Finally!
By Sam Whiting, Staff Writer June 9, 2026 - San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco officials broke ground on a two-year, $73 million makeover of Chinatown’s beloved Portsmouth Square park Tuesday after 40 years of starts and stops, busted budgets and threatened lawsuits related to the massive rebuild.
Mayor Daniel Lurie described the start of construction as a “historic, historic moment,” before he put his dress shoe to a gold shovel.
“I want to thank everyone who has participated in this vision, and yes, it has taken time,” he acknowledged, surrounded by many city officials and Chinatown leaders.
$73 million S.F. park in the heart of Chinatown breaks ground after decades of delays
Quick and Dirty
San Francisco officials broke ground on a two-year, $73 million makeover of Chinatown’s beloved Portsmouth Square park Tuesday after 40 years of starts and stops, busted budgets and threatened lawsuits related to the massive rebuild.
Mayor Daniel Lurie described the start of construction as a “historic, historic moment,” before he put his dress shoe to a gold shovel.
“I want to thank everyone who has participated in this vision, and yes, it has taken time,” he acknowledged, surrounded by many city officials and Chinatown leaders.
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The redesigned park will have a new 8,300-square-foot community clubhouse with meeting rooms and a commercial kitchen, a larger playground and new adult fitness area, an outdoor plaza and stage for performances and community events, more shade and new landscaping and lighting.
Renderings of the reimagined Potrsmouth Square in San Francisco.
Courtesy Recreation and Park Department
The redesign also involves taking down a huge concrete footbridge that connects the park to the Hilton Hotel on the far side of Kearny Street, which the bridge spans.
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Removing the bridge would open up and brighten a major swath of the park. But the gathered speakers avoided mentioning the bridge because it’s tangled in a legal dispute between the city attorney’s office and the owner of the hotel over which party will pay for and remove it.
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“We are engaged in negotiating, and we expect full cooperation going forward,’’ said City Attorney David Chiu, in response to a question about the bridge before the ceremony.
In any case, “the bridge to nowhere,” as it is derisively known, is expected to be closed through Wednesday morning when a fence goes up around the entire park and the city parking garage that sits beneath it. Demolition of the bridge is part of the approved project, said Rec and Park General Manager Sarah Madland. Its demolition is anticipated for late July or early August.
Portsmouth Square is the oldest community gathering space in San Francisco, dating back to the earliest days of the Gold Rush, when the city courthouse and jail sat on Kearny Street. In his remarks, Lurie noted that the first raising of the American flag in the city happened at Portsmouth Square, and it was the location of the first public school in California.
Dubbed “Chinatown’s Living room,” the square is a lively community center with an abundance of benches for enjoying the neighborhood’s frequent fine weather and giving respite to those living in the 3,000 tiny single-room-occupancy hotel residences in the immediate vicinity.
Mayor Daniel Lurie speaks during the groundbreaking ceremony at Portsmouth Square to mark the start of a two-year, $71 million renovation of Portsmouth Square in Chinatown on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, in San Francisco, Calif.
Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle
“This square is where the city grew up,” said District Three Supervisor Danny Sauter, noting that the only place other than City Hall where all 11 members of the Board of Supervisors and the mayor gather, is in Portsmouth Square for Chinese New Year. “There is so much history here,” he said, “and so much history still to be made.”
The renovation will be paid for by funds from city bond funds as well as state and local grants though costs rose from $54 million in 2022, when the project was approved, to $73 million today.
“I feel goosebumps,” said Anni Chung, executive director of Self-Help for the Elderly. “The community has been following this rainbow for many years and starting today it is all coming true.”
Several major monuments from the city’s Civic Art Collection were added to the park in recent years, including the Goddess of Democracy, who overlooked the ceremony, and the Robert Louis Stevenson Monument, on the northwest corner of the square.
The monuments, including one marking the site of the first public school, and one marking the first cable car rolling up Jackson Street, will be moved into storage next week. It’s unclear if any of the monuments will be coming back, said Coma Te, spokesperson for the San Francisco Arts Commission, which oversees the collection.
Mayor Daniel Lurie, right of center, and other officials turn shovels of dirt at Portsmouth Square at the groundbreaking ceremony at Portsmouth Square to mark the start of a two-year, $71 million renovation of Portsmouth Square in Chinatown on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, in San Francisco, Calif.
Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle
Te said the Stevenson statue, a sailing ship atop a tall stone plinth, may be moved to a more appropriate location on the northern waterfront. This scattering of monuments did not sit well with Ken Maley, a longtime parks advocate.
“This collection of monuments to the history and birth of San Francisco belong in the space where they were originally placed,” said Maley. “It is very much intertwined — the history of Chinatown and the history of San Francisco.”
Overall, the mood was celebratory Tuesday when a dozen Rec and Park commissioners and staff filed into the Hon’s Wun-Tun House for a spontaneous lunch after the event, with toasts announced by the tapping together of chopsticks.
“We were feeling the joy that this complicated project is finally underway,” said Commission President Kat Anderson, who was part of the lunch. “People are really going to miss this space while it is tied up in construction. But it’s going to be worth the wait.”
Greg