“In
building the city, let us remember that the material things which will endure
the longest are those that express the spirit in art. In the art of landscape
and architecture, the spirit of a city can be preserved for the ages.” George
White Marston, 1927.
In San Diego, we
have been so effective in bringing activity to Centre City that in many ways San
Diego has become a national model for successful downtown redevelopment. Many
cities have tried to stimulate their downtowns by building a shopping center or
a convention center or a ballpark. San Diego has done it all and reinforced it
with historic preservation, housing, public transportation and public
facilities.
In fact, San
Diego has done lots of things; and, having done them comprehensively rather than
just one big thing is what we are cited for. We are not New York, Chicago,
Boston or San Francisco. Those cities are in a unique class by themselves. But,
so is San Diego. We have developed a Downtown that never was!
Downtown San Diego’s heyday ended after World War II with flight to the suburbs.
What the Downtown people left was a downtown of 200,000. What has been put in
its place is a downtown for a region of over 3 million.
Conversations
about Downtown San Diego often include questions that seek to learn when
redevelopment started and who the heroes were, the champions, the people who
made it happen. Depending on a person’s frame of reference, Downtown
redevelopment started with an event or a project 10 years ago; 20 years ago; 30
years ago; or some time last week when he went to the ballpark or a new
restaurant. Ironically, all are correct because Downtown, like all parts of a
city, is a work in progress. Never finished; and you would never want it to be
finished.
Many individuals,
groups and events have all played a role in the evolution of our Downtown. Each
advocated for a project, an initiative, an approach. It has not been a linear
process but, rather, one of building on the work of others, of collaboration and
passion about Downtown on the part of all involved.
Alonzo Horton’s
Influence
However, in this
commentary, I want to start earlier. When Alonzo Horton came to San Diego in the
late 1800s, he founded what is now Downtown San Diego and what is now Uptown.
Horton was laying out his town next to the site of an earlier attempt at
Downtown — what is now the Marina neighborhood but was called Newtown or,
because of its lack of success, Davis’ Folly.
Horton’s
subdivision was established as San Diego’s Downtown in 1871 after a mysterious
fire in Old San Diego. When the smoke cleared, all the city’s records — presumed
to have been burned — were found in a building in Horton’s Downtown.
The promised
coming of the railroad to San Diego — to make it the western terminus — led to
the development of what is now the Gaslamp Quarter, envisioned to be the
creation of a Downtown to match coast cities befitting the railroad hub.
However, the railroad did not come and San Diego went from 40,000 to 12,000
almost overnight.
Roger Showley,
author and San Diego Union-Tribune columnist, writes that modern comprehensive
planning was born of a desire in 1903 to relocate City Hall from Fifth Avenue
and G Street — what is now the Gaslamp Quarter. “George W. Marston, founder of
the Marston Department Store, prompted the Chamber of Commerce to form a civic
improvement committee to hire city planner John Nolen . . . to lend some
direction to San Diego’s unmanaged growth.”
Nolen’s 1907
“Plan for San Diego” proposed that the waterfront be developed as a recreational
place for San Diegans, that twin railroad stations be constructed, that a civic
center be developed around a public plaza at the site of the current county
courthouse and that a boulevard link between Balboa Park and San Diego Bay be
created. All subjects are still under discussion.
The opening of
the Panama Canal in 1915 and the creation of a fair in Balboa Park were key to
planning for the growth of San Diego in the early 20th century. And World War II
made San Diego a boom town.
Societal changes,
post-war growth and development policies led to suburban flight. In 1958,
intense pressure from the May Company department stores resulted in the City
Council’s approval to rezone and allow construction of the Mission Valley
Shopping Center. This action accelerated the displacement of farming and
hastened the decline of Downtown. At the time of the City Council’s action,
Arthur Jessop, a Downtown merchant, said, “We might as well tattoo on the
Council wall, ‘Here died planning in San Diego.’”
Those events led
to the formation of the Central City Association, one of the first Business
Improvement Districts in California, and San Diegans incorporated a business and
property owners association. The groups began an effort to revitalize Downtown
and created a Downtown community plan. Subsequently, the two groups merged into
what is now the Downtown Partnership.
As the city
prepared for its 1969 bicentennial, San Diego Magazine proposed that Old San
Diego and the Gaslamp Quarter should become the locations of our celebrations,
each representing phases of San Diego’s evolution. Nevertheless, the city chose
to focus its celebration on Old San Diego. Gaslamp and south of Broadway were
written off because that area was home to adult entertainment, Navy locker clubs
and the poor.
However, property
owners in the Gaslamp Quarter had other ideas. Under the leadership of Tom Hom,
they formed an association and began to study what was happening in other parts
of the country; how cities like Seattle, St. Louis and others were preserving
and reusing their historic cores. In the early 1970s, the Gaslamp Quarter
Association petitioned the city to develop special zoning, assist with public
improvements and to recognize the area as a historic district.
Also during this
period, San Diegans Inc. and the Central City Association began to see results
from their efforts — the construction of two high-rise banks and office
buildings at Fifth Avenue and B Street and the bank and office building at
Seventh and Broadway. The Westgate Hotel and the bank/office building across the
street at Second and Broadway, the county courthouse, state office building, and
Civic Center all result from the efforts of the 1960s (although the latter two
offer little to be proud of as symbols of who we are as a community).
Pete Wilson Comes
to Power
In 1971, Pete
Wilson was elected mayor of San Diego. His platform of managing the growth of
San Diego included a plank on revitalizing Downtown, which reinforced the work
of San Diegans Inc. and Central City Association. His vision for Downtown was
guided and assisted by city planner Max Schmidt. (During a 40-year career with
the city and Centre City Development Corp., Schmidt was the “keeper of the
flame” for Downtown redevelopment and revitalization.)
Under Wilson’s
leadership, the City Planning Department produced the 1974 Centre City Community
Plan, which provided a comprehensive approach to Downtown’s revitalization. The
city’s Redevelopment Agency worked with the federal government and the private
sector to develop the federal courthouse on Front and Broadway. The tax
increment from the courthouse provided a cash flow to begin the redevelopment
process.
Wilson’s effort
led to the creation of the Centre City Development Corp. (CCDC), a municipal
entity that could bridge the gap between the public and private sectors and
could implement plans for Downtown using a variety of tools, including those
provided by traditional planning like design review, zoning, and tax increment
financing and eminent domain — tools provided by California redevelopment law.
The newly formed
CCDC focused its resources on Horton Plaza, the first redevelopment project area
in Downtown. The Horton Plaza retail center was considered the centerpiece of
Downtown redevelopment. The adoption of the Columbia and Marina redevelopment
project areas followed shortly.
The Horton Plaza
redevelopment was proposed in 1974 as a way to clean up the area south of
Broadway. It was first thought of as a high-rise office park with some retail
support because no one saw a viable future for anything else in Downtown.
But, then, enter
Ernie Hahn, who felt that the time was right for major urban infill retail.
After some of his initial designs for the shopping center were rejected as too
suburban, he decided that a different model was necessary to be part of
Downtown. He retained architect John Jerde to design something that was unique
yet would fit into the Downtown environment. To complement the retail center he
would build, Hahn required the city to proceed with plans for Downtown housing,
a convention center, the revitalization of the Gaslamp Quarter and public
transportation.
When the first
phase of Horton Plaza was completed, the Fourth Avenue frontage was an exposed
parking garage. The Gaslamp Association, working on the revitalization of the
district, complained that Horton Plaza was “mooning” the Gaslamp Quarter. This
accelerated the completion of the frontage along Fourth Avenue.
In subsequent
years, Downtown revitalization has greatly expanded new housing, new office
buildings, the ballpark and the convention center; but, there were other,
perhaps smaller projects that added to Downtown’s revitalization and San Diego’s
reputation as a national model.
Live-Work Artist
Lofts
In the late
1970s, two issues came to the forefront. Some of the earliest Downtown pioneers
were artists. First, south of Broadway, then the Gaslamp Quarter, then East
Village — the artists were always being forced to move as revitalization
proceeded and that gave birth to the obvious question: How could we maintain the
artists’ presence in Downtown? Coincidentally, there was a great concern about
the loss of Downtown’s warehouse and manufacturing buildings that could not be
adapted to new uses because of building code requirements.
Through a grant
from the National Endowment for the Arts and using the “sewing factory” at 12th
and F streets as a test case, the city investigated and developed new codes that
would allow live-work artist lofts. Not only have the codes been applied in San
Diego, they have become a national model code as well.
Downtowns have
always been home to the poor, especially singles and the elderly. They have
lived in Single Room Occupancy hotels (SROs) — often called “flop houses.” An
SRO, typically, was a small room in those earlier days — just enough for a bed
and a dresser. Shared bathrooms and kitchen facilities were “down the hall” or
in another part of the building.
As Downtown
development proceeded, SROs were removed. Many times for parking lots. Studies
conducted for the city discovered a support network for the occupants; e.g.,
restaurants where they are, facilities where services were provided as well as
people who would check up on their well-being if they did not show up according
to the normal routine.
The SROs long had
been considered the opposite of “safe and sanitary” housing. People hesitated to
use the common facilities. Fires occurred when people would set a hot plate on a
bed to cook a meal.
Judy Lenthall, a
banker turned city planner, was assigned to find a solution. She discovered that
the economics of an SRO provided a great R.O.I. and that with a change of codes
to allow in-room toilets, sinks, and microwave ovens, the entire living
environment of an SRO could be changed. The first new SROs in almost 70 years
were built in Downtown San Diego — many designed by award-winning architect Rob
Wellington Quigley.
The Ford
Foundation recognized this breakthrough in housing and funded city staff to
consult with cities across the country to assist them in creating this housing
type.
In 1992, a second
Centre City plan was adopted that promoted the collection of Downtown
neighborhoods as everyone’s second neighborhood. The 2006 community plan focus,
once again, was on revitalizing the Downtown neighborhoods. What has made the
revitalization of Downtown so successful is that it has always been a
comprehensive approach — that there is no “silver bullet,” that no one project
or initiative would produce an environment that is the heart of our community.
It cannot be done
just with a shopping center, just with a convention center, just a ballpark or
just an anything else. A city is composed of many elements and to revitalize a
city successfully, one must address all the elements and at the same time. That
has been the key to San Diego’s success.
And, the planning
and discussion continues. Will we get a new civic center? When will we begin the
central library? Is East Village the right location for a football stadium? And
when will the waterfront be San Diego’s front porch?
It must be
remembered that Downtown — as with any other neighborhood — will never be
finished nor built out. Cities continually change and evolve; and, building a
city is like building a personal relationship. To be successful, we must
continually work at it.
Michael
Stepner is a professor of architecture and urban design at the NewSchool of
Architecture & Design in Downtown San Diego. He is a planning consultant who was involved in the planning
and revitalization of Centre City during a career of more than 27 years with the
city of San Diego.
