Zoning for Culture Plans in La Jolla : Aim Is to Protect Area’s Famed Sites From Development

It is likely to go down in the city’s history books as the first, and perhaps last, “cultural zone” in San Diego.

City planners already have translated the wishes of a task force of La Jollans into city Planning Department jargon designed to weave a cocoon of benevolent protection around a half-dozen institutions clustered at the intersection of Silverado and Prospect streets in the heart of the affluent community.

Underlying this non-controversial purpose is a very controversial one: to make it economically impractical for the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art or any other of the cultural institutions around it to move out of La Jolla.

Museum trustees revealed in January that they were considering a move outside the La Jolla boundaries, and were leaning toward relocating their art treasures on the downtown San Diego bayfront. Museum officials explained that the 2.2-acre site at Silverado and Prospect was too small by half to house a “world-class” museum to which they aspire.

Key to the project, which has since been shelved by museum board members in favor of establishing satellite sites, was sale of the present property, which lies on prestigious Prospect Street in the heart of the village and sports a multimillion-dollar ocean view. Under its current zoning, the site could house about 100 condominiums.

Adding up the magnificent ocean view and the prime La Jolla address, one developer gave a “conservative estimate” of $10 million for the museum property’s value. Another builder rated it as worth $11 million or $12 million. Community acitivist Sue Oxley, who last year mounted a successful community effort to control the size and type of commercial buildings in La Jolla’s downtown core, calls the estimates “ridiculously low,” and places the land value at about $45 million to $50 million.

Oxley said that she has formed a new organization, called REZONE, to spur efforts to keep the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art where it is, and not allow directors to replace one of La Jolla’s cultural jewels with condominiums for millionaires.

Her group petitioned the San Diego city planning department for help last spring and found that their cause--a cultural zone--had been proposed in the 1976 La Jolla Community Plan update and was budgeted by the planning department for action during the present fiscal year.

Not only were those earlier planners interested in preserving the museum property, but they also singled out other La Jolla historic sites--Bishop’s School, St. James-By-the-Sea Episcopal and La Jolla Presbyterian churches, the La Jolla Woman’s Club and the La Jolla Recreation Center, among others, as precious pieces of the past or special architectural styles that should be preserved.

These and other older buildings clustered in an area of about six square blocks became the nucleus for a cultural zone still under study by the volunteer task force headed by La Jolla Town Council President Kenneth King and composed of community residents, including Oxley, and by representatives of the organizations affected by the zone.

One participant called the six task force meetings, “very electric, as if a thunderstorm were about to break,” while another admitted that the discussions became “fairly shrill.”

There has been very little absenteeism despite the usual exodus of La Jollans during peak tourist season. When a task force member could not attend, he or she usually sent an alternate, King said.

“It wasn’t the sort of situation you felt comfortable missing out on,” he explained.

The planning document outlining the proposed cultural zone goes into the specifics of setbacks and view corridors, parking requirements and color schemes. But to attorney Chris Calkins, a representative of the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, the specific restrictions only masked the real intent of the proposal--”to strip away all the allowed uses of our property and to leave only one use,” that of a cultural institution. “If they do that, the land is worthless.”

Oxley rebuts Calkins’ criticism of the cultural zone by pointing out that most of the institutions affected by the cultural zone are “non-taxpaying, charitable organizations” who have been entrusted to preserve some of La Jolla’s heritage. Those leaders “woke up one day and realized, ‘Oh my, we are sitting on a gold mine.’ ”

That valuable land “is part of the community’s heritage” and not something to be sold for a profit, she said. She predicted that not only the museum, but also the school and St. James will try to fight their way out of the cultural zone designation, “which would make it virtually meaningless.”

King and Calkins are concerned that the city’s bureaucratic scheduling of a summer workshop and hearing is rushing the plan to a decision before the polarized task force of citizens and representatives of La Jolla’s historic institutions have a chance to work out their differences. King wants a delay to allow the institutional representatives time to “educate” their leadership. Calkins considers the rush to create a cultural district “unfair,” placing the museum directors and others in the position of having to oppose the plan because they do not know enough about it to accept it.

City planning commissioners compromised Thursday, and scheduled the first of two hearings on creation of the cultural zone for mid-October.

Neither Calkins nor King has abandoned hope that a solution can be found to the stand-off. The proposed cultural zone eases many of the restrictions that would prevent any of the affected organizations from expanding--such as parking requirements, lot coverage limits, floor area ratios and a number of other planning and zoning regulations now imposed on the area.

Calkins pointed out that the museum board has not had a chance to take a stand on the proposed cultural zone and might, because of relaxed expansion standards, support such a move. At present, the attorney explained, the museum board has plans to expand the La Jolla facility and to establish satellite galleries. Sites mentioned have been the downtown San Diego bayfront and the North County area.

Attorneys representing Bishop’s School and owners of the former Scripps Clinic properties argued for indefinite postponement of the cultural zone designation or exclusion of the properties from the plan. But most speakers at the abbreviated city Planning Commission workshop Thursday agreed that a mid-October hearing on the matter would be best.

That may be too late, Oxley said, because La Jolla’s city councilman, Bill Mitchell, has come out in support of the museum interests and appears to be using it as a campaign issue in the upcoming council elections in September and November.

Mitchell, she said, “is trying to sabotage our efforts,” by seeking to amend the cultural zone provisions to retain the museum’s right to keep its underlying zoning and thus the land value, or by opposing the cultural zone proposal on the basis that it is “inverse condemnation”--the unfair taking of private property.

Mitchell expressed amazement at Oxley’s statements. He said he had met with her and expressed support for controls over the museum and its plans to expand.

But, he said, when the proposed cultural zone boundaries were expanded to include other institutions, such as Bishop’s School, “I felt that I could not take a position,” because “before the elephant plants its foot it must be sure whom it is crushing.” The elephant, Mitchell said, is city government.

Mitchell also denied that he planned to use the cultural zone as an election campaign issue.

Oxley’s whirlwind drive to gain support for controls on office building construction was an overwhelming success last year. Volunteers of BLOB--Ban Large Office Buildings--gathered 12,000 signatures and rallied packed council chamber crowds behind their cause. The result was a building moratorium and, later, the planned district ordinance proscribing the size of buildings in the community’s commercial core.

But that issue--construction of office high-rises--was blamed for causing much of La Jolla’s parking problems and traffic congestion, Oxley explained. The La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art is a less volatile issue, inspiring no great support or opposition among La Jolla residents.

If Mitchell comes out strongly in favor of the museum’s property rights, she said, “we have a crisis situation. I don’t know if we could win.”

Oxley’s REZONE group has launched another, separate attack on the museum’s move and has enlisted the volunteer aid of attorney Bruce Henderson to mount a legal challenge against the museum trustees.

La Jollans bought the museum property--the former home of Ellen Browning Scripps--through subscriptions, and museum trustees are merely keepers of the charitable trust that belongs to the community, Oxley argued.

If a legal challenge is found to be valid, she said, “we hope to interest the state Attorney General in taking on the investigation and the case. Charitable trusts come under his jurisdiction.”

Task force chairman King shakes his head at the threats and fist-shaking from both sides of the issue. He hopes for calmer meetings and a compromise that blends the opponents’ views into a single document describing the cultural zone. But, he admits, that may not be easy, because “everyone seems to be appointing attorneys to represent them when what we really need is architects.”