Japantown Peace Plaza Renovation Project

Background

The Japantown Peace Plaza (Peace Plaza) Renovation Project is vital to the Japanese American community, Asian American and Pacific Islander community. For over 110 years, over 5 generations, San Francisco's Japantown is one of the last three remaining Japantowns in the United States. The Peace Plaza open space has been the cultural heart of the Japantown and is a key destination site for cultural festivals and community celebrations in Northern California. It is home to culturally significant community organizations, institutions, artists, businesses, and buildings.

Note as well that in 2021, Rec and Park replaced the expansion joints located on east and west edges of plaza to protect from water intrusion. This improvement will remain throughout the future full renovation of the plaza. For more information on this completed project, please see the project page for Japantown Peace Plaza Expansion Joint Replacement.

Scope of Work

The Peace Plaza Vision Plan, video attached, is an inspiration for the future of Japantown’s central public space. An extensive community engagement process resulted in the visionary framework informing both design and future construction. The renovated plaza will have all new features: new paving (over new waterproofing), planting, informal seating, and maintain the highly used, central gathering space for cultural events. To learn more about the proposed design, please see our Civic Design Review presentation, March 20, 2023 (PDF).

Japantown Center will remain open throughout construction. All entrances will remain open to the public. Please visit and shop local!

Funding

To begin the essential work for the community, $25 million of the 2020 SF Health and Recovery Bond is allocated for the renovation project.

Due to unforeseen pandemic-related construction impacts, the results of further analysis and testing of the existing conditions, and additional planning to better accommodate the garden or greening aspect of the plan, the budget has now shifted to an estimated $33.5 million. Thanks in part to the steadfast advocacy work of the Japantown community in partnership with RPD, we have been able to address the $8.5 million funding gap through state and federal grants. We look forward to moving onto the next step; preparation of construction documents.

Project Schedule

Project Updates

Monthly Public Meetings, every fourth Tuesday, 5-6 p.m. Japantown Task Force (JTF), Peace Plaza Committee holds monthly public meetings. Please visit the committees page of the Japantown Task Force website for agenda, location (zoom link or in-person), meeting minutes, and any updates: https://www.japantowntaskforce.org/peace-plaza-committee

If you would like to sign-up for Project Update blog posts like the ones below, click here, scroll down to the News Flash section, and then select "RPD Park Improvements | All Project Updates" to receive updates on all our active projects, or pick-and-choose your blog subscriptions by project name. You’ll receive an email that includes a link to confirm your new subscription for each blog for which you sign-up.