WHAT IS FOG?
Friends of The Gateway (FOG) is an expanding community of artists and innovators who champion the creation of a unique public space at the foot of the new Bay Bridge. Using the arts as the organizing principle, we envision a space that integrates engineering, infrastructure, landscape, economic and community development, creating a vibrant regional asset and international destination.
THE SITE - What’s there now?
As the East span of the Bay Bridge is being completed, plans are forming for the development of a new park across from the Port of Oakland, around the touchdown of the bridge. You may not have noticed this space as you’ve driven across the bridge out of San Francisco, but The Gateway site just to the south of the toll plazas offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a new hub of arts-based social and economic activity. Imagine a metamorphosis akin to those created by Millennium Park in Chicago or the High Line in New York, where forgotten urban features were transformed by the arts into visionary public spaces.
THE GATEWAY – Our Vision
We believe that there is a natural junction where engineering, infrastructure, landscape and art converge, that The Gateway is the ideal location to celebrate this convergence. An overarching arts mission can weave these components together into a dynamic, world-class park. We believe that art can help to fuel the economy, build communities, and educate and enrich lives. It can tell the story of place, create engaging public spaces, and bring forward important issues of ecology, site use, and history.
We want The Gateway to be a vibrant nexus of art that explores the relationships between place, structure, and creative innovation. We want this space to become the Bay Area’s new Creative Commons.
OUR NEXT MEETING:
General Meeting of the FOG Membership
Tuesday, August 2
6:30 - 8:00 p.m.
American Steel Studios 1960
Mandela Parkway Oakland
