Plans to implement a new pocket park for Cañon Street in Point Loma approved by the City Council more than a year ago are forging ahead with a Wednesday, July 26 public workshop planned at United Portuguese SES Hall at 2818 Avenida De Portugal.
“The public workshop starting at 6:30 p.m. is just to get public input,” said Don Sevrens, a Peninsula Community Planning Board member speaking on his own behalf about the park site, which he noted was owned for years by the city’s Public Works Department, which used it primarily to store machinery and building materials for local projects.
Sevrens and colleague Jon Linney, PCPB board chair acting independently, have spearheaded development of a new pocket park on the vacant property.
“A park has been in the community plan since 1987,” Sevrens noted, adding KTU&A Planning and Landscape Architecture was selected recently by the city to handle the design work for the pocket park’s plant palette.
Pointing out the “topography of the triangle-shaped park is not suitable for a playing field,” Sevrens said, and added the site is “pretty much ready to go.”
Once Point Lomans have weighed-in with their wishes for amenities at the new pocket park in July, Sevrens noted a second, follow-up workshop will be held sometime in September to flesh out plans for specific park improvements.
Sevrens added one of the stipulations placed by the city on developing the Cañon Street site as a public park was that park promoters “had to have a nonprofit sponsor.” He added, “That’s been the problem for 26 years – that no group was willing to take on the project,” he said pointing out park development is “too big” for a service club like Kiwanis or Rotary to handle.
That problem was resolved when United Portuguese SES consented to be the nonprofit buttressing creation of the new pocket park.
“It’s what the public wants,” said Sevrens concerning future park development. “It’s going to be a park. The money’s in place. The question now is, what’s going to go in it?”
What are some of the possibilities for the park?
“Public art in keeping with whatever theme is adopted for the park, possibly nautical and history,” answered Sevrens, who noted the community has turned thumbs down on one suggestion.
“No one wants the traditional tot lot with a slide and swing set,” he said. “The idea (now) is something for the kids imagination. One idea is a fanciful replica of the San Salvador with an upper deck for kids to play on, a history wall and a stylized Portuguese compass.” 
Sevrens said even a replica “plank” for young children to walk on has been envisioned as a park amenity.
On March 8, 2016, the City Council voted unanimously to earmark $840,000 from Peninsula developer impact fees for design and construction of a new pocket park on a two-thirds-acre lot on Avenida de Portugal above Cañon Street.
The new pocket park, already three years in preliminary planning, is in Roseville in Point Loma, one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods.
It is the first public park approved in Roseville which is “underparked” in terms of being well below the city’s population-based minimum standard of 2.8 acres in parkland per 1,000 population.
Sevrens said all the park project’s construction drawings should be done by February 2019 and a year later, he added, the park could be ready.
District 2 Councilmember Lorie Zapf representing the Peninsula endorsed plans for Cañon Street.
“The pocket park at the end of Avenida de Portugal is moving forward with public design workshops beginning this summer,” Zapf said. “I am excited to see the creation of park space for the Roseville Community.”
There has been some opposition expressed in the past to the prospect of a Cañon Street pocket park, with at least one neighbor arguing the park could become a homeless hangout and add to traffic and parking congestion in the neighborhood. PCPB member David Dick has also stressed caution, suggesting it might be more prudent to do an assessment of other conceivable community needs before committing all available funding to a single project.