If you live in San Francisco, you may argue your neighborhood is the center of the city. You’d likely be wrong. Ian Cull reports.
If you live in San Francisco, you may argue your neighborhood is the center of the city. You’d likely be wrong.
“We just wanted to know where it was,” said Rachel Gordon, spokesperson for San Francisco Public Works.
Gordon says city surveyors set out last week to find the exact geographic center of the city. No one knew in the department and no one could find any recent data that one had been established. Surveyors mapped the boundaries of the city’s main land mass, leaving out outlying areas like Treasure Island and the Farallon Islands. They used specialized geopositioning equipment that used 11 different U.S and Russian satellites to zero in on one spot. The location? On the sidewalk along the 700 block of Corbett Street near Twin Peaks.
“It's not a lot of resources to use,” Gordon said. “We do have a surveying team and we had the equipment here they just had to do the magic work on the computers to come up with the number.”
Most people in the area had no idea, as the tiny two-inch medallion marking the ‘Center of the City’ was bolted into the ground just last week.
“No way!” said Dominick Albano when we pointed it out to him. “No, this is my running route I've been running this for 20 plus years!"
The city will place a bigger plaque or monument at the site in the future.
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Some neighbors are now bragging to their friends about living close to the young landmark.
“They know where to go find me, just look in the center area,” one man said smiling.
Some now argue, it's the center of the universe.
“Usually, except for when the Warriors are playing then Oakland is the center of
the universe,” Albano said.
Gordon said the surveyors simply wanted to find the location. It won't necessarily be used for anything, but it could help for mapping and street planning.
