By Leslie Wolf Branscomb
“It started out as a nice idea,” said Kimberly Claffy, one of the project’s primary critics. “But what it’s turned into is a Walmart-ification of the park.”
Those concerned about the project are mostly Mission Hills residents whose homes overlook the park. They are worried about traffic, parking, lack of public involvement and the potential for ugly new buildings to ruin the park’s Victorian ambience.
The project’s proponents paint a far different picture, however, of a lovely and faithfully-recreated Victorian village that will bring visitors to the underutilized park. “This is such a great project, and it has the potential to be very popular,” said Fred Grand, president of Pacific Hospitality Group, Inc., which recently took over the park.
Heritage Park was created in 1973, when the first of seven Victorian-era buildings was moved to the 7.8-acre lot in Old Town, at the corner of Juan and Harney streets. The nonprofit Save Our Heritage Organisation (SOHO) was given oversight.
“It was always supposed to be self-supporting,” said SOHO executive director Bruce Coons. “It was supposed to be commercially successful and self-promoting, and never has been,” he said.
Some of the oldest structures have fallen into disrepair and are currently closed to the public. Off the beaten path, away from the crowds that visit Old Town Historic State Park, the park is virtually empty most days – visited by schoolchildren on field trips, but few others.
“It’s a ghost town,” said Jean Walcher, a public relations specialist working with Grand. “I just think it wasn’t well-managed, because (the county) didn’t have the resources,” she said. “That’s going to be the benefit to the community — it will be better managed and there will be money put into it.”
The county, which has owned and run Heritage Park since its inception, shed itself of the money-losing park on June 24, approving a 58.5-year lease to Pacific Hospitality Group, which also owns the Hacienda Hotel in Old Town. The lease comes with two 10-year options, and requires Pacific Hospitality to use $4 million in county funds to renovate the existing structures.
The plans call for construction of four additional buildings in the park, to house bed-and-breakfast facilities. Ultimately there will be 84 guest rooms in Heritage Park, including some in the existing Victorians.
With the county out of the picture, it will now be up to the City of San Diego to approve any construction and parking plans related to the project.
The plan isn’t new: the county first authorized issuance of a request for proposals to operate and develop Heritage Park in September 2004. Negotiations with Pacific Hospitality Group began in late 2006.
Grand maintains there have been more than 33 public meetings regarding the project. However, critics are adamant that opportunities for public input have been few.
One neighbor, Linda Smith, recalled attending a community meeting four or five years ago where, she said, people voiced their concerns about noise, traffic and parking problems. She said they heard nothing more about it after that, and assumed the project was dead.
Late last year, in October, Smith, Claffy and other neighbors learned that a Draft Negative Declaration was produced by the county’s Department of General Services, which concluded that the Heritage Park Master Plan Improvement project would not have a significant effect on the environment.
The report included renderings of buildings to be constructed — the first that the critics said they had seen. The drawings include depictions of boxy two and three-story buildings identified as Italianate, Second Empire and Gothic Revival in style.
At this point the opposition really picked up steam. The four buildings, as depicted in the county document, “are significant in size and they really don’t seem to be in the spirit of the park,” Smith said. “These don’t look very Victorian to me. They look more like barracks.”
Grand and Walcher said the renderings submitted by Pacific Hospitality Group for the report are far from the finished product. “We haven’t really had a chance to design those buildings yet,” Grand said. The ones in the report “are not very pretty because they’re computer generated, and there’s no landscaping.”
“And we still have to please SOHO,” Grand said. “They’re our worst critic.”
Shortly after the report was circulated, SOHO’s Coons sent a letter to the county warning that any new construction at Heritage Park needs to be approved not only by SOHO, but also the city’s Historical Resources Board. “The park’s original mission was to provide a place for important Victorian structures that were threatened with demolition. There is no provision for new construction of the scale proposed by the current project,” the letter read.
But Coons’ letter also added: “We feel that new structures that are faithful reconstructions of important lost links in San Diego Victorian architectural heritage … could be added in such a way as to not adversely impact the historic structures in the park and improve the financial stability of Heritage Park.”
Grand swears that’s exactly what he will strive to do. “My goal is to try to find homes in San Diego that were lost over the years – like Alonso Horton’s home, which was demolished – and recreate them,” he said.
After the lease was approved, handing over the park to Pacific Hospitality, Coons said he is hoping to locate additional existing Victorians in San Diego that can be moved to the site – even though that’s a difficult and expensive endeavor. If that proves impossible, he said reconstruction of historic homes could work. “If you do accurate reproductions of pieces of lost architecture, that would probably be appropriate,” Coons said, noting that the current plans do not reflect that. “The key is to keep it compatible with the existing structures, which is not real easy to do.”
In addition to designing the buildings, Pacific Hospitality Group still must address the parking issue. While there are some parking spaces near Heritage Park, all agree that parking is tough in Old Town, particularly on weekends and during the summer.
Claffy said she only found out about the draft negative declaration because a post card was mailed to her, directing her to pick up an item at the post office. The item turned out to be a letter from the county, directing her to view the 60-page document online. It was not what Claffy considered an adequate attempt to notify the public.
When she viewed the report, she was incensed to see that the county had concluded parking and traffic would not be a problem, despite the fact that the project currently includes no plans for extra parking spaces. She fears the extra traffic will affect Mission Hills as well, as people head up Juan Street looking for a place to park.
“Parking is an issue in Old Town, there’s no doubt about that,” said Walcher. “There will be one parking space per unit, which is what is required for bed-and-breakfasts,” she said.
How that will be accomplished remains to be seen. Walcher suggested there may be a parking permit program for residents – an option Claffy doesn’t care for. Grand said perhaps they will work out a deal for parking at other establishments when they’re closed for the day, or maybe shuttles can bring customers from more distant parking lots. “Bed-and-breakfasts guests will park in parking guaranteed for Heritage park,” Grand said. “Wherever that is.”
While the architecture and parking issues remain up in the air, it is certain that there will be more public hearings as the process slowly moves forward.
Approval of the lease was just the first step, said James Duffy, chief of staff for County Supervisor Ron Roberts, whose district includes Heritage Park. “Traffic and other mitigation are issues for the city, and that process hasn’t even begun yet, so there will be ample opportunities for the public to address that,” Duffy said.
Next up: The Heritage Park proposal will be discussed at the Aug. 4 meeting of the Uptown Planners community planning group, 6:00 p.m. at the Joyce Beers Community Center in Hillcrest, 1230 Cleveland Ave., 92103. The center is across from Trader Joe’s in the Uptown Shopping District.
Leslie Wolf Branscomb has been an editor and journalist for 27 years, writing primarily about politics and law for the San Diego Union-Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Associated Press and others.
