The opening date has finally been set for what is set to become the largest park built in San Francisco so far this year.

On Saturday, San Francisco’s Parks and Recreation Department announced that the 43-acre waterfront park that skirts the western edge of the city along the Grand Highway — at the “end of the line, for buses and everything else,” as Hunter S. Thompson once said — will open on April 12.

But despite its reassuring present, the green space in the shadow of Bernal Heights Park has a chaotic, eventful history. Holly Park is eight years older than Golden Gate Park. And nothing about how it got here was easy.

The center of Holly Park is a full baseball field, a large flat top atop a flan-shaped hill.

It just needs a name. Residents are invited to participate in the “unique opportunity” to weigh in with their suggestions on what the two-mile-long destination will be named, which will feature spaces and seating for live music and performance art, lounge areas with chairs and hammocks to enjoy ocean views, a skate spot, outdoor fitness equipment, bike parking and more. The park’s pavement will also be decorated with new murals and sculptures that pay homage to the neighborhood’s surf culture history. The department’s “Great Park Naming Contest” will run from now through March 16, when the Great Highway between Lincoln Avenue and Sloat Boulevard and the southbound lanes of the Great Highway Extension from Sloat to Skyline Boulevard will be permanently closed. A virtual community meeting will be held on March 18 at 6 p.m. to consider the proposals, and the public can expect to weigh in on nominations for the final name between March 20 and April 2. General Manager Phil Ginsburg described it as a “historic moment” for what the department calls the largest pedestrianization project in California history.

“This park belongs to the people of San Francisco,” he said in a statement. “It is a place where the city meets the sea, where art and nature come together, and where San Franciscans will leave their mark — not just by enjoying the park, but by naming it after it.”

In the six weeks leading up to the opening date, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency will begin adjusting travel lanes and signal timing around closed areas, as well as “creating safe routes for cyclists and pedestrians to and around the park,” the department said. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission will later work on its annual sand-passage operation to help shore up the shoreline against rising sea levels and storm-related impacts, while the recreation and parks department implements some of the park’s new features. The April 12 opening will culminate with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and community celebration, but the road to the park’s transformation has not been without controversy.