for use by residents. The need was real.
For decades, large infrastructure and redevelopment projects had “deeply scarred the area’s physical fabric,” the planners said. Most notably, perhaps, there was the stacked Central Freeway that once cut through the area, before it sustained damage during the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake and was later torn down.
Removal of the ramps that had divided the neighborhood opened up new land for development and open space, allowing for a stunning and welcome transformation of the area.
The double-decker Central Freeway once cut through the neighborhood; here seen from Gough Street as it extends over Hayes Street.
City officials put together the Living Alleys Toolkit as a resource for community members and designers.
Living alleys, potentially even a network of them, were seen as a piece of that larger puzzle.
“Because alleys carry relatively little traffic, they can be re-designed to provide more public space for people – as a living alley with corner plazas to calm traffic, seating and play areas for children, with space for community gardens and the like,” the planners wrote. “By prioritizing use by people over cars, the alley can become a common front yard for public use and enjoyment.”
A collaborative effort led by the San Francisco Planning Department, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and Public Works eventually resulted in the Living Alleys Toolkit, a resource for community members and designers to develop and implement living alleys.
“I just think living alleys is just an incredible tool in the urban design toolbox,” said Bulkley, who once served as president of the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association.
Much of the guidelines are applicable to alleys throughout San Francisco, but the Market-Octavia area, which sees more than 100,000 vehicle trips daily and is undergirded by major regional transportation corridors, provides perhaps especially fertile ground for the approach.
Small and quiet alleys occupy about 6% of the total footprint of the Market and Octavia Area Plan, “a significant spatial resource in a dense urban area,” the Living Alleys Toolkit authors note.
“The Market Octavia Plan identified the relative slow pace of alleys as places for open space and calm pedestrian environments to counterbalance the bustling traffic on the surrounding arterial streets,” the toolkit document states. “Fronting these are a mix of ‘back of house’ uses and housing, along with some commercial uses. The Market Octavia Plan called for the development of prototypes and a process for residents to participate in the design and implementation of improvements to their alleys.”
The plan also identified more than two dozen stretches of public right of way suitable for living alley improvements. Among them was Ivy Street.
.png)
A map in the Market and Octavia Area Plan shows potential spots suitable for living alley improvements.
That doesn't mean the location is not without its challenges. The narrow nature of the street meant Public Works designers and engineers had to find creative solutions and keep an eye on the details.
“This is about 35 feet from building to building and we’re cramming a lot of elements into a very small street that has an existing setup with a lot of mature trees,” said Hernandez, the engineer. “So we’ve kind of had to thread the needle with a lot of these elements.”
For one, Public Works staff had to find a way to keep the slender sidewalk accessible to meet Americans with Disabilities Act requirements while also making enough room for the street trees.
The solution? A specially designed trench grate – made by Seattle-based Urban Accessories – that overlays part of the tree wells.
"We’re going to straddle the tree well with this 6-inch grate,” Bulkley said. That means the grate will extend the ADA-accessible walking surface while it overhangs the tree well.
“It’s sort of a pilot project actually,” he said. “We have a lot of these narrow streets, but we want to put trees everywhere.”
Furthermore, because the alley sits in an officially designated historic district, wherever curb is being replaced, the project will use either reused or brand-new granite curb. Crews also are having to relocate an underground water line. And because the project calls for narrowing part of the one-way road with a new bulb-out, Hernandez and his team had to make sure it is designed in a way that still allows fire engines to turn into the alley.
“This is one of my smallest projects, but it doesn’t mean it’s the easiest,” Hernandez said. “This project was a bear. It was like one block, but had every element to have to design and coordinate with.”
On a roll: Tenderloin Beautification Day participants wipe out tags.
Tenderloin Beautification
Day: A Team Effort
Collaboration. Community. Determination. These are just a handful of words that capture the spirit of this year’s Tenderloin Beautification Day event that brought together residents, City officials and community organizations for an impactful neighborhood cleanup.
More than 60 volunteers came out for the June 21 workday. They were joined by teams from Public Works, which provided paint and other graffiti-busting supplies, and the Tenderloin Community Benefit District, which hosts the annual event.
Mayor Daniel Lurie and District 5 Supervisor Bilal Mahmood helped kick off the day’s activities with a brief speaking program on Dodge Street before heading to a nearby street corner to paint over graffiti on a utility pole.
Mayor Daniel Lurie paints over graffiti on a utility pole.
Throughout the neighborhood, volunteers wiped out tags that marred storefronts, apartment buildings, parking meters, mailboxes and retaining walls.
“I’m happy to be out here working with the community to help the neighborhood look better,” said Sam, a Tenderloin resident who just gave his first name and spent his Saturday morning painting out graffiti with brown paint and a roller on Willow Street. “Every little bit helps.”
On other blocks, volunteers learned from the cleaning pros how to properly use power washers to scrub grime off the sidewalks. Inch by inch, they watched the hard, steady stream of water they sprayed work its deep-cleaning magic.
A volunteer power washes an Eddy Street sidewalk.
The Tenderloin, one of San Francisco’s most vibrant and diverse neighborhoods, has long been challenged with problematic street conditions. But it also is a neighborhood rich with community resolve to make things safer and cleaner for the many families and seniors who live there and the small businesses that operate there.
The Tenderloin Community Benefit District, a nonprofit funded by special assessments paid by the property owners in the area, is at the forefront of improving conditions in the neighborhood and creating a more welcoming environment.
Public Works collaborates closely with the organization, not just for special events like the Tenderloin Beautification Day, but throughout the year. By coordinating schedules and leveraging resources, we are able to more effectively take care of the neighborhood.
Graffiti-busting volunteers target a tagged wall on Willow Street.
“The beautification day was gratitude in action – from the Tenderloin community to our collaborative teams at TLCBD and Public Works who work every single day to make the Tenderloin a better place for everyone who lives, works and visits here,” said Kate Robinson, executive director of the Tenderloin Community Benefit District.
“It gave dozens of volunteers the chance to experience the pride that comes from cleaning and engaging the neighborhood,” she said. “This is the real work and we're making a difference through genuine partnership and mutual respect.”
In a tradition known as the “topping out,” construction workers affix the final steel beam – signed by people involved in the project – to the structural frame.
Beaming with Pride:
Rec Center Rebuild Hits Construction Target
Under brilliant blue skies, crews high off the ground and fastened into safety harnesses bolted the last steel beam onto the main structural frame of the Eugene L. Friend Recreation Center – marking a major construction milestone in what is known in the industry as the topping out.
City officials, community members and constructions workers celebrated the beam-raising with a brief ceremony on June 23.
The new rec center in the South of Market will replace the outdated, existing facility with a larger indoor-outdoor space designed to serve the diverse needs of children, families and seniors who use the popular venue for sports, classes and gatherings with friends and neighbors.
Located near Harrison and Sixth streets, it is the only rec center in the neighborhood and long has been an important community hub, serving the public for 35 years.
Rendering of the exterior of the Eugene Friend Recreation Center. Credit: Mark Cavagnero Associates | Kuth Ranieri Architects.
The new center will include a gymnasium with two full-size basketball courts; a new entryway on Harriet Street; an exercise area; a kitchenette; a reception area and office; and two multi-purpose rooms. In addition to new lighting and landscaping, the center’s outdoor area will include a new playground, a picnic area and sport court.
Renderings of the new rec center’s interior and outdoor space. Credit: Mark Cavagnero Associates | Kuth Ranieri Architects
Construction on the $59 million project began in February 2024 and remains on track to wrap up in mid-2026.
Public Works is managing construction and providing contracting and landscape design services for the project. The rec center is owned and operated by the Recreation and Park Department.
“In a busy, ever-changing neighborhood like SoMa, having safe spaces where people can learn, play and grow means everything,” said Rudy Corpuz, founder and director of United Playaz, an anti-violence, youth development organization headquartered in the South of Market.
“This rec center,” he continued, “is like a second home for so many in the community —whether it’s kids in after-school programs, seniors taking classes or neighbors coming together for a basketball game. Watching the new center take shape is a powerful reminder of why we do this work – to make sure our community has the tools and resources it needs to thrive.”
Funding for the project is a mix of public and private sources. More than half the funding, $30 million, comes from the voter-backed 2020 Health and Recovery Bond. Additional support came from developer impact fees, private donations and philanthropic contributions, including a $520,500 in-kind grant from the Trust for Public Land, a national nonprofit focused on access to nature and the outdoors.
Public Works is providing construction management and landscape design services for the project.
Public Works Director Carla Short said the beam-raising ceremony for the project signifies critical progress in the rebuild. “We’re looking forward to celebrating with the community when the new center opens. This is going to be a treasured neighborhood resource for generations to come.”
The June volunteer workday brought out volunteers of all ages to beautify District 8 neighborhoods.
#LoveOurCity
Hard-working groups of determined volunteers fanned out in District 8 neighborhoods for this month’s Love Our City: Neighborhood Beautification Day workday.
Participants carefully mulched street tree basins in Noe Valley, used sheer might to tame weeds and overgrown shrubs along a Diamond Heights median and removed invasive ivy growing on a pedestrian bridge in Glen Park.
They also put six young street trees in the ground in the Duboce Triangle neighborhood and painted out graffiti in the Castro.
Volunteers tame green open space with pruning and weeding.
More than 100 community volunteers came out for the June 7 event. They worked alongside Public Works crews to beautify the community. We were joined by Supervisor Rafael Mandelman.
One Saturday a month, January through November, we hold a Love Our City: Neighborhood Beautification Day workday, rotating through the 11 supervisorial districts.
Next month, we’ll be beautifying District 6 neighborhoods. Kickoff for the July 12 event is at 9 a.m. at the Public Works Street Tree Nursery at 415 Fifth St. Want to participate? Sign up here.
Interested in learning more about our tree nursery? We’ll be hosting an open house there on July 12 from 9 a.m. to noon. There, you can learn about San Francisco's many street trees, check out a display of beautiful nature photos by Marisa Ishimatsu and chat with nursery staff about the history and purpose of the site.
More information can be found here.