It’s been nearly a year since the city and its non-profit partner abandoned a years-long effort to replace Balboa Park roads with pedestrian-friendly parkland, leaving both park advocates and everyday onlookers curious about what, if anything, is planned next for San Diego’s historic landmark.

With the path ahead still to be determined, the Balboa Park Committee, which is the city’s official park advisory body, is scheduled to convene on Feb. 6 to gather public input around short- and long-term park priorities. It’s designed as an open-ended meeting where feedback will be used to kick-start a process that should culminate with a 10-year vision for Balboa Park.

“There’s been a lot of feedback around the general public wanting a clear idea of how projects are getting approved and moved forward,” said Katherine Johnston, who chairs the committee. “My goal with the Feb. 6 meeting is to get genuine feedback from the public. What do they see as strengths and weaknesses in the park? We’ll use that to articulate a scope of work to determine the parameters of our planning process.”

The city, in support of the pre-planning effort, has assigned a facilitator to create a framework for the meeting and guide public discussion. Also involved in the endeavor are the city’s planning department, the parks and recreation division, Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s office and Councilman Chris Ward’s office, said Matt Awbrey, a spokesman for the mayor. The goal appears to not only identify park priorities, as dictated by community members but to establish a better organizational structure.


Typically, new park projects originate from within the city’s parks division, are presented to the Balboa Park Committee and eventually are approved or denied by City Council. Critics have described the process as piecemeal, opaque or inconsistent with decades-old planning documents.

For instance, the latest effort — a $1.2 million project to convert a portion of the Palisades parking lot into a landscaped plaza — materialized after the demise of the Plaza de Panama project and is identified in the park’s Central Mesa Precise Plan. However, the yet-to-be-approved South Palisades Plaza Project, as it’s called, could be considered out of sequence, making it inconsistent with overarching park plans.

Separately, the city in late October abruptly walked away from a revenue-generating plan where it hoped to recruit a developer to lease 25.5 acres of mostly vacant parkland in the eastern portion of Balboa Park.

Johnston believes that the upcoming meeting should eventually work to rally stakeholders around a single direction and help them settle on a clear governance structure. And, if public priorities differ from those identified from the city’s existing planning documents, the advisory group will then consider whether the city should pursue plan amendments, she said.


The Balboa Park Committee will meet at 6 p.m. on Feb. 6 in the Santa Fe Room of the Balboa Park Club.