Help McLaren Park

Help McLaren Park is a volunteer community organization dedicated to improving and revitalizing one of San Francisco’s largest parks, which has suffered from decades of neglect and repeated budget cuts.

The organization began as a group of concerned neighbors and community activists determined to improve the park’s condition and make it safer and more welcoming for everyone. Safety was—and continues to be—the number one concern for many residents and visitors.

Help McLaren Park believes that increasing positive community use and foot traffic can help create a safer, more vibrant, and more welcoming environment. By bringing people together and advocating for much-needed improvements, we are working to make McLaren Park a place the entire community can enjoy, appreciate, and be proud of.

Revamping McLaren Park as a whole has proven to be an extremely overwhelming task with substantial associated costs. Help McLaren Park has started by making a huge impact on the Burrows and Gambier St. area of the park that was in desperate need of repair.   The improvement of this small site should have an enormous impact on the surrounding community, once again making the park an integral part of the life of a local resident.

Since the completion of the Gambier Plaza entrance to the park, we have not stopped working to improve the park and make it more accessible to the community. We immediately began efforts to fund a new playground at the Peru Street entrance, a project that took approximately five years and $750,000 to complete. Funding came from a variety of sources, including generous donations from regular park users, corporations such as PG&E, and Supervisor add-backs. However, the majority of the funding came through a Community Action Grant that we successfully applied for.

Help McLaren Park has been fortunate to receive numerous grants over the years, each one helping us take another important step toward improving and preserving our beloved park.

Among our earliest successes were four incredible grants. The first was a $65,000 Community Challenge Grant. The San Francisco Parks Trust also honored us with a $2,000 grant to help fund our first informational kiosk, which was installed in the fall of 2010. Since then we have installed 4 more kiosks!

Around that same time, we received an important $3,800 grant from San Francisco Beautiful, which allowed us to begin the renovation of the Gambier Street Plaza. Most recently, we were awarded an extraordinary $238,000 Community Opportunity Fund grant. Combined with our Community Challenge Grant and a $6,500 COF match, funding which finally provide the resources needed to build the first replacement playground in McLaren Park in many decades.

Riding the momentum of our success, we turned our attention to replacing the playground in the center of the park, adjacent to its largest picnic area. This playground was not simply dilapidated—it was completely gone, having been destroyed by a fire years earlier and never replaced. In its place was an empty sand pit filled with dirt and debris.

This playground represents the heart of McLaren Park, and bringing it back would require not only a new playground but also a restroom and significant funding—far more than any previous project in the park. We knew that only a city-approved bond could make this vision a reality.

We went to work lobbying tirelessly to ensure that McLaren Park was included in the next citywide bond. Through persistence and hard work, we were ultimately successful. However, delays and cost overruns made the project increasingly challenging, and unfortunately, some elements had to be cut from the final design.

Thanks to Salesforce, which stepped up at a critical moment, we were able to preserve the playground swings in the design. Keeping the swings was a major priority for residents, and their support helped ensure that an important part of the community's vision for the playground remained intact.

As we continue to apply for grants and organize community activities to raise additional funding, the magnitude of our goals can sometimes seem overwhelming, especially in today’s challenging economic climate. We desperately need all the support we can get to continue this important work and bring much-needed improvements to our corner of the city.

None of these accomplishments would have been possible without the small contributions, countless volunteer hours, and unwavering support of our neighbors and friends. Through garage sales, chili cook-offs, pancake breakfasts, pizza nights, and countless other community events, ordinary residents came together to raise money, build awareness, and make their voices heard.

Those grassroots efforts helped us gain the attention we needed at City Hall and ultimately positioned us to secure these important grants. Our success is a testament to what a community can accomplish when people come together with determination, persistence, and a shared vision for their neighborhood.

We must continue to remain active and vocal if we want this positive change to continue in McLaren Park. The work is far from over. The future of our park depends on all of us continuing to speak up, get involved, and make our voices heard.

Please consider supporting Help McLaren Park with a tax-deductible donation. Every contribution, large or small, brings us one step closer to making our vision for McLaren Park a reality.

Together, we can create a safer, more vibrant, and more welcoming park for the children and families of San Francisco—especially those in the Portola, Excelsior, and Visitacion Valley communities. With your support, we can continue turning our dreams for McLaren Park into a reality for generations to come.