Insights into Photography
Teddy Cruz wasn’t just supposed to change Downtown San Diego—he was supposed to change the way we think about Downtown San Diego. A professor at UCSD, an architect of international renown with a reputation for finding innovative ways to weave buildings and spaces into an urban tapestry, Cruz was, when he started in May 2006, going to rejuvenate the board of Downtown’s redevelopment arm, the Centre City Development Corporation, and with it, Downtown. Now, two-and-a-half years later, he’s had enough.
“In reality, I wish I didn’t have to leave,” Cruz told CityBeat. “At this moment, I do not have the time to really engage in those issues.”
But back in 2006, he was excited, right? Absolutely, he said. Since its inception in 1975, CCDC has been focused on luring development to a once-decrepit part of San Diego. It has succeeded beyond most people’s expectations, but the compulsive drive to build has left Downtown a strange conglomeration of nightclub hotspots, office towers and high-rise condos, with little to knit the strands. Cruz was supposed to change all that.
“I joined the board so I could inject into the conversation other issues—in particular, the debate about what the public realm is,” he said. “This was a time to enable the public realm; this seemed like an amazing possibility.”
He was enthusiastic about working with then-CCDC president Nancy Graham (before her resignation last summer amid scandal), who had promised a new era of public services in the city core. He thought Graham and the board he joined could change the way people think about shared space.
“Public parks, instead of just beautiful public spaces, should be surrounded by practical community spaces that could inject a variety of uses,” he said. “But the new ideas of a new public realm weren’t there yet. The public realm was just beautifying a little park with flowers.”
At board meetings, Cruz often found himself voting alone. He was the solitary opposition vote when it came to approving plans for the blocky towers that may someday comprise Doug Manchester’s redevelopment of the Navy Broadway Complex. He fought for adding new arts institutions instead of more office buildings. But in the end, he wasn’t doing the work he intended.
“I had to comment on cosmetic changes to things” he said, “not to fundamentally get involved in producing the vision that was a lot more powerful, a lot more transformational.”
And while he has nothing but praise for both his board colleagues and CCDC staff, he often found himself battling a bottom-line culture. “There would be two spaces that can be given to the community as institutions for the arts, and the response from rest of board was that the market knew better,” Cruz said. “Ideologically, we had differences.”
As time went on, Cruz found his enthusiasm flagging—“I just wasn’t in it anymore”—and let his other projects dominate his time.
“In order to achieve that new way of thinking about it, I needed to spend lot more time,” he said. “But the processes are so set, I would have to really invest a lot more energy and time that I don’t have right now.”
While working on the CCDC board, Cruz’s architectural career continued to blossom: He began work on affordable-housing developments in rural New York and Managua, Nicaragua; he secured funding to build Casa Familiar, his long-awaited experiment in a new urbanism in San Ysidro; and he had to keep up his teaching at UCSD.
And now, though he hasn’t technically resigned, he has announced his plan to spend a lot more time on those projects. Mayor Jerry Sanders has nominated architect Manuel Oncina to replace him, and if he is confirmed by the City Council, Cruz will probably tender his resignation soon after.
Write to ericw@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.
