By Pat Sherman | SDUN Assistant Editor

The Balboa Park Committee will hold a meeting Saturday, Jan. 8, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. to hear public testimony on proposed changes for Balboa Park, including a parking garage and bypass bridge.

Critics say the project, spearheaded by Qualcomm co-founder Irwin Jacobs, would diminish the park’s historic character—particularly at the entrance to the park off Sixth Avenue and Laurel Street.

Topics of discussion will include the addition of a bypass bridge off the existing Cabrillo Bridge that would divert traffic from entering the Plaza de Panama.

Leading opposition to the project is the Save Our Heritage Organisation (SOHO). The preservation group’s executive director, Bruce Coons, said the roughly $35 million plans would be “extremely destructive” to the park’s west entrance and its “magical city on the hill” character.

Coons said this aesthetic element would be blocked by the new bypass bridge (as it is now by untrimmed city trees).

Traffic would still enter the park on the Cabrillo Bridge, though instead of traveling forward through the center of the two portions of the Museum of Man, it would be diverted onto the new bridge that would veer south around the museum of man to a new parking structure behind the Organ Pavilion.

Coons said he fears the project would turn Balboa Park into a “motorist’s Disneyland.”

“I think we all want to get the cars out of the Plaza de Panama,” Coons said, “but (the bypass bridge) is just a massive structure.”

The Balboa Park Committee, a community planning group, serves in an advisory capacity to the mayor, city council and city manager on issues related to the acquisition development maintenance and operation of the park.

For more information and to view the plans, visit sohosandiego.org.