Little Italy Faces Deluge of High-Rises

Savor a heaping plate of pasta at Filippi’s on India Street, with its rich garlicky smells, chianti bottles and Italian chatter.

Wander among the handful of remaining Italian family businesses along India just north of Date Street and know that, in a few years, this small scoop of Neapolitan could be gone, or at the very least buried amidst a heap of new, taller buildings.

Local property and business owners, banded together as the Harbor View Assn., successfully lobbied the city to increase densities in a new downtown plan to allow buildings as high as 110 feet.

“I’m unhappy with the compromise, but I’m happy to have a compromise,” said architect Rob Quigley, one of several Harbor View residents and business owners who banded together as the Harbor View Little Italy Coalition in favor of lower heights.

Such Italian food establishments as Filippi’s, Solunto Bakery just down the street and Vito’s restaurant, which give the area much of its flavor, may be saved, but there is also talk of re-creating them within new developments.

“That’s like if you wanted to rebuild the Leaning Tower of Pisa,” said Jimmy Gaglio, who owns Vito’s, but not the property beneath it. “I don’t think they could do that.”

The city’s Historic Site Board will consider which buildings to designate as historically significant later this year.

Little Italy’s destiny may be contained within a new Interim Design Ordinance for downtown San Diego, which city planners expect will be approved by the San Diego City Council this summer.

Really, though, residents of Little Italy --the small ethnic enclave along India Street just a few blocks north of downtown--believe the spirit of the place began dying in the mid-1960s, when Interstate 5, completed in 1967, displaced a number of houses and businesses.

Lou Giolzetti, who owns several properties in Little Italy and lived there from 1921 to 1938, said the freeway reduced the Italian population from thousands to hundreds.

Italians also moved to places like Mission Hills and Point Loma when they hit it big in the tuna industry, but much of the property is still owned by families whose ancestors first came to the area in the ‘20s and ‘30s.

Now, the property is too valuable for owners to settle for the four-story developments favored by Quigley and others.

In 1988, after they caught wind of the new Centre City Plan, prepared by Mayor Maureen O’Connor’s Centre City Planning Committee, under the direction of shopping center magnate Ernest Hahn, their protests soon followed.

Little Italy is contained within an area known to city planners as Harbor View, bounded by Laurel and Beech Streets on the North and South, Pacific Highway on the west and Interstate 5 on the east.

For years, longtime property owners had watched the northward creep of downtown high-rises, expecting that soon they would sell their land to office tower developers at a sizable profit.

The draft of the downtown plan released in 1988 sought to “retain and accentuate existing ‘Little Italy’ character,” but the part that dismayed many property owners called for a general height limit of 50 feet, with “some mid-rise or high-rise buildings.”

Under the leadership of Mike Daniels, owner of H.G. Daniels graphic supply store on India, they organized as the Harbor View Assn. and hired architect and planner Anthony Cutri to prepare an alternative plan.

Reflecting the desires of his clients, Cutri’s plan pressured the city to allow floor area ratios of 8 to 10, up from the 3.5 to 6 proposed by the CCPC and seconded by the Little Italy Coalition. That’s the difference between four-story buildings and true high-rises.

The new plan compromises by designating all of Harbor View FAR 6, meaning buildings up to six times the area of their lots will be allowed--360,000 square feet on a 60,000-square-foot block, for example.

That probably doesn’t spell a deluge of high-rises for India Street, but these will be massive buildings.

Cutri and San Diego city planner Larry Montserrate, a specialist on downtown, agree that, with the setback requirements for the preservation of view corridors down key east-west streets, and mid-day sunlight along India, the tallest buildings will be about 110 feet, stepping back from 50-foot street walls.

Given that most of the property is divided into small ownership parcels, Cutri said it is unlikely that many full-block, high-rise developments will occur.

“My sense of it is that 90% of the buildings won’t exceed 50 feet,” Cutri said.

A 101-unit condominium project planned for a site at India and Beech Street is probably typical of what’s in store.

This building--six stories and 70 feet tall--will be more massive than anything nearby, but not unreasonably so, considering its location in a transitional zone between downtown and Little Italy proper.

But this building isn’t even close to the maximum allowable under the new plan, according to its developer. Quigley believes that even buildings of this size will dwarf Little Italy’s fine neighborhood grain when they start to pop up a few blocks to the north.

In support of lower buildings, Quigley points to the Marina redevelopment district south of Broadway downtown, where developers of four-story apartment and condominium projects appear to have done just fine.

Developer Michael Galasso will break ground next month on a four-story, single-room-occupancy hotel (SRO) at Date and India in the heart of Little Italy, designed by Quigley and more in keeping with the neighborhood’s scale.

Quigley’s building will test the idea of preservation through replication; he has included a re-creation of the facade of the existing corner Mexican restaurant within his design, and the restaurant will take space in the bottom of the new SRO.

Planners like Montserrate and Cutri hope the new ordinance is the start of a reasonable future for Little Italy, a compromise between intense development and no development.

But they also acknowledge the need for detailed planning in the form of a “specific plan” for the area, which would refine the basic density and bulk guidelines spelled out in the Centre City Plan.

This could include some excellent suggestions proposed by Cutri’s plan, including a pedestrian-oriented mall along Cedar Street leading east from the County Administration Center, and a second, smaller pedestrian mall a few blocks to the north consisting of an extension of Elm Street.

City planners expect that Little Italy may soon be a redevelopment project area under the auspices of the Centre City Development Corp., the city’s redevelopment arm. According to Montserrate, redevelopment powers probably would not be used for condemnation and assembly of land, but to finance various improvements such as public spaces.

In a year of massive city budget cuts, money for more detailed planning in this key downtown area may not be a high priority on some lists, but let’s hope this opportunity doesn’t slip away.

CORRECTION: In last week’s column on SGPA Architecture & Planning and the design of retail projects, photo captions on Uptown District and North County Mall were inadvertently reversed.

San Diego County