Mission Not Accomplished at Seabridge

The Mission Revival movement that peaked during the teens and 1920s produced some good buildings in San Diego. A prime example is the circa-1915 Santa Fe Depot downtown. Its crisp, clean lines, excellent proportions and tastefully understated detailing prove that period revival architecture can succeed.

Architects for the new 321-unit, $32.5-million Seabridge apartments at 820 W. G St. downtown also turned to the Mission Revival for inspiration, but they came up empty. This heavy-handed design captures none of the depot’s romance or authenticity.

Designed by McCune/Gerwin & Partners of Los Angeles and opened in August, Seabridge consists of two four-story buildings joined by a broad Mission Revival-style arch that marks the entry to a landscaped pedestrian promenade through the center of the project.

Exteriors at Seabridge are gussied up Mission-style with smooth stucco walls, entry towers at each end of the arch, deep-set arched window openings, even a courtyard with a fountain. The buildings also feature an array of balconies recessed deeply in massive front facades that hang heavily over the sidewalks below, as if they might come crashing down at any moment.

The missions, the authentic models for Mission Revival, were built during the 18th and 19th Centuries of thick adobe walls. Seabridge uses traditional wood-frame and stucco to achieve its Missionary illusion. In total, it is yet another phony period pastiche in a downtown starved for fresh architecture.

You can’t really blame the developers. They saw Mission or related Mediterranean influences all around them.

To the south of Seabridge is a 1939 police station designed by San Diego architects Quayle Brothers & Treganza, soon to become part of an expansion of Seaport Village. To the north is the 1915 Santa Fe Depot, designed by architects Bakewell & Brown of San Francisco.

“There was a conscious decision to follow along with those, to keep with the compatibility of the area,” said Charlie Bush, West Coast residential construction director for JMB Realty, which developed Seabridge in a joint venture with Catellus Development and Shimizu Land.

Mission-era detailing costs more than a simpler stucco building, but Bush thinks it was worth it.

“When people come to San Diego or live in San Diego, they have a sort of bent,” he said, referring to the common image of San Diego as a romantic, sunny place with romantic Mission-era roots. “That’s a comfort level for people, that type of an Old World feel. We felt it went with the project, and I think it’s helped with the marketing as well.”

Numbers back Bush up. Seabridge is already 65% occupied since its August opening, with renters paying $595 to $1,350 a month for apartments of 540 to 950 square feet.

“It’s pretty, attractive, pleasing to the eye,” said Brenda Smith, scoping Seabridge from the sidewalk out front. Smith moved to San Diego recently and lives at 600 Front, another downtown apartment complex, but, she continued, “If I were looking for a place, I would go in and check it out.”

Added Doug Walker, who lives at Seabridge, “I like it.” Walker said he appreciates the Mission-influenced architecture, “because that is old San Diego.”

Seabridge is a mix of successes and failures.

One of Seabridge’s assets is the jacaranda-lined promenade between buildings, actually a closed section of California Street. Eventually, a four-block section of California, including this strip and the one behind the Embassy Suites hotel to the south, will connect several developments with Seaport Village and the waterfront.

Because of ground water seepage at Seabridge’s site near San Diego Bay, the project was built with parking on the first floor instead of underground. This prevented apartments from having a direct connection to the street. Instead, residents enter through a limited number of street-level entries.

This makes for some uninviting sidewalk-scapes next to the project and limits foot traffic that would help bring G Street alive and add to the area’s sense of security.

Several balconies partly compensate for the shortage of street-level entrances, letting residents keep an eye on sidewalks below. But these outlooks are so high and tucked so far back into the bulky facades, that there is really no feeling of connection between residents of Seabridge and pedestrians outside.

By comparison, architect Jonathan Segal’s small 7 On Kettner project around the corner has individual street-level entrances for each townhome, and these make a warm, neighborly impression.

At Seabridge, the Pacific Highway side is better than the others because of enhanced landscaping, larger street trees and a wider sidewalk.

Enclosed interior corridors turn the focus predominantly inward, instead of out toward San Diego’s agreeable weather. Other San Diego projects, including the 600 Front apartments, have enjoyable outdoor circulation.

A few of Seabridge’s corridors open to large interior courtyards. Each apartment gets fresh air and views of either downtown or the courts.

All homes at Seabridge are air-conditioned, but residents pay a high aesthetic price for keeping cool. Some apartments have concealed central air, but others have bulky remote-controlled air conditioners that jut from walls like a wayward hobbyist’s afterthought. The “heated roof-top pool” mentioned in a brochure for Seabridge is actually a shallow pond adequate for a kindergarten class but not for adult swimming. Views from the rooftop deck include sweeping vistas of the downtown skyline, but also a close-up look at clunky mechanical equipment the architects didn’t take care to tuck out of sight.

But such glitches are nothing compared with Seabridge’s crude backside, next to the railroad tracks.

The developers wanted to include windows in this massive back wall, but lenders were concerned that noise from passing trains might make these rear units difficult to sell.

Instead, at the suggestion of Max Schmidt, assistant vice president of planning and engineering at the Centre City Development Corp., the city of San Diego’s redevelopment division, Seabridge’s architects detailed this blank wall with phony arches and mock windows, emphasized with a muddy brown.

Other blank walls downtown have received similar treatment, and it always looks odd, like the edge of a flimsy cartoon town.

“I’m not really sure why they tried to make something that is a back wall look like something else,” said Segal, whose 7 On Kettner rests in late afternoon shadows behind the Cartoon Wall. “I think they could have been much more successful spending the money on wonderful vegetation.”

Despite what Seabridge’s lenders thought about windows, Segal’s building has special acoustic windows that face the railroad tracks. Units sold quickly, and Segal says you can’t hear trains at all when the windows are shut.

“People get so caught up in Knotts Berry Farm and Disneyland. This is the urban environment, not some theme park,” concluded Segal.