Arts Group Fights Move Out of Brightly Painted Water Tank

The new master plan for Balboa Park has drawn more critics than a Broadway musical.

Every organization situated in the park, or with a tie to the park, seems to have a gripe and a fear that its favorite ox will be gored.

The fact that most of the groups’ concerns sound legitimate only complicates efforts to implement the plan, which generally seeks to expand open-space uses of the park while consolidating other uses around a central core area.

A case in point is the Centro Cultural de la Raza. For 17 years, artists have used the center, in a brilliantly painted water tank in the Pepper Grove area of the park, as a base for teaching and practicing the arts disciplines of Mexican, Indian and Chicano cultures.

Against Relocation

Veronica Enrique, the center’s executive director, feels that important mural art on the building will be destroyed if the center is relocated to the Spanish Village area, as called for in the master plan.

Thirty to 40 artists gained their apprenticeships in 1970 working on the interior murals, under the guidance of Mexican mural artist Guillermo Aranda, Enrique said.

“The interior murals in particular are not only aesthetically significant but historically significant,” she said.

The master plan also riles Enrique because she said it fails to address the center’s needs. She quoted the plan’s acknowledgment of the center’s “relative success and visibility” as a reason for relocating it to the Spanish Village area to add “dynamic dimension.”

“In essence (it’s) saying we’re doing a great job; let’s take them over here to this dead area and see what they’ll do for it,” she said. She also feared that the water tank would be demolished and a new building might not be funded.

But David Twomey, assistant director of the Park and Recreation Department, said, “We have no intention of tearing down the water tanks until there is an appropriate place to relocate the Centro Cultural de la Raza.”

Twomey, who did not think the murals were old enough to be historical, also disputed concerns that Spanish Village might not be an ideal location for the center, saying the move is part of “a revitalization, a reconfiguration” of the Spanish Village area.

City Council member Gloria McColl, who has not yet taken a stand on the center issue, underscored the problems the City Council faces with groups such as the cultural center.

“If we can find a suitable location up where the other museums are, in the traffic pattern, I would support a move,” McColl said. “We’ve been trying to return as much of the park back to open space. It’s a matter of how to serve the total needs of the city as well as to put them in the mainstream.”