By Kate Callen
When my sister and I were children, we loved making Christmas wish lists: pedal-powered mini-cars, two-story dollhouses. But we understood that Santa had to provide for a world full of kids and we wouldn’t get everything we wanted.
Rational people faced with limited resources set realistic expectations. So why do Balboa Park planners keep inviting San Diegans to envision upgrades this cash-strapped city can’t afford? Why ask the public to sit through two years of presentations and workshops that will only raise false hopes? Why not revisit the original 1989 Balboa Park Master Plan to learn about valuable ideas that were never implemented?
These issues surfaced when the latest Balboa Park Master Plan Update kicked off at the September 3 meeting of the Balboa Park Committee. In a 45-minute presentation, San Diego Planning Director Heidi Von Blum and her team slow-walked the Balboa Park Club’s capacity audience through a 35-page slideshow.
People new to park planning might have been bewildered by the mash-up of abstractions: from “vision and guiding principles” to “conceptual framework” to “priorities and phases.” For those of us who have participated in Balboa Park presentations, studies, surveys, and workshops over decades of steady park decline, the slideshow resurrected ghosts of failures past.
The “Master Planning & Design” consultant is WRT, the design firm that produced a 1992 “precise plan” for the East Mesa, which is still largely barren. The “Mobility and Access” consultant is Fehr & Peers, the contractor whose analysis supported Mayor Todd Gloria’s decision to institute paid parking in the Park.
And the “community input” questionnaire posed the same old questions like “How often do you visit Balboa Park?” and “Which areas of Balboa Park are you most familiar with?”
Former City Planner Michael Stepner, one of the park’s most astute advocates, began public comment by challenging planners to engage the public directly and substantively.
“Surveys, websites, and forums are all good, but they do not represent robust public participation,” he said. “And we shouldn’t start from scratch. The 1989 plan had a solid foundation. There have been a lot of studies, and they need to be woven into this process.”
The two issues that will determine the future of Balboa Park, governance and finance, were barely mentioned. Committee members pointed that out.
“Governance and finance should rise up in this process, they shouldn’t be at the end as part of implementation,” said long-time North Park representative Howard Blackson. “How we figure out governance is going to affect how we create economic viability.”
The newest committee member, Natural History Museum COO Matt Jawlik, spoke at his first meeting with an astonishing candor. His comments had the seismic effect of the boy along the parade route who observed out loud that the emperor wore no clothes.
“A lot of what is embedded in the 1989 plan is very much relevant today,” Jawlik said. “We’ve had the best intentions for 36 years, and we’ve been unable to execute because of governance and because of financing.”
“This plan should restore public trust. We’ve had good intentions in all these plans, and in recent years, the city has taken measures that run counter to the plans. If we’re going to produce another master plan, it’s got to have teeth, and it’s got to be followed.”
“We can’t have overnight re-striping of Park Boulevard, eliminating 300 parking spaces, putting in bus lanes, and limiting ways for people to get into the park. How do we make sure that doesn’t happen this time around?”
Public trust is the biggest challenge to the credibility of this plan update. After the paid parking fiasco, San Diegans have no tolerance for hearing the same things from the same government that has managed Balboa Park so badly for so long.
That’s why the Forever Balboa Park conservancy, which operates at the intersection of governance and financing, should have been included in the presentation.
Forever Balboa’s potential to transform the park was conveyed when Planning Vice President Jacqueline Higgins reported on the non-profit’s current projects. They include a new pergola in the Inez Grant Parker Memorial Rose Garden and a significant enhancement of the Plaza de Panama with seed funding from a multi-year Southwest Airlines grant.
If San Diegans are serious about preserving Balboa Park, we can’t spend any more time on lofty concepts and good intentions. In just five years, Forever Balboa Park has delivered solid projects on time and on budget. That is where our efforts should be directed.
Exactly, Kate. I would love someone to add up the cost of all the redundant studies the city has commissioned. Because my experience is that most of these contracts for “outreach” etc. are awarded to well connected YIMBY fellow travelers to subsidize them.