CCDC Kills Artwork Depicting Illegal Alien

A controversial art project that offended Latino and Chicano groups was rejected Friday by the Centre City Development Corp.

“It’s a dead issue, a moot point,” said Irma Castro, whose Chicano Federation of San Diego County had bitterly opposed the project, which, as conceived by its New York artists, depicted an illegal immigrant crossing the border.

The art work, containing photographic images of a man climbing a fence, had been proposed as part of the Marina Linear Park at the trolley station between 1st Avenue and Front Street downtown.

The display would have been clearly visible from the new San Diego Convention Center.

By a 6-0 vote (one member was absent), the CCDC board voted down the proposal, which, according to spokeswoman Suzanne Straussberger, had already cost $88,400.

“What happens now is open to question,” Straussberger said.

Castro said that she and “fellow Chicanos” were offended by the project, “which did not speak to the diversity of San Diego and did not help to build bridges. It focused on one issue in a city troubled by many. It was hardly conducive to improving relations between the United States and Mexico.”

Castro said the project’s proximity to the Convention Center would have sent to tourists “the wrong message about our city. I would hope . . . we could do better in the future.”

Straussberger said the design was the work of a committee of artists and landscape architects, including one local agency, the Austin-Hansen-Fehlman Group. Other participants included two architects from San Francisco, Peter Walker and Martha Schwartz, as well as the artists themselves, Andrea Blum and Dennis Adams, who live in New York.

Straussberger said the controversial work had been approved in earlier sessions by CCDC’s Arts Advisory Board and the Marina Linear Park Subcommittee. But the board, upon seeing the design, asked for opinions from the Chicano and Latino community, and quickly got them.

Opposition came, Straussberger said, from the Mexican Consulate, the Chicano Federation of San Diego County, the Mexican-American Business and Professional Assn. and the American Friends’ Service Committee.

“Each one of them felt it would be offensive,” she said.

Straussberger said the artists were asked to change the presentation but refused.