Pacific Highway Inactivity
- Project Address: Pacific Highway between E and Beech
- Project Owner/ Developer: CCDC et.al.
For years, Pacific Highway, between E Street and approximately Beech Street has seen monster development in the form of magnificent glass and concrete residential towers, mostly by Bosa Development. Most recently, Bayside by Bosa and Breeza have added to the ranks of these towers on the north end, while the western side of Pacific remains a relic of outdated and unsightly hotels and Navy administration buildings. For all the glam the new residential towers have brought to this stretch of downtown, one critical issue remains unsatisfied. There's not a lick of pedestrian street activity along Pacific Highway. Every one of the residential towers puts a block long wall against the street to protect the homeowners at ground level. What could have been a vibrant street, especially with all the cruisers coming in a block away, is instead a dead zone given exclusively to cars. Why does CCDC make such a big deal about street activity everywhere else in our downtown, but allows for what is essentially a bedroom community to line this 3/4-mile long stretch of potentially bountiful, spirited walkways, a mere block away from the bay??
Project Awarded
"We have met the enemy he is US." A dysfunctional congress that can’t approve a debt ceiling limit….A strangled Sacramento that can’t even figure out a way to put budget issues to a public vote . . . they must have learned their lessons here in San Diego. As a collective of individuals, interest groups, businesses, NGO’s, City, County and State governments and too many agencies, committees, commissions and panels to list here tonight San Diegian’s have been debating the future of the gift of our bayfront since before the Nolan Plan of 1908. And yet today Pacific Highway sits vacant, an occasional short-cut for the traffic weary commuter; a place that no dog walker dare tread – much less someone looking for a glass of water or a pack of gum or even directions. The People of San Diego have spoken and the 2011 People’s Choice Onion goes to the stretch “Pacific Highway Inactivity” recognizing that stretch of roadway through downtown: a non-place, a void of empty fake storefronts and sidewalks that are so underused you can’t even find old gum on them. Pacific Highway through downtown is a pedestrian adverse stretch that should be the City’s Main Street but is instead its Back Alley.We all want the waterfront to be our front porch and open to everyone, but when it gets down to the details - how much commercialization, how much parkland, how much housing - we cannot even seem to find a common starting line. To single out any one agency for the onion would be both wrong and inaccurate. It must be an award for ALL of us; public agencies, interest groups, and the broader community for not really talking with each other in order to reach common ground.