Franceschi Park has two active city projects running on it right now, and most people walking the loop this fall are only noticing one. Crews are mid-way through building more than 1,500 linear feet of new trail, connecting the parking lot to the Franceschi Bust, the upper meadow, and the existing path network. At the same time, the Historic Landmarks Commission is still working through a plan that could end with the century-old Franceschi House torn down and replaced with an open-air terrace. Both projects report to the same city effort: the Wildfire Resiliency Project, a joint undertaking between the Parks and Recreation and Fire Departments to rework vegetation and access across the entire 17-acre park. The trail crew and the demolition debate are not two separate stories about one park. They are two visible pieces of one fire-mitigation plan.
If you've driven up Mission Ridge Road recently, you've probably seen the fencing and the fresh gravel without connecting it to the fight over the house lower down the hill. The two are more related than they look.
What the trail crews are actually building
The Parks and Recreation Department started construction in early September on a multi-week project to expand access through the park's upper reaches. The new trail segments connect the parking lot to the sandstone bust honoring Dr. Francesco Franceschi, the Italian horticulturist who ran a nursery and botanic garden on the site from 1903 to 1913, and continue on to the upper meadow, an area cut through with eucalyptus, towering cacti, and oak trees that most visitors never reach because the existing paths don't lead there directly. The new sections use compacted tread and drainage features built to prevent erosion, which matters on a hillside this steep. Once the trail work wraps, the department has already flagged the next phase: native habitat restoration planned for this winter, focused on removing invasive species and replanting with vegetation suited to a high fire-risk hillside.
That second phase is the tell. A trail crew doesn't normally follow its own construction with an invasive-species removal program unless the whole project was scoped as fire work from the start.
The house is on a slower, separate track, but the same file
The Franceschi House itself is not part of the trail budget. It's moving through its own review, and it's moving slowly. At a January 15, 2026 Historic Landmarks Commission hearing, city staff presented concept designs that would demolish the deteriorated house and replace the site with an interpretive garden terrace, a view perch, and new signage explaining the property's history. Commissioners said they support the direction, with Chair Anthony Grumbine noting that the building isn't salvageable but the story it tells can still be preserved through the redesign. Commissioner and architect Robert Ooley made the sharper point during a follow-up hearing: Franceschi's real legacy was never the house, which was largely reshaped by later owners, but the plant collection he built on the hillside, and that collection was never meant to last forever either.
No final vote has been taken. At the most recent hearing on record, commissioners voted unanimously to continue the project indefinitely, asking for more work on preserving specific architectural details before anything moves to construction. The city has said the design and environmental review process could stretch across several years, contingent on funding. So the honest current status, as of this fall, is that the house is marked for likely removal but not yet condemned to it.
Two details from that process are worth knowing if you've ever picnicked there. The existing picnic tables are slated for removal, not because the city wants fewer places to sit, but because that footprint is where the accessible pathway needs to go, according to Parks and Recreation Director Jill Zachary. And of the 85 decorative medallions commemorating Franceschi and various historical events across the property, not all of them will survive the redesign. Architect Kevin Dumain of Design Arc, the firm working the project, has said there isn't room for all 85 on the new terrace, so the plan calls for select medallions to be featured on the new deck and the rest documented through plaques. The Pearl Chase Society, represented at hearings by Cheri Rae, has pushed back on losing the interior stained glass and other original features, which is the kind of local friction that shows up whenever a preservation society and a facilities budget end up in the same room.
Here's how the two workstreams line up as of this September:
| Project | What's happening | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Trail expansion | 1,500+ linear feet of new trail connecting the parking lot, the Franceschi Bust, and the upper meadow | Under construction, started early September 2026 |
| Franceschi House | Proposal to demolish the house and build an interpretive terrace and view perch | Continued indefinitely at the most recent Historic Landmarks Commission hearing, no final vote, multi-year process pending funding |
| Native habitat restoration | Removing invasive plant species, replanting with fire-resistant vegetation across the park, including around the house site | Planned for winter 2026, positioned as the trail project's next phase |
Why the trails and the house fall under the same plan
The connective tissue is the Wildfire Resiliency Project, the collaboration between Parks and Recreation and the Fire Department that the city has attached to both efforts. For the trail work, that means the winter restoration phase isn't cosmetic landscaping, it's fuel reduction. For the house, the same wildfire framing shows up in the practical reasons staff have given for why full restoration was ruled out in the first place: the site's difficult access and the driveway's inability to accommodate larger fire engines were part of what made a full restoration option impractical, alongside the building's small 30-person capacity and foundation issues.
Put together, the picture is less "the city doesn't value this old building" and more "the city has decided fire access and fuel management take priority over preserving a structure that was already failing." The trail crew widening access to the upper meadow and the commission debating whether the house can stay are both downstream of the same risk calculation applied to the same 17 acres.
The Riviera's other wildfire project is a few blocks away
Franceschi Park isn't an isolated case of fire logic reshaping something residents already knew. In February, Southern California Edison used helicopter operations to install five new utility poles in the neighborhood, working the area north and south of Alameda Padre Serra, between Garcia Road and Las Alturas Road, as part of what the city described as an ongoing initiative to modernize infrastructure and reduce wildfire risk. Some residents in the direct operational zone were asked to leave their homes during the flights. SCE followed that with continued aerial inspections using drones and helicopters through the summer, checking poles and equipment for wear that could increase ignition risk.
None of that is connected administratively to the park project. But it's the same year, the same hillside, and the same underlying math: a neighborhood built into steep, wooded terrain is having its power infrastructure and its public parkland reworked around fire risk at roughly the same time. If you live on the Riviera, 2026 is the year that logic reached both the poles above your street and the trail below Mission Ridge Road.
What's actually different if you walk the loop this winter
Short term, expect the parking lot and upper trail sections to stay under construction through the fall, with the new segments opening once drainage and tread work is finished. The onsite lot is locked each night regardless of construction status, and dogs are allowed but must stay leashed, both longstanding park rules rather than anything new. All buildings on the property, including the main house, are currently closed to the public, which has been the case for some time and isn't expected to change before any commission decision.
Longer term, the native planting phase this winter will likely mean visible thinning of some existing vegetation, which can look more dramatic in progress than it will once new plantings fill in. And the house itself will keep sitting in limbo, closed and deteriorating, until the commission takes a final vote that hasn't been scheduled yet.
The park will look different by spring than it does now. Whether the house is still standing when that happens depends on a process that, as of this writing, hasn't reached its final page.
If you're curious how the terrace design or the trail loop turns out once the dust settles, Sharon Jordano keeps an eye on what's actually changing across the Riviera, not just what's for sale on it.
