During the 1980's to mid-1990's, there was a sense of growing crisis in the community of North Park, San Diego's first suburban community built during the early part of the 20 th century. Experiencing the highest recorded crime rates of the entire city, North Park was facing decline. There was a fear that this once vital area filled with Craftsmen and Mission-style bungalows was becoming an undesirable place to live.
Activists in the North Park community began a concerted effort to reclaim their decaying business district. As part of that program, they determined it was crucial to transform the eastern entrance to the community along University Avenue. Abandoned and neglected, it was a textbook illustration of how a purely utilitarian design thoughtlessly inserted into a community's environment could profoundly effect the entire community's sense of well being.
As designer and builder of this project, I focused the design on two key elements that form North Parks' identity. First, the community is strongly identified with its association with Balboa Park, and therefore the idea of a garden. The community also has a rich architectural heritage. Drawing from its Craftsman Era aesthetic, the two gateway pergolas merge elements of the existing built environment with the idea of the garden, by wedding organically shaped "tree capitals" to a design based on the grid.
