Horton Plaza Exudes Life
It is much too early to declare Horton Plaza a success and the city’s $33.9- million investment well spent, but the early returns are clearly favorable. Certainly it is fair to say that the Centre City Development Corp., Ernest W. Hahn Inc. and architect John Jerde gave it their best shot and may well have pulled it off.
If nothing else, Horton Plaza has created unprecedented excitement and enthusiasm for San Diego’s downtown. People who hadn’t been downtown for years--and had never shopped there--joined the throngs who christened the center at its gala opening.
To be sure, many questions remain to be answered: Will the center really be a boon for all of downtown, or will it dissuade businesses from going onto other streets? Will the upscale marketing strategies adopted by the department stores pay off? Will suburban shoppers forsake centers closer to them to drive to Horton Plaza?
For now, it’s wonderful to see people walking downtown with shopping bags during the noon hour, to see restaurants busy on Saturday evening. And Horton Plaza, itself, simply has the feel of a winner. Perhaps more than anything else, it’s fun--from the colorful Joan Brown obelisk rising from the well of the new Lyceum Theatre to the dancing hippo topiaries to the balconies that would have made Juan Peron envious.
Our colleague Scott Harris wrote that it has “more angles than a train wreck,” and he’s correct. Learning one’s way around the assemblage of ramps, walkways, colonnades, levels and half-levels is part of the fun. “Have we been down here yet?” will be a frequent question passed between first-time shoppers.
For Horton Plaza to be a true success, it must help revitalize all of downtown. Architecturally, at least, it appears to be a generous complex. Inside it looking out, there is an array of outstanding views--for example, from the infants’ department of Robinson’s across newly bricked Broadway to the U.S. Grant Hotel; from the upper-level walkways down E Street into the Gaslamp Quarter, and from the restaurant area across San Diego Bay to Coronado and Point Loma. No doors stand between pedestrians and the center; the brick sidewalk along 4th Avenue segues right into the center alongside the Balboa Theater. And the reborn little Horton Plaza Park is accentuated by the peach-colored Robinson’s.
Not everyone will experience love at first sight with the architecture or colors of the buildings. They’re too unusual to be universally appreciated. But even those who feel a bit put off at first may find themselves being seduced by the upbeat vitality of Horton Plaza. It’s a place that’s full of life. And that’s what downtown needs.
