Another Unfulfilled Design Promise

In the early 1980s, local politicians began touting the San Diego River Improvement Project, an intensive mix of offices, hotels, restaurants, shops and places to live.

To be built on the banks of the San Diego River, with pedestrian and bike paths and a light-rail transit line at river’s edge as a focus, this was to bring Mission Valley both economic prosperity and great design.

Several years later, a stroll through Rio Vista Center, the first of several large developments under way in the project area, shows that the initial wishes of the planners have been practically ignored. Now, City Hall is putting the finishing touches on an ordinance that will make design suggestions for the river area legally enforceable.

The Rio Vista Building right next to the river, the first built on this huge chunk of land bounded by Interstate 805, Stadium Way, the river and Friars Road, is Exhibit A. There is no evidence that its architects, Peckham Inc. of Willow Creek, Calif., paid attention to any of the great ideas being developed by planners. (This is the notorious building, easily visible from 805 heading south, whose controversial rooftop tents were removed a couple of years back.)

“That planned commercial development was prior to our specific plan for the area,” said Nancy Schwarz, city planner for Mission Valley, asked about the discrepancies between city Planning Department guidelines and the actual details of the new buildings. “Hopefully, it will get better in future. The newest building there is lower-rise, with terracing facing the river walk and a plaza opening onto the walk.”

Such sensitivity to scale and pedestrian needs has always been key to the discussions that led to the “San Diego River Improvement Plan,” covering a larger area bounded by Friars Road, the river, and Interstate 805 and California 163.

Planning documents for the zone show quite clearly how buildings at the edge of the river might be terraced back, so that their users can enjoy outdoor sundecks with river views, and pedestrians passing between the buildings and the river can see some evidence that people actually occupy these buildings.

As in any successful urban design, the idea here is to emphasize outdoor spaces for people, and to tie buildings to them with many openings. But, for occupants of the Rio Vista Building to eat lunch or take a coffee break at river’s edge, they have to walk all the way around the building from the opposite side; there’s no means of getting directly out of the building to the river walk.

The building’s architects aren’t entirely to blame. While they were designing their building, design guidelines for the area weren’t in place. Yet planners reviewing the project must have made suggestions based on a specific plan, adopted in 1986, covering four huge projects in the same area.

Farther back from the river, neither the new Marriott Hotel nor a nearby new office high-rise (the first phase of Rio Vista Towers) seem at all responsive to the goals for the river project, a fact Linda Johnson, a key city planner for Mission Valley, readily acknowledges.

“Rio Vista Towers was redesigned in the past few years,” Johnson said. “Originally, the drawings had a very strong emphasis on pedestrians, with a 40-foot-wide mall between the two towers (only one of which is completed), but it was reduced to 10 feet.” The pedestrian walk through this particular complex is not immediately apparent because it cuts into the property from a corner out by Stadium Way, a car-oriented thoroughfare with no pedestrian attractions.

And Johnson said she felt the use of reflective glass was too extensive. Under the new ordinance, it will be limited to less than 50% of the area of any side of a building.

People wanting to walk into the Rio Vista Towers building from, say, the Marriott across the street must either wade through strips of landscaping or share the circular drive with the autos.

Meanwhile, the entry to the Marriott, designed by BSHA and Frizzell Hill Moorehouse of San Francisco, presents much the same problem, with the added confusion of a series of square columns that block views into a well-designed and landscaped central courtyard with a pool.

In fact, pedestrians wishing to get from one point to any other among the complex’s three completed buildings--the Marriott, the Rio Vista Building and Rio Vista Towers--must weave their way through parking lots.

On another level, Rio Vista Towers, with its sensuous curves and tastefully understated landscaping, brings a new design sophistication to the valley.

Given that developers will continue to turn to glass curtain walls as the most cost-effective means of enclosing rentable space, Rio Vista Towers, designed by Los Angeles architect Anthony Lumsden and San Diego architect Chuck Slert for the local firm BSHA, is refreshing.

The top of the western side of the first tower presents a striking face to Friars Road, a shape like an eagle’s wings in flight. Such aggressive design is doubly difficult because of what it does to the shape of each floor inside: A trip through the building shows how rentable space is reduced behind this bevel because of its steep angle.

A 65-foot-high “prismatic pyramid” was originally suggested by architects to house a restaurant next to the towers, but city planners wanted something low-key to serve office park workers, not a high-profile beacon that would increase traffic on Friars Road to unacceptable levels.

The resulting restaurant is hidden behind an undulating concrete-block wall that echoes the shape of the high-rise’s top, and is entirely concealed from Friars Road beneath a grass berm.

It’s only unfortunate that the base of Rio Vista Towers couldn’t have been more responsive to pedestrian needs, with retail businesses bringing in people through several sets of doors.

City Councilman Ed Struiksma, whose district includes Mission Valley, apparently sees no conflict between the idealistic plan he has been hyping since the early 1980s and today’s result.

He mistakenly said that Rio Vista Towers was designed by architect Paul Buss, at the time a principal in BSHA--”who enjoys a fine reputation.” He blamed planners for not being more forceful with their urban design ideas if they felt new buildings didn’t live up to them, and for not instigating the new ordinance sooner.

Struiksma doesn’t seem to have much use for city planners, good urban design or critics. Told that city planner Johnson entirely agreed with one critic’s assessment of the Rio Vista complex, he said:

“She gave an excuse because she didn’t want to tell you that you’re wrong.”