Presidio looks ahead to Crissy Field parklands

(04-22) 15:08 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- San Francisco's Crissy Field has been a civic destination since it was reborn as bayside open space in 2001. Now, 13 acres that face it have captured the attention of some of the world's leading design firms.

The evidence for this is the list of five teams - only one led by a local firm - selected this week by the Presidio Trust to craft "concepts" for the parkland being created between Crissy Field and the Main Post's parade ground.

The teams will have three months to draw up proposals for the bluff-like landscape that will cover the tunnels being built to hold the traffic that now travels on Doyle Drive to and from the Golden Gate Bridge. After that, the quintet of visions will be shown to the public to help decide what approach should be taken at the unique setting.

"These five approaches will the raw material for conversations with the public about what the site wants to be," said Michael Boland, chief of planning for the trust, which manages nearly all of the 1,481-acre national park. "It has to work well, be compelling and be beautiful."

It's an unusual exercise in that the next step isn't to select a winner.

Instead, each team will receive $25,000 for the fruit of its labors. From there, a new competition might begin. Or, a separate team might be selected for each aspect of the landscape: the 10-acre "Tunnel Top Parklands" that will drape what has been renamed Presidio Parkway, a "youth campus" at the bottom of the bluff that will include outdoor spaces aimed at families, and the block at the foot of the parade ground that will hold a new visitors center.

Or, a single team will get the nod to continue on to full designs of the reshaped terrain.

"If one of these teams dazzles us and the public, we'll be very inclined to bring them on," Boland said.

The finalists include James Corner Field Operations, the landscape architect for New York's acclaimed High Line. Corner's firm - which also is a consultant to the developers of Pier 70 on the city's southern waterfront - assembled a team that includes several Bay Area horticultural firms and the local architectural firm Page & Turnbull.

The one team without a local component is led by Olin, a landscape architecture firm based in Philadelphia, and Seattle's Olson Kundig Architects. But it knows the terrain: Olin designed the redo of the Presidio parade ground that began with 2012's addition of an ample lawn.

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Presidio looks ahead to Crissy Field parklands