A Return to Park Land

This probably will be the year the San Diego City Council determines what Balboa Park’s future will be.

In what is certain to be an emotional and broadly contested public debate, the council must first decide what to do with the 34 acres and 42 buildings the Navy will be turning over to the city next year as compensation for the Florida Canyon site the federal government seized for the new $293-million Navy hospital. And by year’s end, the council should receive the recommendations of the various committees and boards that will scrutinize a controversial consultant’s report--known as the Pekarek Plan--on the overall development, maintenance and financing of the park.

The differences of opinion over what should happen in Balboa Park are not subtle. The issue basically boils down to whether the park should continue to be developed as a galleria of cultural institutions or whether an attempt should be made to recapture some of the passive aspects of the park--gardens, picnic areas and open space.

Unfortunately, the sequence of decision-making is proceeding in what seems to be the reverse order. Logic argues that the broadest plans for the park be dealt with first, followed by the more specific.

But the City Council, just last month, on a 5-4 vote, gave the go-ahead for a proposed automotive museum in the Conference Building, near the Aerospace Museum. Although that decision conforms with the Pekarek Plan and will have less of an impact than those yet to be made, it nonetheless creates another high-volume park attraction and adds to the traffic and parking problems.

Next up is what to do with the old Navy Hospital property and buildings. One school of thought views the land, including Inspiration Point with its striking view of the city and bay, as the last opportunity to add open space to the park. The other school sees the structures and parking lots as a bonanza of buildings for uses ranging from city offices to athletic or performing arts facilities to museums celebrating children, railroads or the military.

When the City Council begins discussing this issue, perhaps later this month, it will have no fewer than seven different recommendations from within city government alone on the number of Navy buildings that should be saved or demolished. For example, the planning staff would save 18 buildings, while the Planning Commission would raze all but three.

There will be those who argue that in these difficult financial times for local government and for most nonprofit groups, it would be a waste to destroy centrally located buildings that could otherwise be put to such a multitude of worthy purposes. But that viewpoint is flawed in several ways.

To begin with, most of the buildings the city will take over do not meet modern earthquake, fire or electrical codes. The Navy is not abandoning them because they’re fine buildings. Salvaging them for new uses would be an expensive proposition.

Even more important is the fact that green space in the middle of the city is an increasingly precious commodity. It is itself a worthy use of the land. A city that often defines itself by its natural beauty and worries about becoming too urbanized should be ecstatic at the chance to supplant acres of marginally useful buildings with grass and trees.

Finally, there is the promise made by those who supported the Navy-city land swap when it appeared as a ballot measure in 1979 that approval of the proposition would add “acres of prime-view parklands to Balboa Park, providing a much-needed expansion of recreational and picnic areas to serve our growing population.” The swap won the consent of 61% of the voters, short of the two-thirds vote it needed for approval but enough of a majority to allow the Navy to justify condemning the land anyway.

The recommendation made by the city Planning Commission is to raze all the buildings the city will get except for a usable library building, the chapel and the main administration building. That proposal goes the furthest toward restoring this valuable park land to an actual park state, and it is the best alternative for the council to adopt.