If you've walked by 730 Montgomery St. lately, you might have noticed a giant box set up outside, with a reddish frame, teal seating, chain-link fencing, and a yellow tarp roof.
It's pretty bright—you can't really miss it—but we honestly thought it had something to do with the construction next door at the Belli Building. Nope: Turns out it's the city's latest parklet. Only this one is odd. It looks a bit like a deconstructed child's room.
Turns out one of the firms at 730 Montgomery, swissnex San Francisco, spearheaded the idea for a parklet there. "The parklet is one of few in the city dedicated to content and conversation, not café seating," the firm says in a press release. (Ooh, snap, Kearny Street Parklet by Réveille Coffee Co., which is a block away.)
The Kearny Street Parklet, at Columbus Avenue.
The city now has more than 50 parklets, but they've been conspicuously absent in Chinatown, the FiDi, Jackson Square and Union Square, according to this map on Curbed. North Beach has three.
Jackson Square is usually a pretty bucolic place, ideal for a parklet, but with construction on the neighboring Belli Building in full force, things could get noisy. That construction is slated to conclude in July, but the buildout of four street-level retail spaces across the street at 735 Montgomery is set to begin soon, which could mean still more traffic and noise. So maybe give it a few weeks before you try to hunker down and have that conversation.
