Public Forums Bring Out Ideas for San Diego Plazas : DIEGO COUNTY

Some of San Diego’s wisest urban planners aren’t urban planners at all, just San Diegans with a sincere concern for their city.

Many of them turned out last week for two forums on public spaces led by San Diego City Architect Mike Stepner and organized by various civic and professional groups.

Thursday night, a group of about 200 gathered at the Casa del Prado Theater in Balboa Park for a “town meeting” on the subject of public squares.

The evening began with a slide lecture on the Pioneer Courthouse Square, a lively downtown plaza in Portland, Ore., that covers an entire city block. A thoughtful discussion followed, with comments from both the audience and a panel whose members ranged from Tim Chambers of San Diego Espresso Company to developer Ernest Hahn, artist Mario Lara and the city’s Commission for Arts and Culture public arts coordinator Gail Goldman.

Friday morning, many of the same faces returned to Balboa Park to see how lessons learned the night before might apply to three San Diego public spaces in dire need of attention: Horton Plaza Park, the Community Concourse, both downtown, and the Plaza de Panama in front of the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park.

David Porter, who manages Pioneer Courthouse Square and organizes its events, was the featured guest at both meetings.

But the real star of the discussions wasn’t a participant. The name of pioneering urban planner William Whyte surfaced often at both meetings. His 1988 book “City: Rediscovering the Center” has become something of a bible to anyone with an interest in a vital public spaces. It seems even the general public now knows about him.

Whyte spent years in New York City researching what makes public spaces come alive. Many of his recommendations are simple, but it’s surprising how seldom they are followed.

People need places to sit, Whyte says. They need plenty to do and see: art, retail shops with their wares in full view, street performers, food vendors.

Pioneer Courthouse Square puts these ideas to work. It gives Portland the kind of public heart downtown San Diego has never had. People from a variety of socioeconomic groups mingle peacefully.

According to Porter, the success of Pioneer Courthouse Square is attributable to six concepts: simplicity, location, history, ownership, activity and neutrality.

Pioneer Courthouse Square has a clean, functional design, yet plenty of whimsy.

Portland dreamed up a way to give citizens a stake in the project: 65,000 bricks were sold for $15 to $30 and used to pave the square, each with the donor’s name on them.

The square has action galore: a travel bookstore, four food vendors, a restaurant, interactive art pieces and such events as an annual “Festival of Flowers” and noontime “Peanut Butter and Jam” concerts.

A weather machine gives the forecast, accompanied by a fanfare of trumpets, sprays of water and flashing temperature lights.

In San Diego, Horton Plaza Park is a prime candidate for such improvements.

Frustrated by the city’s lack of initiative in finding ways to reclaim the park from downtown’s street people, the Central City Assn., an organization representing downtown businesses, has proposed to the city council to replace the grass with flower beds. It is even ready to pay to do so, but hasn’t gotten the council’s approval yet.

This might help keep the transients away, but it still wouldn’t make the park a great place for a cross section of the public to gather and mingle.

Most of the 50 or so planners, artists, business people and others who met with Stepner and Porter Friday agreed that the long range goal should be to replace the landscaping around the 1910 Irving Gill fountain with hardscaping--bricks or another paving material. An open, paved park would offer people places to congregate and allow for a variety of uses, while plans dominated by grass and/or flower beds have limited possibilities.

Attorney Leo Sullivan is a partner in a law firm with offices across Fourth Avenue from Horton Plaza Park. He is also co-owner of Reidy O’Neil’s restaurant on the ground floor of the building, which has a view of the troubled park.

In making his pitch, Sullivan cited Whyte. He suggested replacing straight benches with round, backless ones more suited to group conversations. He proposed an entertainment stage, a food stand and night lights that would play on the park from adjacent buildings.

These ideas aren’t in the Central City Assn.’s plan, and Stepner endorsed the association’s flower beds as a short-term solution. In fact, the hardscaping, which seems like an excellent idea, may never happen. Posts and chains bordering the grass are period pieces, and historic preservationists strongly oppose their removal.

Whyte-like ideas also flowed during Friday’s discussion of the Community Concourse. Ernesto Guerrero, director of the Centro Cultural de la Raza who was also on the panel, proposed a radical solution to the plaza’s hostile, windy environment: destroy some of the sterile buildings around it.

More realistic suggestions included a city commitment to managing the space (including new art and events), food and retail outlets, a new downtown library at the plaza’s edge, more seating and a landscaping plan that would open better lines of sight.

Porter believes the Community Concourse desperately needs public art that acknowledges local history and adds a taste of San Diego’s broad cultural heritage. History and broad-based art could help make the space appealing to more San Diegans.

The city has commissioned a community concourse reuse study, and Stepner promised to forward several of these ideas.

In Balboa Park, the Plaza de Panama was converted this summer from a parking lot while it was occupied by a touring Frank Lloyd Wright house. Long-range, the city plans to replace the parking lot with a plaza. Landscape architect Steve Estrada, a consultant hired by the city to draft a detailed plan for the heart of the park, proposes a fountain in the middle of the Plaza de Panama, palms around its fringes and a large, hardscaped surface where people can gather.

Ideas proposed for the Plaza de Panama weren’t as interesting as suggestions made for the other two public spaces. A major portion of the debate focused on whether automobiles should be allowed to cross the edge of the plaza, and where new parking lots might be built in the park.