Hillcrest Goes Uptown, but With Flaws

Uptown District, the colossal new mixed-use project in Hillcrest, succeeds admirably where other projects have failed. In a dense but run-down urban area, the architects have created a sense of place from scratch.

In fact, Uptown District’s faults have mostly to do with the spaces between buildings rather than the buildings themselves. In some areas, they lack coherent design or features to make them more inviting and alive.

SGPA Planning & Architecture handled the master plan and commercial buildings. Lorimer-Case Architects designed the condominiums. The planning and design process is seen by San Diego city planners as a milestone.

“It was a landmark project because it developed a process we now call the Sears process,” said San Diego City Architect Mike Stepner. “In less than a year, we went from acquisition to the sale of the site to a developer who built a project which is an asset to the community.”

The city originally purchased the 12.4-acre site--bounded by California 163, University Avenue, Washington Street and Richmond Street--for a new central library. But when studies indicated it wasn’t right for that purpose, the city asked developers to submit proposals. Oliver-McMillan Inc. and the Odmark Partnership teamed up on the winning plan, an $85-million mix of retail, restaurants, offices, 318 condominiums, a community center and a supermarket.

If you haven’t been there, it’s impossible to imagine the scale of the project. The site is actually larger than Horton Plaza, which covers 11 acres. With easements and an adjacent building being renovated at its southwestern corner, Uptown District covers 14 acres.

At its outer edges, Uptown District merges into the surrounding neighborhood as though it has been there for years, the sort of illusion often discussed but seldom captured by architects. Varied combinations of roof lines, balconies and bay windows, together with many colors of stucco, give the project this seasoned quality.

But this 1930s stage set wasn’t simply an architect’s guesstimate of what might fit. The designers methodically set out to marry their architecture to the urban surroundings.

Hundreds of snapshots of area architecture became the basis for Uptown District’s two- and three-story retail and residential buildings, including one complex featuring residential/work loft spaces above ground-floor retail.

The process involved much more than assembling an architectural jigsaw puzzle. The project included a greater degree of community involvement than is common. Citizens groups met often with architects to critique the design as the project was created.

“In retrospect, the community involvement made it a better project,” said Mike LaBarre, a principal at SGPA. “It’s not common that you allow for a lot of community input and come up with something better. Often, a project gets quagmired and stuck with compromises.”

Here, though, Hillcrest residents, including representatives from the Uptown Community Planning Group and the Hillcrest Assn., had a tangible, and positive, effect.

“The community was insistent they did not want to see parking from University Avenue, which meant that Ralphs supermarket had to be hidden within the project,” LaBarre said. “This was some incredible pioneering done by Ralphs, to build a true, conventional supermarket in an urban context with subterranean parking and no street visibility.” With parking underground, the developers installed escalator ramps to carry shoppers and their carts up and down between the lot and the store.

People don’t seem to mind. According to LaBarre, Ralphs is already beating sales projections.

Community members also pushed the architects on other issues.

“They weren’t pleased with the first version of the residential side,” LaBarre said. “We came to the conclusion that it wasn’t good enough. So Lorimer-Case scrapped the original and went back and produced what was built, to the pleasure of the community groups. Through their input and insistence, huge changes were made.

“Before, the project was more suburban in tone. We made it urban, in keeping with Mission Hills and the rest of the Uptown community. If you walk through now, you will not see the same building twice.”

There are 37 individual buildings within the residential complex alone, no two facades alike. Colors change dramatically, but they work well, except an electric purple or two. Color consultant Cecilia Conover gets credit for selecting mauve, sand, olive and other tones that add variety without the rainbow-sherbet sappiness that plagues Horton Plaza.

But the project is not flawless. In terms of large-scale planning, it has some shortcomings.

A mix of cars and pedestrians is what gives dense urban areas their vitality. Here, car considerations sometimes collide with people features.

Vermont Avenue provides the main auto entry off University. Plans for the project indicate a climactic destination: a plaza at the center of the project, on the seam between its residential and commercial halves.

In reality, this semicircular plaza doesn’t come off as a clearly defined space because of the way red curbs, concrete patterns and landscaping collide. LaBarre said he didn’t know the curbs had been painted red and that he planned to investigate.

Instead of being a thoughtful mix of hardscape and plant materials, with benches, art and other public amenities, the space seems cluttered. Islands of bamboo block rather than enhance sight lines. Railings, which may or may not have been necessary, add visual confusion. A dizzying array of patterns were stamped on the concrete, instead of a unifying design.

A ribbon of slate runs diagonally across the plaza, connecting Interior Surroundings, a furniture store, to Cane’s, a new restaurant soon to open. But this interconnecting ribbon is broken by curb cuts and concrete.

Easy access is provided for pedestrians from University Avenue. The main pedestrian entry is wide enough to beckon you, and its concrete retaining walls and planter are just the right height for sitting. This is good.

But you expect this main entrance to lead to a pedestrian promenade through the project. Instead, it is cut off abruptly by an interior street. Even if auto access prohibited a pure pedestrian walkway, the architects could have given this axis more visual unity by eliminating the sidewalk curb and using consistent materials.

The residential portion of Uptown District succeeds in creating a village atmosphere, but the architects missed a chance to create a town square. The large space at the center of the residential zone is awkwardly landscaped with grass, a few trees and hedges. This could have been a lively public space.

Had the developers involved artists early in the design process, such public spaces might have become the kind of witty enhancements the project needs.

Uptown District appears to be succeeding financially. Nearly 70% of the retail/commercial space is leased. Seventy of 110 condominiums have been rented for the short term. The first batch of the remaining 208 go on sale May 5, with prices ranging from the low $100,000s for a studio to well over $200,000 for larger units.