Panel Expects No Opposition : Balboa Park Site Eyed for King Memorial

A panel seeking a site for a privately funded memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. is focusing on a parcel of land near the Casa del Prado in Balboa Park.

A subcommittee of the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce’s Martin Luther King Memorial Committee recommended the site last month after its members visited six locations in their search for a suitable tribute to the civil rights leader, who was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., in 1968 .

“It seemed like the best place,” said Jack Morse, corporate community affairs representative for San Diego Gas & Electric, who is chairman of the subcommittee. “You line up several beauty queens and you pick one beauty queen out of the lineup. It’s a subjective judgment.”

The chamber committee was formed Nov. 3 to allay anger in San Diego’s black community after city residents voted Nov. 3 to strip King’s name from Market Street. After the vote, local black leaders called for a nationwide boycott of the city’s tourist industry but then retracted that initiative after the chamber promised to lead a private effort to honor King.

Two King Tributes

In December, the San Diego City Council created a separate committee to select a new King tribute. That group held its first meeting last month.

The chamber panel has launched a $750,000 fund-raising effort to pay for two King tributes: a physical monument costing about $250,000 and a “living” memorial of $500,000 in scholarships or service awards.

Morse declined to say exactly where the artistic monument would be, and said that a separate subcommittee will determine what shape it would take.

“One of the things I would like to see done is (that we) make a selection of a site first and then see if the memorial could blend in with the site,” he said. “I think the artist that was going to do (the memorial) would feel better about that.”

The subcommittee considered two Balboa Park sites, the Community Concourse plaza off C Street downtown, a site across from the downtown Convention Center and sites on Shelter Island and Harbor Island before settling on the parcel adjacent to Casa del Prado, Morse said.

William Nelson, the chamber’s chairman and head of the King Memorial committee, said that Balboa Park satisfies the criteria developed for a proper memorial to King because it is a well-traveled public area.

“Permanency and dignity are the primary considerations,” Nelson said, “and that really implies publicly owned or publicly controlled property.” The memorial site must also be accessible to the public and easily visible, he said.

Morse and Nelson said that they expect no opposition to the choice, which Morse forwarded Jan. 21, but the memorial has a long list of bureaucratic hurdles to clear before work can begin, Nelson said. The site must be approved by the chamber panel’s site selection committee and then by the full committee, Nelson said.

Nelson will then seek the approval of the city’s King tribute panel, the city’s Park and Recreation Board and the City Council, Nelson said. Fund-raising efforts, which have not yet begun in earnest, have already netted about $30,000 through a kickoff event, he said.