After two decades of wishful planning, San Rafael is set to give its isolated Canal neighborhood something it has long needed: a new park that could become a gateway to the larger community.
On Friday, the city closed escrow on a long-vacant boat storage yard along San Rafael Creek, recently identified by officials and community leaders as a rare viable spot for public green space in one of Marin County’s most crowded corners.
The future park would be far more than a patch of grass. Not only would it bring badly needed open space to the 10,000 mostly Latino, working-class residents of the Canal — the most densely populated neighborhood in Marin and the most racially segregated neighborhood in the Bay Area — but it eventually could connect them to the rest of San Rafael through a long-envisioned pedestrian and bicycle bridge over San Rafael Creek…