The Lake Merced Loop Didn't Get One Upgrade This Year. It Got Three.
August 27, 2026
August 27, 2026
Three separate organizations spent the last two years fixing three separate pieces of the same 4.5-mile loop around Lake Merced, and as far as the public record shows, none of them were coordinating with each other. The San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department finished a multi-year trail overhaul. Brookfield Properties filled Stonestown Galleria to near-zero vacancy and started opening things that give people a reason to walk in, not just shop and leave. The San Francisco Zoo, sitting on the lake's western edge, spent its summer budget on an exhibit that has nothing to do with golf, birdwatching, or fitness stations. None of these were planned as a single project. Put them on the same map, though, and the loop that Lakeshore residents have circled for exercise for decades now has actual reasons to stop along the way.
That's the thing worth knowing if you already live here: the loop itself didn't get longer or prettier this year. It got fewer dead zones.
Lake Merced anchors a 614-acre park bordered by three golf courses, including the municipal course at TPC Harding Park, and its perimeter trail has long served boaters, runners, cyclists, and birdwatchers who use the lake as a stop on the Pacific Flyway. For most of the last decade, though, using the loop meant treating it as pure infrastructure. You parked at one of three lots, did your lap or your row or your round, and left. There wasn't much reason to linger between the water and the parking lot, and there wasn't much at either end of the loop that pulled you off the path.
That's the gap the last two years quietly closed.
The Rec and Park Department's Lake Merced Trail Improvement Project ran in two phases. The first tackled the south side near the John Muir Drive lot: a new National Fitness Campaign fitness court, picnic tables and benches, repaved ADA parking, updated signage, and tree and landscaping work. At the ribbon-cutting marking that phase's completion, Assemblymember Phil Ting and District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar joined Rec and Park General Manager Phil Ginsburg to mark the reopening. Ginsburg called the project a balance between keeping the area natural and making sure everyone could still get to it. Melgar framed it more simply, saying the added accessibility means there's something at the lake for people on foot, on bikes, on wheels, or in a boat.
The second phase addressed the trail's northwest corner, from the intersection at Harding Boulevard to the Sunset Circle parking lot. Crews replaced the old asphalt with an ADA-compliant path and added an adjacent stabilized soil path designed to be easier on runners' joints, along with new adult fitness stations and upgraded parking. Rec and Park's own project updates track the full arc: paving underway in the fall, fitness equipment installed and planting finished by that November, and finally an update confirming the northwest pathway was open to the public, closing out the project.
The whole effort ran about $4.6 million, funded through the 2012 Clean and Safe Neighborhood Parks Bond's citywide and forestry programs, the 2018 Parks Bond Act, and a $1 million grant from the California Natural Resources Agency that Ting helped secure. That's not a small commitment for a corner of the city that rarely gets this kind of sustained capital attention, and it's the part of this story that finished first and got the least notice.
While the trail work wrapped, the loop's eastern anchor was going through its own transformation. Stonestown Galleria has almost no vacancies left to fill, according to owner Brookfield Properties, and the retail mix filling those last spaces tells you something about what the neighborhood actually wants. DSW and Jins both moved in after closing their Union Square locations, and H&M returned to the exact spot where it had shuttered a store years earlier, an unusual move for a retailer to make twice in the same location. Visitor traffic and spending at the mall are both running ahead of 2019 levels, a contrast that stands out against downtown San Francisco's still-struggling retail corridors.
The food and entertainment side of the mall is where the loop's "stop and stay" case gets stronger. The property now runs an Asian food cluster that includes Kizuki Ramen & Izakaya, Kura Revolving Sushi Bar, Marugame Udon, and 85°C Bakery Cafe, alongside Shake Shack, Boudin, and Ike's for the quick-service crowd. HeyTea, the boba chain that went viral after a BLACKPINK member featured it on social media, finally opened its Stonestown location with a grand-opening weekend running June 26 through 28, after months of "coming soon" signage. It's the chain's second San Francisco store, joining its Metreon location downtown.
For entertainment, the mall's current lineup includes:
That's an unusual concentration of things to actually do inside an enclosed San Francisco mall, and it's part of why retail analysts have described Stonestown's model as closer to a neighborhood services center than a fashion destination, with Target and a dual Trader Joe's and Whole Foods Market grocery anchor doing double duty as both retail and daily errands.
Just days after HeyTea's grand-opening weekend wrapped, the San Francisco Zoo opened its own seasonal draw. "Dinos Rule!" debuted July 1, an animatronic dinosaur exhibit set along the lower lake bordering the zoo's Prehistoric Garden, with figures that breathe, blink, and stretch necks above the surrounding palm and eucalyptus canopy. The zoo's new admission pricing, an 8 percent increase for the 2026-27 fiscal year that started the same week, brought general adult admission to $32 on weekdays and $34 on weekends, with the zoo forecasting a 24 percent jump in attendance for the year. Whatever you think of that price move, it signals a zoo betting that people will show up for something beyond the usual lineup of lions and lemurs, at least for one summer.
None of these three projects needed the other two to succeed on their own terms. The trail work would have been worth doing even if Stonestown had stayed half-empty. HeyTea would have opened at Stonestown whether or not the zoo had a dinosaur exhibit that summer. But stack them on the same loop and the sequencing starts to matter. The Rec and Park side of the ledger closed out over the past two years, giving the trail itself somewhere comfortable to run a fitness routine or push a stroller. Then, within the same few weeks this summer, the loop's two social anchors both delivered something new almost back to back.
If you've lived in Lakeshore for a while, you already know the shape of a typical Saturday here: a lap around the lake, maybe nine holes if you golf, then home. What changed isn't the shape of that day. It's that the same loop now supports a version where you grab a drink at HeyTea before the walk, take the kids to see an animatronic Gigantoraptor after, and still make it home before dinner without ever leaving the neighborhood you already live in.
That's a small thing on paper. It's also exactly the kind of change that doesn't show up in a listing description or a market report, because it isn't about property values. It's about whether the place you already chose keeps giving you more reasons to stay in it on a Saturday instead of driving somewhere else.
If you're weighing a move within Lakeshore, curious what a home near the lake is actually worth this year, or just want a second opinion on the neighborhood from someone who tracks it closely, the team at Colleen Cotter is glad to talk through it. Request a complimentary market consultation whenever you're ready.
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