The former Great Highway is now a park, and that park was officially christened Sunset Dunes at Wednesday's SF Rec and Parks meeting, ahead of its grand opening ceremony Saturday afternoon.

After years of controversies that, you may have heard, are still raging, the new voter-approved park at what used to be the Great Highway is opening this Saturday, April 12 at 11:30 am. But as of yesterday, just four days before the park’s grand opening, the park still did not have an official name. It finally got its new permanent name Wednesday at an SF Rec and Parks Commission meeting.

Rec and Parks general manager Phil Ginsburg called the park’s conversion “the largest pedestrianization project in California history.” While it has only been a full-time park for a month, Ginsburg said that it’s already “the third most-visited park in our system, only behind Golden Gate Park and the Marina Green” with 8,000 people visiting every weekend.

And yes a lot of people hate that it’s a park now, but Ginsburg pointed out that a lot of people hated Golden Gate Park at first too. “Many were loudly unhappy with how expansive this new park would be, occupying more than 1,000 acres in the vast west side,” he noted.

Before the vote on a permanent name, the commission acknowledged some of the more whimsical submissions to this naming contest: The Tanhandle, Dunesday Park, Bring a Jacket Park, and Parky McParkface. The commission did not acknowledge name submissions that were personal attacks on Supervisor Joel Engardio, like the The Joel Engardio Screw You District 4 Park, and Benedict Engardio Park.  

After a monthslong naming contest, the commission was considering the following five names for the new park:

• Fog Line
• Great Parkway
• Playland Parkway
• Plover Parkway
• Sunset Dunes

And in a process of elimination that started with the old elementary school “show of hands” system (that’s what the City Attorney suggested!), the commission voted to name this new park Sunset Dunes in a 4-2 vote.

“We had over 1,900 people in the community engagement process rate Sunset Dunes as their first choice,” Commission President Kat Anderson said before the vote. “It was by far the leader over Great Parkway, Plover Parkway, Pacific Dunes.”

“I myself have been out there many times,” she added. “It’s very dune-y.”

But even on the Rec and Parks Commission, there was some anti-park sentiment from the pro-car crowd. Commissioner Larry Mazzola was determined to pee in the commission's Corn Flakes.

“As a lifelong resident of the west side, I feel the way this was forced on the residents of Districts 1, 4, and 7 was completely unfair. I was, and still am, against closing the Great Highway,” Mazzola said. “Prop K should never have been a citywide vote. Of course people living in the other districts voted to close it. It doesn't affect their traffic, it’s not in front of their houses.”

Mazzola made a motion to call it “Reopen the Great Highway Park.” That motion failed.

Sunset Dunes was by far the most popular name in the public Rec & Parks survey results, as seen above. It pulled nearly double the number of selections as the next-closest name Great Parkway.

But there was strong commission support for Playland Parkway, a reference to the old-time amusement park Playland at the Beach that used to sit at the city’s western end. “Anyone that grew up in San Francisco in the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s had the opportunity to visit Playland at the Beach. And many, if not all, did,” Commissioner Joe Hallisy said. “Playland at the Beach was there before the Great Highway. The Great Highway came in in 1929, and Playland at the Beach started in 1926.”

And Playland Parkway scored best on two of the metrics the commission used to assess the appropriateness of these names from historical, environmental, and community criteria.

So wait, why didn’t they just call it Ocean Beach Park?

“We removed names for places referencing already existing parks, including ‘Ocean Beach Park,’” Rec and Parks manager of policy and public affairs Jack Avery told the commission before their vote. “We heard from other agencies how important it is, particularly for emergency responsiveness, to be able to have a clear distinction between the new park and Ocean Beach, which is not managed by the city, but is owned by the National Park Service.”

And so the official grand opening of Sunset Dunes park is this Saturday, April 12, from 11:30 am to 4 pm. According to Rec and Parks, the event “will feature cultural performances, live music, recreational activities such as yoga and Zumba, community resources, biking (including adaptive bikes from BORP), scooters, and more! Bring food and beverages from home for a picnic or shop and eat local in the neighborhood."

Related: Supervisor Chan Proposes Possible Ballot Measure to Bring Cars Back to Great Highway, Which We Just Voted On [SFist]

Image: @zachklein via Twitter