San Diego ready to design downtown’s next public park

After a two-year pause, the city of San Diego and a private developer are seeking community input as they craft the plan for a small, downtown park on a tight budget.

Last week, the Urban Innovation Division of San Diego’s Development Services Department kicked off a summer-long outreach effort for the future park — currently referred to as North Central Square Park — at 1112 Ninth Ave., between Eighth and Ninth Avenue along C Street.

The division has created a webpage and published a survey to solicit input on desired park activities and features, as well as potential theming. The team is also making the rounds to neighborhood groups, starting with the Downtown Community Planning Council and the Cortez Hill Active Residents Group.

The city will pass the public input onto a landscape architecture firm working with Bosa Development, which currently owns the land in question and will build the park at the city’s expense.

The goal is to start construction next year and open the public park in the middle of 2027, around the same time that Bosa finishes its condo tower under construction on the same block, said Brian Schoenfisch, who heads the Urban Innovation Division.

The outreach effort comes more than two years after San Diego city council members signed off on two contracts with the residential developer. At the time, San Diego agreed to reimburse Bosa $9 million for park design and construction costs. The city also entered into a purchase and sale agreement with the developer to acquire the approximately half-acre site for $13.8 million upon park completion and will use a first-of-its-kind financing mechanism to complete the transaction.

“We got all of the approvals we needed at council (in 2023) for the agreement to move forward. Bosa is now doing construction on the adjacent tower. And as part of the agreement (with the city), they are basically designing and building the park for the city, and then the city takes ownership of the park,” Schoenfisch said. “We are working with them on the design process right now. We’re just kicking it off, and essentially we’re trying to get as much community input as possible.”

The North Central Square Park site, which spans 23,045 square feet of land, is on the southernmost portion of the downtown block bounded by Eighth Avenue, C Street, Ninth Avenue and B Street. The park is included in downtown’s community plan and is intended to be a feature-rich urban park with family-friendly play equipment and other amenities.

The city intends to squeeze as much as it can into the small park space, Schoenfisch said, acknowledging that there are a number of constraints, including the fixed $9 million budget, that will limit what can be built on the property.

“It’s not a gigantic budget, especially when you compare it to East Village Green or any of the other parks, but we’re confident we can do a lot with a little, and we can still provide a park that serves all of the community needs,” he said. “The key to this park is that it has to be a very active park given that location.”

The location, along C Street and the trolley line, is beset with challenges, including clusters of nearby homeless encampments. The East Village site is also just west of the city’s central business district, which has been hollowed out by a pandemic-fueled shift in office dynamics. The addition of the new condo tower and a lively public park are viewed as essential to making the area more attractive to downtown residents and visitors.

“By investing in improving the C Street corridor, this project will provide people with additional reasons to live, work and visit an area where it is easy to get around by walking, bicycling and transit,” Schoenfisch said. “It is important that these areas have quality public spaces where people feel safe and welcomed. It is important that we continue to create public spaces such as this as an invitation for people to come back to downtown.”

The city is open to ideas on how best to turn the little park into a big attraction.

In the recently launched survey, community members are asked to rank different potential park activities according to their preference, with options including play equipment, sports courts, a dog park, a running/walking track and game tables. The survey also queries respondents on how they feel about a symphony or music-related theme, given the park’s proximity to the San Diego Symphony.

The park’s name will also likely be changed at some point in the process, Schoenfisch said.

The city’s survey will be available through July 20 and the outreach effort will wrap up in August. Bosa consultant Schmidt Design Group will then come up with the park’s design, and a general development plan is expected to go before San Diego’s Parks and Recreation Board in the fall. At a minimum, the design must incorporate what’s known as a greenway along Eighth Avenue, as the street is part of a planned network of pedestrian promenades meant to connect people to larger parks, the water and adjacent neighborhoods.

San Diego is funding the nearly $23 million park endeavor using a combination of cash and credits.

The city is using $9 million in cash from downtown’s developer impact fee fund to reimburse the developer for park design and construction costs. Development impact fees, or DIF, are a one-time charge, collected by the city at a project’s completion, that act as a fair-share contribution toward the public facilities — streets, fire stations, libraries and parks — needed in a community.

Part of the reason for the two-year delay between the contract approvals and the current design effort is because the city needed to accumulate enough money from development impact fees to fund the reimbursement agreement.

The city is separately paying for the land in a novel way. Instead of paying cash, Bosa will be compensated with $13.8 million in developer impact fee credits. That means the residential builder will not have to pay impact fees for current or future downtown projects until it has used up the balance. The purchase price corresponds to a November 2020 appraisal by Jones, Roach & Caringella that pegs the land’s market value at $600 per square foot.

“This is unique in that this park is going to be the first park the city will acquire without having to pay any cash. We’re basically trading credits for that,” Schoenfisch. “It’s a win-win for us and for Bosa and for the community, and it’s not going to cost the taxpayers anything.”

The unconventional financing method was made possible by a DIF credit ordinance approved by council members at the same time they signed off on the other contracts.

Once the project and transaction are completed, the new public park will be owned and managed by the city.