LOT NOW CAR-FREE ZONE
Car-free Palisades Plaza features colorful tables, chairs, new landscaping
City officials celebrated the official opening of Balboa Park’s Palisades Plaza, which was a parking lot.
An asphalt parking lot in the heart of Balboa Park has been restored to parkland and is being touted as an incremental-but-important addition to the city landmark.
Wednesday, city officials celebrated the official opening of what’s being called Palisades Plaza. The resurfaced area directly in front of the San Diego Air & Space Museum, which had been the 144-space South Palisades parking lot, is now a car-free zone with turf, colorful tables and chairs, enhanced lighting and landscaping, an improved tram stop and upgraded sidewalks. The adjacent North Palisades lot remains intact and has been repaved.
“By restoring the Palisades to its original grandeur, we’ve turned what was literally a crumbling parking lot into San Diego’s next great public space for San Diegans to enjoy at a time when they need it the most,” said outgoing Mayor Kevin Faulconer. “This was a very important first step.”
Faulconer said he also supports a long-discussed plan to add a large water fountain that respects the Palisades’ 1935 origins to the site, but noted that additional funds will need to be identified.
Envisioned in Balboa Park’s 1989 master plan, Palisades Plaza was championed for years by the preser
vation-driven nonprofit, The Committee of One Hundred, which is also funding replica ornamental decorations for the exterior of the neighboring San Diego Automotive Museum and other area improvements.
The parking-to-park reclamation effort became viable last year when the city, at Faulconer’s behest, redirected $9.3 million funds that had been previously reserved for a now-defunct Plaza de Panama project to other Balboa Park priorities. At the time, City Council approved a $1.2 million budget for work on the Palisades Plaza.
The project, however, was not without its detractors, who objected to the loss of conveniently located parking spaces. “Back when I was on the City Council, any time you talked about swapping out some parking spaces to turn it back to people, the knives came out. People were very, very concerned,” San Diego Mayor-elect Todd Gloria said during a press conference. “I understand that concern, but I would point to this being just another example of when we have made these alterations, they have been home runs for San Diego. If you want to challenge me on that, I invite you to look at the Plaza de Panama, where we had a few dozen parking spaces. It has now been turned into almost the living room for Balboa Park.”
As noted, in 2013, a 1.5acre area in front of the San Diego Museum of Art was repaved to eradicate parking.
The Palisades Plaza, though small in scale, is still meant as a meaningful upgrade to the overall Balboa Park experience, and signals the kind of projects the city will pursue under Gloria’s leadership.
“There has been a focus in recent years on major projects, legacy projects. I think this approach, there’s a lot more support for,” he told the Union-Tribune. The city and
its nonprofit partners, he said, can build on these incremental efforts to attract more generous philanthropic contributions. “The hope would be for a long-term, permanent funding source that
would provide the certainty of funding for the bigger projects that are going to be needed.”
Currently, the city is working on a number of improvements of varying signifi
cance, including building new restrooms, replacing museum roofs and restoring the Botanical Building.