A nonprofit revamps efforts to rescue historic Lower Presidio Park from years of neglect.

As Bill McCrone walks through the weeds of a hill in Lower Presidio Park, he points to a plaque commemorating the 1818 raid of Monterey by an Argentine pirate captain named Hipólito Bouchard, who sacked the town, pillaged its supplies and left it in flames.

“It was the only sea-land battle on the West Coast,” McCrone says, adding the park is also where Sebastian Vizcaino landed in 1602 and later, where Fr. Junipero Serra came ashore in 1770.

McCrone is one of about a dozen board members for the Old Monterey Foundation, a local nonprofit formed in 2010 with a mission “to encourage and support the history and culture of historic downtown Monterey.” Last November, the board voted to prioritize a project that’s been collecting dust at Monterey City Hall for 13 years: Put Lower Presidio Park back on the map.

“This is one of the most historic properties on the whole West Coast,” says Old Monterey Foundation board president and former City Councilman Frank Sollecito. “Here we have this park, this historic area, and I was ashamed when I went up there and looked at it.”

Lower Presidio Park consists of 26 acres overlooking Lighthouse Avenue that Monterey leased from the Army at a cost of $1 per year for 50 years in 1996. As a condition of the lease, the city and the Army collaborated to develop a master plan for the park, which was completed in 2002.

“We’re not doing what we’re supposed be doing in the lease we took on with Army,” Sollecito says “It’s not what it’s supposed to be.”

The foundation made its first step toward renovation June 16, when City Council approved $215,000 in Neighborhood Improvement Program funds to improve the park’s signage and pathways, among other amenities.

Those improvements may sound modest, but both Sollecito and McCrone say the most important thing right now is for people – both locals and tourists – to know the park even exists.

“A lot of people don’t know where it is, and if they do, they don’t think they can go up there,” Sollecito says. “That’s one of the main problems we have to overcome.”

Monterey City Manager Mike McCarthy agrees, and says city staff is thrilled the foundation is taking on a project long on the back burner.

“It could be one of the most beautiful spots in all of Monterey, and certainly the most historic,” McCarthy says. “It’s now finally getting the attention it’s deserved.”

The funds from the city will help the restoration gain momentum, but the foundation’s plans are far more ambitious than a few signs and pathways, and include a proposal to put in an amphitheater on a hillside looking out to Monterey Bay.

“It’s an audacious project, but one that absolutely begs to be done,” McCrone says. “[The park] ought to be a national monument.”

McCrone says the bulk of the money needed to complete the restoration, estimated at $3-$5 million, will hopefully come from philanthropists, local or otherwise.

“If we can package it, I think we can find some benefactors that would give us a million here, a million there,” he says.