When a small parking lot in Lower Nob Hill became available for sale last November, neighborhood residents saw a new opportunity to open up a park in an area they feel has long been lacking in green spaces compared to other parts of San Francisco.
It’s part of an ongoing grassroots campaign to add more open spaces to a particularly dense urban area, a push that dates back nearly 15 years. While the neighborhood is not far from a few substantial parks, including Lafayette, Huntington and Union Square, it has no park of its own.
“This is kind of an urban-design challenge and problem — a high concentration of people, of residents in a residential neighborhood, without really the space for people to congregate,” said Peter Gallotta, a neighborhood resident who is a member of the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee and a Lower Nob Hill Neighborhood Alliance board member…