Long-Sought La Mesa Plaza Out of Place : Centerpiece: The bulky project is somewhat of a design failure despite being 11 years and $26 million in the making.

Eleven years ago, the city of La Mesa leveled 5 downtown acres to make way for a redevelopment project to recharge the aging heart of the village.

This month, after years of projects scuttled by financing difficulties, the city’s long-awaited centerpiece is finished: the $26-million La Mesa Village Plaza.

Sitting at La Mesa Boulevard and Spring Street, the busiest downtown intersection, the project includes 95 condominiums, 60,000 square feet of office space and 35,000 square feet of retail space.

La Mesa Boulevard is the city’s version of the classic small-town Main Street, lined by modest one- and two-story buildings that are home to several neighborhood businesses. In the midst of this fine-grained fabric, the city has allowed a comparatively bulky project that, in some places, rises to five stories, or more than 60 feet. In a once quaint, old-fashioned downtown, La Mesa Village Plaza is an interloper, the biggest, glitziest thing around.

Was it worth the wait? With some minor exceptions, the answer is no.

Conceptually, La Mesa Village Plaza represents the state of urban planning. Because of the mixed-use nature of the project, because it sits conveniently near other downtown shops and because it is on the San Diego Trolley line, residents will be able to live at La Mesa Village Plaza without relying on cars.

As such, the project is a prime example of the “Pedestrian Pocket” concept being touted by San Francisco planning guru Peter Calthorpe, who has been much in demand as a conference speaker this year. Calthorpe promotes pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use developments on or near transit systems.

But the project falls short of realizing its potential to knit together this modest-scaled downtown.

La Mesa Village Plaza, which was developed by a partnership of the Commonwealth Cos. and CMS Inc. and designed by San Diego architect Lou Dominy, fails most noticeably along La Mesa Boulevard, one of the most visible edges of the project. The developers had a good idea: condos above ground-level retail, a mix of uses that thrive on each other. The upper residential floors are set back from the ground-level retail spaces, which helps soften the impact of the bulky residential building.

But, instead of building the retail spaces out to the existing sidewalk, which would have helped retain some of the village’s old Main Street character, the developers set their new shops back behind two rows of diagonal parking next to the street. They felt they needed abundant, visible parking to lease the retail spaces.

Janice Weinrick, La Mesa’s redevelopment director, acknowledged that she would rather have seen the project built to the sidewalk along La Mesa Boulevard to continue the cozy village atmosphere of downtown. Perhaps the city, which assembled the site at a cost of $2.3 million and sold it to the developers for a million less, had grown gun-shy after plans for so many projects at the site fell through over the years.

At any rate, officials were too easy on the developers, and, as a result, La Mesa Village Plaza’s diagonal parking spaces create a sizable gulf that isolates the project from La Mesa Boulevard.

The other significant edge of the development is along Spring Street, where the San Diego Trolley stops next to a public plaza included as part of the project. Flanking the plaza are a one-story building (to house a family restaurant) and a four-story office building with ground-level restaurant space. The project’s condominium complex abuts the back edge of the plaza, giving residents easy access to the trolley.

At the plaza’s heart is the perquisite fountain--in this case, several streams of water falling into a plain, round, aqua-colored basin. Surrounding the fountain, the plaza consists of a sea of concrete unbroken by public art (the city has no public art program), colorful tile, quality paving materials or imaginative landscaping. In short, the plaza has none of the things that would make it a great people place.

But there is some hope. Restaurants scheduled to open next fall on the plaza’s edges may have outdoor tables, according to Peter Walz, executive vice president at CMS. Also, the developers are considering adding vendor pushcarts to enliven the place.

Aside from its functional shortcomings, La Mesa Village Plaza fares poorly in aesthetics.

The residential complex is a mix of pale tan stucco walls and metal roofs. These buildings feature a few well-designed facades--most notably the middle section along La Mesa Boulevard, where the street-facing walls of gable-roofed buildings are punctuated by small balconies that convey some residential character.

Elsewhere, though, the residential portion is downright ugly, and the courtyards inside it are barren (raised stucco planters don’t help) and uninviting. Even in a large multi-unit building, the idea of “home” demands something more in the way of thoughtful detailing and intimate scale.

Slick glass office annexes at the project’s most visible corners are out of place in downtown La Mesa, as though a helicopter had lifted a brand of speculative glass office building common to the Golden Triangle or Kearny Mesa and plunked it down here.

For comparison, consider the Uptown District, a mixed-use project that opened in Hillcrest in 1989 in a commercial district of 1920s to ‘40s buildings similar to La Mesa’s.

It, too, was built with simple, economical materials such as stucco, but these were used to create simple facades of modest scale that capture some of the spirit of the adjacent neighborhood. Also, the shops were built to the sidewalk along University Avenue, preserving the intimacy and pedestrian orientation of the commercial district. Ralph’s supermarket even allowed its store to be set back from the street, with its parking lot hidden from view.

La Mesa Village Plaza’s shortcomings don’t seem to be hampering its commercial success. More than half the condominiums are in escrow. Many are being purchased by mature “empty nesters,” couples who want to downscale from large homes to more manageable condos in a more convenient location now that their children have flown the coop.

Forty percent of the retail space, and 25% of the office space are leased. Which just goes to show that mediocre urban design and architecture don’t always hurt the bottom line.

Still, this sizable new project has made an inappropriate slash through the heart of downtown La Mesa, a scar that will be visible for many years to come.