One of the last great restoration opportunities on California’s coast, Sharp Park’s restoration provides an oasis of hope in an area facing local, regional, and global environmental problems. Sharp Park can be transformed now from an exclusive, underused, and budget-breaking golf course into a community-centered model for natural flood control, outdoor recreation, sustainable land use, and endangered species recovery.

Restoring Sharp Park will increase recreational opportunities for people from all walks of life and reconnect people to the historic values and great discoveries made in this watershed. A new Sharp Park trail will connect with the California Coastal Trail, the Bay Area Ridge Trail, and the surrounding GGNRA lands. Strategically-placed viewing platforms along Laguna Salada will invite artists and photographers, bird watchers, and people young and old to get up close and experience the sights and sounds of these restored lands. The trail will then loop back to Sharp Park’s restored visitor center and local natural science museum.

Children from San Francisco, Pacifica, and from all over the Bay Area will enjoy desperately needed nature-oriented educational programs conducted in outdoor settings and science labs at the science museum, while scientists from around the world will come to Sharp Park to study global climate change, sea level rise, and the great diversity of plants and animals found at the site. Other exhibits in the visitor center will tell the tale of the people who lived here throughout the ages: American Indians, Spanish explorers and missionaries, farmers, millionaires, rum runners, and the military personnel who kept watch at the two Nike missile sites in the area. The visitor center will also contain a sustainable local-food restaurant, where visitors may eat-in or take out for a picnic beside a restored Sanchez Creek.

A restored Sharp Park will increase recreational opportunities, improve coastal access, improve flood control, and help endangered species recover.

Restoring Sharp Park will also protect homes and structures from changes wrought by global warming. Sharp Park golf course is often unplayable because its poor design and audacious location—the golf course was built on and around Laguna Salada, a natural backbarrier lagoon—makes it vulnerable to both coastal and freshwater flooding. As climate change causes oceans to rise and storm frequency and intensity to increase, the naturally wet conditions of this landscape will become increasingly difficult and expensive to control. This will make the course’s marginal business plan completely untenable: more and more money will be spent in an ultimately futile attempt to transform a landscape determined to be a wetland into a fairway. Restoring Sharp Park is the most cost-effective way to manage water flow and protect our coastline from climate change. A restored Laguna Salada will be a more effective flood management tool than the reinforced sea walls and massive pumps planned for the course: and restoration will do this at a fraction of the cost.

Restoring Sharp Park will preserve and improve habitat for the endangered San Francisco garter snake, the most beautiful – and arguably most imperiled- serpent in North America, and the threatened California red-legged frog, the largest native frog in the West, a species made famous by Mark Twain’s Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. Both of these species are currently harmed by the ongoing management and operation of the golf course. Maintaining the existing golf course while keeping these species around will require hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure investments, investments that in the end are unlikely to succeed in keeping these animals around for future generations to enjoy.

A restored Sharp Park will provide people from the Bay Area and beyond with diverse recreational opportunities, effective flood control management, and a haven for our endangered species to thrive. Even the process of restoration will help people reconnect to California’s coast. During restoration, ongoing site stewardship programs will engage volunteers from around the Bay Area in rejuvenating their natural community. Building and maintaining trails, growing and planting native plants, and monitoring environmental quality are just a few of the volunteer opportunities available for school age children, seniors and everyone in between.

A restored Sharp Park will create new opportunities to spur local economies while moving towards a more sustainable society.

Whether they come from over the hill or across the globe, visitors to a restored Sharp Park will discover one of California’s premiere landscapes with a diverse topography: sheer cliffs and bluffs, beaches, lagoons, creeks, canyons, grasslands, scrublands, forests and hills will all become available for exploration. From day hikes to overnight adventures, a restored Sharp Park will provide something for everyone: including the endangered species that call this place home. Sharp Park’s restoration will inspire our youth, rejuvenate our spirit, and take us that much closer to a more sustainable and just world.