A Man of Actions, Not Words : Design: City architect Mike Stepner wasn’t perfect, but the elimination of his job will hurt San Diego in the long run.

Former city architect Mike Stepner was not the ideal interview. You couldn’t get him to knock his rivals, he wasn’t outspoken, even on pet issues, and he never let loose a racy remark, even when defending himself or debating an important topic.

But while this quiet diplomacy could make Stepner a frustrating interview subject, it also enabled him to reconcile opposing factions on major planning issues.

Friday was Stepner’s last day as city architect, the position he filled in 1988 after it was dreamed up by Mayor Maureen O’Connor. His job was eliminated by the city in recent cost-cutting moves.

Stepner, 52, will stay on with the city as director of special projects, such as expanding the Convention Center, reporting to City Manager Jack McGrory. But he will be detached from many issues that were his lifeblood during his tenure as city architect, and there is a very good chance some of his pet projects will languish.

Among these are new design guidelines for apartment buildings. Stepner mediated between architects who wanted total design freedom and planners who believed the guidelines could improve the quality of new, low-budget apartment buildings.

While some architects feel the resulting guidelines, approved in 1990, are too middle-of-the-road, they still leave more room for architectural inventiveness than guidelines originally proposed by the city.

In another subtle but significant move, it was Stepner’s idea to hire San Francisco planning guru Peter Calthorpe to help San Diego develop “transit-oriented development” guidelines.

Calthorpe spent a year consulting with the city, and the resulting TODs were adopted as city policy last summer. They encourage mixed-use development close to mass transit and are designed to loosen the stranglehold the automobile has on San Diego County.

Now, without Stepner as city architect, there’s a chance the TODs will simmer into oblivion on a back burner somewhere deep inside City Hall.

“I think that a big part of this is an educational process, not just a regulatory thing,” Calthorpe said this week. “And Mike, because he so clearly understood the thing, was a really good communicator on it. Without that I do fear, not only might it not go as far and as easily as it should, but it becomes open to misinterpretation.”

Stepner was also a player in the lobbying effort that overturned plans for an elevated trolley that would have scarred Harborview, the residential-commercial district north of downtown. For six months, Stepner chaired a group of diverse interests in search of an alternative.

As a result, the Harborview trolley line will mix underground and ground-level tracks, with only a small portion elevated.

In another important planning effort, Stepner was a key city representative to the Centre City Planning Committee, a group chaired by developer Ernest Hahn that came up with a new master plan and design guidelines for 1,500 acres downtown. The plan was adopted by the city in April.

Stepner is especially pleased that the plan encourages mixed-use development, with ground-floor retail to liven up city sidewalks, and that it mandates significant new housing development. A large, stable base of residents is a key to the success of downtown as a genuine community.

Yet another planning effort coordinated by Stepner took a broader look at the future of San Diego.

During a weekend brainstorming session last year, community leaders and planning experts came up with 150 recommendations, which were subsequently narrowed to three priorities: transportation and related issues, mapping out natural resources such as wetlands and canyons to protect them from development, and investigating new ways of revitalizing old neighborhoods.

This report, too, may soon be forgotten without Stepner around to bang the drum.

Asked whether he is concerned about these unfinished works, Stepner characteristically refused to talk about it.

Stepner was not perfect. He considers himself a preservationist, but in recent months he seemed to be caving in to pressure from pro-development factions. When planner Ron Buckley, the city’s longtime preservation expert, was shifted to another planning job last year, Stepner was mum.

And when Buckley’s proposed historic preservation plan for the city could not gain the approval of the Planning Commission because of its uncompromising preservation stance, Stepner didn’t stand up for the plan. It is now being rewritten by Bill Levin, who took over Buckley’s job.

But Vonn Marie May, a staunch preservationist who chairs the city’s Historical Site Board, felt Stepner was, overall, a friend of preservationists.

“He never really left preservation, but in recent years he erred more on the side of development,” May said. “But he’s always very grounded in trying to bring the best out of different parties. He’s an amazing person. He might have lacked leadership, but he was the only one who could smile and be gracious to everyone on all sides. A person like that is rare, and certainly doesn’t exist on the council. I don’t know why someone would really want to get rid of him.”

The loss of Stepner as city architect is only the latest blow to the Planning Department.

After former Planning Director Robert Spaulding’s resignation last year after sexual harassment charges brought by planner Susan Bray, the department was moved under City Manager McGrory, whereas the planning director formerly reported directly to the City Council.

The Planning Department and planning director now answer to McGrory, an attorney whose education is in public administration and whose history as a city employee, dating back to 1975, includes no experience as a city planner.

In recent months, 16 staff positions were cut from the Planning Department, and another 55 people will be transferred to other city departments in the months ahead, leaving the Planning Department about a third smaller.

Budgets dictate streamlining in these recessionary times, but there is also a need to take a long-range view, to lay groundwork for the future, such as the kind of work Stepner had been doing as city architect.

As May points out, Stepner and Max Schmidt, assistant vice president of planning and engineering at the Centre City Development Corp., the city’s redevelopment branch, are the two reigning deans of city planning in San Diego. They have watched the city mature and have decades of valuable experience between them.

Now one of them will no longer be in a position to exercise his extensive knowledge.

San Diego has enough mediocre planning and architecture. Just visit the Golden Triangle or the bayfront, increasingly walled off from public views and access by a rash of 1980s development, or try to commute along Interstate 5 at rush hour.

The city will pay a price for not putting Stepner’s skills to their best use. The damage may not show up for several years, but the loss of Stepner as city architect will eventually impair quality of life in a city that has the potential to be a West Coast gem.