Good Lesson in Planning

Phase 2 of the Escondido Civic Center provides a lesson in how large-scale urban projects evolve. Five years after the original master plan was proposed by Pacific Associates Planners Architects of San Diego, the layout has changed substantially, mostly for the better.

The new $55.4-million Center for Performing and Fine Arts of North San Diego County, designed by Santa Monica architects Moore Ruble Yudell, consists of two theaters, an art museum, a sculpture garden and assorted community meeting rooms.

In 1984, Escondido made other cities that had sponsored design competitions look amazingly inept, by running a smooth, open process attracting 108 entries. The process was notable for the way it melded participation from architects, planners, politicians and citizens. PAPA was chosen from the large field to design a new City Hall and to develop a master plan for development of a cultural complex on the site.

For Phase 2, the city invited architects to submit qualifications. They wanted professionals seasoned in the tricky business of designing theater spaces, and an open competition would have attracted too broad a field.

Moore Ruble Yudell, the Santa Monica firm whose principals include internationally known architect Charles Moore, was chosen.

“The thing that impressed us about Moore Ruble Yudell was their ability to do contextual architecture, to fit new pieces into an existing setting,” said Rolf Gunnarson, assistant executive director of Escondido’s Community Development Commission.

Last month, after a year of refinements, Moore Ruble Yudell’s basic design ideas for the cultural complex, in the form of “schematic drawings,” were approved by the commission.

San Diego architect Randy Dalrymple, a principal in PAPA who was retained to help the new architects work with his firm’s original master plan, saw Moore Ruble Yudell’s newest design for the first time last Friday.

“I had some reservations before Friday, but I feel very good about it now. The south side has gotten a lot better. They’re doing a very good job.”

Escondido’s Civic Center is being built on 17 acres in Grape Day Park, bordered by West Valley Parkway, Escondido Boulevard, Woodward Avenue and Broadway.

The new complex will be concentrated along West Valley Parkway and Escondido Boulevard, so these two edges must be sensitively handled.

The south edge is of prime importance because that’s where the existing City Hall will be joined to a major portion of the addition. In PAPA’s original master plan, the Phase 2 buildings were concentrated at the northwest corner of the site. But the city decided to buy out the Home Federal bank branch at West Valley Parkway and Escondido Boulevard, and this southwest corner became the location of the new project’s conference center and, behind it, a 400-seat community theater. Because West Valley Parkway is an important downtown street, the new siting will allow the Civic Center to make a more vital contribution to the city’s urban life.

Most everyone involved has good things to say about PAPA’s City Hall, which opened last year. With its open dome over an entry courtyard, circular public plazas, smooth stucco surfaces and easy access through several sets of doors opening on an interior plaza, the building subtly captures the best of Balboa Park and the early 20th-Century San Diego buildings of Irving Gill.

Moore Ruble Yudell’s initial designs for Phase 2 lacked this lyrical softness, but they’ve lightened their touch in the new version. Along West Valley Parkway, the massing of buildings, spacing of pilasters, green ornamental steelwork and latticework and exterior stucco in mild tones will play off City Hall.

On Escondido Boulevard, the architects have set back buildings and used landscaping to help soften the impact of the bulky, 1,500-seat theater. The “fly tower” alone (the space above the stage used to hang scenery), will rise to 100 feet--35 feet higher than the dome of the City Hall at the opposite corner of the site.

Budget constraints were partially responsible for a significant deviation from PAPA’s master plan. Originally, part of the new complex was to span a flood-control channel at the northern edge of the site. When that became prohibitively expensive, the 1,500-seat theater shifted south, tightening the core of the project.

Lost in the transition was the strong diagonal circulation axis PAPA had set up with its City Hall entrance at Broadway and West Valley Parkway, at the southeast corner of the site. In the original master plan, this pedestrian channel swept right through the City Hall and across the site, where it culminated in a circular plaza outside the theater complex.

In Moore Ruble Yudell’s design, this forceful diagonal has no termination, and the new site plan lacks the strong cohesive geometry of its predecessor.

To its users, though, this will not be very noticeable. The site is so large, and the vistas so distant, that the impressive series of large and small outdoor spaces developed by the Moore Ruble Yudell team should outweigh the loss of a more powerful organizational scheme.

Plazas and courtyards will be as important to the new complex as the buildings. The larger theater’s green room (the lounge for actors and actresses), a dark cave at most theaters, will look out on a central garden also visible from the performers’ dressing rooms.

“Each building has a relationship to one or several courtyards,” Buzz Yudell said. Many of these outdoor spaces will be used for weddings, parties and other social occasions.

The major entrance to the new complex will be from Escondido Boulevard near Valley Parkway. Visitors will drive into a landscaped entry court to drop people off. They’ll walk through a public plaza between the two theaters, a sort of formal gateway to the project.

Parking is always a big issue with such significant urban developments. Surface lots at the northern edge of the site have replaced the parking structures first proposed. A covered pedestrian bridge will carry visitors from the lots, across a flood-control channel and into the complex. Yudell said the longest walk from the lots to a point in the complex will be about six minutes.

Moore Ruble Yudell’s design is bound to change in many more ways between now and the ground breaking (scheduled for November, 1990), but right now, it looks promising.

Landscaping by Burton & Spitz of Santa Monica hasn’t been detailed, but it will be as important as the architecture. The landscape design of the huge open space at the heart of the project will determine its overall character.

As for the architecture, the key will be to keep its virtues intact while getting the project done on budget. If the City Hall is any indicator, Escondido stands a good chance of success.