Tiny, beloved S.F. playground hit by 2023 landslide reopens after $1.2 million rebuild
Nobody was hurt, but the avalanche of dirt, trees and boulders forced the closure of Peixotto Playground. Hidden at the end of a narrow driveway one block above Castro Street, the little play area with a clubhouse in Corona Heights Park is a treasured neighborhood spot — a 'jewel inside a rough box,' according to a column by the Chronicle's Carl Nolte.
More than two years later, at a cost of $1.2 million to stabilize the hillside, the playground reopened this week with new sand, swings and a slide, and benches cut from the trunks of trees that fell.
'The landslide was top three in our most costly events of 2023,' said Eric Andersen, the city Recreation and Park Department's director of operations, ranking the slide with the flood at Stern Grove and the giant eucalyptus falling on the historic Trocadero Clubhouse during a very stormy winter of 2022-23. 'It required a fairly significant refurbishing of one of our older playgrounds.'
Located at the base of Corona Heights Park, Peixotto (pronounced Pish-otto) Playground opened in 1951 on the site of a former rock quarry that later became a brick manufacturing plant.
The park is accessed either by hiking down a paved path from the Randall Museum and past the tennis court, or by hiking up steep 15th Street from Castro, and making a left on Beaver Street. The playground entrance is marked by a sign on the fence next to an apartment building, but you have to hike up the driveway to see its main attraction: a 50-foot wall of shining red chert stone exposed by the quarrying operation.
The landslide was loosened by an atmospheric river that brought days of hard rain, culminating on Jan. 1, 2023. The slide was 80 feet long and 20 feet wide and took out 36 feet of chain-link fence before coming to rest on the edge of the playground.
The children's play area itself was not damaged, nor was the clubhouse, home to the Rocky Mountain Participation Nursery School since the 1970s.
'It's a nice blend of a natural resource area with a playground and a clubhouse in the middle,' said Andersen.
After the slide, geologists determined the hillside to be unsafe and both the playground and the clubhouse were closed pending full repairs. FEMA declared it an emergency, which merited funding for the work.
During the cleanup, city crews discovered an irrigation leak that was affecting water service in the clubhouse. Crews then took the opportunity to spruce up and repaint the clubhouse and renovate the play area. Logs that had come down in the storm were repurposed as seating areas, and a new lawn and sprinkler system were installed.
The Rocky Mountain Participation Nursery School returned in February and its industrious students set about rebuilding its community garden. Work crews were still on site, which allowed for a class project in drawing individualized thank-you cards for the workers. The slope stabilization project was finally completed on April 22.
'Peixotto Playground is a beloved neighborhood gem, and we're thrilled to have it fully restored and reopened,' said Recreation and Park Department General Manager Phil Ginsburg. 'Thanks to the incredible teamwork across our maintenance, structural and gardening crews — and a lot of creativity with natural materials — we were able to not just repair the damage, but make Peixotto even better than before.'
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