Balboa Park Museums, Theaters Cry Foul on Surcharge Plan

Leaders of the 23 cultural institutions in the heart of Balboa Park are outraged over a surprise city proposal to add a surcharge to the ticket prices charged by the park’s museums, theaters and the San Diego Zoo.

The 25-cent surcharge would be used to retire $15.4 million in revenue bonds that would be issued to pay for construction of two new parking garages and creation of a tram system in the park. The surcharge is one of a series of recommendations contained in the latest version of the Balboa Park Master Plan.

Angered that the surcharge proposal did not surface until the master plan was released April 1 and worried that their already precarious financial situation will suffer if ticket prices are raised, the 23 institutions that constitute the Central Balboa Park Assn. are asking for the chance to develop alternatives.

The San Diego City Council is scheduled to consider the Balboa Park blueprint Monday, but city Park and Recreation Department officials said Tuesday that they will ask for a 90-day delay to accommodate the association.

The surcharge plan “is brand new, right out of the blue, and we think it’s a low blow to hit us with that at the end of the process,” said Douglas Sharon, director of the Museum of Man.

“It’s not the amount so much. It’s the idea that, after all this time and being consistently ignored, it’s right back in our lap.”

Said Steve Brezzo, director of the San Diego Museum of Art: “The park becomes our responsibility when it’s time to improve it. When it’s time to cut ribbons and show us off for conventions and tourists around the world, it’s the city’s park.”

George Loveland, the city’s director of parks and recreation, countered that the cultural organizations in the park’s core benefit most from the vehicle traffic now allowed into the central mesa and should pay to handle transportation measures to accommodate those people.

“Everybody’s agreed there’s a need for an intra-park transit system and improved parking in the central mesa,” Loveland said. “Why should those people who are not using those organizations pay for it any more than they already are?”

Finding a financing method for two new parking garages and the proposed shuttle that would carry visitors in from outlying parking lots has been one of the most thorny questions in development of a blueprint for the 1,100-acre park’s future.

In November, the city attempted to raise as much as $46 million for Balboa Park by winning voter approval to sell general obligation bonds, but fell a few percentage points short of the 66.67% of the vote needed.

Over 30 years, the surcharge would collect enough revenue to retire bonds that would raise $15.4 million, enough to finance a 390-space garage on the site of the Alcazar Garden lot and a second 1,000-space parking garage. That garage could be located near the Organ Pavilion, in the zoo parking lot, or in the old Navy Hospital lot, the report said.

The total cost of needed park renovations is $99 million, according to the master plan. The report recommends forming a citywide assessment district to raise enough to finance non-transportation needs that include shoring up the crumbling buildings along the park’s historic Prado.

But the surcharge, and a separate recommendation to convert the Cabrillo Bridge to one-way inbound traffic, are the elements of the master plan that have incurred the cultural institutions’ anger. The change in the traffic pattern would reduce the number of people passing the Prado museums and cause major traffic jams when Old Globe, Cassius Carter and Starlight Theatre audiences all are forced to leave the park by way of the President’s Way, predicted Thomas Hall, managing director at the Old Globe.

One-Way Traffic

“I have yet to see what one-way traffic will do to help the traffic problem,” Hall said.

A 25-cent surcharge would raise the price of a ticket at the zoo to $8.75. It would be $4.25 at the San Diego Museum of Art, $2.25 at the Museum of Man and $24.25 for a Friday- or Saturday-night ticket to the Old Globe.

Loveland said he doubts that many people will stay away because of a 25-cent surcharge, and that they would soon return if they did. But Hall noted that the Globe is already raising $2 million a year to underwrite ticket prices, and any addition would hurt further.