Commentary : It’s Time to Link Balboa Park, S.D. Bay

Ever since San Diego’s first planning document was completed in 1908, city planners have been trying to sell the idea of somehow linking Balboa Park with San Diego Bay.

In that first plan, “San Diego: A Comprehensive Plan For Its Improvement,” Cambridge, Mass., planner John Nolen stated: “The people of San Diego will do well if they recognize today that the two great central recreational features of the city now and always are the City Park of 1,400 acres and the bayfront, and that the value of both will be increased many fold if a suitable connecting link, parkway or boulevard can be developed, bringing them into direct and pleasant relations.”

To commemorate the plan’s 75th anniversary in 1983, the Ilal-Lael Foundation (organized to “stir concern for San Diego’s physical environment”) asked Paul Curcio of the city Planning Department; Patrick O’Connor, a local landscape architect, and me to take another look at the idea that has been discussed by civic leaders almost since the turn of the century.

We decided that the idea was still a necessary part of the revitalization of downtown. When we looked at where a connection might be made, the idea for a corridor along 6th and 7th avenues emerged.

Nolen had envisioned a “Paseo” running east to west between Date and Elm streets. His proposal was for a landscaped parkway not unlike the boulevards then being constructed in cities large and small throughout the United States. The “panhandle” of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and the downtown “park blocks” in Portland, Ore., are examples.

The Paseo was rejected in a 1911 city election in favor of building the Broadway and B Street piers. In 1926, Nolen returned to San Diego to prepare a new comprehensive plan for the city and surrounding areas, and his new plan reiterated the desirability of a link of bayfront and park. This time he added the idea of a waterfront park at the western end of the Paseo.

After World War II, Planning Director Glenn Rick again modified the plans for a link, proposing the Cedar Street Mall from the County Administration Center to Balboa Park, to be flanked by public buildings, including the Central Library and a convention center. This proposal, similar to the Mall in Washington, was defeated by the voters in two elections in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

In 1974, a report funded by the Marston family found continued support for the park-bayfront link, along with the notion that it should be a part of the downtown revitalization then in its infancy.

The “Centre City San Diego Community Plan” adopted by the City Council in 1976 included the bayfront link as a major recommendation. The plan proposed a corridor between 10th and 11th avenues, connecting the end of Highway 163 with a parkway that would run southerly to L Street, then westerly to a connection at 5th Avenue to Embarcadero Park. This recommendation was not pursued--due, in part, to other priorities in downtown. But a scaled-down version of this will be constructed to provide access to the new convention center.

The principle that guided my colleagues and me in the design of the current bay-park linkage plan was that the project be real and “do-able.” It had to recognize today’s limitation on resources yet be a “master stroke,” a project that has an impact and acts as a catalyst for further revitalization efforts.

John Nolen envisioned “The Paseo” he proposed as “a pleasant promenade, an airing place, a formal and dignified approach to the big central park. In itself, this paseo might possess great beauty, each block offering an opportunity for special design, and yet the whole strip brought into harmony and unity.”

Our current proposal is to remove the parking from one side of 6th Avenue and one side of 7th. Widened sidewalks and occasional vest-pocket parks would create a corridor from Laurel Street to a new waterfront park at the end of the two streets. Proposed “greenway” treatments are designed to fit within the existing street rights-of-way.

Small open spaces would occur on underutilized and obtainable land. The greenway would generate optimum property uses by creating streets of special emphasis. The proposal provides for the beauty that Nolen envisioned and addresses many of the other issues that are facing us today. The vehicular aspect of the corridor is designed to accommodate increasing downtown traffic by providing an inner-city north-south artery.

This proposal provides a variety of open spaces, activity and amenities that attract both residents and visitors to enjoy a stroll from the waterfront through downtown to Balboa Park.

The proposal is real and “do-able,” but it is not the only possibility for a bay-park link.

In the manner of the first Nolen Plan, this project has brought together a coalition of civic groups, including San Diegans Inc., the Central City Assn., Citizens Coordinate for Century III and the San Diego Community Foundation. They are looking at how to make a bay-park link happen.

The connection between Balboa Park and San Deigo Bay is an idea whose time has come.

In the overall scheme of things, our proposal is relatively inexpensive. What needs to happen now is a commitment on the part of both the public and private sectors to move ahead and make it happen.