San Francisco has reopened bidding on the 9.5-acre stretch of Lake Merced shoreline that a toxic shooting range left fenced off for a decade — and it wants a private operator to fund and run whatever comes next, on a lease that could run two decades.

The Recreation and Park Department's new Request for Proposals for 520 John Muir Drive is being sold as the long-awaited revival of a public shoreline: a boathouse, a restaurant, courts, trails and a playground. But the celebratory framing skips the financing model — the site is meant to pay for itself, with a private operator funding and running it for up to 20 years. It also skips what the cleanup left in the water: crews remediated the upland soil, but decades of lead shot remain settled in the lakebed.

Rec and Park's Request for Proposals (external source, opens in a new tab) invites operators to pitch uses for the shuttered site on Lake Merced's western shore: a boathouse and dock, a restaurant and community building, sport courts, walking paths and a playground. The department says the old structures have been torn down and the soil cleaned, and that it is the winning bidder — not the city — who will pay to develop whatever comes next. Whoever wins could hold the ground for as long as 20 years. Neal Patel is the property manager listed on the solicitation.

The bidding calendar is compressed. Rec and Park has scheduled an online pre-bid briefing for Sept. 3, with two on-site tours to follow, on Sept. 9 and Sept. 22. Nonprofits eyeing a partnership have until Sept. 24 to file letters of interest. The window for written questions closes Nov. 20, and completed bids are due Dec. 17. A lease of this length would not be Rec and Park's to grant alone: under Section 9.118 (external source, opens in a new tab) of the city charter, any lease of 10 years or more must be approved by the Board of Supervisors, so a 20-year deal here would ultimately need the supervisors' sign-off, typically after the Recreation and Park Commission acts on it.

The celebratory framing around the reopening tends to skip the financing model. This is not a city-built park. The concessionaire is expected to fund the development, which means the mix of amenities will be shaped less by a public planning process than by what a private operator can make profitable over two decades. The San Francisco Chronicle, reporting on the plan, quoted (external source, opens in a new tab) Rec and Park property-management director Dana Ketcham saying the city is "looking for something that can sustain itself as a business."

The ownership itself is split. The land belongs to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which manages Lake Merced as part of the regional water supply; Rec and Park merely oversees recreational leasing. That division has slowed the site's return to public use for years.

The San Francisco Chronicle, reporting on the plan, quoted Rec and Park property-management director Dana Ketcham saying the city is "looking for something that can sustain itself as a business."

The site was fenced for a reason. The Pacific Rod and Gun Club operated a skeet-and-trap range on the western shore for roughly eight decades, closing in 2015 after years of shotgun fire left the ground layered with lead pellets and pulverized clay targets and after litigation over the contamination piled up — history detailed in a SocketSite (external source, opens in a new tab) account of the cleanup. The upland remediation hauled off tainted soil at a cost the Chronicle pegged (external source, opens in a new tab) north of $20 million, and in 2017 the city settled (external source, opens in a new tab) with the club for $8.25 million.

But the remediation addressed the dirt, not the water. For roughly six decades, shooters fired lead pellets toward the lake, until the Regional Water Quality Control Board's 1994 cleanup order forced the club to stop using lead shot and switch to steel, according to a 2013 Water Board staff report (external source, opens in a new tab). Even as it moved to rescind that old order, the board's own record still flagged "lead in the offshore sediments" as a potential risk to aquatic organisms — a question it left to a separate ecological assessment that could yet require dredging the lakebed. The upland cleanup never touched that submerged shot; SocketSite has reported that regulators consider it low-risk where it sits. Either way, it was never removed.

None of that is disqualifying. But it reframes the pitch. The city is not just reopening a shoreline; it is asking a business to anchor a public park at a documented lead-contamination site, and to make the numbers work for 20 years. Whether any operator bites — and what they'll want in return — is the story the December deadline will start to answer.