A $21 million cruise ship terminal being built on downtown San Diego's Broadway Pier will change the look of the waterfront but is spurring debate about whether the project leaves any meaningful public space.
Citizen activists are raising the concerns, as is the state's powerful Coastal Commission.
The 52,500-square-foot building project has been controversial nearly since it was announced.
An organized group of civic activists objected, saying the building, now set to be 42 feet tall, will ruin the one-of-a-kind convergence of Broadway and San Diego Bay at a time when the city and the San Diego Unified Port District are poised to spend $228 million on a waterfront makeover.
The new terminal was to be a temporary structure, needed while the port renovated its primary B Street facility to serve cruise ships. But fire standards and tightened security rules dictated a permanent building.
The port district and the city scuffled over the mundane initial design — basically a large industrial shed — so the port district ended up spending about $8 million more than expected. That delayed the B Street pier work, said Rita Vandergaw, port marketing director.
Now that the terminal is under way, questions have arisen about use of the rest of the 1,000-foot pier. A little more than half of the concrete surface will be public open space when cruise ships are not in port, which is the majority of days.
San Diego's downtown redevelopment agency has set aside $1 million to turn the terminal's “forecourt,” the pier's first 400 feet, into something special.
Vandergaw envisions festivals and public markets, in addition to maybe potted plants — though buses and trucks will need to drive through the area on cruise days, so nothing big or permanent will work.
A spokesman for San Diego's Centre City Development Corp. said the agency wants to bring the “cool” to the pier.
“Part of our challenge will be to come up with a design that makes the average Joe feel like, on a non-cruise-ship day, that ‘Hey, the gates are open. It's OK for me to walk there,’ ” said Gary Bosse, CCDC's assistant vice president for public works. “And not only is it OK, but, ‘There's something cool out there I want to see.’ ”
Activists say what has occurred is not cool.
“The whole thing is based on servicing cruise ships and bringing supplies onto and off the pier with massive diesel trucks,” said Don Wood, a citizen watchdog on waterfront projects. “Anything that's available on that pier for the public is an afterthought.”
Older plans showed an oval park at the foot of Broadway that is now just a memory. But the California Coastal Commission hasn't forgotten it.
In a July 2 letter to the port district, the commission said the oval park was going to measure more than 79,000 square feet, and that the public space planned on the pier entrance and surrounding promenade along Harbor Drive doesn't match up.
“There is no question that the revised park/plaza configuration is not the same,” the letter said.
Officials involved in planning the pier and building say they've tried their best to make both attractive.
“It will be more of a visual presence than what we have now,” Vandergaw said. “But it's going to be a nice addition to the waterfront in terms of colors, public art and public space.”
The colors will be blues and greens, she said, and much of the building will be glass. The port envisions it being rented out for civic events and weddings. The building will also have environmental features, with solar arrays providing 14 percent of the terminal's energy.
The public art will be see-through panels splashed with lights to create the effect of dancing water on the facade.
Phil Bona, CCDC's former vice president for architecture, said he understands why longtime activists might feel let down after years of planning the waterfront upgrade.
“I'd probably be disappointed because I got sold a bill of goods that was full of romantic notions I thought were going to happen. But things change,” said Bona, who now operates his own architecture firm.
“I'm just happy that something's going to be get built. Because one thing I've learned about San Diego: There's a lot of talk and a lot of planning and only after a lot of angst do things get built.”
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