Spruced-up Alta Plaza Park welcomed back in grand reopening

Visitors enjoy Alta Plaza Park in Pacific Heights during a reopening celebration after it was rehabilitated. Visitors enjoy Alta Plaza Park in Pacific Heights during a reopening celebration after it was rehabilitated. Photo: Photos By Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Photos By Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle Image 1 of / 49 Caption Close Spruced-up Alta Plaza Park welcomed back in grand reopening 1 / 49 Back to Gallery

Spectacular views, sunny skies and almost-warm air Sunday drew hundreds of people to San Francisco’s Alta Plaza Park, which sits high in Pacific Heights.

Joining the dog walkers, birthday party attendees, sunbathers and sightseers were city officials, including Recreation and Park Department Director Phil Ginsburg and Supervisor Catherine Stefani.

They were there to celebrate the completion of a $2.6 million improvement project that returned the northern half of the park to the public after it was fenced off for close to a year during reconstruction work on the park, which was designed by John McLaren in the early 1900s.

During the past several months, construction crews rehabilitated the section of the park that lies closest to Jackson Street. Their work included a new accessible entrance at Washington and Scott streets, fresh green lawns and a new main gateway at Pierce and Jackson streets that’s not quite finished.

The biggest part of the project is what park-goers can’t really see — extensive improvements to the park’s subterranean infrastructure designed to save water and to prevent runoff from seeping out of the hillsides and onto Jackson and Clay streets, where it created unsightly and hazardous streaks of slippery slime.

“A lot of the work was actually underground,” said Beverly Ng, a spokeswoman for the parks department. “The water and drainage work was the major focus of the project. It’s not very visible, but it’s very important.”

Workers replaced an outdated automatic irrigation system on the northern side of the park that was a major water-waster in the city parks system, according to audits by the city’s Public Utilities Commission, Ng said. She said the project should save 2.5 million gallons a year, a 39 percent reduction in use.

They also replaced the drainage system around the entirety of the park, installing French drains to prevent leakage along about two blocks of Clay and Jackson streets as well as part of Steiner Street, said a city worker who added that he wasn’t authorized to comment officially.

The new accessible entrance curves up the hill from Scott Street fairly gently, ending at a new circular viewing plaza that contains benches and the names of donors to the project.

“It’s rewarding, and it’s very exciting,” the worker said of the completion of the project.

Visitors to the park Sunday were appreciative. Brandon Doran, 43, came to the park with his wife and two children, ages 2 and 8, for a picnic. They live a few blocks away and were happy with the new grass and especially the lack of fences.

“It’s infrastructure mainly,” he said. “But it’s nice to have all the entrances open. There wasn’t anywhere here to picnic for a few months.”

Nearby, James Mason, 66, sat on a bench enjoying the view north to the bay and said he was pleased with the spruced-up look and feel of the park.

“There’s nice spreads of new grass, and overall it looks a lot cleaner,” he said. “This is a really nice park.”

So nice, said Matt Carges, 55, a therapist from Portland, Ore., that he visits whenever he comes to San Francisco, where he lived 18 years ago.

“I just love the view here,” he said, “and the microclimate weather where you’re not sure if you’re going to get fog or sun, and I love this neighborhood. This is a great park.”

Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan