Sounds nice, right? In theory, yes. The waterfront is arguably the city's most underutilized asset, and turning a dated plaza into a genuine park is the kind of project that should be a slam dunk. San Francisco desperately needs public spaces that actually invite people to linger rather than speed-walk through.

But let's talk about what's happening in the background. The 710-ton Vaillancourt Fountain — that brutalist concrete behemoth you either love or pretend to love — is being prepped for disassembly even as a lawsuit tries to keep it in place. So we're simultaneously tearing apart and litigating the same structure. Only in San Francisco can a city spend money dismantling something while also spending money defending its right to dismantle it.

As one local put it, "It's a park. Looks fine. Obviously, the person they interviewed says it's world class, iconic, yada yada. It's not, but who cares. Looks nice anyway." That's probably the healthiest take anyone's going to have on this.

Here's what we'd like to know: What's the real budget? What's the timeline, and what's the accountability mechanism when the timeline inevitably slips? San Francisco has a habit of turning straightforward infrastructure projects into decade-long sagas with ballooning costs. The city still can't keep its existing parks clean and safe — so the question isn't whether we can build a pretty new one, it's whether we can actually maintain it.

We're cautiously optimistic. A revitalized Embarcadero waterfront would be genuinely great for the city — for residents, for downtown recovery, for the kind of street-level vibrancy that no amount of tech money can manufacture. But optimism in this town requires receipts. Show us the budget, show us the timeline, and for the love of fiscal sanity, settle the fountain lawsuit before the legal fees exceed the cost of the fountain itself.