Remember that City-owned lot near the top of Bernal Hill that suffered from neglect, overgrowth, and a general sense of sad? And remember how an extremely sexy group of neighborhood volunteers cleaned up the land so well and so thoroughly that it is now certified for use as a Bernal Heights Unicorn Habitat?
Well, Neighbor Samir is organizing a similar volunteer clean-up effort for some neglected terrain in Alemanistan, around the Bradford and Jarboe Stairs. The work happens tomorrow, Saturday, February 21 from 9am to 12 noon, and our local unicorns would love it if you could help.
Neighbor Samir tells the recent history of the site:
According to neighborhood lore, before the Bradford and Jarboe stairs were put in place, there was a dirt path here that was attended to by a neighbor.
Then when two new residences went up on the 300 block of Bradford, the developer worked with the city to install these stairs. They ended up tearing out all the landscaping, but they put in some new plants. The City maintained it for 5 years then stopped. (That was about when my partner and I moved to the block, a little over 3 years ago.)
I think neighbors were put off by the whole process of the stairs going in, and the neighbor who did the original landscaping sold his house and moved away.
In the time since the city stopped doing maintenance, myself and a few others have made individual efforts to go out there and clean things up. Others have repeatedly called 311, but no one ever comes out to do anything. I’d basically all but given up, until I saw the Bernalwood post about the Ellsworth garden. I saw [Jerad Weiner, DPW’s community liaison]’s contact info in the comments, and reached out to him directly. That’s how this got going. Jerad was very responsive and got to work right away organizing this gardening day.,
From what I gather, the first day we’ll be weeding and trimming. We’re then supposed to assess which areas should get mulch and DPW attention. Jerad also mentioned that if we neighbors get together and put together a list of things we want, we can request that the City purchase them (plants, etc).
This area too could soon become a vibrant Bernal Heights Unicorn Habitat. But first, it needs your help. Saturday morning. Nine to noon. As explained here:
Bernalwood 
The Recreation and Park Department had planned to clean up the hill, re-inforcing trails, planting etc. in 2014. Since nothing happened I tried to contact Rec & Park with no response. It might do well to have a few neighbors make more calls and see if we can get them to firm up some kind schedule.
Jerad did mention that this site would be a good candidate for funding and this seems to be the first step in an ongoing project. Please stop by if you can as we’re going to be exploring these options tomorrow.
And thanks to Todd for posting! 🙂
Thanks so much to all of the neighbors who took time out of their day to participate in this workday! The three hours went by quickly, but we managed to remove much of the overgrowth on and by the staircase. Was also great meeting those who live nearby, but whom we’d not met until today. Hope to work beside you again in the near future!