‘Gift To The Neighborhood’: Sunnyside’s Detroit Steps Project Nearly Complete

Rosaura Valle and Tad Sky’s years of hard work and boundless patience are finally paying off.

The Hearst Avenue neighbors have been managing and designing, respectively, a challenging arts project for the past eight years: Adding one more beautified outdoor staircase to San Francisco’s impressive repertoire.

Now, in time for Stairway Month in October, they’re on track to have done just that. They will have completed painting a mural on one of Sunnyside’s long-drab Detroit Street staircases.

For Valle, the Detroit Steps Project has done more than add vibrant color to the 115-riser staircases connecting Monterey Boulevard and Joost Avenue via Detroit Street. It’s brought neighbors together, especially those who haven’t been engaged in the past.

“It created a lot of cohesive sense of belonging here,” she said. 

Sky’s found that the project is a catalyst for meeting neighbors.

“The concrete steps are fine, as long as they’re clean,” he said. “It’s just when you do something beautiful, not only does it inspire people to do more nice things, but you meet so many neighbors that you probably never would have met before.”

But adding a bit of urban beauty and building community connections has been like an obstacle course rather than the usual bureaucratic box checking.

Since they started in 2018, Valle said, the group has encountered roadblocks ranging from city permitting and to the implosion of Parks Alliance, having at least $5,000 to $6,000 tied up in the scandal. They’ve been funding the project’s second phase out of pocket with hopes that they will be reimbursed eventually. Sky said he has already contributed $2,000 for paint and equipment for volunteers. Plus, there’s $529 permit.

They started on July 12 and anticipate they’ll be done in early October.

The design, titled “Winter Stream” and designed by Sky, depicts a stream weaving among stones, greenery and wildlife like frogs, bees, snakes and ants painted by volunteers. They have also extended the mural to the retaining wall and have even patched up some of the cracked aspects, which they say the city has neglected.

It was inspired by the Islais Creek, which was diverted by a culvert in the 1910s at Monterey Boulevard.

The plan was to originally tile the steps, but due to the cost of hiring a professional team to craft the physical tiles and install them, the team opted for acrylic paint. They still have plans to title the lower staircase when funding and time allow for it.

Valle has organized monthly clean-ups; landscaping work, including hosting a design contest with City College of San Francisco’s horticulture students; the installation of an irrigation system, fence and benches; restoration of native plants. They also want a reimagined archway at the top of the lower staircase.

“Because we’re still working on it, I want [the community] to come here and help us paint, mainly because it’s fun,” Sky said. “As you progress and you see the transformation and then you hear the feedback from people, there's no way you're going to stop. That inspires you because you don’t want to let yourself down. You don’t want to let the community down because we said we’re going to do it. We’re going to do it.”

Valle and Sky both said that, despite the difficulties, the project has brought the neighborhood together.

“If I have to say one thing that was great or rewarding in this process of these eight years of work, it was the fact that the people were happy about coming back,” Valle said.

Geoffrey McFarland, a fifth-generation San Franciscan who lives nearby, joined the mural painting phase with his husband. He said it’s been a rewarding experience, particularly for allowing interaction with something he has gone past daily as well as building relationships with neighbors.

“It's a gift to the neighborhood, and it shows what happens when neighbors come together not just to beautify a space but to really work together in a collaborative process,” McFarland said.