Long Hospital History Tied to City’s Through Servicemen and Park

When Herb Stoecklein arrived in San Diego in 1944 for the first of four tours of duty here, the Navy Hospital had taken over Balboa Park in the form of a burgeoning tent city where more than 14,000 World War II casualties were being treated.

Virtually all of the park’s buildings had been turned over to the military to house doctors and nurses caring for the wounded. But nobody complained about the inconvenience--in fact, San Diegans were proud that their city was home to the largest military medical facility in the world, and happy to give over the park to the war effort.

“We had to have the tent city, because the facilities just were not adequate during wartime,” recalled Stoecklein, a retired admiral who served as commanding officer of the Navy Hospital from mid-1972 to mid-1974. He now sits on a select committee that is playing a major role in deciding the fate of the Inspiration Point parcel that the Navy will turn over to the city in 1988 as part of an exchange for Florida Canyon, where a new Navy Hospital is being built.

“It was difficult for everybody to adjust to--not just the military, but the civilian population as well,” Stoecklein said. “But the people of the city were 100% behind the military--they understood the importance of what we were doing here. For anybody who has been in the medical corps, and to many old-timers in San Diego, the hospital is a symbol of the patriotism that got us through that war, and the conflicts that followed it. It’s an important part of San Diego’s history that should never be lost, like the chapel at Annapolis or the memorial to the Arizona at Pearl Harbor.”

The tent city that sprouted on parkland more than 40 years ago symbolized the spirit of cooperation that traditionally has marked the Navy’s relationship with the City of San Diego. But it was severely strained 25 years later, when there was vehement opposition to building a new hospital in Florida Canyon.

The Navy first decided to take up residence in Balboa Park during the latter years of World War I, although the hospital was not completed until 1922. “It was primarily built because of World War I--they had no idea when that war might end,” Stoecklein said.

Originally, the hospital consisted only of the longtime San Diego landmark that is now the administration center. Almost immediately after the facility opened, however, the Navy began adding structures, and the base has been in a state of flux and expansion ever since.

By the ‘30s, there were about 20 buildings on the base, clustered around the original hospital. About 25 “temporary” structures sprang up with the outbreak of World War II, and they remain in service to this day. Similar expansions accompanied the Korean and Vietnam wars, and there are now 77 buildings--only 20 of them considered permanent construction--crowded onto the site.

“The entire base has been built in a fragmented, piecemeal fashion as the need for more space arose,” said Lt. Cmdr. Rick Tittmann, who is overseeing construction of the new Navy Hospital. “And the uses for the buildings have fluctuated when there was a need to handle more patients during wartimes. This place has been overcrowded almost since Day One, and that’s why we saw the need almost 15 years ago to replace it.”

The movement to build a new Navy hospital in San Diego began in the early ‘70s. Originally, the Navy wanted to move to Murphy Canyon Heights, a prime plot of land overlooking Mission Valley. In 1976, Congress appropriated money to purchase the property, and the proposal had the blessing of virtually every politician in the area.

But naval officials saw a need to retain many of the present structures in the Balboa Park location, and decided that the hospital base should remain close to other naval facilities in the area. It was then that the focus for the new $293-million, 760-bed hospital switched to Florida Canyon, a city-owned and city-created ecological preserve that was the last public wildlife area in Balboa Park.

Florida Canyon was widely considered to be the prime natural open space in the urban area. In its 1979 environmental impact report on the new hospital, the Navy acknowledged that four species of rare plants thrived in Florida Canyon, as did dwindling species of the gray fox, red-shouldered hawk and the California quail.

Even the Navy acknowledged that its plans for Florida Canyon would destroy its special qualities. “The proposed action is expected to result in the complete loss of the ecosystem which the site now supports,” the Navy report said. “The loss of part of a semi-wild ecosystem supporting native plants and animals within a major urban center will be a significant long-term adverse impact.”

San Diego did not intend to give up Florida Canyon without a fight, and battle lines were quickly drawn between the Navy and many local politicians. Mayor Pete Wilson and a solid majority of the City Council, county Supervisor Roger Hedgecock and Sen. Alan Cranston attempted to block the Florida Canyon project at every turn, saying it would have a disastrous effect on Balboa Park.

In 1979, during a mayoral election, the city’s voters were asked whether Florida Canyon should be leased to the Navy for the new hospital. The measure required two-thirds voter approval to pass, because it entailed using Balboa Park for a purpose not allowed by the City Charter, and it failed, although 61% of the electorate supported it.

Rather than turning over the choice canyon land to the Navy, the opponents wanted the new hospital built on Market Street, three miles from downtown, in a deteriorating area of Helix Heights. In a subsequent election in June, 1980, city voters overwhelmingly supported selling the Helix Heights site to the Navy, and the Navy estimated at the time that the construction cost for the new hospital could be cut by $15 million if it were built there.

But the military’s insistence on using Florida Canyon did not waver. And in a move that sent shock waves throughout the local political leadership, the Navy, its bid to lease the property rejected by the voters, moved to condemn it instead, offering the city in return $7.6 million and, eventually, 34 acres of Inspiration Point land where many of the current hospital buildings stand. Despite widespread local opposition, the condemnation action was approved by Congress in late 1980.

Cranston, in a three-page letter urging President Carter to veto the condemnation, said: “The Navy has made a bad, costly decision. The hospital will violate the integrity of the park and potentially destroy one of the loveliest urban parks in the nation.”

Wilson, at the height of the opposition to the Navy’s plans to take over the canyon, called the Navy brass’ condemnation move “dishonest and arrogant,” and said he would expect such policies “from the Russian Navy, but not the U.S. Navy.” Rep. Lionel Van Deerlin branded the rejection of Helix Heights as a “racist” action on the part of the military, because the hospital would have been built in a heavily minority neighborhood.

Nevertheless, ground was broken in Florida Canyon for the new hospital in 1981, and the modern 1.2-million-square-foot facility, which, like its predecessor, will be the largest military hospital in the world, will open in January. The rift between the Navy and civilian leaders gradually healed over the years, committee members and Navy officials agree. The focus now is on how best to use the Navy’s Inspiration Point acreage (which will be turned over to the city in June, 1988) to minimize the impact of the loss of Florida Canyon.

“Even still,” Tittmann said, “we’ve been very careful to keep the city fully involved in our planning processes. The fights between the military and the city didn’t do anybody any good, but we are very sensitive to the notion that the park should not suffer from the new construction. We want to be a good neighbor.”

Tittmann said the modern, earth-toned, five-story hospital will be a “state-of-the-art facility--the finest hospital of its kind in the world. It’s something San Diegans will be proud of, and it will allow us to greatly enhance the quality of care. In the end, I think most people will be glad we went ahead with the project.”

“You don’t hear much about Florida Canyon anymore, for all of the hard feelings that were expressed when the plans were in the works,” said Ann Hix, chairwoman of the committee charged with recommending a land-use plan for Inspiration Point to the City Council. “Life moves on. There really wasn’t anything else people could do to oppose the new hospital after the condemnation. All we can do is make the best use of the land we’re going to receive in return.”