The forgotten library site

A peek over the fence at the site where a new library was once envisioned.
- Photo by John R. Lamb

Curious visitors to the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego’s Downtown location occasionally mistake the gray-sleeved columns across the street for some Christo-like installation.

Cab drivers, strung along its nondescript plywood walls while awaiting fares from the nearby Santa Fe Depot, can be heard melodically chanting from the Koran or seen kneeling on a prayer rug placed conveniently in a quiet alcove.

Tourists walk by it without a thought, except perhaps to gaze momentarily at the larger-than-life Luis Jiménez sculpture, “Border Crossing,” rising from a little-used plaza across from the historic train station.

Welcome to the forgotten main-library site.

Now serving as the not-so-attractive roof of a functioning subterranean parking garage that was constructed simultaneously while One America Plaza—San Diego’s tallest skyscraper—rose just to the south along Kettner Boulevard nearly 20 years ago, the site could be mistaken for any other parcel Downtown, where harsh economic times have put the kibosh on construction.

But during the mid-’90s, this was ground zero in the should-we-build-a-new-centrallibrary debate. The city—pushed hard by the folks at Centre City Development Corp. (CCDC), its cocky Downtown redevelopment arm—even plunked down $2.2 million in 1996 to buy not the land itself but the “air rights” above the garage just for a new central library.

Architect Rob Quigley’s iconic trellisdomed design for which ground was recently broken near Petco Park to much fanfare and hoo-haw by new-main-library supporters? Its creation was originally intended for the Kettner site, promoted heavily by then- Mayor Susan Golding. The dome was intended to pay homage to the tiled domes of the neighboring Santa Fe Depot.

William Sannwald, who retired as the city’s library-design manager in 2004 after a long stint as the city’s librarian, recalled the property in the shadow of One America Plaza as “a good site,” but one that presented “some difficulties.”

Because it was originally envisioned for a suites-style hotel, those gray-wrapped pilings that rise from the site were ill-suited for a library, which presents much different loadbearing challenges, Sannwald explained.

It wouldn’t have been an impossible task, but certainly it would have added to the cost, he said.

Steve Williams, whose firm Sentre Partners served as leasing agent for One America Plaza prior to its sale to the Irvine Company in 2006, was a bit more blunt.

“It’s a complicated air-rights deal,” Williams told Spin Cycle. “It’s so convoluted, you really can’t put anything on top of an existing parking garage that weighs anything without changing the structure of the parking garage.”

Williams said the plan just “became too expensive,” earthquake-building standards changed over the years and, in essence, “the liability of shoring up something to carry a multi-story load became greater than the value of just going and getting some other land.”

Sannwald said he visited every site proposed for a new main library. And there were many, including where IKEA now sprawls in Mission Valley, the old SDG&E generating plant on Broadway that would have also featured an aquarium and—Sannwald’s favorite—atop the Horton Plaza parking structure.

“I still think it’s probably a superior site,” said Sannwald, who now teaches ethics and business organization at San Diego State University. “It had an audience of all those people using Horton Plaza, it was close to the trolley and it was the center of Downtown.”

City brass, however, wouldn’t touch the idea with a 10-foot library ladder. A bit too controversial, apparently. “I used to get into trouble a lot at the city because, you know, they don’t like a lot of controversy,” Sannwald noted with a slight chuckle.

Quigley, who couldn’t be reached for this column, has on occasion acknowledged that his domed library design has been nipped and tucked for four different sites. It does make Spin Cycle smile to hear library backers now speak reverently about the design’s nod to the tiled domes of Balboa Park.

That’s OK. Spin gets it. Making lemonade out of lemons is the true craft of the PR world. But, dome or no dome, the difference here is the city didn’t cut a check for any other library sites. Some of the old guard—former CCDC President Peter Q. Davis, included— think the Kettner site would make a smashing plot for a new City Hall. Oog, don’t think we’ll go there just now.

But the fact remains, among the city assets there sits $2.2 million worth of air above a parking garage next door to One America Plaza, looking for an interested party and seemingly forgotten.

Leave it to the ever-chipper Fred Maas, CCDC’s chairman and acting president, to shine as sweet a light as possible on the ownership of air.

“You know, hopefully some day it will be an appropriate office site,” Maas tells Spin Cycle. “So I don’t think there’s any urgency to do anything at this moment in this market with a very viable site in the heart of the core.”

Asked if the air rights are costing the city any money now, Maas said, “I don’t think so, but I could be wrong.”

A 2005 report to the city’s Redevelopment Agency (the City Council wearing slightly different hats), however, noted that the city “has incurred significant costs in holding and maintaining the property” since its purchase.

While Maas acknowledged some design limitations for the Kettner site, he said the city is basically at the mercy of the two-block area’s new owner and one of Downtown’s more dominant office-tower holders, Newport Beach-based Irvine Company.

“Clearly, they have an interest in nothing happening there until they’re ready,” Maas said of the landowners. “And at the appropriate time, they’re certainly one of the buyers that might be interested.”

(Irvine Company’s point man on this site, Tom Sullivan, was on vacation and did not respond to requests for an interview.)

Maas said Irvine executives have expressed concerns that the existing columns “are a limiting factor to what ultimately can be done there.” But until something is decided, Maas said, “it’s just another asset that’ll mature to the benefit of the city.”

Added Williams: “It won’t be easy, but it’s a great piece of property. And with a cooperative city, something fabulous ought to be built there.”

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