Youth eco-center to sprout on Earth Day

San Francisco
Apr 7, 2008

A long-embattled, $1.5 million environmental education center will break ground in Hunters Point on Earth Day — seven years after it was proposed as the first off-the-grid building in The City.

Bayview-Hunters Point residents split over the project when leaders with nonprofit Literacy for Environmental Justice proposed building it in McLaren Park. Now it’s destined for Heron’s Head Park, a wetlands area the nonprofit has restored on former brown fields in the shadow of the Pacific Gas & Electric power plant, project manager Laurie Schoeman said.

“Since then, the project has acted to heal and unify the community,” said Jared Blumenfeld, director of the San Francisco Department of the Environment, which donated $900,000 in grants to build the center. “The product will be something we can all be proud of.”

The nonprofit’s center will be the first in San Francisco to do its own wastewater recycling, in addition to featuring a rooftop garden and enough solar panels to power the 1,400-square-foot building, Schoeman said.