The park was built on an old shipyard to reestablish direct communication with the sea and the bay. The park constitutes an important public space for residents of new projects and the traditional neighborhoods of Fruitvale and San Antonio, with a diverse population of Mexican, Central American, African American, and Asian immigrants. The project’s most important vectors consisted of taking into account the desires and concerns of the community, as well as the site conditions with contaminated soils from industrial activity.
The design also had to consider its privileged location in contact with the sea and views of the bay, as well as the hard edge towards the back street and existing industries. The concept was established from a system of hills and mounds along the street; this topographic sequence was called the “rippled edge,” which also creates a contained space in the park.
The sequence of hills culminates in the so-called Union Point Hill: a large truncated cone seven meters high that invites visitors to ascend through its elliptical ramp to observe views towards the San Francisco Bay and the urban landscape of downtown Oakland.
It is part of a general plan to create a system of parks, walkways, and bike paths around the San Francisco Bay.
