A Piece of the Park : Arts: Although just about every cultural group wants one, fitting everyone in is impossible. The San Diego City Council has been criticized for the way it had handled some of the requests at Balboa Park.

Not long ago, the Children’s Museum received a tip from a well-placed City Hall staffer.

The museum’s future home in Balboa Park might be in jeopardy, the source warned.

In October, 1989, the City Council had chosen the museum to move into the park’s House of Charm after it is rebuilt in the mid-1990s. But in January, at least two city councilmen were suggesting that perhaps the space should be given to the Mingei International Museum of World Folk Art.

“It was a nightmare,” recalled a Children’s Museum director, who worried along with other Children’s Museum supporters that they might lose their promised space in Balboa Park.

In February, supporters of the museum flooded City Hall with hundreds of protest letters. In March, the matter died without the full council ever discussing it.

For the politicians and various arts institutions, it was just the latest spin on a cultural merry-go-round they can’t seem to stop. Since 1989, the council has tried to accommodate arts groups that have either asked to move into Balboa Park or requested more room in their existing park locations.

But the council discovered that trying to accommodate all the cultural groups wanting a park location--something that seems as valuable as a Van Gogh painting--is impossible. There just isn’t enough room.

“We can’t cram every bit of culture into Balboa Park,” said David Twomey, assistant director of the city’s Parks and Recreation Department. “We have to start spreading it around.”

The council has been most criticized for its handling the Mingei Museum’s request for park space. A city-appointed blue-ribbon committee originally recommended that the Mingei, now in a small space in University Towne Centre, move into the House of Charm, but the council gave it to the Children’s Museum instead. Later, the council voted to move the Mingei into space at the Casa de Balboa that was being vacated by the Hall of Champions, a sports museum. The council, however, later changed its mind.

Some critics contend that the council based its decisions on campaign contributions rather than merit. The politicians scoff at that notion and instead suggest that little thought was given to the problem when premium park space was handed out.

“I hope someone is having some sleepless nights due to conscience,” grumbled Don Wood, past president of Citizens Coordinate for Century 3, an urban planning and environmental group active in park issues and based in the park. “This is politics at its worst,” said Wood, who was on the blue-ribbon panel.

City Councilman Bruce Henderson is one who agrees that the council botched its role as landlord by not being methodical in selecting tenants for the various spaces.

“The process from Day 1 was flawed,” lamented Henderson, whose district includes the park.

Despite the flubs, many believe that the real estate shuffle in the park will work out just fine. Directors at several of the museums receiving new or larger quarters seem pleased. And city officials have just completed a study of possible downtown sites for the Mingei, the most prominent suitor shut out of the park.

The process began when the city urged local museums to compete for space in the House of Charm, a condemned relic from the Panama California Exposition of 1915-1916 that will be destroyed and rebuilt.

The city manager and a citizens committee recommended in 1989 that the Mingei move into the space. But Mayor Maureen O’Connor championed the Children’s Museum, and the council eventually backed her.

Wanting to give the losing museums a consolation prize, the council offered still more space in Balboa Park. It was how the council members did so that left them open to criticism.

Unlike the first round, the city did not solicit museum officials to submit formal requests for any new space openings. On Oct. 30, 1989--the same day that the Children’s Museum got its good news--the council authorized the Hall of Champions, a sports museum in the park, which had lost in the bidding for the House of Charm, to move into the park’s aging Federal Building, a much bigger space. The city promised the Mingei it could have the sports museum’s old space.

Because there was no bidding process, many arts groups did not even know the Federal Building or a spot in Casa de Balboa--the building where the Hall of Champions, Museum of Photographic Arts, the San Diego Historical Society and the model railroad layout are located--was available. Any arts group that might have wanted the spaces found themselves shut out of the competition.

That’s what happened to MOPA, one of just a handful of institutions in the nation that is devoted exclusively to photography. Having outgrown its space in Casa de Balboa, MOPA had looked in vain for satellite space downtown.

MOPA only learned that the Hall of Champions, separated by just a wall, was leaving after it was too late, said Arthur Ollman, MOPA’s executive director.

“I didn’t know my neighbor’s space was up for grabs,” Ollman said. “Nobody ever told us.”

“You can see it was a spotty process,” he added, referring to the council’s method of allocating museum space.

Meanwhile, Mingei wasn’t thrilled with the 18,000 square feet it was going to get when the Hall of Champions left, but it was larger than the cramped 6,000 square feet it occupies at UTC in La Jolla. The museum, which has displayed such diverse works as Tibetan sand drawings, Japanese ceramics, early American quilts, Ecuadorean costumes and Romanian folk art--has no room to display its permanent collections.

Also a sticking point with the Mingei was that the Hall of Champions’ directors, wanted the Mingei to reimburse them for $1.5 million they did in improvements to their museum, which is carpeted in Astroturf. Mingei officials balked. The “improvements” were of no use to them, and the museum didn’t have the cash anyway. City staffers told Mingei that it was under no obligation to reimburse the sports museum because the institution was occupying a rent-free city building.

With those negotiations bogged down, MOPA jumped in with a $1.5-million offer of its own and a full-court press for the sports hall. MOPA also persuaded the council that it made sense for it to knock down a wall and move into the adjoining space.

The Mingei lost this battle in March when the council reneged on its promise to locate the museum in the Hall of Champions space. Instead it awarded the sports hall space to the photography enthusiasts. City staffers, following the council’s instructions, and Mingei’s own scouts began searching for a new home for the museum outside the park.

The city staff released a report at the end of May suggesting that the best place for the Mingei would be on the site of the old California Theater downtown, which is scheduled to be replaced by an office high-rise. The principals, one of whom is the son of the Mingei’s board president, has expressed interest in housing the museum, said Pete Hogan, the legislative specialist to the City Council’s Public Facility and Recreation Committee. The arrangement could satisfy the developer’s requirements to spend 1% of the project’s gross costs on art.

Martha Longenecker, Mingei’s founder and director, had no comment on the report and was unfamiliar with California Theater.

She said the search for a location is still in the “exploratory stage.”

“We do trust they will find us a space as fine as the original House of Charm,” Longenecker said. “It’s all our responsibility to make sure the museum is well-placed in the city.”

Longenecker is guarded when asked about the city’s treatment of her museum. But some, such as the Citizens Coordinate for Century 3, contend that the Mingei was beat out because its backers have not contributed as much money to the City Council as the supporters of other museums.

Council members, however, said that such allegations are absurd. The boards of all the museums are politically influential, Councilman Bob Filner said.

It wasn’t campaign contributions that changed votes, it was trying to rectify the hasty way space was allocated in the park, Filner said.

“It became an ad hoc process, instead of being well thought out. That caused all the problems,” he said.

Hartley and Henderson said they felt so badly about how the Mingei was treated that they suggested--without success--reopening the House of Charm tenancy question.

Henderson is still angry that park space was given to the Children’s Museum, an outside arts group, without a thorough analysis of what the future space needs will be for the current Balboa Park tenants, such as the Museum of Natural History and the San Diego Museum of Art. Both have their own buildings.

The House of Charm looks too decrepit to have triggered a real-estate stampede. It was built to house Canadian memorabilia during the 1915-1916 exposition. Later, the building displayed electrical home appliances until people no longer needed to seek out a museum to witness the marvels of an electric toaster.

Today, it looks like a stiff wind could bring the place down. The foundation is rotted and the facade’s crumbling plaster is pockmarked with huge holes. Pigeons are nesting in some of the larger crevices and the grimy ornamental molding is disintegrating. And, after the March monsoon, the gallery smelled faintly of mildew after the roof leaked.

Most of the tenants fled years ago, only the San Diego Art Institute still hangs tough in one corner.

The House of Charm is unsalvageable. The building will be razed and replaced with a structure that looks just like it. The city is exploring how it can recast the building’s extensive moldings in Styrofoam or other lightweight material to save money.

The Children’s Museum will claim most of the space. The new building’s exact dimensions are not yet determined, but with two basements added, the House of Charm will have well over 48,000 square feet, Twomey said. The nearby Old Globe Theatre will rehearse in one of the basements and the San Diego Art Institute will receive about 7,000 square feet.

The Children’s Museum, squeezed into a small space in the La Jolla Village Square shopping mall, has raised $400,000 to outfit its new home. Its board hopes to raise $6 million before the House of Charm is ready for occupancy in 1994 or early 1995.

Psychologists, sociologists, artists, architects and computer specialists are already designing new exhibits. In one room, kids, from a perspective of 22,000 miles above earth, will be able to look through a lens and literally zoom in on a picture of their own back yard. Psychologists are developing an exhibit to chase away children’s bedtime fears and there will be space devoted to ugly bugs--real kid crowd-pleasers.

Like other museum directors, James R. Pahl, executive director of the Children’s Museum, expresses a distaste for the heated competition for a spot on the city’s cultural mesa.

“It is unfortunate that at times we are pitted against each other,” Pahl lamented.

Jean Hahn, president of the Mingei board, echoed the same sentiment. When the board heard that two councilmen had suggested reopening the House of Charm tenancy earlier this year, Hahn said they resisted outside pressure to lobby.

“We never had any intention of pushing it,” Hahn said. “We want to stay friends with all the museums. They are all nonprofits, we should all be working together, not against each other.”

Ollman, however, doesn’t profess to be so charitable. When Mingei was originally scheduled to move into the Hall of Champions’ space, Ollman started researching Mingei’s financial records. He concluded that he Mingei, which now leases its space at UTC for $1 a year, would have failed financially if it had moved into the Hall of Champion’s 18,000 square feet or the new House of Charm.

“How the hell can Mingei swallow that much space?” Ollman asked rhetorically during an interview. “I can’t see them handling 18,000 square feet.”

Consequently, Ollman predicted that the Mingei would have lapsed into a “coma” because it would have run out of money to display quality exhibits.

Longenecker seemed appalled when told of Ollman’s charge.

“I think any contention of another museum saying we’d fall flat on our face is completely unfounded,” she said.

Meanwhile, the Mingei in its own search for a new home has found “very exciting” possibilities in two existing buildings and a third plot of land, according to Hahn, who would not disclose the locations.

Everyone involved in the Balboa Park land rush hopes that one outcome will be the expansion of the city’s cultural boundaries beyond the park. Establishing an arts beachhead downtown, with Mingei’s help, could relieve some of the pressure on the park, which can’t be all things to all arts groups, Twomey said.