20 years of Horton Plaza

Mall has played huge role in revitalizing downtown San Diego

By Martin Stolz
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

August 8, 2005 marks 20 years since the opening of Horton Plaza, an experiment aimed at revitalizing downtown San Diego.

Getting to the opening took 13 difficult years. The project had a dozen designs, weathered recessions and an energy crisis, and survived battles with politicians and preservationists.

But today, supporters and former skeptics say the experiment worked and helped transform downtown into what leaders wanted it to be – the city's cultural center and a rapidly growing residential area.

"San Diego had lost its heart, had lost its downtown," said Pam Hamilton of the Centre City Development Corp., or CCDC, which was created in 1975 to aid redevelopment at Horton Plaza and throughout downtown.

The project's other goals – such as bringing a trolley downtown, building a convention center and creating residential appeal – appeared elusive to many, including Mike Stepner, who retired in 1997 after 27 years as a city planner and architect.

"It's been a great success," Stepner said. "But I was a worrier. For years, I could look out my window at City Hall and see this giant hole in the ground."

Horton Plaza also broke rules for retail development and influenced future projects, including Petco Park's construction.

It brought a mall with department stores to the city's center, after decades when retailers fled to the suburbs.

It featured an open-air and vertical design when malls elsewhere were enclosed, flat and surrounded by acres of parking.

It combined a mall and a hotel, two live theaters and movie theaters, when such traditional and mixed uses were rare in a single project.

Westfield Horton Plaza, as the center is now known for the Australian company that owns and operates it, has planned a 20th anniversary celebration tomorrow with free cake, noontime fireworks and discounts from merchants.

The center continues to evolve, as does the neighborhood.

Horton Plaza faces unprecedented competition from Gaslamp Quarter restaurants and retail stores springing up in condominium projects across downtown. Ballpark Village, a residential, office and retail project proposed near Petco Park, could steal customers from the mall.

Ron Burns, a regional vice president for Westfield who was the assistant general manager at Horton Plaza when it opened in 1985, isn't worried.

"At the end of the day, there are only so many customers and so many dollars," he said. "We'll compete head to head, and that's good."

The Horton Plaza shopping center has an edge, Burns said, over future competition by every measure – its convenience, entertainment, unique stores and sheer size. The center has 998,194 square feet of retail space, with 123 stores, three department stores and 30 kiosks or carts.

Lure to downtown
The story of Horton Plaza dates back more than four decades, when San Diego's downtown area had hit rock bottom. Post-World War II suburban growth came at the expense of the center city.

City leaders, seeking to reverse the decline, imagined new uses for the half-block Horton Plaza park on the south side of Broadway between Third and Fourth avenues. Alonzo Horton sold the plaza to the city in the 1890s.

Dreams of using the plaza for a county courthouse, central library, community college, office tower or parking garage never materialized.

Instead, a simpler effort, fixing the park's dilapidated bathrooms, spawned the $180 million shopping center in the six blocks south of the plaza.

By the early 1970s, San Diego had pegged its aspirations on residential development, because the city didn't expect to become a center for corporate headquarters, said Hamilton, of the CCDC.

But the impediments were huge because "downtown was really pathetic," she said. How could the city lure people to live downtown without shopping or desirable housing?

San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson, who took office in December 1971, soon embarked on the city's first effort to revitalize downtown, the Horton Plaza Redevelopment Project.

In 1972, the city began assembling land for the shopping center, including some with historic buildings, which led to preservation fights. The city eventually had 11.5 acres to squeeze in a mall that would have required 70 acres in the suburbs, Hamilton said.

Developer Ernest Hahn in 1974 won the right to build the mall next to the Horton Plaza park. He demanded commitments from officials for trolley service, residential projects and a convention center to bring customers downtown.

Even though Hahn's company paid $140 million to build the Horton Plaza project, critics saw the proposals as a city giveaway of $40 million in land and tax dollars. Others questioned Hahn's commitment to Horton Plaza, which became tied to the approval of his University Towne Centre project in La Jolla.

Hamilton said Hahn, who she described as "an honorable man," proved his commitment when he personally bought $5 million in bonds for public improvements near Horton Plaza.

At the time, Hahn's company had been bought by a Canadian company, and the city couldn't afford to issue bonds because of double-digit interest rates.

Active sidewalks
Few things about Horton Plaza proceeded with ease.

Still, the shopping center improved during the many delays, Hamilton said. For example, the center today has a Nordstrom department store where an automotive repair shop had been proposed, she said.

To avoid making Horton Plaza "an oasis in the middle of a desert," Hamilton said the CCDC established two other redevelopment areas – one for housing and another for expanding the business district and a proposed convention center.

Hahn's original vision didn't match the city's. He proposed a suburban-style indoor mall with an ice skating rink, said Ron Buckley, then a city planner who also advised the historic site board on the project.

But city leaders "from top to bottom" wanted an active sidewalk with stores, display windows and entrances, not "big, blank facades that the public has to walk around," he said.

The energy wasted on air conditioning and an ice rink didn't fit San Diego's climate, especially in a nation still overcoming the effects of an oil embargo, Buckley said.

Hahn hired a new architect, Jon Jerde, who devised the concept for the open-air mall connected by bridges and ramps.

In 1978, California voters passed Proposition 13, which reduced property taxes and limited their increases, forcing the city to scrap plans to pay for Horton Plaza's public parking garages.

Hahn's company agreed to pay for the garages but wanted to control their design, and the Fourth Avenue garage became "a huge bone of contention," Buckley said.

Jim Ahern, a Gaslamp Quarter property owner and real estate professional, described Horton Plaza's Fourth Avenue facade back then as a "radiator inventory" because pedestrians looked at a garage housing more than 2,000 cars.

It took nine years to resolve – from the date of the shopping center's opening on Aug. 9, 1985, until 1994, when the Fourth Avenue garage was hidden by the construction of a 65-loft apartment building with street-level shops.

The area around the Horton Plaza park and south of Broadway is no longer a den of tattoo parlors, strip clubs and blight. The center has 11 million visitors each year – near the attendance of Disneyland – and about 2,000 employees, a Westfield official said.

The city collects about $1.5 million from parking and rents. It also collects higher revenues from property and sales taxes. Moreover, the city retains control over Horton Plaza as a redevelopment area, which is expected to continue changing:

One parcel is undeveloped on G Street, where a proposed 30-story, 461-room Intercontinental Hotel is being challenged in the courts.

Westfield retains the rights to build nearly 400,000 square feet of offices on top of the parking garages, though company officials declined to comment on their plans.

The historic 1924 Balboa Theatre on Fourth Avenue is undergoing a $20 million rehabilitation, led by the CCDC. It is expected to be open in 2007 as a performing arts center for local theater groups, cinema and music concerts.

Success at Horton Plaza became the cornerstone for all subsequent downtown redevelopment, while serving as a model for projects combining public and private investment across the country, Hamilton said.

Horton Plaza gave momentum to other downtown projects, including the San Diego Convention Center and the ballpark.

The CCDC also has expanded its reach to encompass a 1,450-acre swath from Little Italy to the East Village, where the residential population is projected to grow from 27,000 to 90,000 in the next two decades.

The Horton Plaza shopping center didn't come without the loss of some historic buildings or complaints that the project pushed homelessness and social problems to other neighborhoods. But it continues to influence downtown redevelopment, Buckley said.

"It's meant much, much more to the city than was probably originally intended, and that's the spillover effect," he said, referring to subsequent residential and other development. "It's become a focus for activity and commerce in downtown."