Normal Heights Vying for Honor : S.D. Community Hopes to Be Named All-American City

Patricia Getzel and Jim Villars had a strategy that went like this: Fly to Cincinnati, sleep at a friend’s house, get up the next morning and try to convince a panel of 12 experts that the neighborhood of Normal Heights should be named an “All-American City.”

It was going to be difficult, Getzel and Villars knew. There would be tense moments. They would be competing against cities such as Cleveland, Ohio, and Kansas City, Mo. Not to mention Neenah, Wis.

Still, Getzel and Villars were confident. Not as confident as the Normal Heights resident who approached Getzel a few days before the trip and told her: “Unless you absolutely blow it in Cincinnati, I don’t see how we can lose.” But confident nonetheless.

After all, Normal Heights was among 20 finalists selected from more than 100 communities that had entered the annual All-American City contest, co-sponsored by the Citizens Forum / National Municipal League and the newspaper USA Today. The mid-city neighborhood beat out San Diego, which didn’t make it to the finals.

A Pitch With Slides

The two made their trip to Cincinnati on Nov. 15, for the Citizens Forum / National Municipal League’s annual convention. Two days later they made their pitch to the judges, complete with a slide show. A dress rehearsal the day before did not forestall “the typical worries about the slide projector jamming,” Getzel recalled. “But things went smoothly.”

This week, after nearly five months, the judges’ decision is to be announced. “I’m starting to get anxious,” Villars conceded.

Getzel agreed that she is awaiting the final announcement somewhat nervously. There is no monetary prize for winning, but she said the title All-American City would give Normal Heights well-deserved recognition for its community activism, which in recent years has led to improvements in zoning, traffic circulation and school overcrowding.

“From a philosophical standpoint, I think the award is important,” she said. “It would make people in San Diego realize you can take control of your neighborhood, that you can do things in a constructive way to improve it.”

Seeking Visibility

Getzel is the director of the Normal Heights Community Development, a nonprofit corporation that funnels public and private funds into community development projects. When she first learned of the All-American City contest last summer, she was hoping it would involve some kind of cash prize. “Most of these contests do, and we’re always looking for money,” she noted. But in this case Getzel decided that the visibility the community might gain would be as valuable as cash.

She and Barbara Allen Zeigler, managing editor of the Adams Avenue Post, a bimonthly community newspaper, completed the application and sent it in. Normal Heights isn’t a city, but almost any kind of community or group of communities can enter. This year, for instance, a county is in the finals along with Normal Heights; a few years ago a whole valley won.

“There have been a few snickers” about Normal Heights entering the contest, Zeigler conceded. “The neighborhood doesn’t have anything startling on its surface to recommend it. When you drive through it, you don’t get an overwhelming sense of things going on. But there are a lot of subtle things going on that are improving the community.”

Bounded by 40th Street, Mission Valley, Interstate 805 and El Cajon Boulevard, Normal Heights is one of the city’s older neighborhoods and one of its most ethnically diverse. Residents say that, because of its sharply defined boundaries, Normal Heights has the atmosphere of a small town; its population is about 13,500.

Expansive Homes

The neighborhood is wellknown for the expansive homes that line the southern slopes of Mission Valley, 88 of which were destroyed or damaged June 30 in a huge fire. But newly constructed apartment buildings and condominiums crowd many of the streets in Normal Heights, and a lot of them are rented to low-income families.

“It’s almost as if there are two Normal Heights,” Villars said, “the nice homes north of Adams Avenue, and the multifamily dwellings and apartments south of Adams.”

In the early 1980s, residents angered by the continuing construction of apartments and condominiums--and the resulting strain on the neighborhood’s parking, traffic circulation and schools--formed the Normal Heights Community Assn. Through grass-roots lobbying, the association made residents’ concerns well-known around City Hall, and when the Mid-City Community Plan was adopted by the City Council in 1984, it included provisions for lower-density zoning in much of Normal Heights.

The Normal Heights Community Development Corp. was founded in 1982. Within a few months, the corporation began publishing the Adams Avenue Post, which quickly became a focal point for citizen involvement and a forum for discussing issues affecting the community.

No Name Change

For instance, a suggestion last year to change the neighborhood’s name to Mission Valley Heights elicited a flood of letters from residents who felt the existing name is unique and should be retained.

“I, for one, do not care if others call our area of this great city ‘Abnormal Heights,’ ” wrote one. “It shows . . . that they are at least thinking about us and know we are here.”

Overcrowding at John Adams Elementary School, 4672 35th St., was remedied when sixth-graders were moved to nearby Wilson Junior High School in 1984. Additional traffic lights were installed on Adams Avenue, and a community gardening program was initiated that has brought together senior citizens and the children of recently arrived Indochinese immigrants.

Many residents cite last year’s fire, however, as the event that did the most to unite the community.

“It gave a sense of family to the neighborhood,” Zeigler said. Clothes and food for those who had lost their homes poured in so quickly that 10 days after the fire the Rev. Dan Smitha, who coordinated the relief effort from the Normal Heights United Methodist Church, publicly asked that nothing more be donated.

Incidents Documented

Zeigler and Getzel documented all of these incidents in their application. Getzel and Villars reviewed the same themes in front of the judges of the All-American City contest in Cincinnati. Apparently, their strategy hit the mark.

“It’s not common for a neighborhood to be in the finals,” Debra Collins, director of the All-American Cities Program, said in a telephone interview from her New York office. “We look at innovation, the scope of the community’s programs--in other words, the number of people they influence--and the number of people working on them.”

Collins added that she “couldn’t say why” the title “All-American City” is used when any kind of community can enter. “That’s what it’s always been, and the contest has been going on since 1949,” she said.

According to one contest official, the City of San Diego’s application lacked detailed documentation--one reason the city failed to make the final cut. But if city officials felt any bitterness about getting trounced by one of their own neighborhoods, it wasn’t evident in October, when the San Diego City Council agreed to pay $600 to send Getzel and Villars to Cincinnati.

That sporting piece of legislation was sponsored by Gloria McColl, whose district includes Normal Heights. “People from Normal Heights are not our arch-rivals, they’re San Diegans,” explained Jeff Marston, an aide to McColl. “As far as I’m concerned, Normal Heights was San Diego’s representative” in the finals.

Popular Contest

Getzel said she didn’t realize the contest was as popular and competitive as it is until she and Villars arrived in Cincinnati.

“I figured if we won, OK, but it was no big deal,” she remembered. “But some of the cities had 20- to 40-person delegations, and a few, including Cleveland, had their mayor there. . . . They used professionally produced videotapes in their presentations, and some were giving away free food, like cheesecake.

“Here we just had two people and a videotape of the fire that had been spliced together from TV shows.”

Contest officials say there will be eight to 12 winners among the 20 finalists this year, and Getzel believes that, if Normal Heights is one of them, it will do more than gain publicity for the community and provide inspiration to the surrounding neighborhoods.

“Applying for foundation grants is getting increasingly competitive, and anything that gives you an edge helps,” she noted. “If we can put on our brochures, ‘Winner of the 1986 All-American City Contest,’ it could eventually lead to some direct benefit.”

“The fact that you’re more visible gives you an advantage when you ask for funding for a project,” Zeigler agreed. Like a lot of people in Normal Heights, she thinks it’s an honor just to have been selected as a finalist. But Zeigler added that the day the winners are announced “there will be some joy in Mudville if we win.”

And if not? Well, it’ll be just another average day in Normal Heights.