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 a concrete-bottomed creek and angled on-street parking from the city street through the park, by realigning and slimming the street, creating off-street parking, and choreographing a winding, 900-foot-long naturalized creek through the park’s many mature trees.