Mission Bay Park on Financial Roll : Council Funds Shoreside Upgrading While Balboa Waits in Line for Cash

A little more than a month after San Diegans turned down two ballot propositions designed to raise millions of dollars to renovate the city’s two premier parks, Mission Bay Park has received most of the money critical to its future, while plans for Balboa Park remain unclear.

Though the council has awarded Mission Bay Park enough money to pay for most of the improvements rejected by voters Nov. 3, Balboa Park is still waiting its turn, depending on city leaders’ promises to pry loose state and federal grants to shore up the sagging structures along its historic Prado.

Officials involved with the council decisions, which have caused consternation among some Balboa Park advocates, say that they reflect city priorities, the availability of money for renovation work and political expertise of the key council members involved.

“The problem is that we have two sick cousins and only one of them is getting the money that it needs for medical care,” said Steve Wall, an attorney who headed the Balboa Park subcommittee of the Blue Ribbon Task Force that prepared the ballot issues. “The other sick cousin has got to get some of that money.”

“It is of concern that Mission Bay Park is in a different economic position a month later than Balboa Park,” he said.

On Nov. 30, the council gave departing Councilman Mike Gotch a going-away present: a commitment to spend $25 million on Mission Bay soil erosion and water pollution over the next four years. On Wednesday, the council also approved another $4.6 million to begin development of the park’s South Shores area, near Sea World.

In next year’s capital improvement budget, the city is committed to spend $5.9 million from water utilities revenue for an interceptor sewer system to protect Mission Bay Park waters.

Balboa Park’s only coup was a commitment from a council committee last week to use $2.7 million in state funds to renovate the Balboa Park Club for dancers ousted by a 1986 decision to turn the Conference Building into an auto museum. The issue must be decided by the council next month.

Final decisions have not been made, but there are no major capital expenditures planned for Balboa Park next year, said John Leppert, assistant to the city manager for Mission Bay and Balboa parks.

Mandated Work

The South Shores work, which will ultimately cost $13.5 million, is partly dictated by the city’s agreement with state agencies to replace nine acres of bay water lost when beaches in Sail Bay were widened.

Under pressure from an order to stop polluting Mission Bay, issued in May by the Regional Water Quality Board, the city agreed to fund the interceptor sewer project if the ballot measure failed.

But Gotch’s $25-million going-away gift is based upon the fact that Mission Bay hotels and businesses will generate about $11 million this year for the city, or about $6 million more than the city spends to maintain Mission Bay Park, Gotch said.

(In a curious side issue, the city manager’s office maintains that the Nov. 30 council vote did not authorize exactly $25 million, but instead allocated whatever amount is left over from the year’s revenues after maintenance expenses are paid, Leppert said. Gotch vehemently disputes that interpretation.)

In contrast, Balboa Park’s nonprofit cultural institutions receive nearly $1.5 million in support from the city. Only the golf course and park concessionaires return money to the city, generating about $385,000 this year.

Historically, the money generated by Mission Bay Park lessees was intended to be plowed back into the park to support the 75% of it that is not used for commercial purposes. But for some time, that money has been going into city coffers to be used elsewhere.

“I’m sure that it does appear within Balboa Park that the council has given a higher priority to the needs of Mission Bay than to Balboa Park at the present time,” Leppert said. “I think what really happened, (is that) the council felt that there are revenue sources in Mission Bay and maybe there’s a way we can set some of that revenue to capital improvements in Mission Bay.”

Political Savvy

But the funding for Mission Bay projects also reflects adept political work by Gotch, an eight-year council member who has worked tirelessly to protect Mission Bay Park.

Propositions B and C, which would have raised $93.5 million and $73.8 million respectively, failed Nov. 3. On Nov. 6, Gotch sent a memo to his colleagues proposing the creation of an “enterprise fund” with the revenue Mission Bay Park’s lessees generate, to be spent on Mission Bay Park improvements.

The issue came before the council Nov. 30, the first day of Gotch’s last week in office. Gotch’s council colleagues all knew that something had to be done to stem soil erosion and pollution in Mission Bay Park, but to make sure, Gotch personally visited each of them during the lunch-hour break of the Nov. 30 council meeting.

“I had to garner my support simply two hours before the vote,” Gotch said. “I didn’t know if I had support when I proposed it.”

“I found out over eight years that there is revenue in the city to do anything. It’s just a question of whether your priorities are going to be social service programs or traffic lights,” Gotch said.

Gotch contacted the Mission Bay Lessees Assn., whose representatives spoke at the council hearing to ask for the money.

Amy Krulak, chairman of the Central Balboa Park Committee, believes that the profit-motivated lessees association is a more effective lobbying group than her association of nonprofit organizations.

“I think the outfits in Mission Bay, with the hotel business behind them, were better organized,” she said. “I think if we got better organized, we’d get more money from the city, too.

“There’s a lot of different organizations in central Balboa Park, and they all have their own thing that they’re interested in. And to get them to work together is a lot harder than to get the hotels in Mission Bay Park to work together. They know what they want, and it’s more money,” she said.

Not that the two groups work against one another. Leaders of institutions in both parks acknowledge that portions of both parks need work, and all of them want to see the projects funded.

A cursory tour of both parks shows the problems. Most of Balboa Park’s House of Charm is closed, condemned by the fire marshal in 1984 as too dangerous. Parts of its facade have crumbled off, exposing brown wood beneath. Paint is peeling in large chunks from its exterior. The roof leaks, leaving stains on the carpets in the San Diego Art Institute, its one remaining occupant.

Just east on the Prado, the House of Hospitality shows similar wear. Built without a foundation on blocks sunk in the soft dirt, its columns sag and windows tilt. Though it is still safe enough to be occupied by a half-dozen organizations and the Cafe Del Rey Moro, interior walls holding up the building are slowly collapsing, said Marcia McLatchy, the city’s Balboa Park manager.

“This was never intended to be a permanent building,” McLatchy said. “It was built in 1915 as a (Panama-California) Exposition building, which should have meant three years (before it would be demolished)”

At Mission Bay Park, the effects of erosion are quickly evident at West Bahia Point, where the tide has reclaimed 100 feet of shoreline, leaving a small cliff of turf at the beach edge.

“If we don’t do some of the things that we intend to do, we’re going to return the bay to the undeveloped state it was in prior to development (in 1948),” Leppert said. “That is to say, we’re going to return it to marshlands.”

Voters supported Proposition C, the smaller of the two bond requests that would have allowed work on such problems, by the overwhelming margin of 61.25%. But the total was short of the 66.7% required for passage.

Mayor Maureen O’Connor has repeatedly called the vote a healthy mandate in favor of spending money to fix up the parks, and has promised to seek money in both Sacramento and Washington for the parks. Balboa Park buildings are high on the mayor’s list because they could qualify for state and federal historic preservation funds.

Waiting Their Turn

Relying on those promises, some Balboa Park leaders are content to wait their turn. “They made the very tough decision that cleaning up the advanced pollution we have in Mission Bay takes priority over the also-serious situation we had in the park,” said Ed McKellar, executive director of the San Diego Aerospace Museum.

“The city has shown a real interest in making the necessary improvements in the park,” said Chris Redo. “I have no sense that Mission Bay has been put ahead of Balboa Park. If that was the case, I certainly would go downtown and bang on people’s desks about it.”

Officials in the city manager’s office and council members are beginning to consider ideas on how to raise the needed money. The leading proposal calls for the establishment of a citywide assessment district, Leppert said. Also under consideration are an increase in the transient occupancy tax paid by hotels and an attempt to put another bond proposition on the ballot that could pass with a simple majority of votes. The latter proposal would require special state legislation.

“There’s an enormous amount of maintenance needed in Balboa Park,” said Allen Jones, administrative assistant to freshman city Councilman Bob Filner, whose district includes Balboa Park. “We intend to put as much effort into identifying funding for Balboa Park as I think Mike Gotch did in identifying funding for Mission Bay Park.