bulldoze the civic concourse

question: which of the following california city hall buildings is san diego's?





if you picked the generic 60's building in the third picture, you're correct! (the first and second photos are los angeles and san francisco). here's some more pics of the civic concourse (bounded by 1st and 3rd ave, and b and c streets) that the above san diego city administration building is a part of:













the last picture is of the the san diego civic theater, which is probably the highlight of the concourse. it was designed by lloyd ruocco, who also did the cliffside walter munk building at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics where i work (it's part of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in la jolla). the parking garage, gleaming white and tallest of the city buildings, doesn't actually look that bad from the outside. the elevator entrances and interior are showing their age however. it's actually kind of fun to drive down the crazy center spiral exit ramp inside the building, narrowly dodging cars entering abruptly.

apart from the theater, the entire civic concourse is a drab ode to 60's-era office architecture that could be improved on. some ideas to make this happen could include putting the parking underground, building a city administration building that features interesting architecture, and including some dining options beyond the isolated johnny brown's restaurant. currently it's another reminder of san diego's inability to build defining civic architecture, a physical manifestation of the city's conservatism, lack of vision by its leaders, and its citizens' refusal to pay for meaningful civic projects through bonds or higher fees/taxes. it seems san diego got the ugly-ass city hall it deserved.

however, the union tribune reported wednesday on a plan to rebuild the civic concourse and that the city has narrowed the developer list to two candidates. one of them, hines, was the development manager for petco, and redesigned the san francisco civic center, shown below:



they are also building the transbay transit center in san francisco, near the bay bridge (designed by "starchitects" pelli/clarke/pelli):



pelli also designed the patronas towers in kuala lumpur (once the tallest buildings in the world):





while no renderings are available yet, they've got to look better than what we have now. it's times like this when a famed architect is involved that the 500 foot height limit downtown really sucks.

the big question is how does tight-fisted (and essentially broke) san diego come up with the money to build this project and pay these expensive architects? with the real estate market melting down, it makes it harder for the developer to squeeze retail revenue out of the space. so it comes back to the city to chip in some big bucks, probably. what can the ccdc/san diego redevelopment agency come up with? also, if the city can get its credit rating restored, perhaps a bond could be floated for financing. a more far-fetched approach would be to actually tax america's cheapest city at a rate in line with other cities. it's interesting that cities like chicago can build defining places like millennium park that generate millions in tourist spending and tax revenue, but that such a project would be incomprehensible in san diego, which attracts millions of tourists a year.

at the very least, the city is starting a discussion on replacing the civic center, and that's a good sign.