The Recreation Center and associated outdoor spaces in City Park form the new social heart of San Bruno. Group 4 Architecture and SWA designed the project to declutter and open up City Park by consolidating separate gym and pool complexes into a single building nestled into the park’s hillside edge. The result produced a larger adjacent meadow, grander views within the park and the hillside above, and several pocket spaces around the building. New outdoor spaces around the building include a Community Plaza featuring a large Live Oak, a resort-like pool terrace with a lap pool and water play area, two classroom terraces, and a Community Hall balcony. A Rotary Club-sponsored pavilion provides a venue for concerts and movie nights at the toe of the new meadow.

The transformation untangled the 900-foot-long El Zanjon Creek, which previously flowed through San Bruno City Park in a concrete gutter that emptied into a street with angled parking. During heavy rains, the street filled with water, stranding people and parked cars. SWA shifted the creek away from the street into a new naturalized waterway that curves through the park’s large trees. The creek’s more pronounced form now serves as a subtle barrier between the park’s busy fields and picnic areas and the street, with two bridges providing defined creek crossings. Along with realigning the creek, SWA slimmed and realigned the street, shifted parking into an off-street lot, and created water quality basins that slow and cleanse stormwater.  The creek, which emanates one mile uphill in Junipero Serra Park, flows onward to San Francisco Bay, making its restoration an investment in both local community experience and regional ecological health.