Uptown District
"Urban Delight" Published in Architectural Record
Hillcrest, located near Balboa Park and the city's renowned zoo, is one of San Diego's most appealing neighborhoods: pedestrian oriented, alive both day and night, and above all, architecturally diverse. Here, the urban explorer will find some of the best works by early 20th -century regionalist Irving Gill, along with other less celebrated interpreters of the Spanish Colonial Revival mode. The area also boasts fine old Victorians, sturdy craftsman bungalows, and commercial buildings in an array of styles dating from just before to just after World War II.
Hillcrest also has its less lovely aspects, notably strip development that began spreading along major streets following the war. Most intrusive of all was a giant suburban-style Sears store, built in 1954 and set in the middle of a sea of parking. When Sears closed the store in 1986, the city bought the land, intending to use it as the site for a new central public library. After acknowledging that the library should remain downtown, San Diego's powers-that-be sent out an RFP for architect/developer teams to transform the 12.5-acre parcel through a combination of commercial, residential, and communal uses.
The city selected Oliver McMillan/Oldmark & Thelan as developer, in part because this locally based consortium had been willing to work with Hillcrest residents and business groups. The design team was comprised of SGPA ARCHITECTURE AND PLANNING as master planner and architect for the project's commercial portions, and Lorimer-Case as architect for the residential component. Though both firms had made their marks principally in the suburbs - the former in shopping centers, the latter in housing developments - here they were to come up with an unusually urbane scheme. The very name of the development, the Uptown District, suggests a desire on the part of all concerned that the project be integrated with the neighborhood rather than stand apart as an island of brash newness.
SGPA began the planning process by roaming about Hillcrest and taking hundreds of photographs. The firm then produced montages in search of a suitable architectural approach, and it soon concluded that the worst possible solution would be to wrap the entire development in a single style. For one thing, no one style predominated in Hillcrest; for another, that approach would have increased the development's apparent scale and clearly brand it as an interloper.
The architects consequently took the opposite tack, attempting to make Uptown's 48 buildings look as if they had been done by many hands over a period of time. To be sure, it helped that there were different architects for the commercial and residential sectors; yet even within each sector, buildings vary widely in form and color. Flat-roofed rows that look like something out of an old California mining town contrast with other buildings bearing hipped roofs, vaults, and towers. Uptown may be a low-rise community, but it has a lively skyline.
Most significantly, perhaps, SGPA's plan emphasizes linkages to the existing neighborhood. The original Sears site stopped just short of University Avenue, Hillcrest's main retail corridor, so the developers bought the strip of land in between to bring Uptown's total acreage to 14. Because University was one of the streets that had fallen prey to strip development, Uptown's architects brought their buildings along the avenue right up to the sidewalk line, reinforcing the street edge. What's more, SGPA extended San Diego's street grid into the project, widening Vermont Street to create a grand boulevard where the commercial and residential sectors meet. Mixed-use buildings along Vermont have ground-floor shops, with offices or residential lofts above, while a landscaped courtyard in the center of the development rises in a series of terraced steps that can serve as an amphitheater for community events.
An east-west spine extends from the courtyard to Uptown's largest single building - a Ralph's supermarket. The architects softened the store's visual impact by designing the 42,500-square foot structure as a farmers' market topped by an arching bow-truss metal roof. They also reduced surface parking by placing the market atop a 115-car garage, which features a specially designed escalator that carries both shopping carts and shoppers down to their cars. Where there is surface parking, it is modest and heavily planted with flowering jacarandas. Landscaping and street furnishings throughout contribute an "urban village" feeling, in the architects' words.
Uptown's 320 residential units are also set over garages and are arranged in a pedestrian version of the city grid. Buildings surround a large central park and smaller landscaped courts, each with a distinct design. Lorimer-Case took advantage of San Diego's benign weather by turning what normally would be interior corridors in the apartment buildings to outdoor passageways. Two-story townhouses lining perimeter streets help bring Uptown into scale with Hillcrest's existing buildings.
Uptown was built quickly and has succeeded quickly. Rushed partly because of a threatened building moratorium, the supermarket had opened and the first apartments were leased just 24 months after the city issued its RFP. Within three months, all of the first-phase residential and 70 percent of the commercial space was leased or committed.
-Donald J. Canty
