On the first Saturday of every month members of the Friends of Lafayette Park put on their expendable yard work clothes, pull out their gardening equipment, and go to work restoring and preserving the natural beauty of their beloved park. Kim Barnes organizes these calls to arms and can be seen spear heading the community effort for the park’s preservation.
Barnes is a Pacific Heights resident who took up leading the Friends of Lafayette Park just about five years ago. Barnes was born in the state of Virginia and came to San Francisco via her childhood home town of Philadelphia. In college she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from West Chester University in Pennsylvania. Barnes chooses not to disclose the actual date of her birthday; she instead celebrates her birthdays and accepts gifts during the month of January.
Barnes juggles her duties of leading the F.O.L.P with continuing to be a successful real estate agent in the city (seen as a “top performer” for Hill and Co. Real Estate). She took up a career in real estate following a successful career as sales Vice President for Xerox. Barnes decided to leave Xerox after becoming weary of the amount of travel that the job entailed. Looking for a more community oriented job she sought out a career in real estate. She took up the effort after gaining distaste for the way her neighborhood park was seemingly falling apart without the proper upkeep.
“The actual call to action came when the New Fillmore wrote an article saying why Lafayette Park doesn’t have a group like Alta Plaza. So that was sort of the gauntlet thrown down. A neighbor suggested I start a group and off we went,” Barnes explains about how she came to direct the Friends of Lafayette Park.
Bringing a community together to rally around saving the park’s natural beauty and transforming it into a family friendly place has not fallen solely on Barnes’ shoulders, but she has provided the glue that keeps the group together and focused. Barnes has had help from a consistently growing number of concerned citizens who have allowed her to balance her career as a real estate agent with her leadership of the F.O.L.P.
Shila Clement, a professional gardener who helps with the F.O.L.P, explains “Though Kim has done a great job of organizing the group and keeping it together, it takes a huge group effort to get the changes done to the park that have been taken place in the past four to five years.”
Though the job of building up the prestige of Lafayette Park has not solely been Barnes’, she has become the “figure head” of the group, leading community outreach and park activism. She has led the charge in getting members of the community to be concerned with the look of the park as well as getting citizens to join the group’s mailing list which, in her mind is “critical to the success of the group.”
“Her outreach for FOLP alerts people in our neighborhood to the opportunity to join together in a fun and useful activity: coming together once a month to supplement the efforts of city gardeners in maintaining Lafayette Park. She was able to provide us with a list of 1700 homeowners within a 3 block radius of Lafayette Park for our mailing, so we could let Lafayette Park neighbors know about that meeting and give more people in our neighborhood the chance to connect with FOLP (i.e. the opportunity to join our email list, and to come to our monthly cleanups),” said Art Persyko, a member of the informal board of directors for the F.O.L.P.
With leading, in a way, the charge of community participation for the F.O.L.P, Kim has become an important figure in the community affairs of Pacific Heights. She has organized, informed, and educated the citizens within the community, aiding in giving the citizens of the community a reason to care about Lafayette Park and the Pacific Heights area. Kim has spear headed the campaign of providing the Pacific Heights community with a family friendly community park that is safe and easy on the eye.
http://www.sfnpc.org/lafayetteparkhistory
(Photo credit:sparkletack.com)
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