Bid to Revive Gaslamp Trolley on a Roll This Time

In 1949, they covered the trolley tracks running down 5th Avenue, the asphalt spine of San Diego’s historic Gaslamp Quarter, the city’s 16 1/2 blocks of Victorian legacy.

Now, as the district struggles to revitalize, some say what’s needed is to bring the trolley back.

Although such a revival has been talked about for years and even partially studied once, it seems that, for the first time, support for the Gaslamp trolley has reached a critical stage, primarily pushed by the momentum of downtown San Diego’s dramatic rebuilding.

Centre City Development Corp., the city’s downtown redevelopment agency, has hired a consultant for $6,500 to put together a bid proposal for a full-fledged environmental, preliminary engineering and cost analysis of the trolley.

The analysis is expected to cost $125,000 to $150,000 and to be finished sometime next summer or early fall.

When completed, it will provide redevelopment officials and those from the Metropolitan Transit Development Board--which will be coordinating the study--with the most detailed look yet of what it would take and what it would cost to build the approximately mile-long Gaslamp Quarter trolley.

What it won’t do, though, is say who should pay for building and operating the line, although CCDC has some ideas about that. Rough construction estimates have put the cost at anywhere from $3 million to almost $10 million.

But, unlike in the past, when talk of cost and expense brought trolley discussions to a standstill, supporters say things are different this time, and they believe a trolley will be traveling from the waterfront, through the Gaslamp Quarter to the middle of downtown in about three years.

“I think it’s at a stage where it’s ‘Show us why it can’t be done,’ ” said attorney Michael J. McDade, chairman of the Gaslamp Quarter Planning Board, who said he was initially skeptical about the project.

If it can be done, it’s certainly a turnaround from the mid-’70s, when talk of reviving the Gaslamp trolley began. The idea then, as now, was to spur the stagnant honky-tonk district by providing a transportation link between downtown and the waterfront.

The old trolley was abandoned in 1949, but proponents noted that the double-line tracks were covered with pavement and might be reusable, City Architect Mike Stepner, a backer of the trolley, said. In fact, the old trolley barn at the foot of 5th Avenue is now a popular Mexican restaurant.

Though some of the track was in excellent shape, there wasn’t enough of it. Too many other portions had been cut and removed because they were in the way of newer construction, such as the placement of utility equipment.

But, Stepner said, the idea never died, it just lacked impetus. In 1983, the MTDB paid for a study that looked at the trolley’s feasibility, alternative alignments, potential daily riders and operating costs. No action was taken, though.

Then again in the mid-’80s, there was an attempt to identify issues that needed to be resolved as a precursor to trolley development. Again, nothing happened.

But, although the trolley was meeting a dead end, and lethargy gripped the Gaslamp Quarter itself, other parts of downtown were booming--the Marina district with its housing, Horton Plaza with its shopping and theaters--and high-rise offices were bringing more people downtown, the bayfront Convention Center opened, new hotels and the waterfront-hugging Bayside Line trolley route were completed.

Adding to the mixture was the Centre City Planning Committee’s report, which recommended a trolley link through the Gaslamp.

Events had provided the trolley with the one critical element it had always lacked: timing.

“There’s no doubt the timing is a lot better, when you look at what’s happened downtown. . . . That’s what prompted” the revival of the Gaslamp trolley project, said Tom F. Larwin, MTDB general manager.

“There are now things that can make it happen . . . the way downtown has developed,” Stepner agreed.

As a stopgap measure, a privately run bus-like trolley on wheels has been operating in the Gaslamp, whose rehabilitation can best be described as schizophrenic.

Some blocks, particularly those nearest Horton Plaza, have become beacons of new night life and entertainment that burn into the early morning hours. Others, though, are dark and dreary, home for the area’s legion of transients, winos and street people.

Although a trolley down 5th Avenue would help move people from one end of the district to the other, the driving force behind its revival is economic, as in how can it help Gaslamp get over the hump.

“It’s more an issue of economics than transit,” Pam Hamilton, head administrator at the CCDC, said, echoing comments of several other officials who believe the main argument for the trolley is that it can help provide an economic jump-start to the historic district by dropping off conventioneers, tourists and other free spenders.

If the project is built, it will be because of a joint agreement between the CCDC and MTDB. The redevelopment agency, which oversees the Gaslamp Quarter, would pay for the initial studies while the MTDB coordinates them. The transit organization also would be responsible for the project’s construction and operation. What no one knows yet is who would pay for building and running the trolley.

In an August report, the CCDC said that “the most likely financing approach would be tax allocation bonds for the construction of the trolley and an assessment district (imposed on property owners in the area) for its operation and maintenance.”

Hamilton said that’s mainly her agency thinking out loud, and that a final source of funding won’t be identified until the costs to build the trolley are known next year.

The Gaslamp Quarter’s McDade said, “It’s a wonderful idea everyone can support at this point because no one has been asked to fund it.”

There are also several other issues that might prove burdensome--dull but important technical matters that the environmental and preliminary engineering study will address.

Maurice M. Carter, the consultant hired to prepare the bid proposal for the study, which he expects to finish soon, said those include the alignment of the route and placement of the tracks.

Some officials envision a single-track alignment from C Street, down 5th Avenue to the Bayside Line, passing the Convention Center and ending in front of Seaport Village. Others have talked about stopping the trolley at Broadway rather than C Street, or of running a loop up 5th Avenue and down 4th Avenue next to Horton Plaza, or of taking the trolley past Harbor Drive and to the water’s edge next to the Convention Center.

Not the least of these issues, Carter said, is what will happen to busy 5th Avenue--the parking that now lines the street, the cars that travel its center. And there’s the question of utility costs and relocation, all mundane but serious issues, he said.

If the project is constructed, the Gaslamp Quarter trolley is likely to look different than the red cars the San Diego Trolley now uses.

Carter and others say the idea is to either use modern replicas of old trolley cars or to use old but restored trolley cars obtained from other cities, perhaps as far away as Melbourne, Australia.

In that regard, San Diego would follow other cities--such as Dallas, San Jose, Portland, New Orleans, Seattle and Detroit--which have placed replica or renovated trolleys in their historic downtown districts.

“There’s a heck of a lot of interest and activity on” using historic trolleys across the nation, Carter said.

For property and business owners in the Gaslamp, the trolley can’t be built too soon.

“This will help business down here and will be an economic generator for the Gaslamp,” McDade said. “I think (the Gaslamp) has turned the corner, but we’re not all still there. If this idea has viability, we can’t afford to wait.”