San Francisco's Recreation and Park Department has opened a Request for Proposals to reimagine the 9.5-acre Lake Merced West site at 520 John Muir Drive, a stretch of shoreline that has sat mostly closed off from the public for years. The department is inviting operators to pitch uses for the property that could include a boathouse and dock, a restaurant, a community building, sports courts, walking paths and a playground.
The announcement, posted by the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department on Facebook, lays out a packed timeline for interested parties. A virtual pre-submittal meeting is set for September 3, with site visits scheduled for September 9 and September 22. Nonprofit organizations hoping to find site partnerships must submit Community Letters of Interest by September 24, according to the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department. Written questions about the RFP are due by November 20, and final proposals must be submitted by December 17.
Whoever wins the bid would sign on for a substantial commitment: Rec and Park is offering a lease term of up to 20 years for the property, which remains under the jurisdiction of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission even though Rec and Park manages it for public recreational leasing, per the department. That split ownership structure — SFPUC holds the land, Rec and Park oversees activation — has shaped the site's slow path back to public use.
Decades as a Shooting Range Left a Toxic Legacy
The property's history explains why it has sat behind fencing for so long. From 1934 to 2015, the Pacific Rod and Gun Club leased and operated an outdoor skeet and trap shooting range there before shutting down amid lawsuits over toxic lead contamination, according to SocketSite. Eight decades of skeet shooting left heavy lead shot and broken clay pigeons buried in the soil.
Cleaning it up wasn't cheap. Environmental remediation of the 11-acre upland site required removing contaminated soil and replacing topsoil at a cost exceeding $20 million, funded directly by SFPUC as the property owner, the same outlet reported. The cleanup addressed lead pellets and arsenic that had accumulated at the site since the 1930s.
The site's past also carries historic weight that has complicated redevelopment. On January 12, 2023, the San Francisco Planning Commission unanimously certified the Final Environmental Impact Report for Lake Merced West, finding that demolishing the historic gun club structures causes a significant and unavoidable impact on a historical resource under state law, according to Citizen Portal. Environmental review evaluations separately determined the property is eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places as a cultural landscape representing pre-World War II sport hunting and the evolution of skeet shooting into an international competitive sport, per filings on CEQAnet.
A Second Chance After a 2016 Deal Fell Through
This isn't the first attempt to bring the shoreline back to life. Hoodline's earlier reporting covered a 2016 plan for an 11-acre facility with water sports, a restaurant, and a three-stage buildout — but that effort stalled after the selected anchor restaurant backed out over steep renovation costs, leaving the property shelved. It wasn't until SFPUC agreed to cover site cleanup and demolition costs that Rec and Park was able to move the project forward again, as Hoodline reported in 2023.
Community water-sports groups are already angling for a role in whatever comes next. Local rowing organizations, including the Pacific Rowing Club and Dolphin Club, have publicly advocated during city outreach workshops for site plans that include an expanded multi-bay boathouse larger than the existing facility on Harding Road, according to posts shared by Pacific Rowing Club alumni on Facebook. Rowers were also involved in the 2016 redevelopment concepts that never materialized.
Limits on Hours, Events and a Noisy Neighbor
Whoever eventually takes over the site will operate under specific constraints. Environmental impact filings specify that the redeveloped facility will run primarily during daylight hours, with any restaurant open until 9 p.m., and can host up to 12 special events per year for as many as 500 attendees, according to CEQAnet records. Special events such as weddings or community gatherings would require permits from both the San Francisco Police Department and Rec and Park.
Future visitors will also have an unusual neighbor: the San Francisco Police Department operates an active semi-enclosed indoor shooting range directly adjacent to the Lake Merced West property on John Muir Drive, according to Rec and Park. Unlike the shuttered outdoor gun club that once occupied the site itself, the police facility keeps its gunfire contained inside the structure.
The stretch of John Muir Drive near the site has drawn attention for other reasons recently, too — Hoodline reported a pre-dawn shooting in the 500 block that left a 65-year-old man wounded. For now, the focus at Lake Merced West is on what comes next for the shoreline itself: a decade after the gun club closed its gates, San Francisco is once again asking who wants to reopen them to the public.
