Balboa Park’s Future Needs

The San Diego City Council in coming months faces the enormously complex task of adopting a master plan for Balboa Park.

Eight years have gone into the planning and discussion of the first draft alone. Dozens of voices have raised objections and alternatives to the plan, which seeks to balance the park’s unusual mix of open space and cultural and athletic activities.

The intense debate, while both healthy and expected, has verged on cacophony at times, however, as several planning and advisory boards try to forge a consensus. Besides underscoring the need for a strong master plan, the process has pointed out the lack of a strong advocate for the park. No one has emerged to carry the banner of the city’s premier park, which is also one of its top tourist attractions.

Without such a person or group, there is a risk of ending up with a piecemeal plan--or without leadership to ensure financial support for the plan, which could cost as much as $100 million.

Central to the plan is an appealing proposal for a series of landscaped pedestrian promenades, an attractive car-free area linking the museums in the park’s central area. Cars would be banned from Cabrillo Bridge, and the intrusive parking lots in front of the San Diego Museum of Art and the Aerospace Museum would be moved.

Before eliminating cars in the Prado and Palisades areas, however, other parking would have to be added nearby, which most likely means building one or more garages in the park. Garages, even well-designed ones, are unsightly, but probably no more so than the current surface lot in front of the museums. The trade-off for the promenade concept, we think, is worthwhile if the garages are well-landscaped, though they should not be used to greatly increase the number of parking spaces in the park’s center.

Where to build garages and whether to close the bridge to cars will be the toughest questions facing the council in a few weeks when it is asked to give conceptual approval to the master plan.

Central parking locations that have been discussed are the lots behind Alcazar Garden and the Organ Pavilion, and in Archery Canyon, which runs alongside California 163.

Current discussion centers on restricting the bridge to inbound traffic and building garages in the Alcazar and Organ Pavilion lots. This would retain most of the promenade and keep parking in areas already dedicated to it.

This compromise has considerable merit, not the least of which is that it seems to be politically palatable. But closing the bridge, an idea originally endorsed by most planners, would be an important step toward making the park more pedestrian-friendly, a goal that should be second only to restoring the buildings and landscaping.

We urge the council to look to the future in making its decisions. The master plan may be the blueprint for only 20 years, but some decisions will be indelible. If building a garage and access road in Archery Canyon would meet the needs of the cultural institutions and allow the bridge to close, we think it is worthy of further consideration.

The master plan’s goals--restoring the park, making it more inviting for pedestrians, and increasing open space, while addressing the needs of the zoo and cultural institutions for better access and parking--will require difficult choices, as the council saw with its commendable decision to return most of the Navy hospital site to open space.

These goals are expensive and will take years to accomplish. We hope the intense interest in debating the plan translates into financial support.

But it’s necessary to begin at the beginning. The decision in 1868 to set aside 1,400 acres for a park was extraordinarily farsighted. We should strive to do no less. Needed now is a similar sense of restoration, preservation and ambiance that will guide the park and all of its parts well into the 21st Century, when growth will make Balboa Park all the more important to the next generation of San Diegans.