Did the jury miss the word "interim?" Was the jury hoping to create an "in" for architects who would like to create a Vantage Pointe condo tower for Uptown too, before Uptown gets its new Community Plan?

It's hard not to be sarcastic in responding to this Onion award. Hillcrest and the rest of Uptown are at the top of a hill surrounded by canyons and dead-end streets. They are not an appropriate place for high-intensity development that would bring more cars and exacerbate an already existing shortage of parking spaces. San Diego County covers over 4000 square miles, and planners who think that an efficient 24 hour public transit system that replaces cars will work here are deluding themselves. Furthermore -- and this is the most important point of all -- Hillcrest and Uptown are ALREADY models of smart growth. They are walkable, relatively dense communities with commercial activities within easy walking distance of residential areas. There never was any good reason to make Uptown more dense. Instead, planners should have looked at low-density neighborhoods like Clairemont and concentrated their "infill" development there. Last but not least, Hillcrest and Uptown attract people because of a unique charm that is based on tree-lined streets, set-backs for gardens and lawns, and San Diego's best concentration of historic architecture in a city mostly characterized by soulless cookie-cutter developments. Once it became clear that developers, architects and city planners had zero respect for Uptown's existing character, the community rose up and demanded a height limit. Yes, it's crude, but it put a stop to the transformation of Hillcrest into a dirty, noisy and crowded extension of downtown. I am tired of arrogant pin heads who come out of Ivory Tower universities and presume to impose their elitist and utterly stupid "visions" on everyone else. That is what so called "smart growth" really amounts to, and what we really need to do is ask why we're having growth in San Diego at all when this state's population is bulging at 38 million people, we have no water, and the native born population isn't growing at all.

Just what part of the word "interim" don't you folks get? And to pull out a quote from Jim "MadDog" Madaffer, who never saw a project he didn't like and now dates a building industry lobbyist, well, let's just say some of us in Uptown will be proud to wear your condemnation of an ordinance designed to protect Uptown while our community plan is updated with full public participation. In case you've missed it, the economy's been in the tank lately, so hold back your crocodile tears -- just how many projects would be under construction right now without the IHO? Zip. Zilch. Nada. And elegant towers? Please come by sometime and check out Mi Arbolito or Trilogy on 5th and explain what's elegant about them. Interesting to see some of your board members are Tucker Sadler employees, who think straddling the elegant St. Paul's Episcopal Church on 5th Avenue with insensitive stucco-and-glass condo towers of 150' and 180' on either side will somehow highlight the cathedral's charm. As Leon Krier told me this week, "True bullsh**." So again, thanks for the encouragement -- we must be doing something right! As for creating IHOs "all over the city," I'd say to other communities who care about their future and demand to be heard, "Go for it!" And to city planning director Bill Anderson: thanks for accepting the award and defending the IHO! -- John Lamb, Bankers Hill

IN THE SPIRIT OF REMAINING RECEPTIVE TO ALL PUBLIC COMMENTARY, THE O&O COMMITTEE IS PUBLISHING THIS MISGUIDED COMMENT, DESPITE THE FACT THAT O&O NOMINATIONS, INCLUDING THIS ONE, ARE NOT SUBMITTED BY THE "O&O CREW" BUT BY THE PUBLIC AT LARGE. THE COMMITTEE REMAINS NEUTRAL WITH REGARD TO ALL NOMINATIONS - OUR GOAL IS TO STIMULATE PRACTICAL, PUBLIC DISCOURSE. LOOKS LIKE IN THIS CASE, WE'VE SUCCEEDED. CHEERS! Dear O&O, Let’s have a smelly scallion for the O&O crew that doesn’t like the Uptown Interim Height Ordinance. Their ugly sarcasm is partly right, in that there should indeed not be a series of interim height ordinances dotting San Diego’s landscape. We should have a single, city-wide, permanent, thirty-foot height limit. If a property owner would like to go higher or be denser or have a different FAR or have some other deviation, the City has a procedure to accommodate that. A smelly scallion to O&O for letting its tawdry politics overwhelm its sense of right and wrong. Let’s have a great big stinking Onion too, for O&O’s sellout to the development industry and its contempt for citizens and communities and the hard work they put into their communities to preserve community history and temperament and character and ambience and liveability; the very things architects and architecture should pay attention to. Instead, O&O is flacking for the greed industry, trading its birthright and its members’ good reputations for industry favors. That’s shabby - sad, contemptible, and shabby. Shame on O&O! Finally, a gigantic Onion for those gigantic failures, the Strategic Framework, which inci- dentally, doesn’t exist now, and the Village Strategy which hasn’t produced a village any- where in San Diego. Remember, ticky-tacky boxes that all look alike aren't designed by communities. They're designed by architects. Jim Varnadore City Heights

First, Hillcrest, Mission Hills, Banker's Hill, and University Heights have dramatically intensified density over the course of the past 10 years. Did these communities get more parks or other promised amenities? No. Is traffic nearly impossible along University Ave, Washington St, Park Blvd. Yes? Do additional high-rise buildings destroy community character in these older communities? Yes. Was enactment of the interim height ordinance the result of active citizen participation? Yes. Is these one of the singular examples in San Diego of citizens winning over developer interests? Yes.

I agree with the previous comment that the IHO should get an orchid, not an onion! Who would wish to see the kinds of high rise carbuncles on the landscape that were perpetrated in the 1950's when the Senior high-rises were visited upon us on Park & University and in Mission Hills? In rebuttal to your arguments: 1) The IHO is no "blow to smart growth", nor does it contradict in any way the "City of Villages" framework. It is an interim measure to make sure that any loopholes that might have allowed out-of-scale and character buildings are closed until the new community plans are in place. This seems like a sensible precaution. 2) I don't know where you get the idea that the IHO will encourage identical "stucco boxes". The local Community Planning Groups are very vocal in encourage interesting design, articulation of facades to prevent just such "monotony of form", and pedestrian-friendly street frontages that do not allow for “shadowing at the street level” in all new and remodeled construction. And very vocal in discouraging just the type of construction you suggest might occur. The same Community Planning Groups support the IHO. We are all learning to encourage greener, smarter, more bike and pedestrian friendly, village-like development, and Uptown’s IHO is an aid to that goal, not a hindrance.

For the last decade, community members often expressed disdain for the derivative and uninspired building designs that were being erected in Uptown. Often the finished products did not live up to over-stated promises or renderings and community members would lament and regretted how incompatible new buildings were with the existing structures and streetscape. The existing buildings have a much more interesting and thoughtful quality that was simply unmatched by most newer projects. Working with the city to directly address these issues during the hard economic times showed resolve. The city after all did not have the funding to immediately correct the community plan even though they had been asked to do so by community members in meeting after meeting. The IHO allows most projects to move forward. Realistically with the economy the way it is, there has been little impact to any new projects and there is no real implication that over the next few months that the whole area will instantly be one height since it is not that way now. The IHO has made it clear to designers and developers that to match the high quality built environment in Uptown requires a bit more inspiration and isn't that exactly what projects that get orchids embody?