More than 100 La Jolla residents had a chance to gather new information concerning the future for Bird Rock’s commercial sector during a public presentation Nov. 14 by urban design planners Michael Stepner and Howard Blackson.
The meeting came at the end of a four-day workshop series during which residents and business owners discussed what they did and did not want for building structures along Bird Rock’s La Jolla Boulevard and the surrounding area.
“While some La Jollans outside of Bird Rock have participated in the charette and one or more of the meetings, word of the new plan is only now filtering out to the rest of the community,” said Joe LaCava, a member of the Bird Rock Community Council (BRCC) and the La Jolla Community Planning Association, via e-mail.
Public discussion of revamping the business district has been ongoing since May, when an initial proposition to change the community’s Planned District Ordinance (PDO) to include three-story buildings and an increased floor area ratio (FAR) was met with strong opposition by residents.
Stepner and Blackson were hired to work with the community in a process called form-based coding, which ultimately allows residents to chose the way structures in Bird Rock’s commercial sector will be designed.
At Tuesday’s meeting, however, no one spoke in opposition to Stepner and Blackson’s proposal, which included a plan containing the provision: “Third stories: allow where appropriate and under specific conditions,” according to LaCava.
Members of No Third Stories (NTS), an organization that formed in response to May’s initial proposition to amend La Jolla’s PDO, believe that Stepner and Blackson are moving too fast with the Bird Rock Plan.
“I don’t feel it’s necessary, and I feel there is a rush to approve it,” Cindy Thorsen, a member of No Third Stories, said by phone a week after the public presentation. “I think for something as important as this issue, which will have an impact for years to come on greater La Jolla, that the process needs to be longer than this and the public really needs time to digest it. It was presented as a concession, not a compromise.”
An NTS forum to discuss the designers’ proposal is scheduled for sometime after Jan. 1, 2007, and the organization will keep its members updated through e-mails, according to Thorsen.
The organization believes that city officials may use the approval of the Bird Rock Plan as a precedent to implement similar plans, including third-story buildings, in other parts of San Diego, Thorsen said.
“I don’t want to come off like we [No Third Stories] are saying no to everything, but there needs to be a lot more public input,” she said. “I know they worked long and hard, but to me I see that presentation as only setting down a general foundation. A decision can’t come so quickly.”
The design planners are, in fact, trying to move the plan along at a quick pace, Blackson said by phone earlier this week.
“We are trying to wrap up the code and trying to get it to public for their consumption,” he said. “We want to respond as quickly as we can, and are trying to get it done within the next two weeks.”
Once completed, the designers will present the plan to the BRCC and the La Jolla Community Planning Association to gain further feedback.
Blackson, as well as LaCava, emphasized that the plan proposal limits the three-story aspect to only the middle portion of buildings, which is generally shielded from the view of pedestrians and homeowners.
The plan also places increased restrictions on building heights in relation to the front, rear and side setbacks of the structures, which prevents continuous blocks of 30-foot roofs that could obstruct views of the coastline, according to LaCava.
“Some might fear that this creates a precedent,” LaCava said of the proposal, “but the important element of form-based code, in my view, is that a plan is not arbitrarily imposed on a neighborhood. Instead, the unique characteristics of that neighborhood are studied and understood and a plan that is unique for that neighborhood is developed and applied.”
The designers believe that the problem is not with the three story buildings, but with the way the buildings are designed.
“The three stories is not imperative, it is just a part of the plan,” Blackson said. “You don’t have to do it and you don’t have to do it everywhere. You don’t ban things, you put the right pieces in the right places.”