After being on hold for more than three years because of fiscal constraints, Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s (SIO) Seaside Forum project was reviewed Wednesday, March 7 for a second time at a La Jolla Shores meeting.
Many residents in a crowd of close to 25 people were concerned that the series of conference room cottages and the two-story auditorium would obstruct their view of the ocean from their homes and could pose additional traffic and parking problems.
“There is already bumper-to-bumper traffic on La Jolla Shores Drive from here all the way down to Avenida de la Playa,” said Maria Rothschild, a La Jolla Shores resident. “I’ve lived here for 35 years and I’m all for this project, but we are already dealing with a parking problem on a daily basis. I just wanted to, on a personal note, say that if you do what you are proposing that you make sure the parking problem will not increase any more than it already has.”
The proposed Robert Paine Scripps Seaside Forum is approximately 14,225 square feet of combined conference centers on a parcel of land that has in the past housed the Surfside lounge and machine shop at the southwestern tip of SIO’s campus. The lounge will be transformed into a restaurant in the proposed project plan.
The facility will be used mostly by SIO faculty but could also be rented by the public for special events, such as weddings, according to Camilla Ingram, SIO’s director for capital programs and space management.
A 55-space parking lot will be provided to accommodate the project’s 300-seat auditorium and five smaller cottages ” a trade-off that seems inadequate, according to neighboring residents Ann Jaffe and Jim Babcock, whose homes are directly across from the proposed site.
Babcock requested that SIO and UCSD implement story poles, or markers that show the height of the buildings, before construction for the facility begins.
Jaffe questioned whether public events at the facility would create an overflow of parking into La Jolla Shores streets, especially if multiple events at each of the smaller cottages were allowed on the same day.
“Yes, SIO does intend to rent out the facility in order to give back to the community and to offset some of the maintenance fees,” Ingram said. “But we will be mindful of the on-site parking situation as much as possible.
Milt Phegley, University of California, San Diego’s director of community planning, presented similar information about the project at Wednesday’s meeting, stating that UCSD would not schedule multiple same-day events at the facility and would be working closely with SIO to help provide parking on its campus and using shuttle vans and buses to transport people from one site to the other.
Because SIO is a part of UCSD, projects proposed for the 170-acre marine science research center are done in collaboration with UCSD staff.
Phegley’s presentation was followed by a detailed description from project architects Taal Safdie and Ricardo Rabines, who used digital diagrams to depict the facility’s architecture and landscaping.
The view corridors, or space between buildings that allows people to see down to the ocean, will be preserved and the architects will use the site’s previous structure as a limitation for how close to the coastline they can build, Rabines said.
Each of the five cottages, the largest of which holds a maximum of 75 people, would be one-story buildings, or approximately 16 feet high, Safdie said.
Pretreated wood, glass sand-colored cement and some stucco are the main materials proposed for the buildings, the architects said.
“The site itself is so magnificent,” Rabines said. “We know it’s a local residential area, and we want to treat it nicely and gently. We have generated ways to make the building blend in perfect and be respectful of the existing trees ” we want to preserve the beautiful palms.”
One resident said that wood seemed like an impractical material to use on a building so close to the ocean and worried that the cost to maintain the structure might be increasingly costly as it weathers.
Wood withstands wind and salt in the same way concrete does, the architects said, adding that they did not foresee any additional repairs to the building in the near future.
A $13.6 million total budget has been estimated to complete the project, which should be finished by March 2008, according to Ingram.
Because SIO is nestled close to the coastline, the project requires a Coastal Development Permit and will be reviewed in April by the Coastal Commission, according to Phegley. Construction is scheduled to begin shortly after that, according to UCSD’s planning department Web site.
Scripps Institution of Oceanography is home to more than 1,600 researchers, scientists and graduate students and has been a part of La Jolla since the early 1900s.
For more information about SIO or the Robert Pain Seaside Forum project, visit www.comm
plan.ucsd.edu/community_planning_UCSD_projects or sio.ucsd.edu.