NMTIA Membership Meeting:
Monday, September 21st, 2026, 7 p.m.
at the Ingleside Police Station Community Room in Balboa Park at the top of Sgt. John V. Young Lane.
Agenda
*Rec. & Park’s Lamonte’ Bishop, Carol Sionkowski, & Andy Kushner, will speak about future plans for Balboa Park.
Announcements:
*NMTIA’s October agenda: inheritance laws and generational wealth.
The New Mission Terrace Improvement Association Officers, Executive Board, and Trustees are dedicated to taking care of Mission Terrace.
Your annual dues of $10 per year supports our events, monument maintenance, printing costs, and various miscellaneous items that come our way. Thank you for helping us take care of our neighborhood and community.
David Hooper, President; Marcus Miller, Vice President; Chuck Burwell, Treasurer; Acting Secretary, Lisa Dunseth; Jack Tereck, Sergeant-at-Arms; Trustees: Tim Bell, Rita Gelini, Prudence Hull, Frances Phillips, Margarita Sandoval.
New Mission Terrace Improvement Association (NMTIA)
P.O. Box 12111 San Francisco, California 94112
Email: nmtiasf@gmail.com
Find us on Facebook
Founded 1949
UPCOMING EVENTS
*SFPD: Captain Newbeck’s upcoming community meetings: Tuesday, September 15th & October 20th, 6 p.m. at Ingleside Station.
*Community Living Campaign’s Transportation Fair, Friday, September 18, 10 a.m.-Noon, at Daring Faith Celebration Centre.
*Pasta Dinner in the Alley: tentatively scheduled for October.
*Cayuga Block Party on the 800 block---Saturday, October 17th.
*Diwali Celebration: Sunday, October 25th, 1-4: Otsego/Ocean.
Little City Gardens, 2010-2016, A Brief History
Long before Mission Terrace was a neighborhood it was farmland. Vegetables once grew where our houses now stand.
The original neighborhood was laid out in 1911 and most of the houses were built by the mid-1920s—by which time the vegetable gardens were mostly gone.
One particular remnant lot, however, located at the edge of the neighborhood brought a different kind of excitement to the community. Between 1926 and 1935, the vegetable plots at 203 Cotter Street were transformed when Al G. Barnes brought his circus to town.
Local kids would safely cross Alemany Boulevard via the Santa Rosa underpass then make their way along Cayuga to the Cotter Street lot. There they would find elephants, acrobats, horses, clowns, aerialists and the like—really.
The circus stopped coming to the neighborhood in the mid 1930s. The 203 Cotter lot then sat vacant and overgrown for more than seventy years. It was the last permeable area along the Cayuga creek bed. As long as it was undeveloped it served as a vital and wild playground for local kids and ne’er-do-wells alike.
Until, notably, in 2010. That’s when farmer-artists Brooke Budner and Caitlyn Galloway created Little City Gardens there. Because of their efforts and advocacy—and Mayor Ed Lee’s SF Urban Agriculture Legislation in 2011—the vacant lot at 203 Cotter became San Francisco’s only urban farm.
Until they were evicted in 2016.
Little City Gardens was a functional, useful, and magical place. Their six years in the neighborhood were a special time for the community. We miss their presence. And we want to ensure that they aren’t forgotten.
History of Mission Terrace & the NMTIA
Mission Terrace-A Brief History-REDUCED.pdfNMTIA History.pdf