The Crossing Was Meant to Last Two Years. Why Is It Turning Five With a New Basketball Court?

On a Thursday evening in June 2024, an SF Examiner reporter visited The Crossing at East Cut. Pickleballs were thwacking on the courts, a group of children was playing soccer on artificial turf, and other kids sat on bean bags watching a movie on a big screen. Patrick Kelly, a volunteer pickleball coordinator who had lived in the neighborhood for two years, had just helped hundreds of people campaign to keep the site open. "It shows to us the community can come together and get organized and have our voices heard," he told the paper.

That campaign won a reprieve of about two years. On Thursday, October 15, from 4 to 7 p.m., The Crossing will mark its fifth anniversary at 250 Main Street and cut the ribbon on a brand-new basketball court. The city first offered this land for one to two years of interim use, and it is still adding recreation. The reason is a few blocks away, in two permanent parks that have not been built yet.

How a stopgap reached year five

The Crossing sits on the former Temporary Transbay Terminal, where buses ran while the Salesforce Transit Center was under construction. Its timeline runs well past the original plan:

1. Late 2020: The Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure (OCII), successor to the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency and owner of the land, asked for proposals to activate the empty site. The request called for one to two years of interim activation before development.
2. September 10, 2021: The Crossing opened. It is run by The East Cut Landing Partners, a group made up of The East Cut Community Benefit District, Nestory Park, Real Active and Street Soccer USA.
3. February 7, 2024: Public Works finished construction documents for the permanent park on Block 3.
4. June 2024: OCII postponed that park for about two years and shifted its attention to a separate sports and dog park under the nearby freeway ramps.
5. Spring 2026: OCII's proposed budget for fiscal year 2026–27 says the agency will keep supporting the interim activation on Blocks 3 and 4.
6. October 15, 2026: Fifth anniversary and the basketball court ribbon-cutting.

Even as the site stayed open, it got smaller. The Crossing started out filling the roughly three-acre block bounded by Main, Beale, Folsom and Howard streets. By mid-2024 it covered about two-thirds of that, because construction had begun on two affordable housing developments along Folsom. The Howard end is spoken for too. OCII's budget memo lists about 314 units on Block 4W, a portion of the northern end of the old terminal site, as being in the planning phase for 2026–27. Next door, Public Works finished planting street trees and installing bike racks on the new block of East Clementina Street between Beale and Main in May. That work serves the Transbay Block 2 East and West towers, which the department described as nearing completion.

The park that was supposed to replace it

The permanent park planned for this site is the one-acre Block 3 park, once called Pelican Park. The city's 2026 capital plan says it will have landscaping, play areas and gathering spaces, and that the Recreation and Park Department will take it over once it is finished. When OCII paused the project, executive director Thor Kaslofsky told the Examiner that people had been "really falling in love with The Crossing" and its events, while the replacement design leaned toward more passive recreation.

"We wanted to be responsive to the community by pausing and then come back to figure out what people want in terms of a design." Thor Kaslofsky, OCII executive director, to the SF Examiner in 2024

The capital plan still says OCII is pausing Block 3 "for at least 2 years until summer 2026." Summer 2026 is over. Public Works' project page says the Phase 1 streetscape work is substantially complete and lists the park as a later phase, with no new start date. No 2025 or 2026 document published so far sets a new end date for The Crossing's arrangement with OCII. For now, the support comes from the agency's budget plan for the coming year, with no published lease term behind it.

The park that was supposed to go first

The 2024 decision put East Cut Park ahead of Block 3. This is the 2.4-acre project planned under and around the Salesforce Transit Center bus ramps. It is designed to include multi-sport courts, lawns, an outdoor fitness area, a beer garden, three affordable retail spaces, a two-way cycle track and one of the largest dog parks in the city. The dog park is planned at 20,000 square feet, with separate areas for large and small dogs. Its name came from a community process in early 2025, where 48 percent of respondents ranked "East Cut Park" as their first choice.

Its schedule has kept changing. An OCII memo from 2025 projected construction from July 2026 to March 2029. The 2026 capital plan said construction would begin in 2026 and finish in 2028. Then OCII's April 2026 budget workshop memo described the project as still in planning, design and permitting. The memo said environmental testing would check for contaminants on part of the site, that scope and funding would be reevaluated once testing was done, and that construction cannot begin until agreements are signed with the Transbay Joint Powers Authority (TJPA), Caltrans and The East Cut CBD. The CBD's own page calls the park a "critical yet unrealized" part of downtown's recovery. The CBD has raised nearly $2 million toward operating costs since 2021 and estimates the park will need $1 million a year once it opens.

The latest official step happened the day before this post. On September 29, the Board of Supervisors gave final approval, 11 to 0, to file 260873. The ordinance vacates the remaining portions of Oscar Alley under the park site, conveys them to the TJPA for a nominal fee, and narrows sidewalks on Folsom between Essex and 2nd streets and on Clementina between 1st and 2nd. At the September 14 committee hearing, Supervisor Dorsey added a condition: if construction has not started within eight years of the ordinance taking effect, the Public Works director can reclaim the land as a public right-of-way. The vote clears a land question, and the deadline it sets is eight years out.

What the court adds

Until one of those parks opens, The Crossing is where the East Cut plays. The CBD lists pickleball, Street Soccer USA and a children's playground at 250 Main. Five pickleball courts are open for free play. Street Soccer USA runs community sessions for kindergarten through eighth grade on Saturdays from 2:30 to 4 p.m. at The Crossing Fields. East Cut Park's multi-sport courts have no confirmed groundbreaking. The basketball court at The Crossing opens October 15.

October at 250 Main and nearby

Every Tuesday from 4 to 4:30 p.m., JAMaROO leads a kids' dance and creative movement session at The Crossing. Food and drink on site come from Boba & Brew, Pita Gyros, Red Rooster Taqueria and The Greyhound Bar. The Greyhound offers buy-one-get-one 50 percent off during happy hour, 3 to 6 p.m. The CBD is billing the October 15 party as five years of The Crossing and 10 years of The East Cut.

If you own a rental near Main and Folsom, the courts, fields and weekly events at The Crossing are part of what you can offer a tenant this fall. Ray Amouzandeh writes listings around what's actually open on the block, with nothing promised that the city hasn't built yet. Get a fast leasing plan by scheduling a free consultation.