Horton Plaza Park, reopened a year ago after an $18 million expansion, sometimes looks like homeless plaza.

Dozens of street people, accompanied by backpacks, shopping carts and sleeping bags, can be found dozing in broad daylight on the lawn of the historic park, known for its 107-year-old Broadway Fountain that was designed by famed San Diego architect Irving J. Gill.

Others congregate around the umbrella tables in the shadow of the reconstructed Bradley Building, with its temporary mural depicting downtown in an upside-down perspective.

The former Sloan’s ice cream store area has been taken over by street people seeking a safe place to sleep and relax. (Roger Showley/U-T)


A few huddle beneath the pergola of the now-closed Sloan’s ice cream shop, outside a yet-to-be-opened burger bar, on benches and in the amphitheater. One early afternoon last week there were about 30 apparently homeless people scattered around the 1.2-acre park.

Whether it’s the presence of the homeless, the lack of concerts, food services or the design of the park, Horton Plaza Park is not yet the success that was promised.

Landscape architect Vicki Estrada, whose office has overlooked the plaza for decades, called it a “big expanse of not too much.”

She posted her thoughts on her Facebook page and received numerous replies that were uniformly critical of the park in its reinvented state.


“I have not spent much time there, but I hated it,” said housing consultant Peter Denehy.

“It’s gone full circle back to the Broadway riffraff trash of the ‘60s,” said John Thurston, a former technical editor. “Quite honestly, it stinks.”

“As a design professional, I can say it lacks any heart, soul or anything else redeeming, “ said design professional Robert Dean. “I couldn’t honestly wait to leave.”

Urban designer Howard Blackson said a “nutty lady” pulled a knife on him once, but he said the park is better than before: “It’s OK to not mindlessly booster our city because we’re confident enough to take criticism and use it to make improvements.”


The new amphitheater at Horton Plaza Park overlooks an interactive fountain and area for special events. (Roger Showley/U-T)

Help apparently is on the way.

To battle crime, police have stepped up patrols and the city has budgeted $150,000 to cover private security patrols.

To draw more of the general public, Westfield which manages the shopping center next to the park, is planning a summerful of concerts, movies, art shows, food trucks, farmer’s markets and special events, said Vice President Kim Brewer.


“Bringing back the games and bringing back water fountain play days, coloring stations, the fit program, we’re going to reengage on a daily basis,” Brewer said. “I definitely think people we’ve spoken to and even some of the different organizations that plan events — it’s really been a success. These types of spaces take some time to develop.”

She said the agreement with the city calls for ramping up events to 200 annually by 2019.

Among other ideas in the works: A temporary ice skating rink may be installed for the winter holidays.

Yet to be decided, Brewer said, is a full-scale reworking of the shopping center, a project that in discussion for years. Ideas have ranged from adding housing, offices and hotels to tearing down the entire complex and starting over.


Meanwhile, visitors can enjoy 30-minute nightly sound-and-light shows. The million-dollar interactive fountain, built as the key feature in the expanded plaza, has been programmed to play in sync with piped in musical selections and special lighting effects.

“(We’ll) continue to operate it as a world-class urban space and we’ll be assessing over the next year the success of that and make sure that Horton Plaza is the gem that it was always intended to be,” said David Graham, the city’s deputy chief operating officer.

Horton Plaza (the grassy park around the fountain) has a long and storied history. It opened soon after Alonzo Horton opened his Horton House hotel in 1870 and took its current form in 1910, when the U.S. Grant Hotel opened on the site of Horton House. Gill designed the park layout as well as the fountain.

It’s been the go-to place for protests, celebrations, presidential speeches and countless photo ops. But its half-acre size made it too small for major events and gatherings, its formal layout more pretty than practical.


Historic photos show a mix of sailors, office workers, street people and tourists visiting the park. It once housed a weather station and a visitor center, and there was a set of restrooms underground just to the south.

In the 1980s as developer Ernest W. Hahn was constructing what is now Westfield Horton Plaza, the city toyed with a radical redesign before the Save Our Heritage Organisation pressed officials to restore the park to its 1910 look.

But a year or two after both the mall and park opened in 1985, the homeless moved back into the park and the city removed benches, trash cans and the lawn to deter vagrancy.

The overlook of Horton Plaza Park sometimes becomes a sleeping spot. (Roger Showley/U-T)


In 2013 when Westfield decided to demolish the former Robinsons-May department store building, that footprint was returned to the city and the newly enlarged space opened last May. Westfield promised to maintain the park and activate it with special events and weekly activities.

Last year there were 200 events, mostly modest “Plaza Play” lawn games and “Park Unplugged” live music performances. So far this year there have been only 25 events, all but six being “Plaza Plays.”

A replacement is being sought for the Sloan’s ice cream stand that closed a few weeks ago. Burgerim Gourmet Burgers has signed a lease to occupy the south pavilion and is expected to open by Sept. 1.

Those improvements can’t come too fast for downtown regulars.


Joey Aiello, 59, who has operated Joey’s Shoe Shine just south of the park in a Westfield Horton Plaza breezeway for 12 years and eight years inside the mall previously, said he has observed women showering naked or washing their hair in the plaza, drug deals in the bathrooms, two stabbings, four muggings and “endless other events.”

“I love the park but without police there, it’s a nightmare,” he said.

Todd Idziorek, 52, who lives elsewhere downtown and drives catering delivery trucks, said he witnessed stepped up police patrols make arrests and ticket people for smoking, fistfights and a man bending over the interactive fountain with his pants down.

Milan Aguinaga, 23, who operates the Brooklyn Hot Dog cart outside the entrance to the Lyceum Theatre, said the park first seemed like a patio for downtown high-rise residents and then realized the homeless “have taken over.”


“I don’t go there anymore,” she said of the women’s bathroom, after seeing a couple having sex in one of the stalls.

Glen Schmidt, whose landscape design firm helped bring off the expansion of Horton Plaza park, said the design has held up as intended — similar to iconic plazas in Europe that are similarly treeless because they are designed for large public gatherings.

“I think we need to be patient,” he said. “We need to let the programming and leaseholds develop. I think we shouldn’t rush to judgment yet. The design framework is there for success.”

Other than daily lawless but generally nonviolent activity, the homeless seem mostly harmless and, by and large, friendly and approachable.


Amy Ball, 43, was in the park with her four-year-old daughter Braxton one afternoon last week having just returned to San Diego and living temporarily in an emergency shelter.

“I love its openness,” she said of the plaza. “It’s safe to be here.”

A victim of domestic violence, she said she was working on a publication to help the down-and-out learn to comport themselves respectably in public.

“They all know how to behave — if you ask me for a dollar, you know how to behave,” she said.


Graham, the city official, said the homeless are legally permitted to sleep and sit in a public park and use a public restroom like anyone else.

“Homelessness is an issue the entire city is wrestling with,” he said, and officials are working regionally to provide more housing solutions and ways to get them off the streets.

John Yukrel, 26, an attorney sitting with his laptop near the Starbucks outlet, said all of downtown seems like a “homeless hangout” but after engaging them in conversations, he concluded most were responsible members of society who were down on their luck and looking for a way out of their desperate conditions.

“How do you help these guys?” he asked rhetorically. “They just moved here and are just struggling day to day.”


But the continuing presence of the homeless concerns the San Diego Performing Arts League, which runs the ArtsTix ticket booth at the southeast corner of the park, opposite the Balboa Theater.

“It’s no secret the homeless are an issue,” said board president Candis Paule.

She said grade school students attending concerts at the Balboa Theatre recently were corralled away from homeless sleeping on benches. Her staff feared to use the restrooms and got access to a secure facility. A grant maker visited the ticket booth to see about donating funds — just after a homeless person, sleeping beneath the booth’s ticket window, was politely shooed away. (The grant was declined.)

“I want them to be successful,” Paule said. “The more successful the park is, the more people are drawn to it and the more successful we are.”


But she said Westfield could help as well by relaxing its ban on ArtsTix staff from standing in front the facility to welcome visitors (they are restricted to the 165-square-foot leased space).

A Westfield spokesman said some visitors have complained about ArtsTix outdoor soliciting and some handbills have become litter.

“We are the default visitor center for downtown and all of San Diego,” Paule said. “I guess we thought of it as we’re all in this together and are going to knock ourselves out for Westfield and San Diego.”



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roger.showley@sduniontribune.com; (619) 293-1286; Twitter: @rogershowley