This headline was too easy. After all, the 14-acre Presidio Tunnel Tops, which opened on July 17, was three arduous decades in the making. How did a wrecked roadway — structurally compromised by the Loma Prieta earthquake — become a prodigious park?

“The bulk of the feedback,” says Chris Lehnertz, President and CEO of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, the park’s nonprofit partner, “is that people just wanted a place where they could hang out.”

As the Golden Gate National Recreation Area begins its celebration of 50 years, The Standard spoke with Parks Conservancy CEO Chris Lehnertz about what drives the organization's mission to “activate” its national parklands.

Shelagh Fritz’s primary job is curating and preserving the Alcatraz garden as it was planted decades ago. She identifies plants in photographs and researches them through a lens of sustainability. She enjoys combining research with being on the ground and doing the work.

Two dozen parks have opened in San Francisco since 2020, including what The Chronicle calls "the spectacular Presidio Tunnel Tops," a triumph of imagination and generosity of Bay Area donors. Tunnel Tops cost $118 million — $98 million of which was raised by the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy.

San Francisco's urban national park unit recently gained 14 acres with the opening of the Presidio Tunnel Tops, a green space designed by James Corner Field Operations, the lead firm for New York City’s High Line, which incorporated input from more than 10,000 residents with the help of the Parks Conservancy.

Allen Fish, Director of the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory--a long-term, community-science program of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, in cooperation with the National Park Service--tells us all about their hawk count and banding operation, as well as some of the fascinating projects and partners that connect to this community science effort.

For an inspiring, all-ages journey, gather around a campfire with Golden Gate views at Presidio Tunnel Tops in San Francisco.

In August 2021, the pathways that connect Aquatic Park to blufftop Fort Mason reopened to the public for the first time since the 49ers landed in SF.

Learn why doctors are prescribing nature to patients, and how The Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, in...