Newly renovated Kimbell Field to add 3,580 hours of play
The newly renovated Kimbell Field was officially unveiled at a ceremony on September 19.
Kimbell, located at Steiner and O’Farrell streets, is the only public turf field on the city’s north side, which makes it a coveted field for schools and teams north of Market Street. The field is also used by PAL’s popular Seahawks football and cheer/dance programs.
City Fields Foundation, which in 2006 began renovating many of city’s fields to turf, estimates that Kimbell’s renovation will translate into an additional 3,580 hours of sports play. Turf fields are year-round; they do not have to be closed due to rain or to give the fields a rest.
The renovation, which took almost a year to complete, added new bleachers, benches, bathrooms, and state-of-the-art lights. In addition, Kimbell now boasts San Francisco’s first and only batting cage in a public park.
Mayor Gavin Newsom, who was present at the kickoff ceremony, called Kimbell “hands down one of the best sports fields in the city, if not the Bay Area.”
The Kimbell project is the latest in a series of field renovations designed to boost the number of playing fields available to youth in San Francisco. An assessment in 2004 found that San Francisco needed an additional 60 athletic fields to meet current demand. The project was done in cooperation with San Francisco’s Park and Rec Department.
Altogether, the City Fields Foundation will have donated a total of $25 million toward upgrading a total of seven city fields throughout the city, including the Crocker-Amazon fields in the southern part of the city. The fields are estimated to have added 66,000 hours of sports play for the city’s youth.
Visit the City Fields Facebook page for more photos of the reopening festivities.
