Mayor Kicks It Off Council ‘Consent List’ : Navy Hospital Remains a Singular Issue

Hidden on the City Council’s Monday agenda among more than a dozen “consent” items--routinely approved with a single unanimous vote--was a subject that has generated debate for more than a year. It has set historian against open-space advocate, railroad buff against Olympics supporter--and many faithful city volunteer groups against each other.

The proposal involves the future of Inspiration Point, the 50 acres and 42 old Navy Hospital buildings in Balboa Park that will be returned to the city in mid-1988 in exchange for the new Navy Hospital site in Florida Canyon next door.

Mayor Maureen O’Connor said she was “shocked” to learn Thursday that the hospital site issue was scheduled for automatic passage on Monday, and immediately ordered it placed on the regular agenda and opened for public discussion.

For the last year, a variety of recommendations on the site have been made by numerous groups. They include a council-appointed task force, several citizen committees of the Park and Recreation Department and the Park Board itself, the Historical Site Board, planning groups and planning commissioners, the planning director and, finally, the city manager. Some called for preservation of all the older permanent buildings, some wanted only a few saved, and some proposed demolition of all the Navy facilities and return of the area to open space.

Waiting to have their say at each step in the decision-making process have been diverse organizations with grandiose plans for the roomy facilities. At each stage, the advocates of Olympic training grounds, train museums, homeless shelters, doll museums, veterans memorials and a dozen other causes have been told that the decisions involved only which, if any, old buildings would be retained and not the uses to which those buildings will be put.

“It was a Catch-22 situation,” said Carol Watkins, leader of a group that wants the old hospital compound to become an Olympics training center. “We couldn’t speak to the issue of what the buildings should be used for, and now there are no buildings left.”

The Council’s Public Facilities and Recreation Committee voted 5-0 on Jan. 28 to approve the city manager’s recommendation that four of the buildings be saved and the rest demolished. Because the five affirmative votes represented a majority of the nine-member council in favor of the recommendation, the volatile issue automatically was placed on the consent agenda for routine City Council passage Monday.

The committee vote backed a plan to preserve the hospital administration building, an old wooden Navy chapel, and a newer medical library building. The plan also would keep temporarily an outpatient clinic--the newest building on the site--as a home for park and recreation staffers displaced by other Balboa Park moves. The remainder of the buildings would be razed, with the council deciding whether to return the site to grass and trees or parking lots.

Members of the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum Assn. jumped in early in the game with a polished proposal that the old Navy Hospital buildings become a railway museum, complete with life-size displays.

The U.S. Olympic Committee and a group of local Olympic enthusiasts led by Watkins are equally convinced that the historic buildings could be turned into an Olympic Village--a year-round training site for the nation’s best athletes and a year-round tourist draw for Balboa Park.

“Things look pretty bleak,” Watkins said Thursday. She plans to attend Monday’s City Council meeting just in case the council does a last-minute U-turn and decides to preserve the old hospital buildings.

“It will take $12 million to $15 million to put those buildings into shape,” Watkins said. “I’m not bragging when I say that I can have that money in six months to build an Olympic village training site.” The $200 million to $300 million it would cost to build such a facility from scratch is, she admits, a bit beyond her fund-raising reach.

There are veterans groups that want to turn the old hospital grounds into a war or peace memorial. There are others who see the barn-like wards as the perfect home for San Diego’s downtown homeless.

Lee Noonan, a one-woman crusade to save the structures and to relocate the city’s main library to one or more of them, voiced concern that the Navy would raze those not selected for preservation by the city before turning over the property to San Diego next year.

Noonan argued that, if the city hasn’t the funds to rehabilitate the buildings now, the structures should be mothballed until it does. She said that a poll of City Council members elicited opposition, disinterest “and outright hostility” to her idea of preserving the older structures, except for Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer, who promised to open the issue for discussion Monday.

Margaret Elliot, who recently completed restoration of an Irving Gill-designed house north of Balboa Park, said the Navy Hospital buildings, while not the most architecturally pleasing, are sound as a dollar.

“It would be a travesty not to preserve a number of those buildings,” Elliot said, listing 15 structures that were “built to last” and could be used for decades to come.

Paul Downey, spokesman for Mayor O’Connor, said that “proper procedures were followed in placing the item on the consent agenda.” All items that receive a five-vote majority approval in council committee are automatically placed on the consent agenda as non-controversial issues.

However, opponents to the recommended action said they have been promised a chance to present their arguments when the matter reaches the full City Council level.

Downey said that, even though the matter was not slated for discussion, any council member or member of the public could have requested that it be removed from the consent agenda so that discussion could occur.