Eagle Plaza’s Tribute to Leather Might Serve as a Model for SoMa’s Future
When ground broke on 12th Street at Harrison on the side of SF Eagle, much of the pomp and circumstance accompanying the event was self explanatory. After all, Eagle Plaza is being touted as the world’s first public plaza celebrating the leather community; a center for San Francisco’s Leather and LGBTQ culture.
“The Leather community and all LGBTQ people are an important part of Western SoMa and our City’s past, present, and future. Eagle Plaza will serve as a gathering place for us to honor these communities that make San Francisco unique, while also creating a much-needed new open space for all of our residents in the neighborhood.” – Mayor London Breed.
“This plaza is an exciting project that serves the neighborhood in many ways,” said Loring Sagan, a Founding Principal of BUILD. “A public plaza that celebrates the history of the neighborhood while providing much needed open space is a win for everyone and BUILD is proud to play a small part in making this vision a reality.”
So, we’ll see how city planners and politicians handle SoMa’s development in the coming years. You see these little plazas in Europe and Asia that give their cities so much character, and for San Francisco, Eagle Plaza is a good start. In a district so in need of open spaces, hopefully these people in power use the lessons learned from the McCoppin Hub debacle to identify and create more public spaces in SoMa that everyone can enjoy.
Eagle Plaza, between Bernice and Harrison on 12th Street, is set to open by the end of 2019.
