Plan for East Mesa 1st-Rate : Balboa Park: Unfortunately, implementation of the improvements is a long way off for the long-neglected area.

SAN DIEGO —  This city is blessed with the rarest of urban assets: a huge public park at its heart. At 1,400 acres, Balboa Park is bigger than New York’s Central Park (840 acres) or San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park (1,017 acres).

Since formal development began in Balboa Park early this century, the focus has been on the Central Mesa, the portion of the park where museums line the broad pedestrian mall known as the Prado. Meanwhile, the 620-acre East Mesa, which includes Florida Canyon, Morley Field and the unsightly Arizona Landfill, has remained virtually undeveloped, although the nearby Naval Hospital on Inspiration Point, completed in 1988, is a bleak and looming presence.

Neglect has left the East Mesa as much a liability as an open-space asset. But being a neglected stepchild has turned out to work in favor of the East Mesa, which is bounded by Upas Street, Park Boulevard, Russ Street and 28th Street. Interest in the planning and development of this area is peaking at a time when ecologically oriented public parks are in vogue, instead of more intensive development and recreation uses.

A new East Mesa Precise Plan delivered to city officials this week makes the mesa’s natural assets a high priority. The sensitive plan proposes an inviting mix of uses that would equally serve tourists, San Diegans and especially nearby residents. It outlines how the East Mesa could evolve during the next 20 years.

Beginning with the Balboa Park Committee’s May 4 public meeting, the plan will start a lengthy public approval process. It could reach the City Council for consideration by midsummer.

In terms of planning and design, the new plan--which calls for $44.5 million in improvements--is first-rate. Its major shortcoming is that significant funds probably won’t be available to implement it until the late 1990s. A new North Park entry plaza is the only element of the plan for which funds are now available; by 1994, $535,000 would go into building this plaza at Upas and 28th streets. It would include a grove of jacaranda trees, a compact, triangular children’s park and several picnic tables set out on new lawns beneath new canopy trees.

In a volume running to more than 200 pages, the East Mesa Precise Plan was prepared by a team led by landscape architects Wallace Roberts & Todd of San Diego and including Encinitas artist Christine Oatman and Los Angeles artist Richard Posner. In a progressive move, the artists were an integral part of the design team from the start. Their “art” consists not of the usual artworks, but of their contributions to the planning.

Under the new plan, the East Mesa would be organized into a sensible hierarchy of land uses, and there would be smooth, subtle transitions between the mesa and adjacent parklands and residential neighborhoods.

Florida Canyon, at the west end, would be played up as a natural asset on display at the heart of the East Mesa. The north half of Florida Drive, which now runs through the canyon, would be eliminated, and the canyon would be restored with native vegetation and used for recreation such as hiking.

Land uses and new landscaping would become more intense to the east of Florida Canyon. The most intense uses and most formal landscaping would create a transition at the East Mesa’s edges, where it borders residential enclaves of North Park and Golden Hill.

The heart of the mesa would be a loose agglomeration of sweeping, curving bike and pedestrian paths. But the edges of the mesa would be defined by squares and rectangles formed by trees planted along lines that continue the lines of streets in the adjacent neighborhoods.

Morley Field, for instance, would be rigorously reorganized around a grand, tree-lined pedestrian promenade that would culminate in “Sky Plaza,” an artful public space anchored by a giant sundial. Among several new additions proposed for Morley Field are a swimming complex and a fly-casting pond.

New, stronger connections would be made between the East Mesa and the rest of the park. The most significant of these gestures would be “Alchemy Park,” a public-art park that would be developed atop the Arizona Landfill at the center of the mesa. Kathleen Garcia, one of the landscape architects, refers to this proposed transformation as “garbage into gold.”

The plan includes Oatman’s suggestion for a significant work of public art atop this garbage heap, perhaps an arch, that would align with the Prado, symbolically completing the east-west pedestrian and auto axis that sweeps across Balboa Park from 6th Avenue, beginning with the Laurel Street bridge.

As part of the new plan’s ecological bent, only one major new building is planned: a Pershing Recreation Complex at the East Mesa’s southwest corner.

Neighbors should welcome this; it would replace a city operations yard now occupied by garbage trucks. Soccer fields and a bicycling velodrome--to be relocated from Morley Field--would be the primary recreation uses here.

The plan was drafted with ample input from residents of North Park and Golden Hill, who came together as part of an East Side Task Force. Both communities suffer from a lack of neighborhood parks.

“We’ve been told for years we can’t use Balboa Park for community purposes because it’s a regional park,” said Joan Griffin, a task force member who lives on Upas Street, at the edge of the park. “In this process, we have asked if we can have some of the edges planned to fulfill community needs for tot lots, picnic areas and grass we can go on.”

Under the plan, the East Mesa’s residential edges would be significantly improved with pedestrian and bike paths and pocket children’s parks.

Ties between the park and nearby neighborhoods would be strengthened through two new entries.

In addition to the new Upas entry, a new Golden Hill entry at Russ and 25th streets, at the southern end of the East Mesa, would include enhanced landscaping and a restored, Victorian-era fountain relocated from a nearby park canyon where it has languished for years.

People who live near the park have told planners that the park nursery on Pershing Drive is a blight, a maintenance function that could be located elsewhere. But instead of moving the nursery, the East Mesa plan proposes transforming it into a public attraction featuring educational gardens and botanical displays that could be maintained by San Diego County plant societies.

The Precise Plan has an admirable environmental conscience.

Planners propose beautifying the Arizona Landfill by landscaping with natural grasses. These would require very little water and double as a safety measure. Excessive water, seeping down into the decaying landfill, could have explosive results, speeding decay, which generates the gas methane.

In another ecologically sound move, the plan recommends irrigating all of Balboa Park from a 3.5-million-gallon underground reclaimed-water storage tank to be installed at Pershing Drive and Redwood Street. Water would be piped to the tank from a city water reclamation plant in Mission Valley.

One of the main reasons the East Mesa has been so ignored is that it is difficult to reach by car or on foot, and even more difficult to traverse.

A new circulation system would cure these woes. Five significant pedestrian bridges and several smaller footbridges would link the mesa to the rest of park and make connections between new bike and pedestrian paths within the mesa.

Two of these bridges would be sizable--400 feet long--and could generate controversy about adding man-made structures to this section of the park.

Although it is touted as environmentally sound, the Precise Plan does propose 1,500 new parking spaces. But these would be mostly clustered around Morley Field and the new Pershing Recreation Complex, and they would have a minimal visual impact on this huge hunk of parkland.

All in all, the plan presents an attractive package, but its implementation is far from a sure thing.

Three city bond issues worth $73 million, backed by a portion of the city’s 9% room tax, will fund improvements in all of Balboa Park between now and the mid-1990s. But virtually no money is allocated for the East Mesa. The largest chunk of bond money, $25 million, will go toward restoring the House of Charm and the House of Hospitality in the heart of the park.

Although the city could shift its priorities to include a few East Mesa projects, it is unlikely that significant progress will be made in implementing the East Mesa Precise Plan until the late 1990s.

So, although the plan is a good one that would drastically improve the East Mesa and make it a vital part of Balboa Park, there’s no guarantee that will happen.

For that, plan backers will be looking to elected officials for steady leadership over the long haul. No doubt residents of North Park and Golden Hill will be lobbying for their fair share of Balboa Park improvement money.