New Challenge Raised to SDSU’s Arena Plans

A state board has determined that San Diego State University failed to follow the letter of the law in planning to tear down the Aztec Bowl and replace it with a $41-million, 12,000-seat indoor arena for basketball and rock concerts.

Milford Wayne Donaldson, a local architect and president of the State Historical Building Safety Board in Sacramento, said Wednesday that SDSU bypassed the California Environmental Quality Act in moving ahead with its disputed plans.

The environmental act, among other things, regulates the modification or demolition of historic structures, and, because it is more than 50 years old, the Aztec Bowl--the school’s 14,000-seat outdoor stadium--qualifies for consideration as “an historic resource,” Donaldson said.

Donaldson said that last week that the State Historical Safety Board sent its findings to a state attorney, who will decide if the university failed to follow proper procedures.

Donaldson said that SDSU might have to delay construction. “They would have to file a supplemental environmental impact report, send that to the Office of Historical Preservation and then to the State Clearinghouse.

“Our review and comments would be folded into the supplemental EIR, and it would go back through the process--everyone would have a chance to comment on it, and from that point on, I’m not sure what would happen.”

The indoor arena, dubbed the Student Activity Center, has been troubled from the start. The university faces a court date Friday with Friends of the College Area, a homeowners’ group that filed suit against the school in challenging a second EIR.

The first environmental impact report was successfully challenged last year in Superior Court by another group, the Alvarado Homeowners’ Assn., which, like Friends of the College Area, was concerned about the impact of noise, traffic and parking.

Asked about the board’s findings, university spokesman Rick Moore said Wednesday, “If we’re guilty, we’re guilty. I just don’t know. . . . This is the first I’ve heard of this. There’s been some discussion of the bowl as an historical site designation.

“We felt we’d treated the subject with sensitivity. The bowl was built by hand as a project of the Works Progress Administration,”. We planned to take pictures of the bowl, blow them up and exhibit them in the lobby of the new building.”

Moore said the university planned to retain roughly one third to one quarter of the existing bowl structure, largely for historical reasons. And, it plans to place at the entrance to the new arena a plaque commemorating a speech made by President Kennedy at the Aztec Bowl in May, 1963.

Architect Donaldson said that, in doing its research into the school’s quest for the indoor arena, the State Historical Building Safety Board found mention of the JFK plaque but nothing of the Aztec Bowl as “a historical resource.”

“As SDSU was going through its EIR process and meeting with local groups, the only issue of historical significance seemed to be the plaque,” Donaldson said. “The JFK plaque was definitely considered a landmark. But the Aztec Bowl seemed immune from consideration.”

Donaldson said all state campuses are required to prepare lists of buildings on campus that are 50 years’ old or older and “keep the lists updated. The list is filed with the Office of Historical Preservation in Sacramento.”

When the request for the list was first made, in 1983, “the Aztec Bowl lacked two or three years being 50 years old,” Donaldson said. “But, by the time the school got serious about its arena project, it was 50 years old and had to be mentioned in any EIR of this magnitude.”

Anthony Fulton, director of facilities, planning and management for SDSU, contradicted Donaldson in saying the historical significance of the Aztec Bowl “was considered in our original EIR.”

However, Fulton said the university was not aware of the need to update annually its list of buildings 50 years old and older.

He said that, at the time the list was requested in 1983, “the Aztec Bowl was not yet 50 years old--it was built in 1936. And it just never got filtered down to the campuses that we needed to update and report the list annually.”

The Friends of the College Area “is the one that’s been actively pursuing every avenue they can, and so they reported it” to the state Historical Building Safety Board, Fulton said. “But I don’t see it as a threat. I don’t have any fear with it.”

Donaldson said a state attorney plans to render an opinion at a meeting in Santa Barbara on May 9.