Chamber Plans King Memorial in Balboa Park

Eager to provide a proper tribute to slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce plans in May to launch a $750,000 fund-raising campaign to finance a memorial in Balboa Park and an ongoing scholarship program in King’s name.

The chamber’s proposal comes in the aftermath of a divisive decision by San Diego voters in November to strip King’s name from a downtown street and return the thoroughfare’s original moniker, Market Street.

A special chamber committee on Thursday selected a grassy square in the shade of a massive banyan tree just north of the Natural History Museum as the preferred site for the memorial, which will likely take the form of a statue.

Bill Nelson, chamber chairman, said Friday that the organization will contact the appropriate agencies in the city and begin the process of getting permission from the City Council to use the Balboa Park site. Currently, the city has a committee of its own studying how best to memorialize King, but Nelson insisted that the chamber’s proposal could work in concert with that effort.

“I see the focus of the city’s committee as something different,” Nelson said. “Their focus is to select a tribute to Dr. King from among the universe of possibilities, like naming a building the city owns, or another street or something. It isn’t in conflict with what we’re doing.”

‘Complement’ or ‘Cooperate’

Paul Downey, press secretary for Mayor Maureen O’Connor, said city officials hope the two groups are able to either “complement one another or cooperate with one another” in their pursuit of a tribute to King.

“The chamber is doing its thing, we’re doing our thing,” Downey said. “Hopefully, both groups can coordinate with one another.”

Nonetheless, the chamber proposal has already ruffled some members of the city committee that oversees Balboa Park. Ron Oliver, a member of the Balboa Park Committee, said he and other group members “wish we would have been brought into the process and asked for our opinions” before the chamber selected a site.

“I have no problems with putting a memorial up in the park, I just don’t know that they selected a good location,” Oliver said.

But chamber officials say they fully expect Oliver’s group as well as other city agencies to take an active role in the process during the coming months.

“I’m sure we can iron out any problems as we move along with this thing,” said Jack Morse, a member of the chamber committee that selected the site.

Art Board to Pick Design

Chamber officials have already discussed the memorial with a handful of artists, but will leave selection of the memorial’s design to the city’s Public Advisory Art Board, Nelson said.

“I just hope we get a sculpture that is something we can show the entire world,” said Morse, a corporate community affairs representative for San Diego Gas & Electric. “I don’t want anything but the very best that can be done.”

Up to $250,000 is expected to be spent on the King memorial, and $500,000 would go to finance a scholarship program. Nelson and other members say the scholarships are seen as a “living memorial” for King, a way to annually spotlight the accomplishments of the civil rights leader while helping needy students.

“We can’t just put up a statue or a fountain and say goodby,” Nelson said. “It would be a good beginning, but the wrong thing to do to just stop there. A living memorial gives the community a chance to think again about what Dr. King stood for. That sort of thing needs saying again and again and again.”

Among the more than 30 members of the chamber committee is Herb Cawthorne, head of the San Diego Urban League. After the November vote to rename King Way, Cawthorne and other black leaders led an aborted effort calling for a boycott of the city’s convention and tourism industries.

Cawthorne could not be reached for comment Friday, but Nelson said the local black leader supports the proposal for a King memorial in Balboa Park and made the motion to put it at the site north of the Natural History Museum.