Brotherhood Way's New Log Playground Is Built. Keeping It Is the Volunteers' Next Project.

Recycled logs now sit in a strip of the Brotherhood Way Open Space, arranged so kids can jump from stump to stump onto soft wood chips. A basketball court is on one side and a community orchard garden on the other. The Ingleside Light reported in October that the OMI Nature Exploration Area, a natural playground of about 2,000 square feet, is open to the Ocean View, Merced Heights and Ingleside community.

Crews built it in about three weeks. Getting it funded took years, and the space is leased for only one year, so the playground's future depends on the volunteer group that organized it, which is still at work.

Logs, Wood Chips and a Place to Sit

The play area is on the Brotherhood Greenway, where Brotherhood Way meets Victoria Street and Head Street. It sits between the Head & Brotherhood Mini Park and Sisterhood Gardens. It's made of logs placed to invite open-ended play, and it includes a seating area where people passing by can stop, rest or gather for events.

Maria Durana of San Francisco Children & Nature served as the project's unofficial manager. In the same Ingleside Light article, she said the aim was a space that invites kids to explore rather than telling them how to play. SF Landscapes, the landscaping company that worked on the build, has also worked on nature exploration areas at McLaren Park and the Randall Museum. Families who know those spaces will recognize the style.

Johanna Lopez Miyaki, who leads the volunteer effort, explained the idea to the Ingleside Light: "The OMI doesn't have a whole lot of community gathering spaces, and when we were thinking about that, I'm like, 'Oh, wouldn't it be nice for a place to just be in nature and have a place to sit and relax or to play.'"

Years of Groundwork, Three Weeks of Building

The playground comes from Friends of OMI Mini Parks, part of the neighborhood group We Are OMI. Here's how it came together:

1. 2020: We Are OMI starts caring for the Brotherhood Greenway. Volunteers pick up trash, pull weeds, prune and remove graffiti, and they lead a mural project that replaces tags on neighbors' fences with community art.
2. 2022: The group first pitches the nature exploration area.
3. 2023: The project wins a city Community Challenge Grant.
4. 2024: The group loses its fiscal sponsor, the San Francisco Parks Alliance.
5. 2026: KALW Public Media becomes the fiscal sponsor for the $158,000 grant, and San Francisco Children & Nature helps with the design and with sourcing materials.
6. September 1, 2026: Construction begins. SF Landscapes does the work, and the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department donates the logs. The build takes about three weeks.

The final stretch drew many hands. San Francisco Public Works mulched and pruned the area and sealed and stained the logs, and 36 students from Lick-Wilmerding High School spent a day helping. Support for the grant came from groups across the area, including the Cayuga Neighborhood Improvement Association, Friends of the Geneva Car Barn, Lakeview Summit Steps Greenspace, two Mandarin preschools and the Ingleside Merchants Association.

Why the One-Year Lease Shapes What Happens Next

Because of the grant's terms, the space is leased for only one year. Lopez Miyaki told the Ingleside Light she hopes it will stay as a permanent part of the OMI. Volunteers are also still working on interpretive signage.

What happens in this first year will shape the case for keeping it, and We Are OMI is setting the year up around people who show up. The group plans to program the space with outdoor education and nature activities, and it says it will need many volunteers to keep the area clean. Its calendar lists Brotherhood Greenway cleanups and community events for November and December 2026. Neighbors who want to volunteer, or who have an idea for free programming in the space, can write to the group at [email protected]. Everyone in the group is a volunteer, so replies may take some time.

The same group runs other neighborhood traditions. Its 5th Annual OMI Mid Autumn Festival took place in September outside Merced Heights Playground, with moon cakes from East West Connfections, treats from Blue House Cafe and lantern-making with the Ocean View branch library. The playground is the most permanent-looking thing this volunteer network has produced so far.

The Rest of the Block, Built by Different Hands

The playground fills a gap between two older spaces, and each of the three has a different steward.

• Head & Brotherhood Mini Park, at the bottom of Head Street, has a play structure on rubber tiles, two benches, a full basketball court, and grass and trees around them. SF Rec & Park lists it as a small play area and off-leash dog run.
• Sisterhood Gardens, at 116 Arch Street near Brotherhood Way, is a community food garden and a project of the Chinese Progressive Association. It broke ground in 2016. The garden has community plots, flower beds, pollinator and native plant areas, and a hillside orchard. The Ingleside Light has also reported on its apiary.

Plan ahead if you want to visit the garden this season. The Sisterhood Gardens site lists public hours of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with entry through the Arch Street gate. The garden usually holds monthly volunteer build days, but its public 2026 event calendar marks November and December as a break, so check the calendar before going for an event.

Together, the three spaces make a short outing: hoops or the dog run at the mini park, the logs in the middle, and the garden at the far end.

The City-Funded Version Is Next, at Randolph and Bright

The same volunteers worked on another nature-play project a few blocks away. Friends of OMI Mini Parks formed around three sites: Randolph-Bright, Brotherhood-Head and Lakeview-Ashton. In October 2022, We Are OMI led a community refresh of Randolph-Bright with Rebuilding Together SF and Children & Nature. That park is now in line for a full Rec & Park renovation.

Comparing the two projects shows how differently they're moving.

The Randolph-Bright design also includes accessible synthetic-turf play surfacing, new paths, two bistro tables, fencing and new plantings. The Recreation and Park Commission and Civic Design Review approved the concept in February. In its April 8, 2026 update, Rec & Park said the team had finished 50% of the construction documents and was moving on to internal plan reviews. The fall 2026 through spring 2027 window comes from the staff report's February schedule, so it's a forecast. Rec & Park's project page is where updates will appear.

The city version costs about twelve times as much as the Brotherhood Way playground and comes with a permanent place in the parks system. For about a twelfth of that budget, the volunteers and their partners got logs on the ground this fall, but only on a lease that runs a year.

I've been following how small, neighbor-led projects like the Brotherhood Greenway change the way a block feels day to day. If you own a home or rental near Brotherhood Way, or you're thinking about how changes like these play out around your property, Kevin Wong is glad to talk it through. Let's Connect.