Hooray! Our Community Challenge Grant has been submitted!
Due to watering restrictions, the understory of the trees along the College Avenue medians is dried out and dead most of the year. SMP Greening is making efforts to bring life back to this space.
The purpose of our grant application is beautification, environmental benefits and median protection along College Avenue medians. The grant request is $175,000 and covers the 300 and 400 block medians along College Avenue and a mural design at the top of College Avenue.
Our Community Challenge Grant Program application was submitted on November 28th and is currently under review.
Grant recipient announcements are in the spring of 2023 and awarded grants are funded around July 2023.
SMP Greening partnered with SF Parks Alliance to receive fiscal sponsorship for the Community Challenge Grant application.
This means that SF Parks Alliance will manage the project spending based on the spending plan outlined in the grant application.
Check out the drawings submitted with our grant application, courtesy of Fletcher Studio.
We are super excited to share these designs! When you’re looking through the design plans, please keep in mind that they are not quite complete. These plans still require work to meet budget requirements and we must also go through a city approval process. There will be opportunities for community input later in the process. More on that below…
The designs prepared by Fletcher Studio are based on information gathered at past community meetings (pre-COVID). Plant choices are recommendations from Fletcher Studio based on their ongoing study of plant successes and failures in San Francisco medians. Their research has covered more than five years of analysis which includes tracking plant health and growth progress. Taking advantage of their expertise will help ensure the success of our project and the long term health of our plants along the medians.
The first thing you'll probably notice about the designs is that the plans cover only two medians, the 300 & 400 blocks of College Avenue. That's because, despite a generous grant program that offers funding up to $175,000, we've learned that it's not quite enough to do a beautiful job on all four medians. Every design that included all four medians was coming up short. There simply wasn't enough funding to meet all the grant requirements while making it feel complete.
Also included in the current grant application are plans for a mural at the top of College Avenue. The mural project is a collaboration of three neighbors, two neighbors that own property on or adjacent to the mural and an SMP resident muralist. The drawings and plans for murals have special requirements and have been submitted to SF Arts Commission for their required review and approval.
Our work continues....
We will continue to work on the designs in 2023 after our grant application has been approved and funded.
Although we are still required to stay within the budget that was submitted with the grant, as long as we are following the grant guidelines (maintaining the same scope of work, using drought tolerant plants, etc.), we can hold community meetings and refine our design plans.
While we are awaiting a decision on our grant, SMP Greening is preparing our 2023 community engagement plan which will include an in person community meeting to discuss and finalize the design plans for the medians.
Our previous updates mentioned our research into rainwater capture. After thoroughly researching various opportunities to capture rainwater runoff from College Avenue along the medians, organizing multiple onsite visits from SFPUC, as well as, consultations with a local civil engineer that is familiar with our area, we ultimately concluded that our success with this particular type of grant would be much more likely if we allow more time for research and reconsider this in the new year in hopes of applying in the fall of 2023. We still have a desire to explore this further and hope to have more news and community discussions on this topic in 2023.
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